“I doubt if it’ll smell half as sweet,” he said. “If we go slow we’ll miss our dinner.”
“Ah, let’s miss our dinner!” she begged. “Did we not eat all those little fat quail and those great fat peaches for our lunch? I’d rather sup on the lights that’ll be coming out behind the window-panes while we pass, and the stars that’ll slip through the sky while we’re not looking, and the smell of gilly-flowers and lavender warm against the walls. Maybe if we go slow, we might have a slip of new moon for dessert—maybe if we go slower than that, the horses will know what it’s all about, and let you hold one of my hands.”
And so the horses did, and so he did, and it was long past dinner when the duke and his duchess drove through the gates of Gray Courts, and swept proudly up the long alley with its great beech trees to the door where grooms and butlers and housekeepers and maids and men enough to start a republic came running sedately to greet them. The duke stood them off with a gesture and held out both his hands to help his duchess down from her throne, and she laid her finger-tips in his and reached the threshold high on her toes.
“This,” said the duke with a pride that made his former arrogance seem humility, “is Her Grace.”
He swung her through the carved doors before the most skillful of them could do more than gape or sketch a curtsey—in the great stone hall with the flagged floor and the two fireplaces built by giants to burn oak trees she looked smaller than a child and brighter than a candle. She stood smiling as warmly at the cold and hollow suits of armour, with their chilled gleam of steel and gold and silver and the jaded plumes drooping in their helmets, as though they were her brothers, and the dun-coloured hound lying with his nose on his paws blinked twice, and rose slowly, in his huge grace, and strolled to where she stood gleaming, thrusting his great head beneath her hand.
“Oh, the wonder he is!” she cried. “What will I call him?”
“His name’s Merlin,” the duke told her, and he put his arm about her in full sight of the stunned household. “He knows a witch as well as the one he was named for. Layton, where are my sisters?”
“Their Ladyships have retired to their rooms, Your Grace.”
“Good!” replied His Grace distinctly. “Where are my sons?”
“Their Lordships drove over late this afternoon for a dinner and theatricals at the Marquis of Dene’s, Your Grace.”