“The roses will last longer if the air isn’t so stuffy,” he said. “You don’t order a hot water bottle because you don’t want the staff to know of your indisposition, which is silly. They know everything anyway. I brought you a peace offering.”
“Are we at war?”
“I thought we might be. I adore you, and my adoration sometimes provokes… Well, that is to say…” He regarded her with a brooding sort of frown. “Never mind that now.” He bent to withdraw something from his boot and presented Jeanette with a flat, dark curve of metal, sharpened to a lethal point at one end. “For you.”
“A knife?” Not like any knife Jeanette had seen before. The darkness of the metal, the elegance of the curve, and the wicked point all announced that this was a deadly weapon rather than a serviceable tool.
“A trial design. We could give it a toss in the mews, see if it fits your hand.”
“You brought me a present.” The metal was smooth and cool, the weight exquisitely balanced. This knife was sleeker than the ones Jeanette had thrown previously and not quite as long.
“I know calling on the Sabbath isn’t the done thing, my lady, but somebody is following you, then Tavistock is set upon in an alley, and now you tell me you are indisposed. I leaped to fearful conclusions. I often do, which is not entirely a bad thing, because if one anticipates fearful outcomes, then one can—I am babbling.”
He took the place beside Jeanette—very presuming of him—and Jeanette lost a piece of her heart to him. A passionate Sycamore was arousing and impressive. A babbling Sycamore, bearing gifts and spouting off about tisanes, was a dear man, indeed.
“Every month,” Jeanette said, passing him back the knife, “I am reminded of my unfitness for the title I bear. In years of incessant attempts to conceive, I could not produce a single child, Sycamore. Not even a daughter, as my husband reminded me month after month. I was interrogated and examined by physicians, accoucheurs, and midwives. I drank vile concoctions, I took the waters at half the spa towns in the realm, and I prayed without ceasing to an indifferent God. I hate this time of the month, and it’s as if my body hates it too.”
“Did the late marquess ever impose his attentions on you at this time of the month?”
Where had the knife gone? Probably back into Sycamore’s boot, though Jeanette hadn’t seen him put it away. “Of course not.”
Sycamore put a large hand low on her belly and kneaded gently. “If the mumps wasn’t the problem, that might be why you didn’t conceive. My sister-in-law Margaret is a genius with herbs, and between her, the countess, and my sister Daisy, I’ve overhead more about lady’s ailments than you can imagine. Gives a fellow pause.”
“You should not be sitting next to me, Sycamore.”
“You should not be suffering, Jeanette. Does this help?” He used firmer pressure.
“Yes, damn you. Nobody conceives while the womb is bleeding.”
“Says who? The late Marquess of Mopery? He got all of one woman pregnant that we know of, and that doubtless took heroic forbearance on the part of his wives, mistresses, and casual romps. Perhaps you would conceive right as the bleeding ends, and the business wants a few days head start.”
As Sycamore’s shocking familiarities continued, Jeanette resisted the urge to rest her head against his shoulder. He was contradicting medical science, and also making sense.
“Peem will be up here with a tray,” she said. “I told him we were not to be disturbed, but he’s set in his ways.”
“He’s softening toward me,” Sycamore said, working his way across Jeanette’s belly. “Witness, I am no longer Mr. Doorknob. Let’s see how your new favorite toy fits your hand.”
“You are flirting with me.”
“No, I am not. If I invited you to fit your hand to my favorite toy, then I would be flirting. Shall we sneak off to the mews and engage in a little diversion, my lady?”
She wanted to see how the knife behaved, and she wanted to sneak off with Sycamore. Not in that order.
“A few throws only, and that assumes the mews are deserted.”
“Of course.” He rose with his usual energy and offered her his hand.
Jeanette got to her feet more slowly and realized the horrendous cramping, which made her ache from the arches of her feet to her ribs, was somewhat abated. Not gone, but better.
She took up a shawl rather than bother with a cloak and saw her guest out through the back garden and across the alley.
