“Coward,” Cam said, giving Will an affectionate shove that nearly sent him sprawling on his arse. “The ladies usually marry in age order, oldest to youngest. If you’d like a few pointers, I’ve made a study—”
“He’s being Will,” Ash interjected, cuffing the back of Cam’s head. “Looking after everybody before he looks after himself. Your prospects are improving, Willow, and I’ve wondered if Lady Della is as keen on being married off as Lady Susannah is on marrying her off.”
The park in the early evening was beautiful, despite the afternoon’s showers. The birds caroled their end-of-day songs in the leafy canopy above, the last of the sun’s light slanted through stately maples, and squirrels danced among the branches.
And yet Hyde Park wasn’t Dorset, nor was it that perpetually sunny forest of Lady Susannah’s imaginings.
“Lady Della is wellborn,” Cam said. “Of course she wants to get married, but she can do better than the likes of you, Ash-Can Dorning. You’ll recite the multiplication tables while you’re—”
“Sycamore!” both older brothers shouted in unison.
“—wooing her,” Cam went on, “and expect her to live in a poky little room in the City, darning your stinking socks and having your stinking brats, while you get squint-eyed and hunchbacked from— That’s a dog.”
A deerhound-mongrel sort of dog trotted purposefully across the path ahead of them. No collar, and the animal wasn’t lost. Either an owner was somewhere close at hand, or the dog was in pursuit of dinner in a corner of the park that would yield game.
“That’s not Alexander,” Will said, “and that dog is doing reasonably well for himself.” Unlike Will, who was so muddled after the day’s exchange with Susannah, he wanted to play fetch the stick with Georgette for hours.
Which, in Dorset, he might have done.
“Shall we leave that fellow some cheese?” Cam asked. “Handsome dog like that could probably use a home.”
“We’re looking for Alexander,” Will said, “because Lady Susannah expects it of me. If a lack of coin prevents my offering for her, and finding the dog will yield coin, then find the dog, I must—according to her.”
Cam kicked a pebble straight into a puddle, starting a series of concentric rings that quickly doubled back on themselves.
“What about according to you, older-and-wiser-though-seldom-jolly brother?”
Excellent question. Will paused in the middle of the path, for here in Hyde Park, at this hour, he had privacy with his brothers.
“According to me, something is rotten in Denmark.”
“Is Shakespeare contagious?” Cam asked.
Ash ambled over to a bench—the very bench Will and Susannah often occupied—and sat. “What do you mean, Will?”
“Three large dogs missing from aristocratic households,” Will began.
“Three?” Cam said, tossing himself down beside Ash. “I’d only heard about two.”
“Because you’re too busy wenching and gin-ing,” Ash said. “Worth mentioned something about this at luncheon. He heard it from another Alsatian owner he occasionally meets when he’s out walking Meda.”
“The most recent one’s an Alsatian,” Will said, “and the owner is the Earl of Hunterton. His children are particularly fond of the dog; consequently, there’s—”
“—another reward,” Cam said, helping himself to a bite of cheese from the sack Ash had carried. “This is getting out of hand, Willow. You’re the Duke of Dogs. Somebody is stealing canines from people who can afford to pay to have them returned. Ransoming dogs is heinous. Make it stop.”
“And make me rich and Cam sensible, while you’re at it,” Ash muttered.
“Are you in the wooing-but-not-courting business now too?” Cam asked, popping another bite of cheese into his mouth. “Maybe this is a new fashion: make violent love to the lady, but out of noble poverty, never offer for her.”
“Sycamore,” Ash said, snatching the bag from him. “If you eat any more of this cheese, your bowels will seize, and the prodigious flatulence upon which you pride yourself will fail you when you most especially seek to embarrass your siblings with it.”
“You sound like Will,” Cam said, punctuating his sentiments with an audible demonstration of the talent under discussion.
“You smell like a dung heap,” Ash retorted.
“Quiet, both of you,” Will said as another canine came down the path, sniffing at one bush, lifting a leg on another. Will took the cheese from Ash and remained standing. “That’s him. That’s the dog Susannah and I saw earlier. Neither of you move. Cam, is that the fellow you’ve seen behind the King’s Comestibles?”
“The very pup,” Cam said. “He’s healing too.”
“Alexander,” Will called, opening the cheese bag. They were downwind of the dog, but this fellow was astute enough to recognize the bag, or perhaps to recognize Will.
“He knows his name,” Ash said as the dog’s gaze riveted on Will.
“He knows the smell of cheese,” Cam retorted. “My boy is no fool.”
Very likely, the beast knew the smell of Cam. Will shook the cheese bag. “Sit, Alexander.”