“Somebody is neat as a pin,” she said, admiring gleaming knives, sparkling tiles, and a black behemoth of a range set against the outside wall. Three turnspits inside an enormous open hearth created a forest of cast-iron gears and chains, while no less than four Dutch ovens had been built into the bricks surrounding the hearth.
“I enter here at my peril after sundown,” Sycamore said, draping Jeanette’s cloak on hooks before the hearth. “Your bonnet could do with drying out.”
Jeanette passed over her millinery, among her plainest, and peeled off damp gloves as well. “I don’t mind that London is often cold,” she said, “but I mind that it’s so dirty when it’s cold.”
“And smelly when it’s hot—smellier.” He hung her hat on another hook, her gloves draped over the brim. “Shall we to the cellar, my lady?”
Jeanette had hoped that familiarity with Sycamore Dorning would reduce his appeal. She had dreamed of him, as if she were a schoolgirl smitten by one of Sir Walter Scott’s brave knights. Dreamed of him walking away, and worse, she had daydreamed of him naked from the waist up, muscles rippling as he let fly with a knife. She was haunted by the memory of his chest, his back, his taut belly, and the roped strength of his arms and shoulders.
Worse yet, she could not get the memory of his smile—naughty and sweet at the same time—from her mind. His mouth was made for smiling, his eyes for flirtation, and his hands…
Jeanette was not smitten, she was merely aware of him as a man. While this occasioned some relief—she was not dead yet, not the Puritan widow she wanted Society to believe she was—she was also at a complete loss for what to do about the persistent desire.
“How are you today?” he asked, leading her through the doorway to the cellar steps.
“I am pleased to see my step-son regularly appearing at breakfast, though he then proceeds to bed and does not rise until it’s time to rejoin you here.”
“Tavistock isn’t stupid,” Sycamore replied. “He has honestly been helpful to me. His lordship notices when a patron is bothering a dealer beneath the table, for example, and he notices when a lady is imbibing too quickly. His youth means the older women find him harmless and easy to talk to, a role that I, in my advancing years, can no longer fulfill.”
“You were never harmless.”
He set the knife case on the head of a barrel and undid the locks. “I am harmless to you, my lady.” He opened the case and passed her a knife, his gaze direct and knowing.
The target was set on a chair a few yards down the corridor. Jeanette took the knife and held it, the hilt now a familiar shape against her palm.
“You are not harmless,” she said, rolling the hilt between her hands. “You disturb my peace by the hour.”
Sycamore stepped behind her. “Focus on the target, your ladyship. If you are frustrated, direct that sentiment at the target, not at my hapless self.”
Frustrated. Was that the word for burning curiosity about a man’s kisses, about the texture of his hair, and the look of him without a stitch of clothing?
“Right,” Jeanette said, forcing herself into the routine her instructor had shown her. Focus, relax, breathe, throw. She cycled through the focus-relax-breathe sequence several times, and yet, Sycamore Dorning’s presence behind her was a weight on her awareness.
She had virtuosic ability to ignore men, a skill developed of necessity during her marriage. She had learned how to mentally sort linen while her husband rutted, to plan a guest list while he snored atop her, to revise a menu while he fumbled himself into a state of arousal and pawed at her breasts.
She could separate mind and body as effectively as Sycamore’s knives sliced through the shadowed cellar to bite into the waiting target.
“Just throw the damned thing, Jeanette. You’re thinking it to death.”
Jeanette. She hurled the knife and was surprised it hit the target.
“You released too soon,” he said, and even that factual statement took on sexual connotations. How often had the late marquess spent only two instants after he’d effected a joining of his body to his wife’s?
“Right,” Jeanette said. “Knife.”
Sycamore slapped the weapon into her hand. “The release is your farewell caress to the blade. Linger a bit.”
Thoroughly indecent images came to mind. This throw also hit the target only a few inches off center.
“Better,” he said. “Less force this time, more precision. Watch the knife as it sails into the wood. You can build up to both speed and force later in the session. Start with accuracy.”