“Tavistock was not set upon in an alley,” she said as Sycamore’s earlier comment came back to her. “He was right on the street, and some of his friends weren’t far behind him.”
Sycamore led her around to the back of the stable, to the dusty yard where horses were often groomed, the farrier did his work, and barn cats lounged in the sun.
“Tavistock was very clear that he’d ducked into an alley to have a nip from his flask. While I know the use most gents will put an alley to—the uses—I believe the lad because the fragrance of brandy was strong on his person in the middle of the day.”
Sycamore walked off a distance from the side of the carriage house. No windows broke up that wall, and he used a penknife to scratch three concentric circles at chest height on the wooden siding. From the stable across the yard from the carriage house, curious horses munched hay and watched over their half doors.
“Sycamore, what are you going on about? Tavistock’s mishap occurred late at night, on the street, and the only brandy involved had been consumed over cards at Jerome’s club.”
Sycamore used the heel of his boot to draw a line in the dirt. “Tavistock told you he’d sparred a little too enthusiastically at Jackson’s?”
The cramps in Jeanette’s belly were joined by a feeling of general unease. “He did, and knowing young men, I believed him. He lied to me, didn’t he?”
Sycamore passed her the knife and moved behind her. “He apparently did, though with the best of intentions. Focus on the throw, Jeanette, and aim for the center of the target. We will discuss Tavistock’s little mishap later, but for now, focus on the throw.”
She toed the line and tried to relax and breathe, but when the knife left her hand, it ended up a yard above the ground, buried in a post six feet away from the damned target.
Chapter Nine
Sycamore had in fact brought three knives, all of the same design. Jeanette’s first throw was a predictable disaster, but a dozen more attempts, and she was wielding the blades with reliable accuracy—and no little temper.
“I believe we’ve established that the design works for you,” Sycamore said as another set of three throws clustered toward the middle of the makeshift bull’s-eye. “Do you like it?”
Jeanette glowered at the blades embedded in the carriage house wall. “I suppose I must if I hit the target so consistently.”
“Not so,” Sycamore said, retrieving the knives. “Just as you accommodated the old marquess in every wifely sense, hating the whole ordeal, you can competently throw a knife you don’t care for, or throw well at one distance and fail at every other. Did you enjoy wielding these knives, my lady?”
He slipped one blade into each boot and passed the third to her.
“They fit my hand,” she said, running a finger over the elegant curve of the metal. “The other knives were too big and heavy for me, though I would never have known that without throwing these.”
Sycamore busied himself scratching the ears of a muscular bay gelding rather than watch Jeanette caress the blade.
“Just as this design is an improvement for you over my own knives,” he said, “another design, even lighter, or finished to a smoother grip, might be better still.”
“I like these,” Jeanette said. “May I keep this one?”
“Of course, and I’ll have a case made for the set. Are you calm enough to discuss Tavistock’s lying yet?” He offered the slight to her self-control deliberately as a test of that calm.
She retrieved her shawl from the half door o
f a pretty chestnut mare. “You throw knives to calm your temper?”
“And my worry.” Sycamore took the shawl from her and draped it over her shoulders, because he needed the excuse to touch her. “Also to help me think. My father would go on long walks to help him solve problems, though his practice was to note all the flora and fauna, the state of the crops, and the condition of the tenant cottages. By the time he came home, the walking had often jostled a solution loose in his brain box.”
“One cannot safely go for long walks in London. Hence, you play with knives.” Jeanette gestured to a bench in the shade of the stable’s overhang. The location was outdoors yet private, a good place to have a difficult conversation. “You are about to present a case for the defense of his lordship, to put a gentlemanly gloss on Trevor’s dishonesty.”
She sank onto the bench a little gingerly, and Sycamore’s wayward imaginings were pushed aside by a reminder that the lady was uncomfortable.
“I hate that you hurt,” he said, taking the place beside her. “I hate even more that you’ve nobody on hand to commiserate with you and cosset you. I want to hold you and pet you and bring you hot water bottles and tisanes while I rub your feet and read you Byron’s poems.”
