His lashes lowered and he patted his pocket. “That’s something, I suppose. When you’re making that choice, recall how you felt now. Whoever you bestow your hand upon, he should make you feel if not like a princess, then like a queen.”
Sadness muted the glow of their kiss, because again, Ash was reminding her that he was not among her suitors. He was not asking for her hand. His kiss had not been an overture, but simply a kiss.
“Would you cut me another peach?” Della asked.
He rose and selected another ripe fruit. In a few deft strokes of the knife, he’d reduced it to slices and a bare, hard pit with a few scraps of flesh clinging to it. As Della sat on the bench, he stood before her and presented the whole on a second, plain handkerchief.
“First selection goes to the lady,” he said.
Della chose the pit and wrapped it in her own handkerchief. “I should get back to the ballroom. Susannah might be looking for me.”
Mr. Dorning held up a slice of peach to Della’s mouth. She took a bite, he finished the slice, and tossed the rest into the undergrowth.
A sad waste, and somehow Della’s fault. She passed Mr. Dorning his gloves, drew on her own, and with a peach pit secreted in her skirt pocket, accepted his escort back to the ballroom.
*
“Effington has emerged from the card room,” Will said as he and Susannah made their way toward the punch bowl.
The ice sculpture had at one time been a unicorn, but the poor beast had wilted, rather like Susannah’s patience, and now resembled more of an ice-rock with an odd, dull sword sticking into it.
“Why must Effington leave his cards now, when Della has gone for a breath of air?” Susannah asked. “Do you suppose he saw Tresham glowering at Della and Ash?”
Will’s hand at the small of Susannah’s back was no comfort. She was not a dog, to be guided at all times by its master.
“Tresham wears a perpetual glower,” Will said. “When next I work with Quimbey, I’ll inquire as to the reason for Mr. Tresham’s disposition. Susannah, are we in a hurry?”
She was in a taking, tired of socializing that only seemed to dim Della’s prospects instead of enhance them. Of all the bad luck, Effington was apparently intent on a glass of punch as well, for he met them when they’d gained the end of the line at the punch bowl.
“My lady, good evening. Mr. Dorning, is it?”
They exchanged the required pleasantries while the line inched forward, and Susannah’s impatience strained closer to exasperation. She did not want to make small talk with the world’s most indifferent, arrogant suitor.
But for Della, she would be pleasant and agreeable. This was the man whom she must impress with her dog-loving skills, after all.
“Is your pug with you at the card tables, my lord?” Susannah asked. “Della claims Yorick is a lucky dog.”
“Of course he’s a lucky dog,” Effington replied. “He’s my dog, and thus has only the best of care. He’ll not disappear like those other unfortunates, you may depend on that.”
Susannah seized on the topic like Georgette with a favorite stick.
“My lord, as a dog fancier, what do you make of these disappearances? All three dogs from aristocratic households, all sizable animals whose owners esteemed them greatly.”
Effington fluffed the lace of his cravat, which upon examination, had several snags in it, perhaps Yorick’s doing.
“One supposes the owners were careless,” Effington drawled. “I never let Yorick roam, for example, because I’m the protective sort. I don’t suppose Mr. Dorning would allow his beasts to stray, though they’re much larger than my Yorick, more mature, and probably quite capable of looking after themselves.”
Effington smirked at Susannah, as if the larger, more mature sister ought to be able to protect herself too. Several people nearby smiled—as he’d doubtless intended—while Willow’s silence took on the quality of a growl.
“Mr. Dorning has explained to me some of the simpler aspects of dog training,” Susannah said.
Effington’s fluffing paused. “Has he now?”
“Lady Susannah is diligent,” Will said. “She grasps intuitively that canines benefit from order, calm, and frequent praise.”
“Much as most women do,” Effington replied, “save for the occasional stubborn soul in need of firmer discipline. Though as a rule, the ladies smell ever so much nicer than the dogs.”
The couple ahead of them in line smirked at Susannah, and that pair of arch smiles touched a chord, such that Susannah was again a shy seventeen-year-old, her stays too tight, and her ability to recall dance steps nowhere to be found. She wasn’t seventeen though. She was wise enough to see the sheer spite in those smiles, to feel a circle of malicious interest gathering around her like drunks around a cockpit.
This time, she would not retreat to the garden in tears.