“So I’m to retrieve my cane and interrogate the help?” Will asked.
“I’d wait for another half hour. Her ladyship is more likely to have taken her landau to the park by then. Now, we should ask the help in the stables what they know about the dog’s disappearance.”
“I am hearing the word we entirely too much today, my lady, and applied to the wrong endeavors.”
“While I am not hearing it enough,” Susannah retorted. “You tell me you lack the coin necessary to allow a woman expectations regarding your future. The reward for this missing mastiff is substantial, and you’re ideally suited to find a missing dog, Willow.”
The cat blinked at them, then hopped off the wall and strutted across the alley.
Will slapped his gloves against his thigh. “What else did you notice about Lady March?”
“Her rings are paste,” Susannah said as the cat leaped up onto another wall and thence into an oak. Crows scattered from the tree amid a cacophony of avian scolding.
“If a lady is so bold as to show off her jewels during daylight hours,” Susannah went on, “she should expect those jewels to be noticed. The settings might have been real, but the rubies were not.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Will said. “Lady March cannot afford the reward she has so ostentatiously posted. Her dog is genuinely missing, but she has no means to make good on the obligations his return would entail.”
Susannah began a brisk progress down the alley. “You do not want to find that dog. Are you so happy to remain an impoverished bachelor, Willow?”
He remained where he was, clearly reluctant to heed the implied command to heel which her departure had signaled.
“Susannah, stop.”
Ha. She stomped along, looking for the mews that would serve Lady March’s horses. Will was so quiet, Susannah didn’t hear him until he’d leaped in front of her.
“Not an hour past,” he growled, “I was admonishing my hotheaded brother that poking into the fate of lost dogs is dangerous, thankless work. I must think, and so must you. Give me two minutes, Susannah, to sort fact from folly, to—”
Susannah kissed him, lest he forget about lost opportunities while considering lost dogs.
“Talk to the stablemen, Willow. I’ll await you near the street. If anybody sees me, I’ll be a lady waiting for my vehicle to be brought around. You can walk me home, then come back and chat up the butler or the porter.”
Will untied the bows of Susannah’s bonnet and reset it on her head, as Della had done, at nearly the same coquettish angle. The feel of his fingers brushing against Susannah’s chin had strange repercussions in the vicinity of her knees.
“You aren’t concerned for the dogs,” he said. “I wish I were not, but I am concerned for the dogs.”
What was he going on about? “The weather is mild, London abounds with dung heaps, middens, and all manner of sources of food for an enterprising dog. Of course I’m concerned for the dogs, Willow, but I’m concerned for you too.”
The notion seemed to puzzle him. He cocked his head as Georgette might have, while Susannah nearly panted from the effect of standing so close to him.
“Wait for me. I won’t be long,” he said, striding off in the direction of the stables.
Susannah had taken exactly one step in the opposite direction before Will’s hand on her arm gently but firmly turned her into his embrace.
“You are concerned for our future,” Will said. “I am too.” With that, he kissed the daylights out of her, then set her back, and resumed his march upon the mews.
* * *
“I have landed in the midst of one hell of a tangle,” Will said, quietly, lest the other men in the club’s dining room overhear him.
Casriel topped up Will’s wineglass. “You, Willow? Are Cam and Ash behind this? I don’t recall you ever being in a tangle, not even with a woman, and they are the very definition of a tangle.”
“Unless that woman is your wife,” Will said, taking a sip of cool, fruity red wine. Susannah’s kisses were like this vintage, startling in their verve and impact, but sweet, too, and full of subtleties.
“Willow, will you explain this tangle to me or not?” Casriel asked, setting the bottle on Will’s side of the table. “I am the head of your family, also your devoted brother. I would be surpassingly gratified to solve a problem for you for a change, instead of the other way round.”
Will might once have used that opening to lecture the head of his family on the necessity of acquiring a countess, but such single-mindedness—such simplemindedness—was beyond his grasp at the moment. The notion that Casriel was concerned, even eager to help, was quite odd.
Also reassuring.
