Sycamore wrapped his arm around Jeanette’s shoulders, which ought to have struck her as a terrible presumption rather than a great comfort.
“You are not a bride ill-used by a cretin of a husband,” he said. “You are wonderfully fierce. The old bugger did not make you fierce, you did that yourself. I treasure you for it, and I am sorry for my brusqueness. I should not have presumed.”
Ill-used by a cretin of a husband. Jeanette’s marriage in a nutshell. “I don’t believe a man has ever apologized to me before.” Much less so swiftly and sincerely.
“Then I’m your first true gentleman, a signal honor for me and a long overdue pleasure for you.” He half hugged her, a friendly squeeze that bewildered Jeanette.
The late marquess had touched her only to exercise his marital rights or, when unavoidable, to observe a public propriety, such as escorting her up the church steps. Her lovers had been uninspired—she’d suspected as much, and Sycamore had confirmed her hunch—and Rye… Rye’s affectionate impulses were distant memories.
Very distant. “I will call on my brother,” she said, swiping the back of her glove against her cheek. “The suggestion has merit, and I do worry about him.”
Sycamore passed her a handkerchief. “Would you like my escort when you pay that visit?”
She’d just scolded him, blurted out horrid confidences, and behaved like a ninnyhammer, and his response was to apologize, hug her, and pass her his linen.
“I don’t know if I should take an escort,” she said. “I need time to think. I appreciate the offer.” She appreciated the hug more, the arm around her shoulders, the hand holding hers. These overtures disturbed her, but they met a terrible need that all the dignity and self-possession in the world could not quench.
They also blended with the low, insistent hum of desire that had started up when Jeanette had first noticed Sycamore Dorning lounging by the steps at the Coventry months ago. She had ignored the desire—pesky annoyance, desire—but she could not ignore him.
“I give a lot of orders at the club,” Sycamore said, gaze on the coach lamp. “I make demands rather than requests because I am afraid nobody will listen to me if I’m polite instead of politely overbearing. Do you suppose the marquess was prone to the same insecurity?”
Jeanette let her head rest against Sycamore’s shoulder. He could not know how such a capacity for self-examination awed her and unnerved her. To him, his own responses were a puzzle to be understood, not a citadel of masculine dignity to be defended.
“The late marquess,” she said, “was an entitled ass, spoiled from birth, and indulged in every regard. Perhaps on some unspoken level, he sensed he had not earned his privileges, and he blustered to distract anybody from noticing that fact. The result was still a miserable staff, a miserable wife, and a son who barely knew him.”
“Are you miserable now, my lady?”
She was snuggled against a man who apologized, a man who’d made no unwelcome overtures and who’d offered to take on her troubles out of simple decency. He also threw a lethally accurate knife and admitted to being plagued by worry and nostalgia.
“I am not miserable, Mr. Dorning.”
He relaxed against her. “Then neither am I. But, my lady?”
“Hmm?” She was abruptly drowsy, and he made a comfortable pillow.
He shifted again and dimmed the coach lamp. “Never mind. The rest of our discussion will keep. Have a nap, and I will look forward to hearing your decision regarding a call on Orion Goddard.”
Chapter Five
“Lady Tavistock was married off to a rutting martinet who wanted only obedience and sons from her,” Sycamore said, pacing around the hazard table as morning sun slanted through the Coventry’s windows. The windows were too high to afford a view into the place, but they provided good ventilation. “Now somebody is following her ladyship intermittently, and she can’t bring herself to consider motives and malcontents.”
Ash Dorning, looking relaxed and a little bored on a dealer’s stool, watched Sycamore pace. “So Lady Tavistock asked you to sort out the business for her? What aren’t you telling me, Cam?”
Sycamore wasn’t telling Ash a great deal. The head waiter had vexed the undercook and nearly caused a kitchen war. Mrs. General Higginbotham had played too deeply and offered ruby earbobs in repayment, but an appraisal revealed the jewels to be paste. The champagne merchant, Monsieur Fournier, was being coy about the date of the next delivery.
