Trevor regarded her for a long moment, his blue eyes giving away little. “What is it you want from me, Jeanette?”
“The truth. I will keep you informed should I sense any threats to my wellbeing, and I hope you will do likewise for me. I cannot battle a foe who hides behind your gentlemanly sensibilities, Trevor, and you cannot protect me from an enemy I refuse to discuss with you.”
He ambled toward the door this time, no sweeping off the stage in high dudgeon. Surely that was cause for encouragement?
“Do you ever consider leaving London?” he asked. “Just bowing out of the whole social whirl for a few months?”
“The spring Season is the whole social whirl,” Jeanette said, “and I would not abandon you here to the matchmakers and Aunt Viola’s schemes.”
Trevor scrubbed a hand over his face. “Auntie is quite determined. If you should take a notion to rusticate, I would be happy to escort you from Town. I have no wish to return to university, but spending my mornings lounging from one print shop window to the next, lunch at the club, fencing in the afternoon… I could put it aside to see you safely to Tavistock Hall.”
“And Viola would descend with your cousins within an hour of our arrival.”
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch. “I’ve thought about getting rooms at the Albany. That address is the height of fashion for bachelors of means, and Jerome would keep me company.”
Jerome would whizzle free room and board for himself and half his loutish friends. “You must do as you see fit, though I cannot endorse a move to the Albany.”
Trevor tossed her a smile over his shoulder. “I can’t very well abandon you here if somebody is skulking through the bushes making you fretful. The Albany isn’t going anywhere, and Jerome would probably never come up with his half of the rent anyway.”
“And I would miss you.”
Trevor slipped out the door without offering Jeanette any reciprocal assurances.
Chapter Ten
Sycamore had a knife in his hand before he found his balance. The blow to his chin had been stout and completely unexpected, but the follow-up fist to the gut never happened.
He faced a man—a gentleman down on his luck, based on the fellow’s attire—of substantial height and even more substantial bad humor. Ill-will rolled off the fellow in a palpable wave, as did the crisp scent of lavender.
Sycamore’s assailant was a tower of contradictions. Lavender was a clean scent, while this man’s boots were dusty and worn. The second button on his morning coat was coming loose, and his hat needed a good brushing. He wore a patch over one eye, as if his demeanor generally wasn’t piratical enough. His hair was dark and badly in need of a trim, while his eye was the blue of bachelor buttons and summer skies.
His cravat was a lacy old-fashioned jabot, and yet, like any conscientious London street tough, he wore no gloves.
“Put your little toy away,” Sycamore’s assailant growled. “Continue to disport with my sister as if she’s a common doxy—and on the Sabbath, no less—and a blow to the face is the least you’ll have coming to you. Consider yourself warned.”
Even the voice was a contradiction, a dark baritone that yet managed to convey public school elocution. He got a half-dozen steps down the alley before the puzzle pieces formed a pattern in Sycamore’s mind.
“Orion Goddard?”
“Sir Orion to you, Dorning.” He kept walking, his gait uneven and less than brisk.
“Good day to you too,” Sycamore said, catching up to him easily. “You have a peculiar way of skipping the introductions, Sir Orion.” Also a formidable uppercut.
“You have a peculiar sense of decorum, imposing yourself on a lady whose hems you are not fit to touch.”
“Lady Tavistock likes me,” Sycamore replied. “I more than like her. Because she apparently has a care for you as well, I will allow your little tap to my chin to go unreciprocated—for now.”
“I’m a-tremble with dread.” Goddard turned at the intersection of two alleys, confident of his direction. “Jeanette has been through too much already at the hands of a randy arsewipe from a titled family. Leave her alone.”
“My brother Willow has dogs like you,” Sycamore said, beginning to enjoy himself. “They growl, they show their teeth, they are quite menacing, until some child tosses a ball for them in the back garden.”
Goddard shoved Sycamore hard against a stone wall, and abruptly, there was a knife at Sycamore’s throat.
