“Will you be at the Darlington ball tonight, my lord?” Della asked as they wandered toward Park Lane. “Lady Darlington is said to have an excellent orchestra, and I’ve been given permission to waltz, you know.”
A lure, an invitation for Effington to beg a spot on Della’s dance card.
Susannah dropped back rather than listen to Effington’s reply. Yorick, also trailing behind the couple, was trying to both lift his little leg on the pansies bordering the path, and hop along to keep up with Effington. The dog’s efforts might have been amusing, had the result not been for the dog to essentially wet himself.
“Yorick, come along,” Effington said, hauling on the leash. “Lady Susannah has expressed concern over our tardiness.”
Effington could not have seen Yorick behind him, but that tug on the leash jerked the dog right off his stubby legs.
“I’ll take Yorick,” Susannah said, appropriating the leash from Effington.
Della untangled her arm from his lordship’s. “Suze, you don’t care for dogs. I’ll take Yorick.”
“Nonsense. Yorick and I will manage well enough.”
Effington placed Della’s hand back on his arm. “Far be it from me to deny a lady the pleasure of the company she prefers. Yorick is a very well-behaved and friendly fellow, much like his owner.”
The viscount sauntered off with Della, while Susannah gave Yorick a moment to heed nature’s call. He was an ugly, fretful, smelly little dog, but Susannah could not abide Effington’s casual disregard for the pet he claimed to love.
* * *
“Something isn’t right,” Will said softly, so that under the hum and bustle of the Darlington ballroom, only Ash would hear him.
“You’re right. The hour approaches midnight and I’m not yet drunk, a sure sign the End Times are upon us.” Ash snagged a glass of champagne from a passing footman. “As the Season drags on, my tolerance goes up. I suspect Cam can already outdrink me, though.”
A dozen yards away, under the minstrel’s gallery, Lady Susannah and Lady Della appeared to be chatting gaily with each other.
Very gaily.
“Sycamore is in his gin phase,” Will said. “Drinking blue ruin to feel sophisticated, tough, and wicked. He’ll tire of it in approximately three weeks and become a wine connoisseur for the remainder of the Season. That’s not what I meant.”
Ash passed Will the full glass. “You’re not drinking, and that’s sheer folly. This is a ball, which means free champagne for the bachelors, and I haven’t seen you touch a drop. Casriel was last seen on the terrace in discussion with the Earl of Bellefonte, who, being both enormously tall and enormously blond, is hard to miss. Cam was smoking on the terrace steps, so Casriel will keep an eye on him.”
Brothers present and accounted for, true enough, and yet the hair on Will’s nape prickled disagreeably.
“Many of the ladies are smirking behind their fans,” he said, “and everybody is casting glances at the Haddonfield sisters, but nobody is approaching them.” This again. Next they’d be accidentally tramping on Lady Susannah’s hems and apologizing for their clumsiness, even as they also spilled punch on the back of her skirt.
Ash took back the glass and sipped. “Scandal afoot, d’ya think? Suppose that’s the other reliable commodity at balls. That and dancing. Sounds like a waltz coming next, and about time.”
Lady Susannah had held the same glass of punch for five minutes without taking a sip. Lady Della had drained her glass too quickly, and she was tapping her foot, but not in time to the orchestra tuning up in the corner.
“Does Lady Della waltz yet?” Will asked, though even as he raised the question, he knew the answer. She was an earl’s daughter and pretty. The patronesses would have already given her permission to waltz in hopes of getting her married off, so the less titled or less lovely would have a clearer field.
Ash peered at Will owlishly. “You’re asking about Lady Della? I thought you fancied the older one, Lady Susan.”
“Lady Susannah, and she’s merely a friend.” A friend who had kissed Will in the park. He’d come to a decision regarding what to do about that folly if the lady made further advances. “Somebody needs to waltz with Lady Della.” How Will knew this, he could not say, but he was prodded by the same instinct that told him when Casriel’s hounds were about to turn on one of their own.
“You waltz competently,” Ash said. “Might do you good and she’s a lovely little creature. Now why is Trudy Mannering twittering near the men’s punch bowl and glancing at the Haddonfield ladies? Never a good sign, when a Mannering female gets to twittering.”
