“That’s not the option I refer to and not one I’d suggest. Until you know who is trying to bully you and why, leaving Town doesn’t necessarily keep you safe. In Derbyshire, you would be quite easy to dispose of.”
She paced back to him and kept coming, slipping her arms around his waist. “You do not try to hide the truth from me. I treasure your honesty, but I am afraid, Sycamore. I hate being afraid. I was afraid for too long, of never having my husband’s respect, of every overheard whisper in the ladies’ retiring room. I became sick with dread and began to fear I’d be set aside—or worse—so the late marquess could try for his spares with a third and fertile wife.”
She leaned on Sycamore, the sweetest, most precious gesture of trust in the world, also alarming. Men from kings to paupers had set aside troublesome wives for affronts less serious than barrenness, and Jeanette had lived with that fear for several years.
“Nobody would care if I suffered a tragic accident, Sycamore, but I would care. Rye might shed a few tears, the charities I support would miss my coin, but a week on, nobody would care.”
I would care profoundly. “Tavistock would be devastated.”
“What if Trevor sent the notes? What if he’s too polite to tell me to leave him a clear field here in Town?”
Jeanette’s marriage had taught her to fret like this. “An odd sort of manners, that threatens a woman’s peace of mind with vile notes.” And yet, the theory had merit. Sycamore was reminded that Tavistock had claimed to be a skilled liar, an odd but credible boast.
“Please hear me out,” Sycamore said, guiding Jeanette back to the bench and keeping an arm around her shoulders. “You trusted me enough to ask me for instructions on how to use a knife. You trusted me enough to take me to bed. Can you trust me enough to enlist me as an ally in the effort to keep you safe?”
She sat beside him, her hand on her belly, her gaze on the bull’s-eye scored into the carriage house planks across the yard.
“I already have enlisted you as an ally, though nobody is more surprised to find it so than I am.”
Surprised, and not exactly pleased, apparently. Sycamore charged on nonetheless. “Let me pay you my addresses, Jeanette. As a regular caller, as a devoted suitor, I can keep a closer eye on everybody around you and do a better job of investigating the beatings, the notes, and whoever is following you.”
She pulled away and sat up very straight. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have no wish to marry ever again, Sycamore. You must know that. Marriage to Lord Tavistock was hell. Lapdogs are treated better than I was, and I will never again become a man’s property, to be used intimately and insulted at his whim.”
Well, damn. Sycamore had not seen that knife whistling toward him in the dark, but he should have.
“I hadn’t meant to propose actual marriage, Jeanette.” Sycamore had. He absolutely had. Marriage, a home of their own, safety for her, pleasure for them both. The whole bit, including—maybe, eventually—a few fat, chortling babies to put paid to the late marquess’s worst insults to Jeanette. “I meant to propose a pleasant fiction that allows you to better direct me in aid of your safety.”
“You are trying to cozen me.”
“I am trying to keep you safe. We might not be the best of friends, but I am a gentleman, and you are in a difficult situation.” They were also lovers, not simply passing romps. Sycamore had had enough of the latter to know the difference.
“You are truly a gentleman,” Jeanette said, a brooding admission accompanied by a perusal of his person.
“I am also a Dorning. I have family coming out my ears. Willow can provide you a watch dog. Ash will teach Trevor the finer points of pugilism. Kettering is merely an in-law, but he can acquaint us with the details of young Jerome’s finances, and darling Margaret will brew you up a potion to banish the worst of your monthly pains. Casriel is an earl—earls come in handy at odd moments—and his beloved Beatitude corresponds with every literate gossip in England.
“I remain attached to my family,” he went on, “because they are all the safety I have, Jeanette, and I offer them to you for the same purpose.”
Not quite what he’d wanted to say, but then, Please, for the love of God, marry me wouldn’t serve either.
Jeanette braced her hands on the bench and leaned forward, brushing her slippers against the cobbles. “I want to keep you safe too, Sycamore. I haven’t finished my knife lessons, after all, and you wield a blade very competently.”