So much Sycamore could tell Ash, the point of which would have been to emphasize… what? How necessary and important Sycamore was to the club? To his brother? To avoid admitting how much he missed Ash?
“Not here,” Sycamore said, taking the stairs two at a time. The cleaning crew came through at dawn, but the junior kitchen staff would soon arrive, and like the rest of the Coventry’s employees, they enjoyed a good gossip among themselves.
Ash followed more slowly, his mood apparently sanguine. His darling wife, the former Lady Della Haddonfield, had hauled Ash by the ear off to warmer climes for a winter holiday and honeymoon. Sycamore knew the look of a brother wondering if his wife was already on the nest.
Fast work, even for a Dorning in love. But then, a former Haddonfield had also been involved in the situation, and the Haddonfields were not retiring by nature.
Sycamore closed the office door and remained on his feet. “Lady Tavistock’s step-son lost a fair amount here Saturday night. She is agreeable to having his lordship work off his debt to us.”
Ash peered at the new print hanging behind the sideboard, a framed version of the late Mr. Gillray’s hilarious, satirical, and ever-so-accurate L'Assemblée Nationale. Quite a find, that.
“We don’t need his lordling-ship flirting with the dealers and swilling our champagne, Cam. He’s a nice enough lad, but you might have discussed this with me before you agreed to it.”
“I might have, but you barely show the colors here anymore, Ash, and besides, I have not yet put the notion to the marquess. If you object, I will simply hold his lordship’s vowels until they are paid off. I am asking for your comment, rather than presenting you with a fait accompli.”
And yet, even asking for comment was the behavior of a senior partner.
Big Brother was also apparently disinclined to take the seat behind the desk. “Why do this? Why involve yourself in somebody else’s troubles when all and sundry know you to be driven entirely by self-interest?”
Lady Tavistock did not believe Sycamore driven entirely by self-interest. “I cannot help that all and sundry Dornings insist on seeing me as if I’m eight years old and forced to cause a riot simply to get the jam passed my way. I am drawn to young Tavistock’s situation because I had myriad examples of how not to behave as I came of age, while he is on his own.”
Ash propped a hip against the desk. In his morning finery, he looked of a piece with the appointments. The beads of the mahogany abacus were marble, the wax jack silver and fashioned to match the pen tray and ink bottle. The room looked like what it was—the administrative epicenter of a thriving enterprise—and also like a gentleman’s retreat.
The sofa was long enough to sleep on, the reading chairs both had leather hassocks, and the prints on the walls were among the less bawdy political cartoons.
Ash belonged here, but Sycamore had already lost his brother in some material sense. Lost this brother too. Where howling grief should have been, Sycamore felt mostly bewilderment and a little impatience.
“I have been preoccupied,” Ash said, a rare smile revealing him for the handsome devil he was. Dark-haired, lean, murderously skilled in a fight, he was also, and more importantly, the apple of Lady Della’s eye.
“You have been married and on your honeymoon, but Town is filling up, Ash, and if you don’t care to keep your hand in here, we need to find you an understudy.” Argue with me, tell me you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and rescue the place from my neglect.
“Tavistock isn’t even of age, Sycamore. Yo
u are taking him under your wing solely to curry favor with Lady Tavistock.”
Not true, and that Ash would make the accusation was frustrating. “Perhaps I want a younger-brother figure on the premises to regularly insult.”
Ash’s boot began to swing. “I know I haven’t been underfoot much, but what I do—the books, the wages, the inventory, looking after the coal man, and making sure the carpets are beaten—doesn’t require that I be here of a night.”
For the past four months, Sycamore had managed that list and much else besides. “Precisely. You’ve left me on my own to sort out the kitchen squabbles, keep an eye on the inebriates trying to fondle the dealers’ knees beneath the table, monitor play to see who’s losing too much, and remind the waiters that the buffet does not replenish itself. I cannot be everywhere at once, and Tavistock can aid me in that regard.”