“I’ll lay it out as best I can,” Will said. “Several large, handsome, well-cared-for dogs have gone missing from aristocratic owners, and I suspect there are more I haven’t yet heard of.”
“I know about the Duchess of Ambrose and Lady March’s dogs,” Casriel said, circling his wrist in a gesture reminiscent of Cam. “Impressive rewards posted by both women.”
“Cam is determined to find the dogs,” Will said. “I cannot see any good resulting from his involvement in such dangerous matters, but neither will common sense dissuade him. I am thus considering lending my expertise to the search, provided I can do so discreetly. The duchess and I are on familiar terms, but Lady March and I are not well acquainted. I enlisted Lady Susannah’s company to pay a call on Lady March.”
Storytelling gave a man a thirst, and Will’s glass had somehow become only half full.
“This steak is undercooked,” Casriel said, pushing his plate away. “I don’t care for Lord March myself. Can’t hold his drink, and must let all and sundry know he’s a regular at the tables where the deepest play is to be had.”
Will buttered a crust of bread and popped it into his mouth. Paste jewels, gambling markers, a reward that could not be paid…the bread was too dry, and the conclusion clamoring in Will’s mind utterly sour.
“Between calling on Her Grace,” Will went on, “and calling on Lady March, I ran into Cam and Ash. Cam related a tale of pursuing some fellow who showed every sign of having stolen the mastiff he was dragging along. Cam followed and freed the dog, and the animal matches the description of Lady March’s missing Alexander.”
Casriel refilled his own wineglass. “Shite.”
“Shite, because Cam nearly got into a scrape, or shite because Cam let the dog go when he might have earned a reward?”
Casriel took a sip of his libation, while the club’s candlelight flickered over dark hair, a shrewd gaze, and features that looked more like their papa’s with each passing year.
Grey was the earl. In that single, mundane moment, watching Grey take a considering sip of good German wine, Will realized that the title had settled on his brother’s shoulders more firmly in recent months. The earl was more focused, more in charge of the family’s affairs.
He met with the solicitors not at their offices, but in his library. He sat in the Lords and took his responsibilities seriously, but did not become preoccupied with affairs of state to the detriment of the earldom’s affairs.
The realization sent Will’s emotions in several directions at once, like puppies spilling out of their whelping box.
“I am proud of you,” Will said, though he hadn’t intended to burden his brother with that sentiment aloud.
“How much wine have you had, Willow?” Casriel asked, sitting back with his glass cradled in his hand. “I’m proud of Sycamore. He needs to learn that a fellow can get into all manner of interesting contretemps as long as he can also get out of them.”
“Yes, well, I’m proud of Cam too,” Will said. “For getting out of the scrape, but also for setting the dog free. One can’t know, of course, who the dog’s owner is, but Cam saw an animal in need of aid and intervened.”
Will’s feeling went beyond mere pride, to a sense of gratitude, for Cam had taken the risk Will himself ought to have shouldered. If the dogs of th
at size were being stolen, their fates would be miserable—a short life of violence and deprivation, a bad end.
“He took a risk,” Casriel replied, holding the wine up to the light. “Cam excels at tackling risky ventures, and usually comes out the worse for it, as does my exchequer. Back to your recitation, Willow. I’m expected at some ball or other before the hour grows too late, and I cannot like that you’d embroil yourself in this matter of stolen dogs.”
Casriel was scheduled to attend the Windham ball. “Any particular lady standing up with you?”
“She’s not even expecting me,” Casriel said. “Perhaps a sneak attack will serve me well, if I can get up the nerve to ask her for a dance. So there you were, dressing Cam down for his foolishness, and then you’re off to take tea with Lady Susannah at Lady March’s?”
The other emotion Will could put a name on was a sense of loss. When even Cam was showing good sense—for Cam—life was changing. Casriel was apparently interested in a woman, Casriel was the one helping Will sort through a trying day, and Ash was on his way to a position with Worth Kettering.
The Dorning menfolk were settling down, which explained the relief Will felt, to behold his older brother looking every inch the handsome lord. Grey, Ash, Cam, and the youngsters would manage if Will found himself a small estate where he could train dogs and raise sheep.
