“For your information, Ash, there are four unmarried Windham ladies remaining now that the ducal branch has all wed. All of Lord Tony Windham’s daughters are out, they’re all pretty, and they’re all well dowered. You’re simply too busy worshipping at the hem of Lady Della Haddonfield to inspect any other possibilities.”
“You stole my best reading spectacles is the more likely explanation.”
The music trilled along, Casriel remained among the ferns talking to some dark-haired fellow in a kilt, and still, Cam simply watched the passing scene, a smile playing on his lips.
“What have you done, Sycamore?”
Lady Della was on the dance floor, looking vivacious and delectable in forest green, and entirely too smitten with her partner, Viscount Effete-ton.
“Will brought home a steak from the club. When he went upstairs to dress, I took half of it to where I last saw my dog. I went around to the pub to ask a few questions, and when I came back, the steak was gone.”
No wonder Will so seldom smiled. Sycamore was an ongoing threat to the sanity of any family, and there were three more brothers just like him at home in Dorset.
“What if some of the pub regulars had followed the young toff around back?” Ash asked. “What if they’d decided to lighten his purse and relieve him of a few teeth? Could you not have at least taken me or Will with you?”
Lady Della twirled past again, not three yards from where Ash stood. This close, her expression was more desperate than gay, her eyes haunted rather than vivacious.
“You’re worse than Casriel,” Cam said. “Stop glaring at the poor woman. If I’d asked, would you have come with me to Bloomsbury?”
Ash could no more stop watching Lady Della Haddonfield than he could avoid applying the Rule of Seventy to an interest calculation.
“Of course I would have gone with you,” he said, “but, Cam, you must desist. Will has offered to help and he knows what he’s doing. I get the sense there’s more to the situation than you perceive. If Will advises caution, heed him.”
Regarding most situations, Will knew what he was about. Lady Susannah Haddonfield appeared to have even the great and rational Willow Dorning stumped.
“Is she nice?” Cam asked, popping something into his mouth.
“Is who nice?”
“Lady Della. She’s pretty.”
Good God, not Cam too. “What are you eating?”
“Peppermints. The punch can leave a fellow with rotten breath and yet he can’t very well stand around chewing parsley like a sheep in formal attire. I’d miss you, if you got married and set up a household. Will’s a lost cause, though. If you’re intent on raiding his wardrobe, you’d best help yourself now.”
The dance ended, mercifully, and Effington led Lady Della back to her brother, the Earl of Bellefonte.
“What in the sulfurous, stinking hell are you going on about, Cam?”
Cam passed Ash a tin that was probably intended for snuff. “Help yourself. I’m talking about Willow rolling about in the underbrush with Lady Susannah and two enormous dogs. In America, vines grow wild that can give you an awful itch. Will and her ladyship were growing wild and suffering an itch, without benefit of noxious greenery. I’ve never stood in the middle of a path getting a pebble out of my boot quite so long or so quietly.”
Ash took several peppermints, slipped one into his mouth, and three others into his pocket, then gave the tin back to Cam.
“That is Casriel’s snuffbox, you Vandal.”
“I’m borrowing it,” Cam said. “About time old Willow stopped acting like a monk, but in the very park? My virgin eyes!”
Lady Della disengaged herself from her brother, and crossed the corner of the ballroom that led to the grand staircase.
“Your eyes might be the only virgin territory left on you,” Ash replied. “The ladies’ retiring room is upstairs?”
“Ash, are you foxed? I’ll see you home, old chap. As many time as you’ve looked after me, a bit of turnabout is only the done thing. I mean, the ladies’ retiring room—you’ll give a fellow cause for worry, and the elders are apparently hors de combat, and even I know better than to—”
Cam’s concern was real, and quite gentlemanly, for a change. “Shut it, Cam. I’m not going into the ladies’ retiring room, I was merely—who is that dark-haired fellow crossing the dance floor?”