“Knife,” Jeanette growled.
He obliged and stepped back.
She wanted to murder not the target, but her preoccupation with Sycamore Dorning. He was so calm, so damned detached, while she was battling an unwanted and completely useless attraction. This was not supposed to happen, and yet, Jeanette was unable to ignore what her mind and body were determined to notice.
She put that vexation into her throw, put the bewilderment—why him, why now?—into the speed and power of her arm.
“That is the smoothest arc you’ve made so far,” he said. “You’re finding your rhythm.”
Rhythm. Would he be a slow and sweet lover, or sexually relentless? Probably both, damn him. “Knife.”
Jeanette allowed herself only one breath, then sent the knife flying. This one also struck close to center, and struck hard.
“Excellent balance between force, speed, and precision, and the release was perfect. Do that again.”
Do that again. “Knife.” She hit the only side of the target’s center not already occupied by a knife, the pattern of the blades cause for dark satisfaction. “Knife.”
“Choose where you sink the blade, my lady. High noon, just off ten of the clock, a shade beneath four o’clock. You decide, and the weapon does your bidding.”
“High noon,” she said, eyeing the top of the target. Her aim was a hair off to the right, but only a hair. “Knife.”
“You’ve finished the set. What is different today from last week?”
I want to kiss you. “I am less worried about Trevor, I suppose.” And more fixated on watching Sycamore Dorning’s mouth.
“He’ll come right. When a man wants to be of use, but he’s born to idleness, charting a course can too easily descend into protecting his right to remain idle. I’ll retrieve the knives, and we can hope the second set goes as well as the first.”
He ambled forward, no coat, just waistcoat and shirt, cuffs turned back, and pulled the knives one by one from the target.
“My lady, you are staring at me,” he said, prowling toward her and laying the knives in their velvet case. “I am undone?”
Jeanette focused on the target sitting in the shadows down the corridor. “I was trying to discern whether you are… in a state suggestive of…” Heat flared in her cheeks.
“Whether I’m aroused?” he asked, sounding ever so nonchalant. “I am, moderately, but the experience of desire when I’m around you is apparently my normal condition. Watching you hit that target today tests my usual restraint. I can often think myself into a more genteel frame of mind. I contemplate ledger books and how long the coal in the cellar will last until we need another load delivered into the hole… But today, even that analogy fuels my imagination.”
“So why aren’t you pawing at me?”
He smiled faintly. “Why aren’t you pawing at me? I am more than willing to be pawed, my lady. Mauled and bitten even, provided you start gently.”
He stood two steps away, as luscious and cool as a chocolate ice, and Jeanette felt tears threaten.
“I don’t know how, damn you. You aren’t like the others. All they wanted was a tame little romp before drifting off to dream about the price of wool. Thank God you are not like my husband either.”
Sycamore came half a step closer. “I am not at all like your miserable excuse for a spouse. If you take me as a lover, there will be no holding still, and if anybody gets to w
himpering, the cause will be an unbearable excess of pleasure.”
The cellar held subterranean quiet, while Jeanette’s heart pounded with both dread and anticipation. If you take me as a lover… Sycamore Dorning was offering her something no other man had offered her.
The power to choose. The power to decide, to change her mind, to refine on her options, to come closer or to walk away. At the same time, he was warning her. If she chose him, she’d be flying into the unknown, with him.
“I choose to allow you to kiss me,” Jeanette said, her voice steadier than her nerves. “So please be about it.”
Sycamore could hear a chorus of older brothers all nattering at him in unison: Do not bungle this one and only opportunity to coax the marchioness into sampling your limited charms.
“How fortunate,” Sycamore replied, “for I choose to allow you to kiss me as well. I am at your service, my lady.” The initiative had to be hers. Sycamore was not sure why—he was happy to play the pursuer in the usual course—but instinct told him that with Jeanette, restraint on his part was imperative.
