Chapter One
“Mr. Dorning, I come to offer you a proposition.”
Sycamore Dorning was frequently propositioned.
By ladies who’d played too deeply at The Coventry Club.
By gentlemen in the same unfortunate circumstances.
By gentlemen who’d gambled to excess, and thought to offer Sycamore a wife or mistress’s favors in exchange for forgiveness of a debt.
Jeanette Vincent, Marchioness of Tavistock owed the club not one penny, alas. “My lady, do come in.” Then too, she wasn’t calling on Sycamore at his gambling hell, but rather, at his private quarters.
She had no escort. Her coach was plain to the point of shabbiness. Neither coachy nor groom wore livery, and her cattle were stolid bays, not a hair of white between them.
“Walk ’em,” Sycamore called out to the coachy.
John Coachman merely looked askance at the marchioness.
“Will you see me home, Mr. Dorning?” her ladyship asked.
“Of course.” Given the chance, Sycamore would have seen his guest safely returned from the underworld.
Lady Tavistock wasn’t conventionally pretty. She had auburn hair, forest green eyes, a nose shading toward well defined, and swooping brows that added an air of imperiousness. He had never heard her laugh, never seen her touch another in anything but strictest propriety. A man would not want to merely escort such a woman, he’d want to matter to her, and Sycamore Dorning was very much a man.
“Mr. Dorning will see me home, Angus,” her ladyship called.
Angus spared Sycamore a glower, then moved the horses on at the walk. “Scottish?” Sycamore asked, closing the door.
“Scottish and former military, the confluence of all that is stubborn and loyal.”
“May I take your cloak?” A conspicuously drab article, given how fashionably attired the marchioness usually was.
She removed her plain straw bonnet, stashed her gloves in the crown, and passed it to Sycamore. He set the bonnet on a hook and drew the cloak from her ladyship’s shoulders. She watched him from the corner of her eye when he stepped behind her, as if expecting him to commence a seduction in the very foyer.
“You arrive on my doorstep alone,” he said, “late at night, in a disgracefully ancient conveyance, and you speak to me of propositions. Are you hoping I will make amorous advances, or fearing I won’t?”
Her cloak bore a faint scent of jasmine, a light scent for woman of such… such…presence? Such consequence?
Sycamore did not know exactly how to describe her ladyship, which was characteristic of her appeal. Her smiles were rare and startlingly warm. She was ferociously protective of her step-son; at the card table, she was a shrewd and disciplined gambler, of one few in Sycamore’s experience who knew enough to walk away from both winning streaks and losing streaks.
“I assumed you would flirt,” she said, “and you are welcome to make whatever advances will flatter your male vanity, but I came to talk rather than dally.”
“As it happens, I am equally talented at conversation and dallying.” Sycamore offered the lady his arm. His longsuffering butler had gone to bed an hour ago, and Sycamore did not employ a night porter.
“You would rather dally,” her ladyship said, wrapping her fingers lightly around his sleeve. “You are an unattached, increasingly wealthy young man from a titled family. Dallying for such a one is almost a civic duty.”
Unattached, like a boot discarded by the side of the road, a wagon wheel left leaning against the wall of the garden shed.
“What I prefer might surprise you,” Sycamore said, ushering her into his personal parlor. The fire was lit in here, as were the candles, but he’d chosen to entertain her in this room because this was his private place to idle about when at home. He wanted her to see his bound collections of satirical prints, the French novels any school girl could translate at sight, the botanical sketches every self-respecting Dorning considered necessary to any decoration scheme.
“Deadly nightshade?” her ladyship murmured, studying the frame to left of the dart board. She moved to the frame on the right. “Night blooming jasmine?”
“My father was a passionate amateur botanist. We all take an interest in plants, my own talent being the growing of potted ferns.”
Her ladyship eyed the massive specimen situated in the bow window. “We all?”
“We Dornings, of the Dorsetshire Dornings. I am one of nine.” She likely knew that, and knew as well which siblings were married into which respectable and titled families, because all of them—every blessed one of them—had married quite well.
“While I have only the one brother,” her ladyship said, applying a finger to the fern’s soil.
“You borrowed your brother’s coach tonight because you didn’t want anybody to know of this call, and yet you haven’t told me exactly why you’re here. Would you join me in a nightcap?”
She dusted her hands together. “Armagnac, if you have it. Early spring nights are both chilly and damp.”
Early spring nights were lonely. Sycamore poured two servings of a lovely year and passed one to his guest. “To interesting propositions.”
Lady Tavistock eyed Sycamore over the rim of her glass as she sipped. “This is delightful.” Her second taste was less cautious. “You have something I want.”
Were Sycamore not tired, were he not missing the most recently married of his many recently married siblings, he might have replied with a reference to passionate kisses, a comfortable bed, or talented hands.
But he was tired and lonely, and no longer the randy boy her ladyship would dismiss at a glance.
“I have something you want.” He gestured to a pair of reading chairs near the hearth. “Or do I have something you need?”
Her ladyship settled gracefully onto the cushions, glass in hand. “Want assuredly, need possibly. I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a collection of knives decorating an informal parlor before.”
Sycamore took the other reading chair. “My brother claimed displaying them elsewhere was in poor taste.” And why had she saved remarking on the knives for after her polite notice of ferns and botanical prints?
“You are reported to be quite handy with a blade, Mr. Dorning.”
By firelight, her hair was a palette of myriad colors. Gold, russet, garnet… If asked, Sycamore would have said her hair was firelight-colored, while her hands wrapped around the crystal glass put him in mind of purring cats and sleepy cuddles.
“I am skilled with a blade,” Sycamore said, not allowing himself to imbue that statement with even a hint of prurience.
“Will you teach me how to throw a knife?”
Of all the things she might have asked of Sycamore, that hadn’t even been remotely on the list.
“Why, my lady?” Women took up the bow and arrow for diversion. They might on rare occasion participate in a shoot, particularly on their own family’s land. A few intrepid women followed the hounds, usually in the second or third flight.
But knife throwing?
“You ask me why.” She set her drink aside. “Because a knife doesn’t have to be kept dry at all times and loaded with shot prior to each use. Because a knife can be carried in a reticule or pocket or sheathed to the body. A knife is silent and can be used again if the first throw misses—or if it doesn’t.”