This diatribe raised all sorts of possibilities, regarding the lady and the men who’d stolen pieces of her joy. Rather than speculate, Sycamore focused on her questions, because she deserved his answers.
“My sense of why I, and most of my associates at university, were reckless is because we sought to test ourselves against the greatest possible risk, while pretending our courage made the undertaking a mere lark. The drunken steeplechases, the abuse of spirits, the ridiculous wagers are all tests of courage.” As had been, come to think of it, the duels and brawls.
“Bravado,” her ladyship retorted. “Courage displayed for effect, not courage in its truest, quiet form.”
“A boy’s courage,” Sycamore said. “Courage that needs the reinforcement of admiration, perhaps.”
Lady Tavistock glowered at her wineglass. “To show the world how foolishly brave she is, a woman marries, Mr. Dorning. She becomes the property of a rutting fool who can get children on her until his lust kills her. She puts herself under the dominion of a man who can raise his hand to her because the Bible exhorts him to such tender guidance where his wife and children are concerned. Women have no need for any greater display of bravado than that exercised when we speak our wedding vows, but we could surely use opportunities to enjoy the freedom you found so tedious at university.”
Such magnificent, articulate anger. “I suppose some women come to the Coventry to exercise freedom, albeit a limited, polite version of it. If you were to undertake one daring indulgence in freedom, my lady, what would it be?”
Her ladyship’s expression lost the guarded, poised quality that she’d worn since sitting down to eat. For a moment, she looked perplexed, then wistful.
“How is a woman to know how to have a reckless adventure when her entire life is spent doing as she’s told, thinking as she’s instructed, and focusing on the needs and happiness of others?”
“Have you met my sister Jacaranda?” Sycamore asked, taking the lid off the fruit compote. “She’s not much of one for socializing, though she and her spouse bide in Town much of the year. When my mother abdicated all roles at Dorning Hall, save that of chief victim of cruel fate, Jacaranda was impressed into the job of de facto housekeeper. Would you like some fruit?”
“A small serving.”
Sycamore took a modest portion for himself, knowing the kitchen staff would gobble up any leftovers.
“Jacaranda revolted,” he said. “She went into service—scandalous, I know—and she had to do so without admitting her family connections. She became a housekeeper in truth. She said if she was to drudge for a pack of louts, she’d at least be paid for it. I gather she was ferociously competent at her post. Some cheese to go with your fruit?”
“One slice. What became of your sister?”
Sycamore pared off two slices of a pale Swiss cheese and laid a strip across her ladyship’s bowl of fruit. He had no earthly idea now why he’d brought up his older sister, whom he’d missed bitterly when she’d decamped for a paying post, but then, the entire conversation with Lady Tavistock bore no resemblance whatsoever to the witty banter Sycamore had intended to offer her.
“We thought Jacaranda would be home in a fortnight,” he said. “Several years later, we had to beg her to come back to Dorning Hall. Had her employer raised the slightest objection, she would not have taken pity on us even then. As matters unfolded…”
He fell silent while her ladyship took a bit of compote.
“What is this?” she asked, peering at the bowl.
“Mostly pineapple, with a few slices of orange for color.”
“You eat pineapple, Mr. Dorning? Most people rent them to display, not to consume. I’ve never in my life… This is very good.”
“My sister’s husband has a head for business and hatched a notion to grow pineapples for profit. I bought some shares in that venture and accept the occasional dividend in kind. What is the point of displaying a fruit that will only spoil if not consumed?”
“This is marvelous,” she said, taking another taste and closing her eyes. “Succulent, tart, sweet. Sunshine should taste like this.”
“Have as much as you like.” The kitchen would revolt, but the kitchen revolted regularly, as did the dealers, the waiters, the footmen, and the stable lads.
“When I die, there had best be pineapple served in heaven,” her ladyship said, taking another spoonful. “Even the juice… nectar of the goddesses.”
Goddesses, indeed. “You never did answer my question, your ladyship. What would your grand, reckless adventure be?”
