“How do you know?”
Susannah knew with every instinct developed while chatting desperately with the other wallflowers for the dozenth time in two weeks. She sensed Lady March’s mendacity the same way she’d sense when one of her brothers was troubled, though he’d never share a word of the problem with her. She knew Lady March had dissembled, the way she knew she must kiss Will Dorning again, and soon.
“Did you notice she never actually shed a tear?” Susannah asked. “She put on a performance worthy of Mrs. Siddons, but she never cried for her dog or shared any information about him that would lead to his return.”
Will slowed as they reached the corner. “What are you suggesting?”
“She doesn’t want that dog back. She’s making a great production out of her loss, but she doesn’t expect him to be returned.”
Will drew Susannah into the alley that would lead to the mews of the various great houses along the bordering streets. Maples and oaks arched over the lane, and the noise of passing traffic was muted in the alley. A tabby cat lay on a high garden wall, sunning itself amid pots of red salvia.
“So I’m to retrieve my cane and interrogate the help?” Will asked.
“I’d wait for another half hour. Her ladyship is more likely to have taken her landau to the park by then. Now, we should ask the help in the stables what they know about the dog’s disappearance.”
“I am hearing the word we entirely too much today, my lady, and applied to the wrong endeavors.”
“While I am not hearing it enough,” Susannah retorted. “You tell me you lack the coin necessary to allow a woman expectations regarding your future. The reward for this missing mastiff is substantial, and you’re ideally suited to find a missing dog, Willow.”
The cat blinked at them, then hopped off the wall and strutted across the alley.
Will slapped his gloves against his thigh. “What else did you notice about Lady March?”
“Her rings are paste,” Susannah said as the cat leaped up onto another wall and thence into an oak. Crows scattered from the tree amid a cacophony of avian scolding.
“If a lady is so bold as to show off her jewels during daylight hours,” Susannah went on, “she should expect those jewels to be noticed. The settings might have been real, but the rubies were not.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Will said. “Lady March cannot afford the reward she has so ostentatiously posted. Her dog is genuinely missing, but she has no means to make good on the obligations his return would entail.”
Susannah began a brisk progress down the alley. “You do not want to find that dog. Are you so happy to remain an impoverished bachelor, Willow?”
He remained where he was, clearly reluctant to heed the implied command to heel which her departure had signaled.
“Susannah, stop.”
Ha. She stomped along, looking for the mews that would serve Lady March’s horses. Will was so quiet, Susannah didn’t hear him until he’d leaped in front of her.
“Not an hour past,” he growled, “I was admonishing my hotheaded brother that poking into the fate of lost dogs is dangerous, thankless work. I must think, and so must you. Give me two minutes, Susannah, to sort fact from folly, to—”
Susannah kissed him, lest he forget about lost opportunities while considering lost dogs.
“Talk to the stablemen, Willow. I’ll await you near the street. If anybody sees me, I’ll be a lady waiting for my vehicle to be brought around. You can walk me home, then come back and chat up the butler or the porter.”
Will untied the bows of Susannah’s bonnet and reset it on her head, as Della had done, at nearly the same coquettish angle. The feel of his fingers brushing against Susannah’s chin had strange repercussions in the vicinity of her knees.
“You aren’t concerned for the dogs,” he said. “I wish I were not, but I am concerned for the dogs.”
What was he going on about? “The weather is mild, London abounds with dung heaps, middens, and all manner of sources of food for an enterprising dog. Of course I’m concerned for the dogs, Willow, but I’m concerned for you too.”
The notion seemed to puzzle him. He cocked his head as Georgette might have, while Susannah nearly panted from the effect of standing so close to him.
“Wait for me. I won’t be long,” he said, striding off in the direction of the stables.
Susannah had taken exactly one step in the opposite direction before Will’s hand on her arm gently but firmly turned her into his embrace.
“You are concerned for our future,” Will said. “I am too.” With that, he kissed the daylights out of her, then set her back, and resumed his march upon the mews.
*