Ash rose from the desk and settled into a reading chair. “What is afoot with the marchioness, Cam? You were smitten with her at the Wentwhistles’ house party, and your passions are as all-consuming as they are fleeting. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I do recall you telling me how much you enjoy a good, hard fuck.”
“And you don’t? Who knew my enthusiasm for reproductive activity was just another of my endless eccentricities?”
“I have missed you,” Ash said, propping his boots on a hassock, “though I’m not exactly sure why.”
“Because I am honest to a fault, conscientious, and to those I care about, as loyal as an old dog. The marchioness asked for my help, and I doubt she has other options in terms of practical assistance.”
Sycamore took the other chair and was reminded—painfully—of the many nights he and Ash had spent trading ideas, grumbling, and insulting each other before this same hearth.
Now, Sycamore was running the damned club on his own, and Ash was still treating him as if he needed help tying his cravats. Was this same frustration what drove the young marquess to foolishness?
“Lady Tavistock is a well-heeled widow,” Ash said. “She can hire bodyguards, put her footmen on alert, and take the knocker off the door.”
Sycamore slouched into the cushions, finding the spot that cradled his bum with loving familiarity. “They are the marquess’s footmen, and the knocker is on his door. I thought you liked her.”
“I do like her, and I respect her, but I like you more—may heaven forgive me such folly—and I don’t want to see you either cast aside for attempting misplaced gallantries or entangled in somebody else’s stupidity.”
“Now you know how I felt when you decided to rescue Lady Della from scandal. ‘There he goes,’ I thought, ‘the finest of men on the most foolish of quests.’”
Ash regarded him in some puzzlement. “My quest was gentlemanly. The tabbies were circling, and Della needed a gallant.”
“Am I incapable of gentlemanly sentiments?”
Ash considered that question as if the answer merited some study. “You tend to get consumed by gentlemanly sentiments, one after another. Her ladyship has a brother, if I recall.”
“Colonel Sir Orion Goddard, touched by some military scandal nobody seems to know much about. He keeps his distance from her ladyship for no discernible reason. Lady Tavistock’s late husband was a petty dictator, her step-son is a self-absorbed bantling, and her father was responsible for marrying her off to the dictator. If she ever had a trusting nature, her menfolk disappointed her out of it.”
Ash sat up, his boots hitting the floor with a thump. “Thus she turns to you?”
“I served as her banker at the Wentwhistle house party, Ash. She knows I can be discreet and honorable.”
She did not yet know Sycamore could be passionate, inventive, and great good fun in bed. When a woman was recounting the horror her marriage had been, for Sycamore to inform her that he desired her madly would have been selfish.
With her ladyship, Sycamore wanted to be very selfish, also very generous, and—this gave him pause—utterly selfless. A muddle to end all muddles.
“You can be discreet and honorable,” Ash said, rising, “but I’ve long suspected you show us your gallant side mostly to confuse us as to your true nature. Can Tavistock be any use to you at all, or are you saddling us with a bumbling puppy?”
“A little of both.”
“Then let him follow you around for a few nights, and if he survives that ordeal, I’ll show him the books and inventories some afternoon next week.”
Sycamore rose, his joints protesting. He’d not slept well, and dawn had seen him taking his horse out for a morning gallop in the park nonetheless. Thus did the Season’s exhaustion begin, until pleasure and duty blended into a fog of busyness, and grouse season loomed like salvation.
“Do you have any time to spar with me at Angelo’s this week?” Sycamore asked.
“Thursday suits. Ten of the clock, and then we can have lunch at the club. Della likes an afternoon outing in the park if the weather is fine.”
Della was doubtless scheduling those outings to get Ash into the sunshine and fresh air, part of her prescription for keeping the blue devils at bay—and for showing off her handsome husband.
“Married life is going well?” Sycamore asked as he and Ash descended to the gambling floor. The question was both perfunctory and pressing, for if Ash’s mood gave way to melancholia, Della would be coping with a very difficult situation indeed.