“I am busy now, Mr. Dorning. I will ponder that puzzle later.” She leavened her scold with a startlingly impish smile, then took another bite.
That smile gave away volumes. Somewhere behind her poise, her asperity, and her ruthless self-sufficiency lay a woman who had once been mischievous and sweet, too intelligent for fashion, and far too tenderhearted for the fate that had befallen her.
Sycamore wanted to learn the delights of that woman, much as Lady Tavistock was learning to savor her pineapple.
“Finish your tale regarding your sister’s rebellion, Mr. Dorning.”
What sister? “Jacaranda’s rebellion led to wedded bliss when she married the man for whom she’d kept house. The pair of them are obnoxiously happy. All of my siblings are.”
Lady Tavistock dredged her spoon through the fruit juice in her bowl. “Tell me more about your family. Lord Casriel is the eldest?”
Sycamore did not want to discuss his legion of busy, impressive, blissfully married siblings. “If we are to embark on that recitation, you should have seconds. Have you only the one brother?”
“Orion. I call him Rye, though he and I are not close. The war did not go well for him.”
War, a tiny word to refer to twenty years of armed mayhem courtesy of the French, though to be fair, the Austrians had played an inciting role, and to be even more fair, England had been at war more or less for a century. The most recent wars with the Corsican hadn’t gone well for much of anybody, save the British mercantile community.
“We Dornings did not serve,” Sycamore said. “I ought to be ashamed of that, but Papa was furious that hostilities interfered with his botanizing. Napoleon, at least, put science above warfare where various expeditions or Josephine’s roses were concerned, but England did not. Then too, Papa operated from a general sense of equity toward his children. What he did for one son, he felt he should do for all of us, and thus one commission could have turned into five or six.”
Not seven, because Casriel, as the heir, would of course been required to bide safely at Dorning Hall.
Her ladyship set her empty bowl aside. “Did you want to go to war?”
Sycamore passed her his untouched serving. “I did not, though I am to say yes in that tradition of reckless boys full of false courage. Perhaps we’re brought up to put on such displays because they make sending boys into battle easier?”
She turned the bowl of fruit as if choosing where to dip her spoon. “My brother might agree with you. He came to hate war and everything it stood for.”
Not a popular position when so much profit was to be made supporting the military. Wrap profit up in patriotism, and John Bull would make endless, uncomplaining sacrifices. A great lot of complaining, rioting, and repression had gone on since Waterloo, however.
“I might like your brother.”
“I originally came to the Coventry hoping to find him among the patrons. We meet by chance from time to time, but never by design. Do you suppose I might join your brother-in-law’s pineapple venture?”
“I will ask him. Kettering frequently handles funds on behalf of women and finds the ladies have generally sounder investment instincts than men do. Maybe that false courage makes men stupid in commerce as well as war.”
Her ladyship considered him over a spoonful of fruit. “You are not the strutting fribble you would have everybody believe you are.”
“I cannot tell if you’re pleased or
disappointed by that conclusion. Don’t tell my family of your discovery. In the Dorning lexicon, ‘Sycamore’ and ‘scapegrace’ are synonyms.”
She tucked into his serving. “Because in your large and illustrious tribe, the job of scapegrace was the only one remaining by the time you came along, so you were determined to do it well. I was the good girl, the dutiful daughter. My mother died in childbirth trying for a spare—her third try, though none of the babies lived—and my brother became the little hero. I am determined that Trevor have a few years to indulge in reckless wagers and bawdy song before he takes on the full burden of the title.”
Trevor would be her step-son, the youthful Marquess of Tavistock. “But you have no respect for that sort of behavior.”
“I understand its purpose, Mr. Dorning. Wild oats, youthful high spirits, like a green horse has to gallop off the fidgets before tolerating a quiet hack. My objection is to the fact that young women risk ruin if they indulge in the same freedoms, though young women deserve those freedoms far more than young men do.”
Sycamore ought to have paid more attention to her ladyship’s words and less attention to the silver spoon sliding between her lips.