“Bother Jeanette again, you randy pestilence, and I will leave you for the crows to feast upon.”
“If my English serves adequately,” Sycamore replied, “what you meant to say is that you love your sister dearly and wish to know if my intentions are honorable. And by the by, that slight pressure you feel at your crotch is the knife I had in my left boot—always carry two, you know. You are welcome to slit my throat—my affairs are in order, after all—but be assured that your cods will be parted from your irascible person ere I take my last breath.”
Sycamore moved the blade a quarter inch. A throwing knife was not made for slicing, but Goddard would get the point, as it were.
Goddard smiled, an incomprehensibly charming flash of teeth and humor. That smile turned a saturnine countenance sunny and revealed either hidden warmth of heart or a criminal’s black-souled ability to regard violence as entertainment.
He stepped back and bowed. “Well done, Dorning. A bit slow, but an adequate performance. You are teaching Jeanette to wield a knife?”
“To throw a knife,” Sycamore said, slipping the blade back into its sheath. “Hand-to-hand combat for a lady wielding a knife is not well advised.” Goddard’s question, though, revealed that he’d been lurking in the alley for the better part of an hour. “Why are you spying on your sister?”
Goddard approached a stout, roman-nosed bay gelding dozing in the shade of a plane tree.
“Because if I demanded to escort Jeanette openly, she would fillet me more effectively than you threatened to. I am not good ton, and she has worked endlessly to keep a place in Society she has earned twenty times over. I could ruin that for her in a single evening and without even trying to.”
The horse was no longer young, with gray around the muzzle, and the wizened eye of an old campaigner. He’d been well cared for, though, and was in good weight and good condition.
“I can escort her openly,” Sycamore said. “She has in fact given me leave to…” Not pay his addresses, but what, exactly?
“Yes?”
“To escort her. To respectfully show my esteem and liking.”
“But not to pay her your addresses,” Goddard said, taking up the girth a hole. “How much has she told you about her marriage?”
“Enough. Tavistock was fixated on having more sons.”
“Many a man is fixated on having sons, but he doesn’t have to be mean about it. Jeanette could have popped out a baby boy annually, and Tavistock would still have made her life hell. He wanted a dog to kick as well as a wife to pester. Why did you offer to show Jeanette how to use a knife?”
“We are to air your sister’s business in an alley? You could instead come to the Coventry and share a meal with me. The club is closed, but the kitchen has made a Sunday feast nonetheless. And lest you think your scurrilous company will redound to my discredit, my staff is discreet.”
“And is your cook competent?”
“The undercook is on duty at present. Quite competent, does not suffer fools, well compensated.”
“You never answered my question,” Goddard said, untying the horse’s reins from the oak tree. “Why teach Jeanette to use a knife?” He ambled off down the alley, a man who clearly held a map in his head of London’s lesser byways, for he was making directly for the Coventry.
“Her ladyship asked me to show her the rudiments, and natural talent and determination are doing the rest. Did Tavistock abuse her physically?”
Goddard was silent for a good dozen yards, the only sound his horse
’s hooves clip-clopping against old cobbles.
“I don’t know, but Jeanette came to loathe his marital attentions. When I left for Spain, she was a shy bride with a brusque new husband twice her age. By the time I came home on my first winter leave, the light in her eyes was all but gone. By then, it was too late. Tavistock had bought my commission as part of Jeanette’s marriage settlements, and Jeanette was the one taken captive by hostile forces.”
They reached the mouth of the alley, and Goddard crossed the thoroughfare, tossed the crossing sweeper a coin, and took the next alley rather than travel on the main street.
“How did the late Marquess of Tavistock die?” Sycamore asked.
“I didn’t kill him, more’s the pity. I was traveling in France at the time, becoming bad ton. The public cause of death was a fall from one of his crazy colts, but I suspect the marquess choked on a fish bone at his new mistress’s house.”
“For a fellow who was larking about France, you are prodigiously well informed.”