She gave him the sort of look a new footman would earn when he’d buttoned his livery wrong. “You expect me to sashay over there and make free with your person?”
“I long ardently for that very fate. Nobody has made free with me in such a long, lonely time, you see, and until you do, I cannot reciprocate the pleasure.”
“But you seem like such a flirt.”
She was stalling, bless her. “Flirtation is a skill I hope I can claim,” Sycamore said, “a harmless social accomplishment. You inspire desire, my lady, and that is a very different and more precious article.”
“You called me Jeanette earlier.”
“While you have yet to call me Sycamore. I suppose you could call me Mr. Dorning in bed, in that prim, maidenly way you have. I would probably expire of lust on the spot, set the sheets on fire, and singe you in the process.”
That earned him a slight, bewildered smile. “Sycamore, I have no idea how to proceed. With Endicott and Forster, I didn’t even permit any kissing.”
“And they, poor lads, allowed you to deny yourself that pleasure. I will delight in kissing you, Jeanette, in fondling you where and how you wish to be fondled, in encouraging your explorations of my person to the most intimate degree, but you have to give me some encouragement too.”
That a man could need encouragement was apparently a new thought for her. She stepped closer, slid a cool hand up Sycamore’s chest and around to his nape, and touched her lips to his cheek.
“Like that?”
“Lovely,” he said, though damnably, maddeningly chaste. Still, she had made a beginning. “Let’s elaborate on that theme, shall we?” He drew her closer, and she came willingly.
“We fit nicely,” he said, an understatement. “Let’s try a bit more kissing.”
He made those inane observations because he sensed Jeanette needed the commentary. She was unsure, and her courage would take her only so far.
Sycamore began by kissing her brow, then her cheeks, then her eyelids, as Jeanette gradually gave him her weight. When she was thoroughly relaxed, he touched his mouth to hers.
“You tease me,” she muttered.
“I invite you. Tease me back.”
Sycamore’s arousal had gone from a pleasant annoyance to a full cockstand in the duration of a few chaste kisses, and Jeanette had to be aware of that. She pressed nearer and sank her fingers into the hair at his nape.
Her kisses were delicate, and when Sycamore seamed her lips with his tongue, she startled, then reciprocated, and he opened his mouth on a groan.
Or perhaps on a whimper. In any case, Jeanette got into the spirit of the expedition, and by the time she was lavishly tasting him, she’d also pressed her breasts to his chest and rubbed against him in a manner designed to pop the buttons from his falls.
“A moment,” Sycamore said, his arms wrapped about her. “A moment to breathe, if you please.”
“You are breathing,” Jeanette replied, her cheek against his chest. “Breathing hard.”
“My breathing isn’t the only thing that’s hard.”
She eased back, though she didn’t leave his embrace. “Am I to accommodate you now?”
Her wary question gave common sense a small purchase on rampant desire. “You are never to accommodate me. If all I want is to spend, that’s simple enough to achieve. I regularly pleasure myself and hope you pleasure yourself too.”
Wariness gave way to confusion. “I am not naughty enough to embark on a liaison with you, Sycamore. I don’t even understand how to be naughty. The naughtiness was married right out of me.”
I’m naughty enough for both of us. That reply would have served for a different woman facing different challenges.
“Don’t be naughty, Jeanette. Be self-indulgent, curious, brave, and joyous. Play with me as a lady plays with her lover, rejoice in your animal spirits, and to hell with what anybody else thinks.”
She studied him as if he’d spoken in a language she barely understood, then she kissed him full on the mouth.
“I like kissing you, Sycamore Dorning. I like it a lot. Is there someplace we might take this discussion? For if I’m to become acquainted with your fiddlestick, I’ll want more light.”
Sycamore kissed her a swift, hard smacker. “I’ll light every candle on the premises and pull back every curtain too. There’s a bedroom upstairs off the office. Nothing lavish, but I hope you’ll be paying more attention to me than to the accommodations.”
“I usually do.”
