“You are worried,” he went on, “about your brother and perhaps resentful that he would dine with me and not with you. He was swayed by my endless charm, so you cannot be too wroth with him, my lady. And you are vexed to think somebody wishes you or Tavistock ill, when neither one of you wishes harm to anybody.”
Jeanette closed her eyes and turned to wrap her arms around Sycamore’s waist, feeling all out of sorts and unaccountably sentimental. Sycamore obliged with a gentle embrace, and that made things both better and worse.
“You are telling me what I feel,” she said.
“And you are not berating me for my presumption, because I have put into words what you had not wanted to admit. Admit this too, Jeanette. A day of fresh air and spring sunshine will do wonders to restore your spirits, and mine too.” He leaned near enough to nuzzle her ear. “I brought your new knives, my lady. Wickedly hard and sharp and eager for your touch.”
Jeanette remained in his embrace for the length of three heartbeats, the better to hide her smile. “You are being naughty.” And that was a wonder, that Sycamore Dorning—handsome, outspoken, funny, passionate, and protective—would be naughty with her.
“Between adults who know what they want, naughtiness doesn’t signify. Come with me, Jeanette, try out your new toys, and forget your cares for a few hours. Your troubles will all patiently await your return, I assure you.”
Of that, Jeanette was certain. “You will tell me what Rye had to say?”
“I will, and I will tell you what he did not say. Siblings really ought not to be estranged, Jeanette. I feel quite strongly about that.”
She stepped back, though that took an effort. “You feel strongly about everything.”
“Bear that in mind when you assess my regard for you.” He kissed her cheek—the wretch—and winged his arm.
Jeanette let him escort her from the parlor, collected a hat, shawl, reticule, and cloak, and did not tell Peem where she was going or when she’d return.
A curious metamorphosis of Sycamore’s erotic appetites was under way, one that ought to alarm him, but did not.
He desired Jeanette madly, particularly when he was alone late at night after another long evening at the Coventry. He wanted to take her in his arms and exhaust himself in shared pleasure, then hold her and indulge in the quiet, mundane talk that was another kind of delectable intimacy.
And yet, his desire was responsive to Jeanette’s moods and needs. On Sunday, when she’d been ailing, Sycamore’s need had been to offer comfort. Now, in the roomy confines of a traveling coach, he needed to listen to her and offer affection, while desire receded to a humming undercurrent.
The depth of his feelings for her surprised him, though the intensity felt good too. He would propose marriage when the time was right for Jeanette to hear that offer.
“Trevor really is at the club most nights?” Jeanette asked as they clattered across the Vauxhall Bridge and onto the Surrey side of the Thames.
“Young Lord Tavistock is at my side three nights a week, and he’s increasingly comfortable in the role of my supernumerary. He has a particular gift for settling the feathers of the kitchen staff. His French is flawless—your influence, I trust—and his sense of humor is quick without being cutting. I have not, however, seen hide nor hair of Mr. Jerome Vincent.”
“Dodging his creditors?” Jeanette asked, resting her head against the squabs.
“Or avoiding a venue where the play is more than Jerome can handle. Your brother has little good to say about the Vincent family in general.”
Jeanette closed her eyes. “I have little good to say about the military. We’re even.”
“Goddard will not admit that he had you followed, Jeanette, but he might have caused you to be followed.”
“Explain yourself.”
At some point, Sycamore had taken Jeanette’s hand, or she had taken his. Holding hands was at once prosaic—elderly couples held hands—and precious, because the hand Sycamore held was Jeanette’s.
“Goddard’s existence is precarious, given the past nobody will describe in any detail.” If Goddard had spied for the French, why hadn’t he been tried for treason, stripped of his knighthood, and sent to the gallows? That fate would have been kinder than consigning him to wait years for a bullet through the heart—or through the back.
“I don’t know Rye’s past in any detail, and you are not to ask him, Sycamore.”
“One sensed a need to tread lightly. In any case, despite having a certain number of detractors, Goddard apparently also has some loyal associates, gentlemen at large, to use his parlance.”