Goddard slanted a glance in Sycamore’s direction. “Had you bothered to ask your great friend Her Grace of Quimbey, you could have gathered the same information. Is the Coventry doing as well as the gossips claim?”
“Better, probably, and yes, the tables are honest.”
“So why is Trevor frequenting your establishment? Jeanette keeps him on a tight financial rein, and he has no business consorting with that crowd.”
“Trevor slipped the leash, abetted by his cousin, Jerome Vincent, and a half-dozen simian cronies. I agreed to let his lordship work off an indenture rather than beggar himself with the pawnbrokers.”
“Because you are trying to get under Jeanette’s skirts?”
“Because Tavistock has no father or brothers to show him how to go on, and his step-uncle is too busy collecting gossip to pay the boy any mind. I don’t care for Jerome Vincent, or for idle ornaments in general—except the ones dropping fortunes at my tables, of course.”
“So out of the goodness of your solid-gold heart, you took Trevor under your wing?”
“I am working his skinny arse to flinders, and he is loving the challenge. I like having a loyal minion, truth be told, and my brother Ash, who is also my partner, is recently wed and of no use whatsoever to anybody save his wife.”
Goddard paused at another thoroughfare. “You jealous?”
“Pathetically.”
“Jeanette won’t marry you, Dorning. Resign yourself to worshipping her from afar, or a-near. She won’t be your consolation prize in the Dorning family’s marital sweepstakes.”
“That is for Jeanette to decide. Take the next turning to the right, and we can use an entrance to the club that opens onto the carriage house.”
“Why skulk about like that?” Goddard said, nonetheless turning his steps to the right.
“Because we are being followed.”
“What on earth brings you to my doorstep during daylight hours on the Sabbath, old boy?” Jerome Vincent made a production out of peering up at the sky outside his door. He was attired in a dressing gown and pajama trousers, with slippers on his otherwise bare feet. “Do come in, Tav, and tell Cousin Jere what’s amiss.”
“How can you tell something’s amiss?” Trevor replied, stepping over the threshold. Even Jerome’s foyer bore a taint of tobacco—with worse yet lurking beneath the smoke stench—and the lone fern in the window wasn’t long for this world. Cobwebs wafted from the chandelier, and a stack of correspondence—bills, most likely—was about to teeter from the edge of the deal table.
“I’m making an educated guess,” Jerome said, closing the door. “I base my conjecture on your downcast phiz, the strange hour, and logic.”
Trevor took off his hat and set it beside the letters. “What sort of logic?”
“The sort of logic that says if you don’t want to get leg-shackled to Hera or Diana, then you’d best get yourself leg-shackled to somebody else, and Auntie Jeanette, being a shrewd and female-ish sort of person, has doubtless started presenting you with lists of those somebody elses. The situation calls for a drink.”
Nearly every situation with Jerome called for a drink, and today Trevor wasn’t in the mood to argue. He was in the mood to be cheered up, though he wasn’t sure exactly why that should be.
“Jeanette has never breathed a word to me of the matchmaking variety,” Trevor said, except to commiserate with him regarding Viola’s schemes and to counsel forethought regarding his eventual choice of bride.
“The best matchmakers never do.” Jerome led the way down the corridor to his parlor-cum-study-cum-smoking-room. Newspapers were strewn about, along with two discarded cravats, one slipper, a hat with a crushed crown, a pair of spurs and a riding crop, a smoking jacket, and more correspondence. No less than three trays of cigar ashes needed emptying, and a pipe with a small bowl lay on the stones beside a hearth much in need of tidying.
“Where is Timmons?” Trevor asked, moving a stack of papers from a chair and taking a seat.
“Gave him the sack,” Jerome said, crossing to the sideboard to hold up a bottle to the sunlight slanting through a dingy window. “He was impertinent.”
The poor fellow had probably requested his delinquent wages. “You’ll hire another valet?”
“The agencies have already sent me three candidates. The first will start on a fortnight’s trial tomorrow. Tell me what troubles you.” Jerome found two glasses on the mantel and poured a slosh into each one. “A health to the ladies.”