“Instead, you bring me a sharp blade and a thorny dilemma. I understand why Trevor would keep a fight in an alley to himself. He does not want me to worry, and that is a kind impulse. I have not wanted him to worry, and thus I haven’t been entirely forthcoming either.”
A sparrow lighted on the cobbled walkway ten feet away. Sycamore produced a butter biscuit pilfered from his morning tea tray, broke it in half, and offered one portion to Jeanette.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the treat and popping it into her mouth.
The rest he crumbled up and tossed at the sparrow, who moved from crumb to crumb according to some map known only to the bird.
“Do you refer to general reticence, my lady, or have you, too, been set upon by brigands in broad daylight?”
“Not brigands. I sought your instruction with knives because I was uneasy. Then Trevor had that brawl, now you tell me he’s been attacked again.” She watched the little bird hopping from crumb to crumb. “I have received two notes, Sycamore. One came some time ago, telling me a widow riding a step-son’s coattails was a pathetic creature who’d be well advised to rusticate out of Society’s view. That was merely insulting, and I have learned to ignore insults.”
“And then somebody started following you.”
“Then I noticed somebody following me, and now Tavistock has had not one but two encounters with London’s purveyors of street violence. And just yesterday I received a second note, telling me I’m not safe in London. I could dismiss the first as the infantile dramatics certain members of society are prone to. The second is more threatening than insulting. I was going to tell you about it, but then I became indisposed. One wants to be on one’s mettle when one broaches such a topic.”
Sycamore battled the impulse to gather Jeanette in his arms and spirit her away to some safe place—Dorning Hall came to mind, a very hard two days’ journey from London if the roads were dry. Oak, out in Hampshire, could provide sanctuary, as could Jacaranda at Trysting.
“This is why Viola’s threat to consign you to the dower house upset you so,” he said. “Because you had been threatened before. May I see the notes, Jeanette?”
“I keep them with me,” she said, fishing in a pocket. “If the notes are real, then my fear is justified. I hate even saying those words.”
Sycamore took two folded pieces of foolscap from her. “How did these arrive?”
“With the morning post on both occasions. The mail sits on the sideboard in the foyer for half the day. Any of Trevor’s friends who come and go with him could have added those notes—the young men put locusts to shame when they join us at breakfast. A servant could have found the notes on the floor and included them with the stack of letters on the sideboard.”
Sycamore unfolded the first note.
A widow past her prime trading on a step-son’s consequence is a blight upon Society. Get thee to a dower property, where you belong, and stay there.
The second was more to the point: London is no longer safe for you. To the country, my lady, posthaste!
“Nasty,” Sycamore said, holding the paper up to the light. “No watermark, suggesting we are not dealing with a complete fool. Educated handwriting, proper spelling, a vague allusion to Hamlet’s insults.”
Jeanette balanced the knife horizontally on her fingertip. “‘Get thee to a nunnery’?” she quoted.
“Meaning Ophelia was to go to either a convent or a brothel, but either way, a low insult to one’s intended.”
“Unless Hamlet was trying to keep her safe.”
“Hamlet broke her damned heart and drove her mad, but an uneducated person isn’t likely to have alluded to Shakespeare. Why haven’t you left London, Jeanette?” Sycamore wished the answer could be that she hadn’t wanted to leave him, but that was foolish. The first note had arrived before he and Jeanette had become lovers.
“I refuse to be cowed,” she said, watching the sparrow fly away with a crumb held in its beak. “For the first twenty-four years of my life, I did what I was told to do. I am no threat to anybody, and these notes could be from some matchmaker who thinks I’m preventing Trevor from standing up with her niece. I was afraid of my husband. He never raised a hand to me, but I disgusted him, and he took infinite, intimate pains to make sure I knew that. I retreated and retreated and retreated in the face of his disapproval. Recovering the ground I yielded has taken me years.”
Jeanette gripped the knife firmly now, and it fit her hand exactly.
“Tell me what you know of Trevor’s first encounter with street roughs.”
She angled a glare at him.
