Casriel was scheduled to attend the Windham ball. “Any particular lady standing up with you?”
“She’s not even expecting me,” Casriel said. “Perhaps a sneak attack will serve me well, if I can get up the nerve to ask her for a dance. So there you were, dressing Cam down for his foolishness, and then you’re off to take tea with Lady Susannah at Lady March’s?”
The other emotion Will could put a name on was a sense of loss. When even Cam was showing good sense—for Cam—life was changing. Casriel was apparently interested in a woman, Casriel was the one helping Will sort through a trying day, and Ash was on his way to a position with Worth Kettering.
The Dorning menfolk were settling down, which explained the relief Will felt, to behold his older brother looking every inch the handsome lord. Grey, Ash, Cam, and the youngsters would manage if Will found himself a small estate where he could train dogs and raise sheep.
And raise a family.
“Lady Susannah’s company is agreeable to me generally,” Will said, “and she is acquainted with Lady March. Try though we did, Lady March would not disclose a single detail of her dog’s disappearance, and Lady Susannah suggested I instead talk to the help.”
Casriel finished his wine. “What aren’t you telling me, Willow?”
“Lady March’s rings are paste, her tea service less than grand, only the upper servants are paid on time, and the dog typically spent the night in a stall in the mews. He simply wasn’t there one morning, though he disappeared during the stablemen’s night for playing skittles at the corner pub.”
“Shite and more shite. She sold her dog?”
Will had hoped to gather evidence that her ladyship had not sold her dog, because the ramifications of Casriel’s conclusion were many, and all of them bad.
“She might have,” Will said. “He was a handsome fellow, reasonably well trained, but very protective. Some squire down from the north might have taken a fancy to him.” Will prayed that had been the dog’s fate.
“Tell that bouncer to Georgette,” Casriel said, crossing his knife and fork on the edge of his plate. “What do you think befell the dog?”
“I think he’s bound for the bear pits. The bear gardens need a steady supply of big, aggressive dogs. The bears occasionally kill a dog, often wound them, and sometimes knock the fight out of them. The only fools who enjoy a bear-baiting are the ones not in the pit.”
“I avoid them, and the cockfights too. A Mayfair ballroom is all the blood sport I can handle. You’re still not telling me the whole of it, Willow. Proving ownership of a dog would be next to impossible, and thus anybody involved risks finding disfavor with the law—and with the thieves.”
Disfavor with the law being a polite way to refer to charges of theft; disfavor with the thieves might result in severe injury, or worse.
“Lady Susannah has got it into her head I can use the rewards,” Will said. “She’s not wrong.”
“A gentleman never argues with a lady when he can get drunk with his brother instead. The Dorning hasn’t been born who’s truly wealthy, Willow.”
Will signaled a waiter to wrap up the earl’s uneaten steak, an eccentricity the waiters were accustomed to from him. While the food was removed, Will searched for a way to say what needed saying without jeopardizing his privacy.
And mostly failed. “I fancy Lady Susannah, and I believe my sentiments are reciprocated.”
“To hear Ash tell it, they’re reciprocated in the undergrowth of Hyde Park of a morning. Your breeches were dirty and grass stained in interesting locations earlier this week.”
“Clothing that is less than pristine is unlikely to be pilfered,” Will said. “A man who wants to take a wife must be able to support her. I conveyed my concerns in this regard to Lady Susannah.”
Casriel to his credit neither laughed nor swore. “So she wants you to earn those rewards, while you only want to find a few hapless mongrels without being caught doing so.”
“Purebreds, but yes. I cannot expect the rewards, Grey—a gentleman would not accept them, though Susannah doesn’t seem to grasp that—and yet she expects me to locate the dogs. Dogs meet difficult fates, I know that, but now Cam and Ash expect me to join the search, and—”
“And you cannot sleep at night, knowing several overlarge, unsuspecting pets will be thrown into the pits. You want to find them too, Willow.”
Will wanted somebody to find the damned dogs, and Susannah wanted that somebody to be him.
“I’m no longer penniless, much to my surprise, but neither am I wealthy,” Will said. “Susannah’s lot with me would be humble, compared to what she’s accustomed to.”