Cam peered around Ash’s shoulder. “Quimbey’s nephew, Jonathan Tresham. Travels a lot, but is home at the duke’s insistence. His Grace wants the succession ensured, but the nepphie’s not the type to be told what to do. Not the type to share a drink with a fellow either. I don’t care for him.”
A duke’s heir was being pressured to take a wife, and that same man was now all but following Lady Della Haddonfield from the room—after having watched her for half the evening.
“Stay out of trouble,” Ash said, sidling toward the doors at the end of the room. “And thanks for the peppermints.”
“Don’t do anything stupid—stupider than I would do!”
Nine
“Step lively there, Horace,” Jasper said, knocking Horace’s booted feet off the corner of the table. “Time to go hunting. I’m none too happy about the last one getting loose, and the gin doesn’t pay for itself.”
The gin didn’t drink itself either, and the bottle on the floor of the stable’s saddle room was empty.
“Not tonight, Jasper,” Horace moaned, cradling his head. “Damned carriages everywhere, Quality about their amusements, too many brawny footmen on the street with nothing better to do than break my ’ead.”
“How are the dogs?” Jasper asked, passing Horace a flask. The flask was only a quarter full, which meant Horace couldn’t get falling down drunk even if he drank every drop.
“Dogs are mean, stupid, troublesome brutes. The big one’s getting worse. We need to get ’im out of ’ere. What is this? Cat piss?”
“Gin. We’ll move the big one when the price is right. Don’t do to make them bastards down in Knightsbridge think we have dogs coming out our arses. Trying to hurry that black brute along was how he got loose. Let’s go.”
They had to walk past the stalls where the dogs were housed. Two stalls were quiet, but from the third, where the newest mastiff paced by the hour, a low growl rumbled.
“Makes my ’air stand up, when ’e does that,” Horace muttered. “I pity the bear ’e wants a piece of. Won’t be much bear left.”
Jasper checked both latches on the stall door. Wouldn’t do for another valuable dog to get away.
“They pull the dogs off before the bear’s hurt that bad. Bears are trouble to catch, dogs come less dear. Give me back my flask.”
Horace took another deep pull, then handed back the empty flask. “What you got in that sack?”
“Ham bones. Figure we’d leave some where the last one got away. Never know when a dog might travel back the way he came, hungrier than a dog likes to be.”
“You’re brilliant, Jasper. A bloody genius.”
Jasper was a bloody busy man, with too many mouths to feed, and a missus with a mean temper. The traps were unreliable—they attracted everything from rats to cats to children—but the prospect of stealing another dog from some wealthy nob who could bring down the law…
A man could swing for stealing a dog from a titled household. Jasper got out his second flask, took a discreet nip, and led the way into the alley.
* * *
“What did you learn?” Susannah asked, for she would not be put off.
Investigating the disappearances of the dogs had been her idea, and if Will Dorning thought she’d sit on her tuffet reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream while he had all the excitement, he was daft.
“I learned that you will risk your reputation for a conversation that could wait until tomorrow, my lady.”
Susannah paced away from him, though she couldn’t go far because they were in a shadowed alcove at the end of a corridor. Their only other option was to step through the
French doors onto the balcony, where anybody on the terrace below might hear them.
Susannah turned when she was far enough away that she couldn’t touch Will. “The evening has gone cloudy, Mr. Dorning, and tomorrow might well bring rain, so waiting until I can meet you in the park will not serve. If you don’t want us to be discovered, then I suggest you answer my question. What did Lady March’s staff tell you?”
Will brushed a lock of hair back over Susannah’s shoulder. Because they were both in evening attire, that meant her bare neck was caressed by the errant tress, and that caused her to shiver.
“You can be very formidable, my lady. One has suspected this about you.”
“Willow Dorning, I will formidable you right over my knee if you don’t answer my question.”
He looked intrigued, the dratted man. From around the corner and down the corridor came the sound of young ladies gossiping and tittering, and older women scolding them for their talk.
