She turned the bowl of fruit as if choosing where to dip her spoon. “My brother might agree with you. He came to hate war and everything it stood for.”
Not a popular position when so much profit was to be made supporting the military. Wrap profit up in patriotism, and John Bull would make endless, uncomplaining sacrifices. A great lot of complaining, rioting, and repression had gone on since Waterloo, however.
“I might like your brother.”
“I originally came to the Coventry hoping to find him among the patrons. We meet by chance from time to time, but never by design. Do you suppose I might join your brother-in-law’s pineapple venture?”
“I will ask him. Kettering frequently handles funds on behalf of women and finds the ladies have generally sounder investment instincts than men do. Maybe that false courage makes men stupid in commerce as well as war.”
Her ladyship considered him over a spoonful of fruit. “You are not the strutting fribble you would have everybody believe you are.”
“I cannot tell if you’re pleased or disappointed by that conclusion. Don’t tell my family of your discovery. In the Dorning lexicon, ‘Sycamore’ and ‘scapegrace’ are synonyms.”
She tucked into his serving. “Because in your large and illustrious tribe, the job of scapegrace was the only one remaining by the time you came along, so you were determined to do it well. I was the good girl, the dutiful daughter. My mother died in childbirth trying for a spare—her third try, though none of the babies lived—and my brother became the little hero. I am determined that Trevor have a few years to indulge in reckless wagers and bawdy song before he takes on the full burden of the title.”
Trevor would be her step-son, the youthful Marquess of Tavistock. “But you have no respect for that sort of behavior.”
“I understand its purpose, Mr. Dorning. Wild oats, youthful high spirits, like a green horse has to gallop off the fidgets before tolerating a quiet hack. My objection is to the fact that young women risk ruin if they indulge in the same freedoms, though young women deserve those freedoms far more than young men do.”
Sycamore ought to have paid more attention to her ladyship’s words and less attention to the silver spoon sliding between her lips.
“Women need the freedom more than men because…?”
“Because for a woman, marriage can be tantamount to death, and it certainly curtails what little freedom she had. For a titled man, marriage simply means enjoying the favors of both a wife and a mistress, and little else changes for him. That is the nature of the institution.”
Sycamore stuffed his slice of cheese into his mouth rather than point out the obvious: Clearly, the marchioness had been married to the wrong man, but neither could he argue her point. At law, a wife wasn’t a person.
She was a thing, not quite even livestock, subsumed into her husband’s identity, chattel that among the lower orders was yet a salable commodity. His Grace of Chandos had, in Sycamore’s father’s time, purchased his second duchess at a wife sale.
Sycamore had been raised with that legal definition of the married woman’s status and hadn’t once questioned its ramifications for the ladies, though he questioned it as the meal concluded, and he held her ladyship’s cloak for her.
He escorted the marchioness home in his carriage, the hours in her company having given him much to think about. When he assisted her from the coach in the alley behind her home, he passed her a covered crock.
“The leftover fruit. Please don’t refuse it, or it will just go to waste.” A patent falsehood, his first of the evening, but offered in good cause.
“My thanks for a lovely supper, Mr. Dorning.” She took the dish and bobbed a curtsey. “Until next week?”
He bowed. “I will look very much forward to it.”
She walked off a few paces, then turned to regard him. “You mean that. I am difficult company, opinionated, and I do not suffer fools, but we did manage a pleasant meal.”
“We kept our bargain.”
Her impish, fleeting grin came again, this time tinged with something that might have been surprise. “We did, didn’t we? Until next Sunday, Mr. Dorning.”
He waited until she’d disappeared through the garden gate, then sent his coachman on without him. The coach had not been followed that Sycamore could tell, but he needed the brisk night air to clear his head, and to put from his mind the image of her ladyship savoring succulent fruit while she held forth about death, marriage, and dreams.
A year ago, he would have flirted his way around to presenting himself as a candidate for Lady Tavistock’s next—or possibly her first—reckless adventure.
A year ago, he’d been delighted to face another Season of late nights, feuding staff, and heirs overspending their allowances.
A year ago, neither Ash, nor Hawthorne, nor Valerian had succumbed to the lure of matrimony.
That was then. Now, Sycamore wanted Lady Tavistock to regard him with the same rapt, pleasure-stricken expression she’d turned on her first bite of pineapple.
Chapter Three
Jeanette’s first lesson in knife throwing had gone well. Her first supper with Sycamore Dorning had gone wonderfully.
And that was a problem. As she savored the last of the fruit at breakfast Monday morning, she tried to parse where exactly the difficulty lay. Gentian eyes that missed nothing, a physique the Apollo Belvedere would envy, a mind both analytical and playful… These were all faintly troublesome because they meant Mr. Dorning would be hard to manage.
Jeanette had encountered perceptive men, well-built men, and men of impressive intellect, but Sycamore Dorning was more than the sum of those parts. Perhaps the conundrum was that he was so inherently attractive he didn’t need to flirt or flatter to secure a lady’s notice.
But no, that didn’t feel quite right, because he was also bashful,
