A Proper Lord's Wife (Properly Spanked Legacy 2)

She picked him up and cradled him against her chest. “Would you like to pet him? I promise he’s very clean.”

He stroked the rabbit gently, as an Edward might do, instead of a Lord Townsend. While Bouncer leaned into his touch and twitched his ears, Jane stared at his long, manly fingers, wondering when her intense fascination with her husband’s body would end.

“He’s very calm when you hold him,” he noted. “Not like a wild animal at all.”

“Yes, I’ve tried to help him feel secure. There’s always been a question—was he abandoned by his mother for his damaged foot, and therefore caught more easily by my father’s hound? Or did the hound damage his foot in catching him? I tried not to blame Pagan too much.”

“Pagan, the naughty bunny snatcher.”

Jane smiled at him. “Yes, it was naughty, but I suppose it worked out in the end.” She held Bouncer up, watching his nose wiggle and his eyes take in the stranger beside her with curiosity. “Some people think of rabbits as little more than rodents, but they are not at all like rodents. For one, they have two extra incisors that rodents don’t have.”

“How interesting.”

“They also have larger ears than most rodents, so they’re able to hear from much farther distances. Their long ears also disperse heat to keep them cool on warmer days. When it’s cooler, as now in winter, they wear them closer to their bodies.”

“Hmm.” He gazed down into the enclosure. “Do you think they’re cold out here, your animals?”

“With additional warmth from the stove, they can survive English weather. Back in you go,” she said, placing her rabbit in his pile of cotton scraps and straw. “I’ll feed you more hay tonight.”

The snake’s enclosure was next, longer and low, with a glass front.

“Do you want to meet Mr. Cuddles?” she asked uncertainly. “I’ll understand if you don’t, after what happened yesterday.”

“I would like to meet Mr. Cuddles on the condition that he not be released from his cage.”

“It wasn’t meant to happen yesterday,” she said. “He was in a traveling box, you see, and the boy dropped it from surprise. Anyhow, we needn’t open the enclosure. You can look through the window and see him if you prefer.”

“That does sound safer. How did you come to own this reptile, Jane? Did you buy him at the Exeter Exchange?”

“Oh, no. I did not have to buy him. He was so ill; they’d pretty much left him to die. They don’t care properly for their animals, it’s very sad. A man who worked there told me he was in peril, and I demanded the manager surrender him to me.”

“You are an enterprising advocate for animals. I suppose they knew you from your protests outside.”

She detected the disapproval in his voice. It had been outrageous to stand outside the Exchange and entreat patrons not to support the zoo. She’d been raised well enough to know that, and in the end, her efforts had not worked, and her father had ordered her home. It had also been outrageous to adopt an exotic python, but in this her papa had allowed her to prevail. She pointed to the snake, now curled up in a cozy bunch of moss. “I think he was grateful for my help. He has never been aggressive toward me.”

“Do you handle him often?”

“Not excessively, but enough to ensure he is healthy and happy. He loves to wrap about my hands and arms and stare up at me. He can be quite affectionate in his own way.”

Her husband made a soft sound, something between a laugh and a groan. The poor man, just now realizing how bizarre a woman he’d married. Well, he’d probably realized that last night, but here he was, listening to her. He hadn’t ordered her pets to the devil yet, although it was within his rights to do so.

“England isn’t the best place for a python,” she admitted. Around them, the groomsmen half listened, watching the enclosure as they attended their duties. “Perhaps I should have left him where he was and let nature take its course, but he would have died so young. I try to keep him as content as possible in captivity.”

“He’s doubtless grateful,” he said with a smile. “If snakes can feel gratitude.”

“A professor at Cambridge University told me that, if he stays healthy, Mr. Cuddles might live twenty or twenty-five years.”

Edward’s smile faded. “Twenty-five years, you say? My God. What do you feed it?”

“Mice or rats. He has a rodent meal once a week, usually a half-dead critter the kitchen cats bring to the doorstep. At my father’s house, my pets lived in the kitchen, you see. It was warmer and busier, and the staff enjoyed feeding them scraps. Well, Bouncer anyway. Mr. Cuddles doesn’t eat scraps, and none of them liked to feed the snake.”