“Women need the freedom more than men because…?”
“Because for a woman, marriage can be tantamount to death, and it certainly curtails what little freedom she had. For a titled man, marriage simply means enjoying the favors of both a wife and a mistress, and little else changes for him. That is the nature of the institution.”
Sycamore stuffed his slice of cheese into his mouth rather than point out the obvious: Clearly, the marchioness had been married to the wrong man, but neither could he argue her point. At law, a wife wasn’t a person.
She was a thing, not quite even livestock, subsumed into her husband’s identity, chattel that among the lower orders was yet a salable commodity. His Grace of Chandos had, in Sycamore’s father’s time, purchased his second duchess at a wife sale.
Sycamore had been raised with that legal definition of the married woman’s status and hadn’t once questioned its ramifications for the ladies, though he questioned it as the meal concluded, and he held her ladyship’s cloak for her.
He escorted the marchioness home in his carriage, the hours in her company having given him much to think about. When he assisted her from the coach in the alley behind her home, he passed her a covered crock.
“The leftover fruit. Please don’t refuse it, or it will just go to waste.” A patent falsehood, his first of the evening, but offered in good cause.
“My thanks for a lovely supper, Mr. Dorning.” She took the dish and bobbed a curtsey. “Until next week?”
He bowed. “I will look very much forward to it.”
She walked off a few paces, then turned to regard him. “You mean that. I am difficult company, opinionated, and I do not suffer fools, but we did manage a pleasant meal.”
“We kept our bargain.”
Her impish, fleeting grin came again, this time tinged with something that might have been surprise. “We did, didn’t we? Until next Sunday, Mr. Dorning.”
He waited until she’d disappeared through the garden gate, then sent his coachman on without him. The coach had not been followed that Sycamore could tell, but he needed the brisk night air to clear his head, and to put from his mind the image of her ladyship savoring succulent fruit while she held forth about death, marriage, and dreams.
A year ago, he would have flirted his way around to presenting himself as a candidate for Lady Tavistock’s next—or possibly her first—reckless adventure.
A year ago, he’d been delighted to face another Season of late nights, feuding staff, and heirs overspending their allowances.
A year ago, neither Ash, nor Hawthorne, nor Valerian had succumbed to the lure of matrimony.
That was then. Now, Sycamore wanted Lady Tavistock to regard him with the same rapt, pleasure-stricken expression she’d turned on her first bite of pineapple.
Chapter Three
Jeanette’s first lesson in knife throwing had gone well. Her first supper with Sycamore Dorning had gone wonderfully.
And that was a problem. As she savored the last of the fruit at breakfast Monday morning, she tried to parse where exactly the difficulty lay. Gentian eyes that missed nothing, a physique the Apollo Belvedere would envy, a mind both analytical and playful… These were all faintly troublesome because they meant Mr. Dorning would be hard to manage.
Jeanette had encountered perceptive men, well-built men, and men of impressive intellect, but Sycamore Dorning was more than the sum of those parts. Perhaps the conundrum was that he was so inherently attractive he didn’t need to flirt or flatter to secure a lady’s notice.
But no, that didn’t feel quite right, because he was also bashful, occasionally unsure of himself, and he demanded attention.
Again, not quite right. Jeanette had been married to a man who’d demanded attention with the insistence of a baby who’d soiled his nappies. Sycamore Dorning did not demand attention, he commanded attention.
“Good morning, Step-mama.” Trevor strode into the breakfast parlor and offered her his usual smile, though he was not attired for riding.
“Good morning, sir. We’re to enjoy a beautiful spring day, it appears.”
Trevor adjusted the drapes so the breakfast parlor wasn’t quite so bright. “The manager at Jerome’s club says we’re in for a bad turn of weather later this week. His elbow is paining him, and Monsieur’s elbow is a sure prognosticator of foul weather.”
Trevor, usually a tea drinker, poured himself a cup of coffee. His fair complexion was shading sallow, and his eyes were tired and bloodshot.
