“Effington is not nasty,” Susannah said. “He’s sophisticated and doesn’t countenance fools. He’s ideally placed to protect Della from the gossips, but I have antagonized him.”
“He’s easily antagonized.”
Susannah’s headache wanted to come back. She wished she could rest her forehead against Will Dorning’s shoulder and have him stroke her ears again.
“I know Effington isn’t the most pleasant fellow,” she said, “but he’s shown marked attention to Della, and he can’t be all bad if his dogs like him, can he?”
Will’s thumb brushed over Susannah’s knuckles, a small, distracting caress. “What are you asking of me, my lady?”
Don’t stop touching me. His hands were magic, bringing calm and quiet with them. No wonder the dogs, cats, and horses loved him.
“You’re being gentlemanly,” Susannah said, letting her eyes drift closed. “You dislike Effington.”
“I’ve only seen him with the one dog, the little pug, and that fellow does not trust his owner. Watch carefully the next time Effington lifts a hand to pat the dog’s head. The dog will never take his eyes off Effington, and will cringe away any time Effington raises his hand, even to pat the dog.”
Some dogs were simply shy. Susannah was shy, though apparently not with Will Dorning.
“A detail, Mr. Dorning. How can I convince Lord Effington that I like dogs?”
Will patted her knuckles and withdrew his hand. “Isn’t it more important that your sister like the viscount? If she doesn’t care for him, what’s all this posturing and running around in the forest in aid of?”
Della’s position had become precarious, and Susannah’s careless comment was at least partly to blame, a far weightier matter than simply running about in the forest of Mayfair spouting clever verse.
“Mr. Dorning, Lord Effington can ruin my sister or assure she’s comfortably settled for life. I would do anything to see Della well situated. If I must pretend to like dogs, I will pretend to like dogs. If I must dance with Lyle Mannering while he sneezes on my bodice, I will dance with Lyle Mannering all night. I’ll swill that horrible punch, smile, and look gracious until hell freezes—”
He kissed her. A quick little smack of lips upon lips that danced through Susannah like the leafy shadows danced with the breeze.
“A simple ‘please be quiet’ would have sufficed, Mr. Dorning.”
“But it wouldn’t make you smile, and you are apparently not one to take offense at simple kisses, so you might endure a few more from me. I don’t like Effington, I don’t respect him, and I don’t trust him, though none of that matters.”
Kisses mattered. Susannah was coming to believe they could matter a lot. “Then what is the difficulty? You teach me what dogs like, I’ll do that, and Effington will see he’s brought me to heel, so to speak.”
“Is that image supposed to inspire my cooperation, my lady?”
Will Dorning would be a complicated dog to train. He was always thinking, and he missed little.
“You have the knack of disagreeing with a lady without arguing with her,” Susannah said. “If more men cultivated this habit, social conversation might become interesting.”
“Or the race might die out. Here’s the problem: one can’t fool a dog. If you don’t like them, they know it. If you’re frightened of them, if you disdain them, if you do like them, they know. Cats are the same, as are horses. I haven’t met an animal who can be regularly fooled by somebody they’ve spent any time around.”
“You’re saying animals are smarter than we are?” Smarter than Susannah, in any case. She’d thought the Mannering sisters were her friends. She’d thought Edward Nash, former neighbor in Haddondale, would make a biddable husband.
She’d been howlingly wrong about Mr. Nash and the Mannerings, both.
“I’m saying animals aren’t fooled by appearances,” Will replied. “Maybe they can smell the fear and anger and love on us, maybe they see our actions more clearly for being unable to decipher our conversations. In any case, you can’t fake a love of dogs.”
Defeated by dogs? First by the petty intrigues of cruel girls, then the avarice of a greedy country squire, and now defeated by the honesty of dogs?
“I can go home to Kent,” Susannah said, though abandoning Della was eighteen varieties of cowardly and wrong. “I can go home to Kent, and start on all the comedies, again. As You Like It is an excellent bellwether of the Bard’s lighter charms. I haven’t made a study of the comedies for nearly two years.”
Had Will moved nearer? The urge to lean on him had certainly become more acute. He brushed a lock of Susannah’s hair over her shoulder.
“You don’t want to return to Kent, my lady. Or perhaps you simply can’t stand to leave your sister to fend for herself.”