And raise a family.
“Lady Susannah’s company is agreeable to me generally,” Will said, “and she is acquainted with Lady March. Try though we did, Lady March would not disclose a single detail of her dog’s disappearance, and Lady Susannah suggested I instead talk to the help.”
Casriel finished his wine. “What aren’t you telling me, Willow?”
“Lady March’s rings are paste, her tea service less than grand, only the upper servants are paid on time, and the dog typically spent the night in a stall in the mews. He simply wasn’t there one morning, though he disappeared during the stablemen’s night for playing skittles at the corner pub.”
“Shite and more shite. She sold her dog?”
Will had hoped to gather evidence that her ladyship had not sold her dog, because the ramifications of Casriel’s conclusion were many, and all of them bad.
“She might have,” Will said. “He was a handsome fellow, reasonably well trained, but very protective. Some squire down from the north might have taken a fancy to him.” Will prayed that had been the dog’s fate.
“Tell that bouncer to Georgette,” Casriel said, crossing his knife and fork on the edge of his plate. “What do you think befell the dog?”
“I think he’s bound for the bear pits. The bear gardens need a steady supply of big, aggressive dogs. The bears occasionally kill a dog, often wound them, and sometimes knock the fight out of them. The only fools who enjoy a bear-baiting are the ones not in the pit.”
“I avoid them, and the cockfights too. A Mayfair ballroom is all the blood sport I can handle. You’re still not telling me the whole of it, Willow. Proving ownership of a dog would be next to impossible, and thus anybody involved risks finding disfavor with the law—and with the thieves.”
Disfavor with the law being a polite way to refer to charges of theft; disfavor with the thieves might result in severe injury, or worse.
“Lady Susannah has got it into her head I can use the rewards,” Will said. “She’s not wrong.”
“A gentleman never argues with a lady when he can get drunk with his brother instead. The Dorning hasn’t been born who’s truly wealthy, Willow.”
Will signaled a waiter to wrap up the earl’s uneaten steak, an eccentricity the waiters were accustomed to from him. While the food was removed, Will searched for a way to say what needed saying without jeopardizing his privacy.
And mostly failed. “I fancy Lady Susannah, and I believe my sentiments are reciprocated.”
“To hear Ash tell it, they’re reciprocated in the undergrowth of Hyde Park of a morning. Your breeches were dirty and grass stained in interesting locations earlier this week.”
“Clothing that is less than pristine is unlikely to be pilfered,” Will said. “A man who wants to take a wife must be able to support her. I conveyed my concerns in this regard to Lady Susannah.”
Casriel to his credit neither laughed nor swore. “So she wants you to earn those rewards, while you only want to find a few hapless mongrels without being caught doing so.”
“Purebreds, but yes. I cannot expect the rewards, Grey—a gentleman would not accept them, though Susannah doesn’t seem to grasp that—and yet she expects me to locate the dogs. Dogs meet difficult fates, I know that, but now Cam and Ash expect me to join the search, and—”
“And you cannot sleep at night, knowing several overlarge, unsuspecting pets will be thrown into the pits. You want to find them too, Willow.”
Will wanted somebody to find the damned dogs, and Susannah wanted that somebody to be him.
“I’m no longer penniless, much to my surprise, but neither am I wealthy,” Will said. “Susannah’s lot with me would be humble, compared to what she’s accustomed to.”
Casriel made a study of the wine bottle’s label, though Will doubted the earl could decipher much German in the limited candlelight.
“Can you find these dognappers, Willow? Allow me to remind you that thief-taking is hardly a respected or safe profession.” Casriel spoke with the distaste of a man was has a reputation to consider, siblings to provide for, and a prospective countess to locate, court, and marry.
“Finding the thieves is simple,” Will replied, for he’d studied on the matter for two entire sessions of fetch the stick. “I’d simply put it about that I’m pockets to let—typical Dorning, you know—and have a bad-tempered dog or two I would sell for a good sum.”