“I cannot waltz with Lady Della,” Will replied. “I’m the spare. Casriel should be leading her out, dammit.” A perfect opportunity to be the gallant knight, and his earl-ship was off discussing foot rot or Corn Laws. Gentlemen were bowing before their partners, couples were taking places on the dance floor.
“You just swore,” Ash marveled. “You swore and Cam wasn’t here to gloat. This is what happens when people schedule their social occasions for the full moon. Sheer folly. Nothing for it, then, but I must leap into the affray.”
Ash pushed his now-empty champagne glass at Will, shot his cuffs, ran a hand through flowing dark locks and sauntered across the ballroom. He fixed a blazing smile on Lady Della in a manner sure to draw attention.
When Ash Dorning focused on an objective, he made a good job of it. He’d be a fine solicitor, perhaps even a barrister. Ash bowed over the lady’s hand and led her out, leaving Lady Susannah looking relieved and tired.
The compulsion to go to her, to lead her out—to ask her why she’d kissed him—had Will’s feet moving in her direction.
“There’s been another one,” said a voice to Will’s left. An acrid whiff of smoke came off Cam’s clothes, and his excitement was palpable. “Just today, another one taken. Hendershot was gabbling about it.” Cam wasn’t drunk yet either, but he was in a lather about something—though a lather was Sycamore’s natural state.
“Sycamore, calm yourself,” Will said, in the same tones he’d used on an excited puppy. “Another what?”
“Another dog, this time stolen from the dowager Duchess of Ambrose. Poor old dear is distraught, and that’s why she’s not here tonight.”
Will took Cam by the arm and steered him back out onto the terrace. “Firstly, arrange your features as if you were discussing Greymoor’s new stud colt; and secondly, how did you hear of the duchess’s misfortune?”
“Who’s Greymoor?”
God save me from half-witted younger siblings. “Greymoor is an earl of our brother’s acquaintance, one who had the sense to marry several years ago. The example has yet to bear fruit with Casriel, but I cling stubbornly to hope. Tell me about the missing dog, Sycamore.”
Dogs went missing all the time in London. They ran loose in the streets, congregated in alleys, and could menace foot traffic in the meaner neighborhoods. They also kept the rat population down, and Will suspected dogs were hunted in their turn in the rookeries.
“Her Grace was devoted to the brute,” Cam said. “Rather like you and Georgette, apparently. She talked to the dog, kept it in her bedroom on stormy nights, took it with her everywhere.”
Will did not talk to his dog. Very much.
He led Cam across the terrace, in the direction of the torch-lit garden. “This was a large dog?”
“Mastiff, like Georgette, and very protective of the duchess. That’s the second one this month, Will. The second big dog to go missing from a fancy household, and nobody has seen a sign of either of ’em.”
This was not good, not good at all. Sycamore’s determination rivaled that of a bloodhound, and made Ash look like a puppy with an old shoe by comparison.
“Sycamore, dogs run off. They chase rabbits, rats, and cats. They run out in front of coaches, and if somebody inadvertently killed a duchess’s dog, he’d keep that to himself.” Dogs also fell in love, or their version of it, and no amount of training prevailed against that biol
ogical imperative.
Though two large dogs from wealthy households was enough of a coincidence to make Will uneasy for the dogs as well as for his brother.
“Is this why you attend the bear-baitings?” Will asked when they’d moved out of earshot of the terrace. “You think you’ll find the missing dogs in the pits?”
Cam tossed himself onto a bench near a blooming hedge of honeysuckle. By torchlight he looked about eleven years old, too young for the violence and gore of a bear-baiting.
“You’re not supposed to know about that,” Cam said. “I wasn’t looking for missing dogs, though. Did Ash peach on me?”
Will came down beside his brother as the strains of the waltz wafted from the ballroom.
He should have asked Lady Susannah to dance with him once Lady Della’s plight had been addressed. That would have given him a chance to ask her why she’d kissed him, and then invite her for a stroll in the dark, fragrant garden. In private, he’d explain to her that calling a man an old friend one minute and kissing him the next rather muddled a fellow.
