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.”
Only if Susannah let him live beyond this night.
“Mr. Dorning, I do not recall proposing to you.” Susannah resumed walking, for the rest of the party was about to turn a corner, and the only safety on the streets of London at night lay in numbers.
“You kissed me,” Will said, lacing his arm through Susannah’s. “You called me an old friend, and you are looking for a husband. Have you kissed other old friends, my lady?”
No, Susannah had not, simply because she had no other old friends. Indignation threatened to become humiliation.
“Mr. Dorning, do you kiss your dog?”
“Georgette? What has she to do with anything?”
“Do you kiss your dog, sir?” Where was Susannah’s dratted purple parasol when a man needed sense smacked into his handsome head?
They reached the corner before Will answered. “I have. Rarely. Georgette is not a demonstrative creature.”
Bother the perishing dog. “Shall you propose to her, then? Does a friendly kiss signal addresses must follow? If so, I can assure you Lord Effington is about to plight his troth with any number of spaniels and at least one malodorous pug. My sister doesn’t stand a chance. Perhaps His Grace the Duke of Quimbey harbors a tendresse for that exuberant mastiff, and Nicholas has given his heart to his mare.”
Susannah slowed her pace, lest she catch up to the larger group.
“So you were not…” Mr. Dorning said. “That is, this husband you’re looking for, he’s—I beg your pardon, my lady. I have apparently misconstrued matters.”
Susannah experimented with silence for about half a block, but she could not outlast Will Dorning’s reserve. He had not misconstrued anything. She’d kissed him in the first act of hope she’d permitted her heart in years.
Also, apparently, the last. She hadn’t gone so far as to make designs on his future, but the ache in her chest assured her she’d strayed past casual gestures onto the boggy ground of maidenly hopes.
“The husband I seek is for my sister, Mr. Dorning. My instincts when it comes to social ill will are not to be trusted, for my own experience skews my perspective, but Della’s dance card has typically filled before the orchestra opens their violin cases. Tonight, she danced only three times before you intervened. I must see her married. I owe it to her.”
“You suspect somebody wishes her ill?”
Will did not dismiss Susannah’s fears out of hand, and he never had. He never would, and he would never return her kiss, either, apparently.
Rot this stupid evening.
“I suspect Della is about to be treated to the same polite cruelty I was,” Susannah said. “Perhaps the same vile women are resuming the game with a different Haddonfield sister. Della is vulnerable, though.”
Susannah ought not to have said that, but Will Dorning’s discretion was as formidable as his silences.
“We all have weaknesses,” he said. “Her ladyship has strengths as well. She’s comely, intelligent, graceful, witty. Compared to any number of young women, she’s impressive.”
“Compared to any number of other young women, she’s plain, penniless, and—I suppose you’ll hear it soon enough—from irregular antecedents.”
Mr. Dorning’s stride did not falter in the slightest, and his hand remained relaxed over Susannah’s knuckles, for which she could have kissed him all over again—when she was through smacking him with her parasol.
“Half the younger sons in that ballroom are similarly situated,” Mr. Dorning scoffed. “My brother Hawthorne is too. Sycamore and Valerian are proof Papa and his countess moved beyond her ladyship’s misstep, or perhaps beyond my father’s neglect of his wife.”
Will’s words were a comfort, because his brother’s situation was not common knowledge—Susannah would have heard of it—and thus a confidence exchanged between friends.
“I am frantic for my sister. I can’t bear that anybody would hurt her, much less for something completely beyond her control.”
“As you were hurt, merely for the entertainment of nasty young women and their nasty mamas.”