“Highwaymen?”
“Maybe reformed youthful highwaymen—slightly reformed. He has their loyalty, and they look after him, as he looks after them. I gather on their own initiative, some of his young friends might have kept an eye on you.”
Jeanette half turned so she rested against Sycamore’s side. “I prefer this explanation to others. Jerome Vincent joined Trevor and me for breakfast yesterday. He ate an unseemly amount and sent me brooding looks over his coffee cup.”
“Is he in love with you?”
“If he’s in love with anything, I suspect it’s my exchequer. From one or two comments Viola has made over the years, I gather she and Lord Beardsley nurture a sense of injury over my settlements.”
“And you,” Sycamore said, “being a gudgeon, tolerate their pique because you failed to produce the entirely unnecessary spare. I long to get you with child, not only because babies are wonderful and I adore you and please marry me and all that other whatnot, but because I want it established beyond doubt that the only party in your first union suffering reproductive impairment was the marquess. Of course, if we had children, I’d have to share you with them, and I do like having you to myself.”
Jeanette kissed his cheek. “You say the most idiotic things.”
Sycamore used that opportunity to lift Jeanette into his lap and to expand a peck on the cheek into mutual petting, which passed more than few miles very agreeably. By the time he handed Jeanette down from the coach, his breeding organs were in a pleasant state of anticipation, and he hoped Jeanette had forgotten all about volunteer escorts of the surreptitious variety, a moody step-son, and meddling relations.
Also about nasty notes urging her to quit Town.
“I’ve been thinking about the notes,” Jeanette said as the footman set down a large wicker hamper, and the coachman turned the team in the direction of the nearest posting inn. The footman hopped onto the boot as the coach clattered past, and Sycamore was at last alone with his lady.
“I was hoping you were thinking of enjoying a secluded picnic à deux followed by shocking liberties taken with my willing and eager person.”
“What is gained by sending me north, Sycamore?” Jeanette replied while opening her parasol. “I can communicate with the solicitors easily enough by mail, Trevor’s funds remain mostly tied up in trusts for another three years, and it’s not as if I host lavish entertainments. We are not at Richmond.”
“We have arrived at Richmond’s purlieus. This property borders the royal estate.”
Jeanette peered about at a wide, rolling park ringed by hedgerows of maple and oak. Across the open expanse, a two-story white manor house sat on a rise, and the roof of a cottage peaked over the hilltop in the direction of the river.
“Do you know the owner?”
“He is in Paris on business, and I am in negotiations with him,” Sycamore said. “The land hereabouts is not blessed with rich soil, so the ideal owner will mostly want pasture acreage and a retreat from Town. Market gardens or hothouse plants are another option. I had hoped you could tour the house with me after we enjoy our picnic.”
Jeanette turned in a slow circle, her skirts belling gently around her ankles. “Did you bring me here to seduce me, Sycamore?”
Was that hope in her voice? “Seduce you?” Sycamore studied puffy white clouds in a blue sky rather than ogle Jeanette’s ankles. “Of
course not. What do you take me for? I might exhaust my powers pleasuring you witless, but I would never stoop to seduction. Mutual ravishing, shared raptures, ecstatic communion, most assuredly, but not seduction.”
“Good,” she said, taking his arm. “For I did not finish my breakfast, and your efforts would be doomed to fail, at least until we empty that hamper.”
“The top of this rise affords a pleasant view of the river, also plenty of privacy in the form of a summer cottage. We will not be disturbed.”
He picked up the hamper and soon had Jeanette ensconced on a padded bench overlooking the Thames. The porch of the summer cottage had been kitted out as a folly, open to the spring breezes, but sheltered from the midday sun.
“This is lovely,” Jeanette said as Sycamore pulled up a low table before the bench. “I think of you as a Town man, haunting your club at all hours, but I am much more comfortable in the country.”