Had any other woman made that observation, Sycamore would have known she was flirting. “I do, and we have a bargain, and I will make a very biddable suitor, I promise you.”
“No,” she said, “you won’t, and you are not to court me, Sycamore. You are to attempt to court me. To consider courting me. To try to interest me in a passing liaison. Pay me enough attention to help me solve the puzzles currently vexing me, but don’t start too much talk.”
Progress indeed, over the status of clandestine dining partner. “I am the soul of discretion,” he said, “and I never start talk.” His entire family, including Willow’s dogs, would be overcome with hilarity at that pronouncement, but his family wasn’t sitting on a bench with Jeanette, longing to hold her hand again and mentally vowing to punish whoever had disturbed her peace.
Jeanette sat back and rested her forehead against his shoulder. “Be patient with me, Sycamore. I don’t want to draw you into my troubles, and against all good sense, I like you, very much. That leaves me in a badly timed muddle.”
“I like you too, Jeanette.” He liked her passionately. “I’ll have the blacksmith cast you a full set of knives, shall I?”
“Please.”
They remained on the bench for another few moments, the sound of horses munching hay an accompaniment to an odd fluttering of both joy and anxiety in Sycamore’s heart. Threatening notes were bad, but liking him very much was good. He bowed over Jeanette’s hand at her garden gate and agreed to call on her the following day, possible-suitor fashion.
Or trustworthy-gentleman fashion. Both roles were lovely to contemplate, though becoming Jeanette’s intended would be lovelier still. Her marriage truly had been a horror, the damage worse than Sycamore had first suspected.
He was rambling along in the alley, his thoughts swirling from Jerome’s possible debts to picnicking with Jeanette at Richmond Park, to Trevor’s apparent gift for dishonesty, when out of nowhere, a fist like iron clipped him hard across the jaw.
“Taking the garden air?” Trevor asked as Jeanette let herself into the house through the library’s French doors.
The afternoon light and the way he cocked his head combined to create a strong resemblance to his father. To the casual observer, the late marquess had been a handsome man making an elegant transition into distinguished maturity. Trevor would age well, too, and just now the boy was far less evident than the emerging young man. The faint bruise on his jaw did that, as did the fine tailoring and the indolence with which he occupied the chair at the desk.
“I have been throwing knives,” Jeanette said, “with Mr. Sycamore Dorning.”
Trevor put down his quill pen and came around the desk to brace his hips against it. “Step-mama, did I hear you aright? You were throwing knives with Mr. Sycamore Dorning?”
His tone was faintly disbelieving and put Jeanette in mind of all the times his father had mocked her.
You do not seriously intend to wear that in public, do you?
You thought to plan a menu all by yourself, without even consulting Viola. I applaud your initiative, but you will understand if I avoid consuming the results.
Oh, gracious. Her ladyship is endeavoring to read a book. Such a lofty ambition in one of her limited capabilities.
“Mr. Dorning and I practice weekly,” Jeanette said, “and he is having a set of knives made for my personal use.”
Trevor crossed his arms. “He’s said nothing about this to me, and I have been practically in his pocket of late.”
Jeanette wanted
to order herself a hot water bottle and some ginger tea and spend the rest of her Sabbath reading in bed, but she and Trevor had business to discuss first.
More lost ground to recover. “Mr. Dorning has said nothing about my lessons to anybody, because I asked for his discretion. When did you plan to tell me that you were set upon by three brigands in an alley, Trevor?”
Trevor stalked across the library to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. “You asked Dorning for discretion? Perhaps I should have insisted on it from him as well. What sort of gentleman tattles on another fellow?”
When had Trevor lost the quality of a gangly youth and instead become a tall and increasingly muscular young man?
“What sort of gentleman lies to a lady, Trevor? Your safety matters to me very much, and if those men had been intent on robbery, you’d have left the alley without your watch, sleeve buttons, rings, coat, and boots.”