“The coffee will help,” Jeanette said, “but you should also drink several glasses of water and try a pot of willow bark tea.”
Trevor took his place at the head of the table. “I don’t believe willow bark tea would set very well just now.”
Jeanette passed him the toast rack. “Your father woke many a time with a sore head.” And with breath more foul than hell’s jakes, and a temper to match.
“I don’t recall him ever being anything less than in full possession of himself. The jam, if you please.”
Jeanette set the jam pot at Trevor’s elbow. Honey would have been a better choice, with only a smidgeon of butter, but she’d vowed two years ago not to nanny Trevor into manhood.
“Your father was fond of his brandy.” Also of his horses, but not at all fond of his second wife. Jeanette had failed to produce sons and had thus been as useless as an unmatched glove and nearly as vexing, according to her late husband.
Trevor gulped an entire cup of coffee and poured another. “Papa was fond of his brandy, yes, but never to excess, that I recall.”
Jeanette dredged up a spoonful of pineapple juice. Not for the world would she tell Trevor that his father had been frequently drunk and often intent on drunkenly exercising his marital privileges, which in a state of advanced inebriation had been an impossibility. Many a time, Jeanette had endured half the night with the marquess snoring atop her. She’d been too fearful of waking him to move, and in the morning, he would have forgotten everything except his own imagined prowess.
“How is your cousin?” she asked.
“Jerome is a man beset,” Trevor said, scraping jam onto his toast. “Aunt Viola never lets him forget that for nearly three years, he was the marquessate’s spare, in line behind only his father, and one unfortunate day, the title might still be his.”
“Therefore, Jerome must marry?”
Trevor’s smile was sad. “Aunt is nothing if not consistent. Jerome will soon attain his majority, and even Uncle Beardsley has started lecturing him about the responsibilities of young manhood. Jerome was quite morose about the whole business.”
And getting drunk was a sure cure for low spirits?
“What is Jerome’s objection to marriage?” Between pineapple dreams, Jeanette had also revisited her conversation with Sycamore Dorning. S
he’d characterized marriage as a death sentence for women and the acquisition of a live-in mistress-cum-hostess for men. That description fit her parents’ marriage and the marquess’s two marriages, but not all marriages.
And yet, Mr. Dorning had not argued with her. She had wanted him to protest that his marriage wouldn’t be like that.
“Jerome hasn’t any property,” Trevor said. “How is he to support a wife on his allowance? Auntie is all in favor of Jerome setting up his nursery, but she’s rather short on ideas for how the operation is to be funded. Knowing Jerome, the nursery would be full to bursting in no time.”
Not if Jerome took after his uncle, it wouldn’t. “You want to make Jerome’s situation better, don’t you?”
Trevor studied his coffee. “I am the marquess. That makes me the head of the family in one sense, despite my eternal youth and endless inexperience. Jerome is a good sort, my only male cousin, and he spends most of his time escorting his sisters to every boring entertainment in Mayfair, unless I can be impressed into performing that office. I don’t like to see him so miserable.”
Miserable… to while away his days lounging about Piccadilly, calling upon one bachelor friend after another. For entertainment, Jerome would accompany another fellow to a fitting at the tailor’s, then hang about the print shops to gawk at the latest satires. In the afternoon, he’d drop by a favorite tavern for some drunken singing, call upon a chère amie to grab a nap and indulge his manly humors until supper, then nip off to the theater, dancing, cards, or—for a variety—the cockpits, Jackson’s, or Angelo’s for a pleasing hour of gratuitous violence.
Rye had as much contempt for the average lordling-about-Town as he did for arrogant generals and stupid captains, and he was quite articulate on the details when provoked. The late Marquess of Tavistock hadn’t had much taste for cockfights—too many low sorts in attendance—but the rest of the litany had still fit him twenty years after he’d finished at university.
Where on that continuum, between contempt for and mindless pursuit of masculine pleasures, would Sycamore Dorning fall?
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 4