“I was raised in Dorsetshire, which is as rural as England gets. I had a mostly happy boyhood, riding hell-bent with my brothers, learning a prodigious amount of useless botany from my father, and vexing my mother with all the mud I left on her carpets. I miss it, but I am no longer a boy who can take my welcome at the family seat for granted. Champagne?”
The bottle was still cold thanks to the Coventry kitchen staff’s care and skill packing a hamper.
“Champagne would be lovely. What do you mean, you no longer take your welcome in Dorsetshire for granted?”
Sycamore poured two servings of wine, passed one to Jeanette and touched his glass to hers. “To pleasant memories.”
The champagne was from the better stock at the Coventry, a touch sweet with enough effervescence to tickle the nose. More than the wine, the image of Jeanette, relaxed and smiling for once, gave Sycamore pleasure—and hope.
“Where did you grow up?” he asked as he made up plates of cold chicken, buttered bread, sliced cheese, and forced strawberries. Explaining how Dorning Hall had changed—from Sycamore’s home, to the family seat, to Grey Dorning’s personal household—was complicated.
Encouraged by Sycamore’s occasional questions, Jeanette painted a picture for him of a quiet girl raised in the shadow of a favored older brother, a girl who’d lost her mother early and become increasingly invisible as war with France had decimated the family fortunes.
The Goddards had been among the wealthier gentry—very wealthy indeed—when Jeanette’s parents had wed. Commercial and familial ties with France had been a tremendous advantage until they’d become a tremendous liability.
“Whatever I expected of marriage,” Jeanette said, considering her last strawberry, “it wasn’t what the marquess had in mind for me, but Papa said the match was a triumph for the Goddards and the answer to his every prayer. What girl doesn’t want to be the answer to her Papa’s every prayer? He did not live to see my first anniversary. A mercy, that.”
She popped the strawberry into her mouth, while Sycamore hurt for her. “Had the late Lord Tavistock shown you the least bit of affection, you would have found a way to adore him.” She adored her brother, who showed her no affection whatsoever, and her step-son, whose devotion was marred by youthful dunderheadedness.
“Perhaps I would have merely esteemed his lordship, but I did want to respect and like my husband.” She eyed Sycamore’s plate. “Will you finish those strawberries, sir?”
He held the largest berry up to her mouth. She nibbled it from his fingers, and the moment became something more.
“Through that door is a parlor, my lady, and beyond the parlor, a bedroom.” Sycamore fed Jeanette another strawberry. “I’d like very much to take you to bed, but only if you are inclined to take me to bed too.”
She leaned over to give Sycamore a strawberry-flavored kiss. “I wondered what you’d brought along for dessert. Your suggestion will make a lovely next course.”
Sycamore kissed her back, gently and sweetly, for once savoring desire that rose on a slow tide. With Jeanette, he would not be satisfied as he’d so often been, by a merely pleasurable interlude. He wanted the childhood stories, the past disappointments, the intimate joys, and the hopes too.
As he led his lover to the bed tucked into a sunny corner of the little cottage, Sycamore silently apologized to every sibling whose marriage he’d resented. Those brothers and sisters had been in the grip of something larger than family loyalty, something wonderful and precious that family loyalty was built upon.
He aspired to share that something wonderful with Jeanette, and for the next few hours, meddling relatives, nasty notes, estranged siblings, and any plagues yet to come could all go to blazes while he made wild, passionate love to the woman he adored.
The morning should have been nothing remarkable, Jeanette reflected as Sycamore undid her dress hooks. Londoners who had the leisure and means frequently enjoyed Richmond Park, and picnics figured on that agenda. Meals al fresco allowed couples to spend time together without violating the many, many dictates of propriety.
Every wellborn young lady expected to enjoy the regular occasion of picnics with attentive gentlemen.
Such a lady also expected to dance with those same witty, pleasant fellows.
To drive out with them in the park.
To have their escort at musicales or other social gatherings.
To enjoy the occasional bouquet sent by such gentlemen after those outings.