Casriel’s wince was subtle. “That sounds like Cam’s idea of a strategy. You’ll use your dogs as bait, and then snabble the thieves. What if you don’t catch the thieves and then your dog is condemned to some bear garden in Manchester?”
Then Will would die a thousand deaths, though thinking of Caesar in that bear garden had already cost him much sleep.
“It won’t come to that,” Will said, “because I can’t be the one to earn those rewards.”
Casriel left off pretending to read the bottle’s label and tipped his chair back on two legs.
“Willow, dearest, you are not making sense. Gentlemanly scruples aside, you need money, you’re the fellow who can find these unfortunate brutes, you detest the spectacle of the bear gardens, and Lady Susannah is expecting you to muster the old derring-do. What am I missing here, besides the opening sets at the Windhams’ ball?”
Casriel was missing the entire point, probably because he was focused on a young lady’s dance card—now, when Will needed his brother’s attention.
“Think, Casriel. Somebody knows which aristocratic households have these large dogs. Somebody knows which owners have either a need for funds, or a lack of security where the dogs are concerned. Somebody knows household schedules.”
The earl’s expression turned to a frown, but clearly, he hadn’t put the puzzle pieces together.
“Somebody knows a lot of specifics,” Will went on, “enough details to pluck large dogs from the middle of Mayfair and cart them off to short and violent careers making money from a lot of bloodthirsty toffs. Who could such a somebody be, and how would my consequence compare to his?”
The earl’s chair settled onto all four legs with a thunk. “You could bring scandal and ruin on some scheming, impecunious lordling,” Casriel said slowly, “and thus…on your untitled and relatively impecunious self.”
“The Duke of Quimbey sits over there,” Will said, “in all his finery, not a care in the world, but I depend on him and his ilk to buy my collies, and refer me business. London is full of men like him, and any one of them can ruin me, or ruin anybody associated with me, if I spoil the wrong titled fellow’s little dognapping business. If I don’t spoil that business, then innocent animals suffer
a miserable fate, and Lady Susannah will think I’m indifferent to their suffering.”
“And yet you risk ruin from a titled quarter if you search for the dogs,” Casriel said. “That assumes you—and Georgette—survive to endure that scandal, and aren’t instead sent to a premature reward by some wealthy peer who thinks violence is great entertainment.”
Both brothers spoke in unison. “Shite.”
* * *
“Where the hell have you been?” Ash muttered, under the lilting elegance of the Duchess of Moreland’s orchestra.
“Good evening to you too,” Cam replied, shooting his cuffs. “I was on an errand of mercy. Dispensing alms to the deserving, living up to the nobility of character for which I would soon like to become—”
No wonder Willow wore a constant air of vexation. Ash swiped Cam’s cup of punch, sniffed it, then took a drink.
“You can’t be foxed already, Sycamore. You just got here, and you’re too cheap to pay for your drink when you can get it for free.”
“I would not disrespect my hostess by arriving to the ball inebriated. Where are the elders?” Cam asked, taking back his cup of punch. “I can’t believe they’d leave us here without supervision.”
Ash had lost track of Casriel and Will. He was too busy with his own concerns.
“Willow was here, but he might be off in some corner with Lady Susannah. Last I saw Casriel, he was making sheep’s eyes at the Windham ladies and trying not to be obvious about it.” Which was touching, in a way, or pathetic.
“Willow would be pleased,” Cam said, scanning the ballroom. “Casriel is over by the ferns, in full view of the dowagers, no less. Which Windham lady has caught his eye?”
“How should I know? Between the Duke of Moreland and his brother, there’s an entire cricket team of them.”
Cam set his glass of punch aside, then glowered at Ash’s cravat. “You stole my stickpin, you plundering Visigoth.”
“Borrowed, my boy. I only borrowed it. Besides, you owe me your allowance for the next four years. Maybe I’ll take the stickpin as a small installment on the principle.”
A younger Cam might have stepped on Ash’s foot, dashed punch on his cravat, or at least lapsed into foul language. This Cam merely smiled sweetly.
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