“Maybe a man who owns such a nice dog isn't all bad.” She tossed a glance over her shoulder and the cautious smile died on her lips. The way he was looking at her, his eyes so dark and fierce, his bony face so set had the breath backing up in her lungs. There was violence trembling around him. She'd had a taste of violence from a man, and the memory of it made her limbs weak.

Slowly he relaxed his shoulders, his arms, his hands. “Maybe he isn't,” he said easily. “But it's more a matter of her owning me at this point.”

Suzanne found it more comfortable to look at the dog than the master. “We have a puppy. Well, he's growing by leaps and bounds so he'll be as big as Sadie soon. In fact, he looks a great deal like her. Did she have a litter a few months ago?”

“No.”

“Hmm. He's got the same coloring, the same shaped face. My brother – in law found him half – starved. Someone had dumped him, I suppose, and he'd managed to get up to the cliffs.”

“Even I draw the line at abandoning helpless puppies.”

“I didn't mean to imply –” She broke off because a new thought had jumped into her mind. It was no crazier than looking for missing emeralds. “Did your grandfather have a dog?”

“He always had a dog, used to take it with him wherever he went. Sadie's one of the descendants.”

Carefully she got to her feet again. “Did he have a dog named Fred?” Holt's brows drew together. “Why?”

“Did he?”

Holt was already sure he didn't like where this was leading. “The first dog he had was called Fred. That was before the First World War. He did a painting of him. And when Fred exercised the right de seigneur around the neighborhood, my grandfather took a couple of the puppies.”