And Jeanette had had none of that. She removed Sycamore’s cravat pin and watch, her emotions a mixture of sexual anticipation and an odd sort of sorrow. Recounting the circumstances of her engagement to the marquess, she’d seen for the first time how ignorant she’d been.
How her own father had taken advantage of that ignorance and moved her about like a chess piece in a game she’d never consented to play.
A picnic was a small thing. Could Papa not have married her off to a wealthy widower who was yet capable of sharing a picnic with her? Waltzing with her? Driving her in the park? The marquess had spared her none of those courtesies and had instead subjected her to ceaseless rutting and even more relentless criticism.
The act of coupling, the simplest and most profound privilege of the committed couple, had become resounding proof of her inadequacy, a punishment rather than a pleasure.
And thus did her sadness acquire an edge of anger.
“You’re sure?” Sycamore asked, shrugging out of his riding jacket and draping it over the back of a chair. “Just because we have time and privacy doesn’t mean you must take me to bed, Jeanette. I would be happy to cuddle with you and indulge in a discussion of your family’s French vineyards or the latest fashion in lady’s bonnets.”
She unbuttoned his waistcoat and laid it over his jacket. “You mean that. You would snuggle up with me and make idle conversation if I wished it.”
He passed her his cravat, undid his shirt buttons, and pulled the shirt over his head. “I would. Mind you, I might have to see to myself before leaving the bed, lest I go blind with frustrated desire, but that’s the work of a moment and hardly work at all. Ask any male over the age of fourteen.”
He tossed the shirt onto the chair and stood naked from the waist up, his hair slightly disheveled. “Shall I take off your boots?”
Her first inclination was to wave him away and finish undressing unassisted, as she had many times before. Her corset laces tied in front for that purpose, because she did not like being fussed at as she disrobed at the end of the day.
But Sycamore had asked, his touch was exquisite, and the right to enjoy such intimate consideration was also something the marquess had stolen from her.
Jeanette sat on the bed and hiked her skirts a few inches. Sycamore knelt before her, and soon her boots were off. He sent her a questioning glance—still asking her permission, though more subtly—and she nodded.
He made removing her garters and peeling down her stockings into a worshipful act, and why, oh why, had Jeanette never known that a man’s touch on her feet, ankles, and calves cou
ld inspire erotic sensations?
“You have the prettiest knees,” Sycamore said. “If I could draw as well as my brother Oak does, I’d immortalize your knees.” He kissed each one, left then right, and rested his cheek against her bare thigh.
Jeanette stroked his hair, feeling awash in regret—why had she ever, ever agreed to marry an arrogant fool twice her age? The regret was edged aside by tenderness for the man kneeling before her.
“I am overdressed for the occasion,” she said, rubbing Sycamore’s earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. “So are you.”
He eased back and to his feet in one motion and held out a hand to Jeanette. She expected him to whisk her dress over her head, yank off his boots and breeches, and toss her onto the bed.
Instead, he kissed her, first on the cheek, then lightly on the mouth, until Jeanette stepped close, got a firm grip of his hair, and showed him how she longed to be kissed. She paused a few breathless moments later to remove both her dress and her chemise, and the sensation of being skin to skin with Sycamore’s heat had her nearly pushing him onto the mattress.
“My boots, Jeanette,” he muttered as she plastered herself against his chest. “Must not…” He stepped back, panting, his eyes dancing. “Country air agrees with you, my lady.”
“It does. I had forgotten that. Get out of those clothes, Sycamore, lest I rend them from your person.”
He closed his eyes for one moment, as if praying for fortitude—or for his clothes to be rent from his person—then toed off his boots and peeled out of his breeches and stockings.
“Does my lady approve of this ensemble?” he asked, turning in a slow circle. “Perhaps she’d like to inspect the adornments I’ve chosen for this delightful occasion?”
He was thoroughly aroused and thoroughly unconstrained by self-consciousness. Sycamore was, in fact, smiling at her, his expression conveying buccaneering high spirits, a challenge, and also deep affection.
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 22