Effington held his little dog wedged between them. Yorick always looked uncertain, but his expression was…alarmed, and too frightened to let it show.
Georgette never wore a worried expression, though Will Dorning didn’t fuss and coo over his dog as Effington did Yorick.
“Della, I thought you’d gone home without me,” Susannah said, affecting great good cheer. “We’ll be late for our midday meal if we tarry much longer, and I’m sure his lordship has a busy afternoon ahead. Where could Jeffers have got off to?”
Effington stepped back from Della, slowly. He was making a point of some sort, a nasty point. Susannah was reminded of the Mannering twins, who’d filled her first forays into Polite Society with gracious, public assaults. Their voices echoed in memory as gratingly as if they’d attended last night’s musicale.
“That ensemble disguises nearly all of your height, my lady!”
“How clever, to let your blue eyes and blond hair be the plain, ordinary attributes they are. Nobody else would be so daring.”
“It’s not that Lady Susannah has no conversation, you see, it’s that she hopes her silences will make her more mysterious than witty rejoinders ever could. An intriguing strategy.”
Their cruelty had been so unexpected, Susannah at first hadn’t realized she was being ridiculed. Her older sisters, Nita and Kirsten, had explained the realities to her, though they had been helpless to intervene when Lady Mannering herself was apparently encouraging the twins.
Will Dorning had intervened.
“I suppose the maid is off making eyes at some footman,” Effington said, stroking Yorick’s head. “We will doubtless find her, cap askew, waiting at the park’s entrance with a besotted smile on her face. Come, my lady. Never let it be said I kept you from your victuals.”
He set the dog down, and laced his arm through Della’s while Susannah resisted the urge to tug her bonnet forward.
“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.