Muddled him to the point where he was thinking about kissing her, which would not do.
“Willow, if you’re trying to flagellate me with your disappointed silence,” Cam said, “it’s working quite well. I only went to the bear garden twice.”
And yet Will’s disappointment was infinite. “Did you learn anything?”
“I don’t recall much, to tell you the truth. Had a bit to drink before. Bear-baiting is legal,” Cam said, taking out a gold case and extracting a cheroot. He rose to use a torch to light his smoke, then leaned against the lamppost. He smoked not with the restless self-consciousness of a youth attempting adult vices, but with the careless grace of the experienced devotee. Now he looked not eleven years old, but a man full grown, and then some.
He really should be at university.
“Bear-baiting is legal,” Will said, “so is wife beating and selling your children into bondage. So are opium dens, so is prostitution.”
Cam studied his cheroot, the smoke wafting around him in the shadows. “Why do they go, Will? Why do the crowds go week after week, to see the same bear chained by the same back leg, the same dogs hectoring him? The dogs tear at the bear, the bear bites and claws the dogs, a great mess is made, and much suffering endured on the part of the poor beasts, over and over, until death do them part. I don’t understand it.”
Thank God. “Why do you think the crowds go, Cam?”
Cam took a long, thoughtful draught on his smoke. “To be more horrified at the fate of the animals than at their own lives? To see somebody who has it worse than they do? I don’t know. A lot of the crowd is swells and cits, Will. They aren’t living brutal lives. Queen Elizabeth liked a good, gory bear-baiting. The cockfights are just as bad.”
“Bear-baiting is worse,” Will said. “The cock who won’t fight or doesn’t fight well is gifted with a summary execution, not staked in the pit over and over. You know your Roman history?”
Cam’s cheroot was growing short. He tapped the ash off, the movement competent and graceful.
“Bread and circuses?” Cam asked, taking another drag. “That’s for the masses, Will. What is a duke’s heir doing at a bear-baiting? A German prince and his cronies? Members of Parliament? Puking drunk and howling with mirth at a tormented bear, the lot of them.”
Cam dropped the last of the cheroot and stubbed it out with his toe, then slouched against the lamppost. His posture signaled disillusionment and bewilderment, necessary acquisitions on the road to maturity.
“I don’t understand the appeal of violence as entertainment, either,” Will said. “Papa took me to a bear-baiting when I was twelve. I left in tears, walked seven miles home in a howling rain, and wouldn’t talk to him for weeks. I never respected him quite as much after that.”
“Yes,” Cam said, straightening. “I can’t respect it, but the fellows think it’s quite the crack. Can’t wait to go, must sit right up front.”
Oxford had no bear gardens, not in the literal sense. “Next time somebody wants to attend a bear-baiting or a cockfight, Cam, you tell them a lady waits for you whom you’re loath to disappoint. Tell them her company is preferable to a pathetic old bear, a pack of mangy curs, or a lot of drunken boys.”
Cam pushed away from the lamppost. “You’d lie to your mates?”
Will rose, because the waltz had ended, and the conversation with Cam would take years to conclude. At least they’d made a start.
“I wouldn’t be lying, and they wouldn’t be my mates. Georgette is a lady, and I prefer her company to most anybody else’s. Let’s find Casriel and lecture him about his duty to the wallflowers, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s,” Cam said. “Casriel has been sorely remiss, and sets a poor example for my impressionable self. Hasn’t danced yet this evening, or introduced me to any lonely widows, or even scolded me for over-imbibing.”
Will shook Cam by the scruff of the neck and shoved him toward the terrace steps, though he’d really rather have hugged him.
* * *
“Della, I think you’ve found the best dancer among the Dorning menfolk,” Nicholas said. “Perhaps you’d introduce us?”
Nick’s question bore all the geniality of a French firing squad taking aim, but only some of his ire would be directed at Mr. Ash Dorning. The rest, Susannah knew, was for her—for letting Della waltz with a man whom Nicholas, as Earl of Bellefonte and head of the family, had not inspected, interrogated, and investigated.
To Ash Dorning’s credit, his smile remained in place, his manner relaxed and sociable.