He patted her bum and let her go, lest he back her onto the nearest barrelhead and introduce her to his fiddlestick in the next thirty seconds.
“Upstairs with us,” he said, taking her by the hand and making himself ascend at less than a dash. She had said yes, to next steps at least, if not to consummation, and her yes meant worlds to him. A cautious yes could be fanned into an exuberant certainty, and he was willing to exert himself to the utmost to inspire her to make that leap.
And to restrain himself to the utmost as well.
“This is pleasant,” Jeanette said when Sycamore had ushered her into the bedchamber adjoining the office. The room was almost feminine in its appointments, the quilt a lavender blue, the curtains white lace, the rug before the hearth blue, pink, and white.
“Off with your boots,” Sycamore said, “and I will light the fire.” He ducked into the office to retrieve a lit spill and considered tossing himself off, but discarded the notion. Left to her own devices, Jeanette would fret, and not for anything would he give her cause for worry. He instead took up an extra branch of candles and set them on the bedside table when he rejoined her.
Jeanette sat in the reading chair before the hearth, one boot on, one boot off.
“Shall I assist you?” Sycamore asked, lighting every candle in the room as well as the fire laid on the hearth.
“I can manage. Perhaps you have disrobing of your own to do?”
“I’d rather you disrobe me.”
She set her second boot aside. “I see.”
Clearly, she did not see, but she rose and approached him, then slipped the pin from his cravat. “I valeted my husband often enough. The job isn’t complicated.”
“Don’t valet me, Jeanette, drive me mad. Torment me with what I might never have.” He could not believe those words were coming from his idiot mouth, but he’d made Jeanette smile, and that mattered.
“Like this?” she asked, casually pressing her breasts to his chest as she unknotted his cravat.
“Exactly like that. You might have to unbutton my falls too.”
She draped his neckcloth over the back of the chair. “Why?”
“Because my hands are shaking too badly, and I cannot go about in public with half my buttons ripped off.”
She slipped his sleeve buttons free of his cuffs. “I don’t suppose you can.” She undid his waistcoat next, in no hurry what-so-damned-ever. By the time Sycamo
re was minus his boots and stockings and naked from the waist up, Jeanette was smiling.
“I’d best finish what I started,” she said, tugging Sycamore closer to the hearth by his waistband.
“Not so fast, madam. You are overdressed for the occasion.”
She looked at the bulge distorting the line of his falls, looked at his face, and her smile became a grin. “What will you do about that, Mr. Dorning? I refuse to miss supper because you were dilatory about your duties.”
“Hold still,” he said, then caught himself. “If you would please hold still, I will assist you to undress.”
“Be quick about it.” She followed up with a kiss to his mouth, then turned her back to him. “My hooks, if you please. And thank you, Sycamore.” She offered her thanks—for what?—while sweeping her hair away from her nape.
He got her out of her dress, stays, and petticoats without embarrassing himself or falling on her like a ravening beast, but stopped short of removing her chemise.
“You are being considerate of my modesty?” Jeanette asked, taking a seat on the bed.
“No, love.” He sank to his knees before her. “I’m trying, futilely I suspect, to preserve my sanity. Might you please spread your legs for me?”
Surely a little ravening to begin the proceedings was permitted, a little ravening and kissing and driving the lady wild? Or more than a little?
“Spread my legs for you?” Jeanette did not like the sound of that at all. “Why?”
Sycamore grasped her ankles, his thumbs brushing over the bones in a slow caress. “So that I can pleasure you with my mouth, of course. I want you as witless as I’m becoming.”
His mouth on her…? She’d heard of such things, or overheard of them, in the women’s retiring rooms, though the conversation always ended abruptly when somebody noticed she was on hand.
“Is that really necessary?”
His hands slid higher, to her knees, his touch so very warm and shocking. “Not necessary, but…” Knees were pedestrian joints, bones and sinew fashioned to facilitate locomotion. When Sycamore touched Jeanette’s knees, they developed all manner of strange and erotic sensitivities.
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 11