The Last True Gentleman
The True Gentlemen — Book 12
Grace Burrowes
Grace Burrowes Publishing
The Last True Gentleman
Copyright © 2021 by Grace Burrowes
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Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
To my dear readers
Miss Delectable — Excerpt
Dedication
To all the true gentlemen
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, Marchioness of Tavistock, owed the club not one penny, alas.
“My lady, do come in.”
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. Moreover, she’d waited until well after dark to pay this call.
All quite intriguing.
“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. Sycamore had never heard her laugh, never seen her touch another in anything but strictest propriety. He did not want to merely escort this woman home, he wanted to matter to her.
She exuded such an air of self-contained calm that Sycamore also wanted to make her giggle, to hear her curse, to see her in high dudgeon and in casual deshabille. He was ever the dreamer, in the opinion of his family.
“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 hung 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.
With other women, he had done exactly that on many an occasion. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.
“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 fragrance for a 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, and at the card table, she was a shrewd and disciplined gambler. One of few in Sycamore’s experience smart 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 overtures will flatter your male vanity, but I came to talk rather than dally.”
“As it happens, I command equally vast stores of talent for both conversation and dallying, not that the two activities are mutually exclusive.” Sycamore offered the lady his arm. His long-suffering butler had gone to bed an hour ago, and the premises employed no 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 weathered 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 ladyship to see his bound collections of satirical prints, the French novels any schoolgirl could translate at sight, the botanical sketches every self-respecting Dorning considered necessary to a domestic decorative scheme.
“Deadly nightshade?” her ladyship murmured, studying the frame to the left of the dartboard. 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, because her late husband had been a marquess, and Sycamore’s oldest brother was the Earl of Casriel. Polite society kept track of its own.
“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. Will you join me in a nightcap?”
She dusted her hands together. “Armagnac, if you have it.