“Did Dorning pass that along?” The question was nearly sneered.
“I saw you on Friday when you tried to sneak in from the mews, Trevor. Saw you dressed more or less as you’d left the breakfast table, before your round of fisticuffs at Jackson’s got a bit out of hand. I am worried about you, and I do not care for deceptions between family members.”
Trevor sipped his brandy, he didn’t gulp it. Jeanette took some consolation from that.
“Deception is required of a gentleman,” Trevor said, sounding slightly exasperated. “If I told you of the vulgarities that pass for humor at the club, the low talk that passes for gossip, or the nocturnal strolls through the park my friends delight in, you would box my ears.”
After dark, most of London’s public parks turned into open-air sex markets, a situation that the newspapers delicately decried at least once a quarter. The streets around the theater were similarly thronged with those intent on risqué pleasures, which only added to the popularity of the theater as an evening entertainment.
“I expect decent manners from you, Trevor, but I also expect honesty regarding something as important as a violent crime committed against your person. This is the second time you’ve been accosted on the street, and you do not frequent bad neighborhoods.”
“All of London is a bad neighborhood, to hear the preachers tell it.”
She marched up to him, unwilling to indulge his masculine pouts. “You could have been killed, Trevor, and I would mourn your passing deeply. I have watched you grow from boy to man, and I dearly want to see the man take his proper place in Society. I will never have children. You are the only person I have left to love in this world, and when you lie to me, it hurts.”
That he would lie was also frightening, proof that the darling boy was gone forever, replaced by a dear but increasingly distant young man whom Jeanette didn’t know as well as she’d thought she did.
“Don’t cry,” he said, sounding genuinely horrified. “I have never seen you cry, and if I give you occasion to cry now, I will have to call myself out.” He passed her a handkerchief and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You are upset, the very thing I sought to avoid. I have made you cry, and this is all Mr. Dorning’s fault.”
“Your mendacity has upset me, and I am not crying, Trevor. I am disappointed that you would not trust me with the truth.”
Trevor offered her his drink. She shook her head.
“Both Dorning brothers told me to be honest with you,” he said. “I thought them daft. Why burden my step-mama with a recounting of such villainy? And here you’ve been nipping out to the mews to throw knives. Why, my lady?”
My lady, not Step-mama. “Somebody has followed me, Trevor, on many occasions.”
He set his glass down rather too hard. “I beg your pardon? Followed you?”
“Somebody followed my coach when I borrowed my brother’s less conspicuous conveyance and followed our town coach when I took it out midweek.”
Trevor gazed across the library at nothing in particular. “You borrowed Orion Goddard’s coach? Whatever for?”
“Privacy. I got in the habit when your father was alive. If his lordship took the town coach, and I did not want to travel in an open vehicle, I borrowed Orion’s. Rye seldom goes out, at least not to society’s usual entertainments, and I have never cared for ostentation anyway.”
Then too, sending along a note asking to borrow the carriage was one way to ensure Orion still drew breath. He never scrawled more than a word or two in reply, but that was better than the long silence that had followed his return from France.
“So I take the town coach,” Trevor said, “and you get up to God knows what, God knows where, without a word to me? Throwing knives, for example? Being followed? Having Mr. Dorning procure a whole set of knives for you?”
Jeanette produced the blade she’d carried in from the mews. “You are attempting to distract me from your own dishonesty, Trevor. It won’t wash.”
He peered at the knife lying across her palm as if it would writhe to life before his eyes. “That is a formidable accessory you have there. Perhaps I ought to carry a knife myself.”
“Ask Sycamore Dorning for advice. He’ll probably show you the rudiments of throwing if you want him to. Tell me about the men who accosted you behind Angelo’s.”
Trevor took a wing chair before the empty hearth and recited the facts more or less as Sycamore had relayed them.
