The Last True Gentleman (True Gentlemen #12) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,3
knowledgeable about polite society. Let’s give it a month, shall we? The Coventry is closed on Sundays. We’ll have privacy there and some room to practice.”
She had come to make him a proposition, but he’d purposely put himself in the position of one making an offer.
“Four lessons and four suppers?”
“Or I can simply teach you to throw.”
She stuck out a hand. “We have a bargain, Mr. Dorning. I will meet you at the side entrance to the Coventry at five on Sunday.”
Sycamore shook, pugilist-fashion, then bowed over her hand, gentleman-fashion. “I will look forward to it. Shall I call for my coach, or would you rather I walk you home?” He was several inches over six feet, though those inches had taken forever to show up. He also fenced, rode, and boxed, and considered himself a match for any footpad, even without his knives.
“I prefer to walk, please.”
The faster option, given that a groom and coachman would have to roused and the horses put to. Also the less conspicuous choice.
Sycamore contented himself with the role of gallant escort, and parted from the lady at her front door. He made sure the night porter did not see him lurking at the foot of the terrace steps, and when her ladyship was safely behind a locked door, Sycamore returned to his own address by wandering several streets out of his way.
Two conclusions made his midnight stroll a thoughtful undertaking. First, in this compulsion to learn the art of the knife, her ladyship revealed a fear for her safety. Because she was neither fanciful nor stupid, Sycamore thus feared for her safety as well.
Second, whoever had followed her ladyship from Sycamore’s rooms had not felt it necessary to follow Sycamore on his return journey.
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Chapter Two
“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.