Will stepped closer. “I learned that Lady March hasn’t been paying her junior household staff timely, and her husband plays too deep. She’d be motivated to sell a valuable dog if approached quietly. The dog has likely not gone missing at all, and there’s an end to it.”
His eyes were beautiful, even in the low light of the sconces. Did he know that? Was that why he was gazing directly at Susannah, muddling her wits when logic was needed?
“Her ladyship has not withdrawn the reward, though,” Susannah said. “If you returned her pet to her, she’d have to pay you.” A goodly sum too. Enough that the poorer half of London should have been scouring the streets for the wretched dog.
“Susannah, my dear, if Alexander has been sold to some squire from the Midlands, then we’ll never see him again. Lady March has her sale money, the dog has a good life, the squire is happy. Shall we return downstairs?”
Those beautiful eyes, full of sunset hues and patience, also held shadows.
“You’re giving up, then? Willow, I blush to point out that several dogs of similar description have gone missing, and if a man kisses a lady as if she matters to him, the same man being in want of coin, then that man is likely to confuse the woman who kissed him back as if…”
He stood even nearer, and Susannah’s command of English met the lump in her throat. Will Dorning was the best person to find the dogs and earn the reward. He needed the reward if ever he was to take a wife, and he was giving up?
Anger, bewilderment, and longing crashed through Susannah as more giggling girls went past down the corridor.
“Willow?” Don’t you want me?
His arms came around her, gently but firmly. “I left you with the impression that I am an impecunious younger son, because I believed that to be the case. Worth Kettering has taken over management of my finances, however, and very slowly, my situation should improve to the point where I can afford a…family. My dogs sell for good coin, my investments are prospering, and I thrive on hard work.”
The torrent of self-doubt and indignation in Susannah calmed to a current of hope, albeit turbulent hope.
She linked her arms around his waist and leaned against him. “What are you saying, Will Dorning?”
He kissed her, sweetly, maddeningly, and Susannah cuddled closer in retaliation.
“I can’t ask any woman to wait for my prospects to improve, Susannah. Investments fail, hard work can come to nothing. Better offers come along for a woman of good birth and lively intelligence—”
She wedged a silk-clad leg between his thighs, the better to stop his foolish gallantry. “I can be patient, Will. I’m not feeling patient now.”
Susannah was feeling…giddy, as if her attraction to Will Dorning was a vindication of the good judgment and prudence for which she’d become notorious. She’d developed a towering tendresse for him years ago, and that preoccupation had saved her from the distractions offered by lesser men of greater standing and fortune.
Edward Whatever-his-name had been a faltering of that judgment, a sign of weariness and loneliness, but Will was a good man, and he was her man.
Susannah twined her fingers in Will’s dark locks and pulled him in for a resounding, tongue-tangling kiss. She wanted him in the lush undergrowth of desire, wanted him panting and quivering as she nearly was.
“Susannah, my love, this isn’t—bloody hell.” His mouth came back to hers, ravenous and uncompromising, and Susannah’s back hit a wall.
Good, because she needed leverage if she was to—gracious, Will was aroused, and letting Susannah know he wanted her by pressing himself firmly against her. She pushed back, cursing all evening attire to eternal flames.
“Willow, if you don’t right this very instant—”
He kissed the side of her neck. “Hush. I shall not ruin you.”
Susannah’s knees nearly buckled as Will’s kisses whispered along her shoulder. “I’ve already been ruined, and it was nothing like this.”
She’d endured Edward’s fumblings, recited sonnets in her head while he’d breathed stale pipe breath and staler promises all over her breasts. Will could promise nothing, and the only quote Susannah could pluck from the Bard’s endless verbal riches was something about love being a madness.
Will rested one forearm against the wall and remained in Susannah’s embrace. “You took all the risk and saw none of the reward?” he asked, trailing the backs of his fingers over Susannah’s cheek.
“I don’t know what that means. I expected marriage, and allowed him liberties. It was…mostly bearable, at the time.”