Trevor drank to that, though Jerome offered a very indifferent brandy. “I had a spat with Jeanette.”
“About damned time. You treat her as if she’s your governess, not a dependent relation.”
“She’s not a dependent relation. Her settlements are generous, and she manages her funds exceedingly well.”
“She’s dependent,” Jerome retorted, tossing back his drink. “She’s dependent on you for a roof over her head, dependent on you for her consequence. Without you, she’d be just another slightly used widow trying to attach followers and generally failing. Why did she harangue you this time?”
Coming here had been an impulse, and now that the moment to discuss particulars was at hand, Trevor was afraid it had been a foolish impulse.
“Jeanette wasn’t haranguing me, Jerome. She is concerned for me.”
Jerome refilled his glass. “You are in good health, only passingly ugly, possessed of a lofty title, not all that stupid, and deucedly plump in the pocket. What manner of worry could Jeanette find to plague you about if not holy matrimony?”
“You recall I had a bit of a dustup in the alley behind Angelo’s on Friday?”
“Was it Friday? Of this year?”
“The day before yesterday. I mentioned this yesterday.”
“If you mentioned it over cards, I was too busy watching Fremont lose his curricle to Westerly, though my money says Westerly will have to give it back within a month. Neither of ’em can hold their liquor.”
While Jerome was able to consume prodigious quantities and at least seem sober. “Three men accosted me at high noon. They scampered off when I repulsed their overtures, but one of them had a knife.”
“Knives.” Jerome made a face and sank into a reading chair. “Nasty business, knives. Not gentlemanly. Give me pistols or swords on a foggy morning, and let God decide the outcome.”
“Jerome, could that attack have been meant for you?”
Jerome set his glass on the floor. “For me?”
“They called me a bloody fop, and you are more of a dandy than I am. I told only Step-mama of my morning appointments. You, on the other hand, arranged with a half-dozen fellows to spend the morning at Angelo’s. Those three men were waiting for me, or for someone.”
Jerome ran a pale hand through hair that was for once not artfully styled. “Everybody nips around to the alley to take a piss or enjoy a quick tup, Tavistock. Of course ruffians would lurk there.”
“Ruffians don’t lurk in St. Jam
es’s. Fine gents and Corinthians do. To accost me there was very bold, even desperate.”
“Foolish, too, I gather, if you ran them off.”
“Prize ring rules were not observed.” And Jerome was not answering the question.
“Do tell. Did you resort to schoolyard tactics? Toss dirt in their faces?”
“Brandy, and I kicked the knife from one fellow’s hand and delivered a blow to another fellow’s tallywags. Hated to do it, but needs must.”
“And where was I while you were having such fun?” Jerome reached for the drink at his feet and knocked it over. “Damnation, that is the last of the everyday. We’ll have to break out the good stuff now.”
Trevor passed over his flask, which he’d taken to keeping full since Friday. “Not quite yet. In any case, Jeanette was alarmed at my mishap and more alarmed that I failed to mention it to her before she heard of it through a third party.”
Jerome took a good, long pull from the flask. “The Tavistock cellars do not disappoint. Don’t suppose you could send over a couple bottles of this?”
“Of course. You must have a birthday coming up one of these months.”
“Or you do,” Jerome replied, passing back the flask. “Maybe Fremont does. If all else fails, we can celebrate old King George’s natal day early, eh? Did Dorning peach on you?”
“He didn’t know he was peaching on me. I’d told Jeanette that I’d gone a few rounds at Jackson’s, which I sometimes do, but this time… I glossed over the truth.” And despite all posturing to the contrary, Trevor felt bloody awful about lying to Jeanette.
He felt bloody awful-er that she was being harassed by some snooping journalist and hadn’t seen fit to tell him. The conviction with which she’d hurled her knife suggested worse yet was afoot, but she either could not or would not confide the particulars to her mendacious step-son.
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 19