“I wasn’t afraid at the time. I was annoyed,” he concluded. “Then I arrived at the Coventry, and it occurred to me that I’d had a narrow escape. As Sycamore said, if there had been a fourth man, or a second knife, perhaps a cudgel or two… Those fellows were expecting to thrash a fop, and if they come after me again, I won’t have the element of surprise on my side.”
Jeanette sat opposite him, her knife wrapped in a handkerchief and slipped it into her pocket. “Are your debts paid?”
“Of course. The increase in my allowance was more than sufficient to bring everything up to date, and you apparently know my arrangement with the Coventry.”
“Have you offended anybody?”
Trevor stared at the ceiling. “What do you take me for, my lady?”
“A young man new to Town, who is the dearest person in my world. Answer the question.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are Jerome’s bills up to date?”
Trevor swiveled a puzzled gaze to her. “Cousin’s affairs are quite in hand, I’m sure.”
“You look like him, Trevor, and both times you were accosted, he might well have been accompanying you, but he sent you out alone instead.”
Trevor shot to his feet. “Madam, that is the outside of too much. Jerome has earned more respect from you than that—he’s considered offering for you, if you must know—and I will not hear a word against him.”
Jeanette knew she’d blundered badly, but the conversation wasn’t over, and Jerome had never earned her respect. He wasn’t considering offering for her, he was considering a cockeyed scheme by which to get his hands on her wealth—or his mother was.
“I’m not saying Jerome sent you out to be set upon by ruffians, Trevor, but might the ruffians have mistaken you for him? You and Jerome look very much alike, and you both frequent the same venues. He uses the family crest when it suits him, and you aren’t that much taller than he is.”
Trevor stalked toward the door. “You are being fanciful, my lady. You ask why I did not burden you with the details of a small misadventure, and this is exactly why. You are overreacting and flinging wild fancies about, heedless of whom you insult. I will leave you to regain your… your… to collect yourself.”
He had about half the library yet to cross, and Jeanette was not overreacting. She took out her knife, rose, and threw it such that it bit into the door at shoulder height.
His lordship stopped short.
“Insult me like this again, Trevor, and we will have words such as you cannot imagine. You are upset to think that Jerome might have involved you in an intolerable situation, and you thought to protect me from fretting
over his difficulties. You are also protecting him, a grown man nearly three years your senior, resplendent in his town bronze.”
Trevor’s gaze went from the knife to Jeanette, something cool and appraising in his eyes. “I have not even discussed this situation with Jerome. The idea that I have been the target of malice meant for him never occurred to me.”
“But you must admit that theory makes sense. Sycamore Dorning saw the connections immediately, and if you can’t respect my opinion, you should respect his.”
Trevor pulled the knife from the door and examined the blade. “He said nothing to me about Jerome being the intended victim. This is a peculiar sort of knife.”
“The design is specifically for throwing, not for hand-to-hand combat, or for any kind of practical use. This blade is smaller and lighter than other knives, fashioned to suit my hand.”
Trevor palmed the knife. “Fashioned by Sycamore Dorning?”
“Yes.”
He passed the blade back to her. “I do not want to argue with you, my lady—Jeanette. But allow me to point out that regarding a matter involving your personal safety, you went to Dorning rather than to me, and I am both the head of this family, despite my lamentable youth, and somebody who would be devastated should harm befall you. You have not been forthcoming with me, and yet, you castigate me for exercising some gentlemanly discretion. There is reason here for more than one party to be hurt.”
Good heavens. Trevor had delivered that set-down in perfectly measured, calm tones. He’d been honest with her, not the condescending aristocrat and not the whiny adolescent.
Jeanette wrapped the knife in her handkerchief and returned it to her pocket. “You are correct. I kept my own counsel about being followed because I did not want to be told I was overreacting and behaving like a hysterical female. For all I knew, some journalist was doing a piece on titled widows and nosing around in hopes I’d create a great scandal in my spare time. When Sycamore told me what had happened to you—told me in the last hour—I put aside my doubts and confronted you with the situation.”
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 18