Another caress, a single fingertip drawn along Susannah’s eyebrows. She’d be begging Will to tug on her ears next.
“Bearable. It was bearable, Susannah?”
This was not a Willow she knew. This man could touch her eyebrows and have her body singing in places low and feminine. His voice was cool moonshadows and hot innuendo; his kisses stole reason and words.
“This is not bearable, Willow. I can’t think.”
“Good,” he growled, sliding fabric up over Susannah’s thigh. “Don’t even try. If you can think, I’m failing you. I never want to fail you, Susannah, and I never want you mostly bearing my attentions.”
He drew her skirts high enough to stroke his fingers above her knee, and she half turned, half collapsed along the wall. Will stayed where he was, Susannah’s back to him.
“Lean on me, Susannah. Let me be your support.”
Will’s hand moved higher, stroking, petting, teasing, until Susannah could not have remained upright without resting against him. Nobody had touched her this way, nobody had called forth this longing and frustration.
She should stop him, but what danced across her mind was the realization that while she’d wanted Edward Nash to just get it over with, she wanted Will to caress her without ceasing. Susannah had mentally declaimed tragic soliloquies rather than attend Edward’s furtive liberties. In this stolen moment with Will, all of Susannah’s attention was focused on what Will would do next, as if time itself waited for Willow Dorning’s command.
His touch became intimate as he glossed a fingertip over a slick bud of flesh and sent sensation skittering across Susannah’s nerves.
“Breathe, Susannah. Don’t push the pleasure away, let it come to you.”
Had Susannah been able to speak, she would have told Will the feelings were not pleasurable. The physical experience he conjured was shocking, intense, and unsettling.
And yet Will was all around Susannah, solidly at her back, his arousal obvious where she pressed against him. Susannah could bear the welling desire because Will was with her, in every sense. She could explore the growing tide of need, and as he’d bid her, let it come to her.
The lilt of the violins from the ballroom receded to the periphery of Susannah’s awareness, the voices murmuring around the corner faded as Will’s touch became diabolically delicate and…relentless.
Moment followed moment, and Susannah had all she could do to breathe and to remain silent, and then pleasure wa
s upon her, consuming her from the center out.
“Willow—”
He bent his head to cover her mouth with his own, while his fingers kept up a rhythmic torment that sent white heat exploding behind Susannah’s eyes. For an eternity, she hung suspended between “too much” and “God help me,” while Will cradled her against his length.
Eons of pleasure later, Susannah’s skirts brushed down over her knees, and she was left panting against the wall, Will at her back, his arm around her waist. He turned her in his embrace and held her loosely.
Every part of Susannah was renewed and exposed. The soft night air caressed her cheeks, the shadows flickering from the sconces danced across her vision. Will’s heart beat against hers like a timpani of sheer life force that echoed between her very legs, and inside…
Inside she was poetry, ancient wrath, orchestral crescendos, and every rose ever to bloom unseen under a waning summer moon.
“Hold me,” Susannah whispered, leaning her entire weight against Will.
His embrace became more snug, while Susannah’s grip on him remained desperate. His hand smoothed along her back, bringing peace and sanity. Susannah’s lover was in no hurry to leave her, he was not ashamed of what they’d shared.
And neither, by God, was she.
* * *
Jonathan Landsdowne Farnsworth Verulam Tresham slouched against a pillar in the ballroom and allowed every iota of his antipathy for the assemblage to show in his gaze. He was in London contrary to his will, he was in evening finery contrary to his will, he was in this very ballroom contrary to his will, and contrary to his better judgment too.
The author of that last misfortune went dancing by in the arms of Viscount Effington, her smile ferociously bright. If Lady Della Haddonfield had seen Tresham, she did an excellent job of hiding her reaction.
Tresham suspected subterfuge was central to her ladyship’s nature, though to be fair, she’d begun her blackmail attempts by writing to him discreetly, her note addressed as if from some fellow in Surrey.
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