He used the same command on the dogs, and it didn’t work any better on her than it did on Will’s cock.
“I don’t want to dratted settle, Willow. I want to avail myself of your charms, and you will think me a strumpet.”
She tried to raise herself up on her arms, but just as a dog tipping its nose up will naturally lower its quarters, this only pressed her closer below.
“I think you—” Will began as Georgette decided to have a seat right near his head. “I can’t think. Samson, sit.”
Now the daft dog turned up biddable.
“Susannah, if you don’t get off of me, I will soon be trying to get under your skirts, and we are in Hyde Park, with two dogs looking on, and my hat sitting on a bench nearby signaling to all that somebody has gone arse over teakettle into the bracken—are you laughing at me?”
“Yes,” she said, climbing off of him to sit beside him. “I do believe we’ve found the comedic forest.”
Georgette licked Will’s ear. Samson looked like that might be a fun game to join so Will sat up.
“Perhaps you’ve learned enough about dogs that you can appease Effington’s worries,” Will said, yanking Georgette’s leash from under his fundament. “Stay, Georgette.”
He fished through the leaves and weeds for Samson’s leash and instead found Lady Susannah’s hand.
“Willow Dorning, I want to ruin you. Thoroughly and repeatedly.”
“A fellow can’t be ruined, but I do appreciate the sentiment. The problem is, I want you to succeed in your folly.”
Leaning back on her hands amid the ferns and leaves, Susannah smiled—not a smile Will had seen from her before.
“Progress,” she said. “What must I do to get you to take the treat, Willow?”
She had to marry him, or the next thing to it, and that meant Will had to find a way to support her. He brushed a green oak leaf from her hair.
“Stop smiling at me like that,” he said as she winnowed her fingers through his hair, though he was smiling back. Besottedly, unreservedly, adoringly.
“No, Will Dorning. I will not stop smiling. I like you exceedingly, and I like kissing you. You cannot scold me or ignore me out of my sentiments.”
A rock made itself known beneath Will’s backside, and Georgette was watching him with a look he couldn’t decipher. Pitying, perhaps. Georgette was the mother of seventeen, having had three litters.
“I think we’re setting a bad example for the dogs,” Will said. Or perhaps Georgette was laughing at him. Samson simply looked bewildered, as if to remind Will that kissing in the undergrowth was not what came after looking for a stout, stiff—
God help me. “We can’t tarry here in the hedges without inviting scandal, my lady.”
Though Will couldn’t exactly parade about the park in his present condition, either, riding breeches leaving little to the imagination.
“Let’s sit on the bench and discuss literature,” Lady Susannah said. “That might cool your blood.”
She scooted around and kissed him again, her hand settling on his falls and squeezing gently. Twice, as if to assure Will her actions were intentional.
Then she rose and picked up Samson’s leash. “Samson, heel. Georgette, stay. Mr. Dorning, I will await you on the bench.”
Away her ladyship strolled, grinning like a fiend, Samson trotting obediently at her side.
*
“Three rewards now,” Mannering marveled, scooping Yorick up, and stroking his head. “Great, fat, generous rewards. Lady March said she loved her little bowwow at least as much as the Duchess of Ambrose loved hers, and so must post an equal reward. The third is more modest, from some baron or other.”
Effington disliked the look of Yorick, cradled trustingly against a waistcoat that had probably cost as much as an entire winter’s coal expenses for Effington House. Neither did his lordship like the look of Mannering, lounging in his finery on the library sofa.
“Put the dog down, Mannering, or he’ll piss on your expensive tailoring, and then I won’t let you accompany me on my calls.”
Effington would pay a visit to Lady March and the poor duchess too, for appearances’ sake, of course. Dog fanciers were a close-knit group, after all.
“Little Yorick is a consummate gentleman,” Mannering said. “If he did have an accident, and piddle a bit where he oughtn’t to, well, that’s what laundresses are for.”
Laundresses were for tupping on Monday mornings out in the mews. A merry lot, and clean, not coincidentally.
“If you’re so enamored of the dog, then you hold the leash,” Effington said, tossing the length of leather at Mannering’s chest. “What do you hear regarding my intended?”