“Please,” Sycamore amended. “Won’t you please tell me what you know of that incident?”
“He was coming home from supper and a late-night round of cards at Jerome’s club. Jerome stayed behind, though several other fellows left when Trevor did. Trevor had lost, he was half-seas over, and he hadn’t bothered to hire a linkboy. A pair of ruffians set upon him, and his friends apparently came around the corner in the next instant. Trevor hasn’t exactly boasted of the occasion, but I gather he gave a good account of himself.”
“And the whole business in our great and elegant metropolis is entirely unremarkable. Not so this week’s incident.” Sycamore took Jeanette’s free hand. A pale measure compared to spiriting her off to Dorning Hall, but he hoped his touch reassured her.
As hers reassured him.
“As best I can tell,” Sycamore said, “Friday morning, Tavistock apparently had an appointment to fence with a chum at Angelo’s. Jerome and the usual gang of foplings came to watch. The agenda had been for Jerome and Trevor to share lunch at the club following Trevor’s session. Jerome became engrossed in observing the next match, so Trevor left on his own. He wanted a nip from his flask, but was too much of a gentleman to drink on the street and popped around to an alley. Three professional bullyboys met him there, one with a knife.”
Jeanette shifted her grip on Sycamore’s hand to lace her fingers with his. “He could have been killed.”
“Not likely. I suspect both attacks were a case of mistaken identity. If three men wanted to kill one unsuspecting marquess in an alley, they would all come armed, they would wait for cover of darkness, and they would finish the job.”
Jeanette watched the sparrow return to snatch up the last of the crumbs. “You think Jerome was the target?”
How Sycamore loved her mind, as quick and sharp as a Damascus blade. “The facts line up with that hypothesis, and Jerome and Trevor look very much alike.”
“Trevor is taller and leaner, not half such a dandy as Jerome.” Said with no little disdain for dandies.
“But to those who don’t know them, or to whom every gent in St. James’s is a peacock, that’s a distinction without a difference.
I can think of many reasons why somebody might want to beat some humility into young Mr. Vincent.”
The little bird came back, or another very like it, while Jeanette appeared to consider Sycamore’s theories. “Jerome has debts. Trevor has let that much slip.”
“Jerome might well have taken liberties with somebody’s sister or companion, led somebody else’s brother into the River Tick, or offered an insult to someone’s mother. He is an only son, from a titled family, and of an age to be quite stupid.”
“Quite arrogant,” Jeanette said. “Of all Trevor’s fine qualities, what I love in him most is his decency. He’s not consumed with his own consequence. If I seek to safeguard any aspect of his character, it’s that reservoir of humility. Do you think Jerome is trying to banish me to the country, the better to gain influence over Trevor?”
Not a theory Sycamore would have come up with, though it fit. “Somebody is determined to beat Jerome silly. If he’s deeply in debt or has committed some serious breach of honor, then sending you two hundred miles away allows Jerome to move in with Trevor and shelter under the marquess’s consequence.”
“And get his cousinly fingers into the marquess’s purse.” Jeanette rose to pace the cobbled walkway beneath the overhang. “How does Jerome’s situation connect with somebody following me?”
“Perhaps,” Sycamore said slowly, “the next beating is intended for you. Somebody is trying to scare you clear back to Derbyshire.”
Jeanette half turned away from him, her hand rubbing absently over her belly. “I hate this. I want to scoff, stick my nose in the air, and conduct myself with complete indifference toward a lot of foolish dramatics.”
Sycamore rose. “Instead, you sought to arm yourself and kept the whole business from the marquess lest you trouble his handsome head. Jeanette, there is another course between ignoring the problem and taking the whole matter on in solo combat.”
“I can retreat to Derbyshire. It’s not even near the family seat, just some property acquired in an advantageous marriage a couple of centuries ago. Rye would never see me, Trevor would correspond with me out of duty, and I would receive an annual invitation from Viola to come to Kent in the autumn when the men were off shooting, but she’d hope I’d decline—and I would.”
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 17