Lotti kissed her, because she could see Clara was upset, but then she pulled away and said, “It’s not enough though, not for me. I want so much more from life than that.”

“Lotti …”

“Let’s just sit quietly for now, Clara. Let’s not talk about tomorrow. Let’s just think about Ben.”

It very much seemed, in that moment, as if all was lost.

But once again, they had underestimated the dogs.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The convent hens were happy.

At night, they slept safely in a snug coop with sand on the floor and plenty of shelves for roosting. During the day they roamed freely and laid their eggs wherever they chose. A little bantam called Poulette liked the herb garden. Pauline, her mother, had once laid an egg on the chapel altar. Palinka, an intrepid young russet, flew as high as she could to lay hers in apple trees.

The gardener, Moses, had grown used to finding eggs as he worked, and he liked to look out for them. As he looked, he noticed other things, like caterpillars and butterflies, the discarded nuts of squirrels, tiny red flowers growing in moss, and he forgot all about gardening and eggs but lost himself in these treasures instead. Often on these occasions he smiled, and a dimple appeared in his left cheek.

Moses had been dimly aware of the sound of the cart returning, but he was far away raking a path at the top of the orchard, and had discovered an adder basking in a dip of the wall. He laid down his rake to watch it. The adder was brown and green, looped in elegant coils, beautiful. Moses slowed his breath to match the rise and fall of the adder. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a dog bark, but he ignored it.

His mind wandered.

Around him in the grass, hens scratched at the ground.

Federico was bored. He had hated Buisseau. Shut away with nuns, dragged along sidewalks on the lead. Back at the Sparrowhawk he longed to run and explore the woods with Lotti as they used to at Barton, but she was sitting all quiet and subdued with Clara, and had ordered him to sit too.

He obeyed, but it was no life for a dog. And then into the open door in the wall to the orchard there stepped the hen Palinka …

… who just stood there, foolhardy creature, her head cocked coyly to one side, practically inviting Federico to chase her …

It was too much for any Chihuahua, let alone one who had suffered.

Federico did not hesitate. The Sparrowhawk’s roof was high, but this jump was nothing compared to the one at Emlyn Lock. The little dog tucked his legs beneath him and launched himself from the roof of the Sparrowhawk onto the jetty, where he bounced, gathered himself and with frenzied barking gave chase.