“Please do introduce us, Lady Della, that I might offer your family my compliments on your faultless waltzing.”
Blather, but charming blather. The knot in Susannah’s belly eased a fraction.
“I’ll do the honors,” she said, launching into the civilities. By the time she’d finished, the Earl of Casriel had joined the group, and where Casriel went…yes.
Willow Dorning lurked two paces away with the other brother, Sycamore, at his side. Sycamore was young enough to have an element of beauty about his features, of refinement and innocence. He’d shave more out of vanity than necessity most days, and his prettiness might not ever blossom into handsomeness.
While Willow Dorning had sauntered past mere handsomeness years ago.
After further introductions, it was decided that the Haddonfield party and the Dorning party would walk home as a group, neither having brought a carriage for the evening. At the appropriate hour, good nights were offered to the host and hostess, dancing pumps exchanged for sturdier footwear, and wraps assembled.
By sheerest coincidence, Casriel offered his arm to Nicholas’s countess, Leah. Della positioned herself between Cam and Ash Dorning, and Susannah was left to bring up the rear with Will.
Two brawny footmen from the Haddonfield household carried lanterns. The moon was full, and yet Susannah had a pleasant sense of sharing the darkness with her escort.
“Thanks seem to be in order again,” she said as the larger party moved ahead down the Darlingtons’ front steps. “I was growing frantic for Della. Once she waltzed with your brother, her card filled for the remainder of the evening.”
Susannah walked arm in arm with Will, his gloved hand resting over Susannah’s knuckles.
“Perhaps word of Lady Della’s availability for waltzes hadn’t reached the ears of the Eligibles yet,” Will said. “She’s a fine dancer, though. She’ll be thronged at her next ball, I’m sure.”
Will would do what he could for Della, in other words. Earlier in the evening, Nicholas had fumed and fretted and told Susannah she was imagining things, while Willow Dorning—without a word of discussion—had sent a dashing brother to the rescue.
“I hate London,” Susannah said as laughter burst from the group ahead of them. “Hate the meanness of it, the hypocrisy, and pettiness. I almost think a woman is better off finding a husband anywhere else besides this social menagerie
, where the animals turn on each other out of sheer boredom.”
Her escort remained silent. Willow’s silences were of geological proportions. Vast quantities of thought, regard, irony, disappointment, or consideration could weigh upon the moments when he said nothing.
“About the husband hunting, my lady.”
“Wife hunting too,” Susannah said, warming to the topic. “What woman shows to her best advantage when she’s trying to dodge the Mannering twins’ malice, or some aging baron’s wandering hands? When she must sip the punch to be polite even though somebody has doctored her drink in aid of making a great fool of her in public?”
“They failed,” Will said gently. “Nobody made a fool of you, though some poor fern probably had a bad few weeks when you dumped out your drink. Are you hunting a husband, then?”
Susannah had dumped her drink all those years ago at Lady March’s tea dance because Will had taken a single, discreet sip and told her to. He’d tested all of her drinks after that.
“I am hunting for a husband,” Susannah said. “One good man. He doesn’t have to be wealthy or handsome, simply good and solvent, and his regard for his wife must be beyond question. Good birth would be nice, but even that isn’t—what?”
Will had stopped walking. “I cannot be that man, my lady, not even for you. I’m sorry. I have responsibilities, duties, myriad obligations, and precious little coin with which to meet them. I esteem you greatly, but honor requires that the truth be aired sooner rather than later, however much it pains me. Make no designs upon my future, for I hardly make any myself.”
In the moonlight, Willow Dorning had the quality of a declaiming marble Apollo, and his voice was beautiful. Logical, balanced, articulate, and sincere, as if he’d rehearsed these sentiments like a speech.
“Mr. Dorning, what are you going on about?” Susannah injected amusement into her question, though she knew exactly what he was going on about. The Mannering twins could not have dealt Susannah a more stunning blow had they torn her ball gown from her very body.
“I cannot marry you.” At least he had the decency to sound regretful. “I’ve considered the situation. Given it a great deal of thought, and while your charms are considerable, my means are not. You’re an earl’s daughter, and I’m…I’m very likely to end up as my brother’s steward.”
Will's True Wish Page 5