“Do you recall when we started here, Cam? We made money from the first day, and both of us were so surprised to succeed that we tiptoed through the weekly ledger balancing. ‘Too good to be true,’ we thought. ‘Any moment, the club will fail, and it will be our fault.’”
“Marriage is too good to be true?”
“Marriage to Della is so lovely, even the rough patches are magic.”
Those were the words of a man awash in connubial bliss, and not all of his joy was based in erotic satisfaction. Sycamore knew Della and knew that her regard for Ash was unwavering and reciprocated.
“Tell Della that, Ash. Tell her that even the rough patches with her are magic. And if the weather is fine, ask her if she’d like to drive out with you. Don’t assume that’s what she wants.”
Ash paused by the side door to settle his hat on his head and take up his walking stick. “You are giving marital advice now?”
Glass shattered somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen, followed by fluent French obscenities. Another workday at the Coventry had begun.
“When we ask the ladies what they want, we are obliged to listen to their replies, and who does not appreciate a respectful listener?”
“We will talk further about the situation here,” Ash said, “and please give my regards to the marchioness. She struck me as lonely, and loneliness is not a curse I would wish on anybody.” He dragged Sycamore into a quick, tight hug, thumped him once on the back, and slipped out the door.
The cursing from the kitchen subsided into the usual yelling, and Sycamore remained by the door, watching Ash stride off to rejoin his bride.
The marchioness might be lonely—Sycamore would ask her about that—but he for damned sure was. Also, worried for her, and randy, and not sure how to resolve any of those dilemmas. That he was more concerned with his club and her ladyship than with Ash’s moods and unavailability was cause for some puzzlement—and also a bit of relief.
The rare steak on Trevor’s plate threatened to make the two cups of tea he’d managed earlier in the day reappear.
“You aren’t looking quite the thing, old man,” Jerome said, pouring them each a glass of claret. “Try a little hair of the dog and see if your afternoon doesn’t improve.”
Trevor’s morning had consisted of rising well past dawn and avoiding Step-mama, solid food, and bright sunshine. He had taken the town coach for the few streets between Tavistock House and Jerome’s club and wished he’d sent his regrets to this luncheon instead.
“Tea will do,” Trevor said.
Jerome lifted his glass in a silent toast. “Your he
ad is the very devil, I take it?”
“The devil and all his infernal imps singing my doom to the accompaniment of kettle drums.” Trevor signaled to a waiter and made a pouring-out gesture.
Monday evening had begun with the clear intention to drop by The Coventry Club and have a word with Mr. Sycamore Dorning about payment of certain debts in a certain little while. Jerome had loyally agreed to accompany Trevor on that awkward mission. A stop at Jerome’s club for fortification had become several rounds of fortification and then a few hands of cards.
The direction the cards had taken required more fortification, and at some point, Trevor had been talked into attempting to prove he was equal to a few glasses of Scottish whisky—not a gentleman’s drink—and matters thereafter had become very merry.
Also very stupid. Again.
“Town life takes some getting used to,” Jerome said. “You’ll find your stride in another few weeks. Takes stamina to truly enjoy London. Did her ladyship sermonize at you over your breakfast tea?”
Thoughts of Step-mama were anything but cheering, though a sermon from her might assuage the guilt of being half-seas over yet again.
“I missed her at breakfast, but she doesn’t have to sermonize. She looks me up and down, and I feel about eight years old, and as if I’ve been caught stealing shortbread from the pantry.”
Jerome cut into his steak, and Trevor pretended to take visual inventory of the dining room’s other patrons. By day, these men were ordinary enough. A baronet’s son, an earl’s nephew. The grandson of a gun manufacturer who’d grown rich during the unpleasantness with the Americans. By night, they turned into witty, clever, handsome fellows always willing to stand each other to another round.
Or did they?
“Tell your step-mama not to be disrespectful,” Jerome said. “I heard your late papa holding forth more than once about what a poor marchioness the most honorable Jeanette made. Uncle chose her, so I suppose we must not blame her for being ill-suited to her role, but you don’t have to encourage her presumptions.”
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 9