Again, not quite right. Jeanette had been married to a man who’d demanded attention with the insistence of a baby who’d soiled his nappies. Sycamore Dorning did not demand attention, he commanded attention.
“Good morning, Step-mama.” Trevor strode into the breakfast parlor and offered her his usual smile, though he was not attired for riding.
“Good morning, sir. We’re to enjoy a beautiful spring day, it appears.”
Trevor adjusted the drapes so the breakfast parlor wasn’t quite so bright. “The manager at Jerome’s club says we’re in for a bad turn of weather later this week. His elbow is paining him, and Monsieur’s elbow is a sure prognosticator of foul weather.”
Trevor, usually a tea drinker, poured himself a cup of coffee. His fair complexion was shading sallow, and his eyes were tired and bloodshot.
“The coffee will help,” Jeanette said, “but you should also drink several glasses of water and try a pot of willow bark tea.”
Trevor took his place at the head of the table. “I don’t believe willow bark tea would set very well just now.”
Jeanette passed him the toast rack. “Your father woke many a time with a sore head.” And with breath more foul than hell’s jakes, and a temper to match.
“I don’t recall him ever being anything less than in full possession of himself. The jam, if you please.”
Jeanette set the jam pot at Trevor’s elbow. Honey would have been a better choice, with only a smidgeon of butter, but she’d vowed two years ago not to nanny Trevor into manhood.
“Your father was fond of his brandy.” Also of his horses, but not at all fond of his second wife. Jeanette had failed to produce sons and had thus been as useless as an unmatched glove and nearly as vexing, according to her late husband.
Trevor gulped an entire cup of coffee and poured another. “Papa was fond of his brandy, yes, but never to excess, that I recall.”
Jeanette dredged up a spoonful of pineapple juice. Not for the world would she tell Trevor that his father had been frequently drunk and often intent on drunkenly exercising his marital privileges, which in a state of advanced inebriation had been an impossibility. Many a time, Jeanette had endured half the night with the marquess snoring atop her. She’d been too fearful of waking him to move, and in the morning, he would have forgotten everything except his own imagined prowess.
“How is your cousin?” she asked.
“Jerome is a man beset,” Trevor said, scraping jam onto his toast. “Aunt Viola never lets him forget that for nearly three years, he was the marquessate’s spare, in line behind only his father, and one unfortunate day, the title might still be his.”
“Therefore, Jerome must marry?”
Trevor’s smile was sad. “Aunt is nothing if not consistent. Jerome will soon attain his majority, and even Uncle Beardsley has started lecturing him about the responsibilities of young manhood. Jerome was quite morose about the whole business.”
And getting drunk was a sure cure for low spirits?
“What is Jerome’s objection to marriage?” Between pineapple dreams, Jeanette had also revisited her conversation with Sycamore Dorning. She’d characterized marriage as a death sentence for women and the acquisition of a live-in mistress-cum-hostess for men. That description fit her parents’ marriage and the marquess’s two marriages, but not all marriages.
And yet, Mr. Dorning had not argued with her. She had wanted him to protest that his marriage wouldn’t be like that.
“Jerome hasn’t any property,” Trevor said. “How is he to support a wife on his allowance? Auntie is all in favor of Jerome setting up his nursery, but she’s rather short on ideas for how the operation is to be funded. Knowing Jerome, the nursery would be full to bursting in no time.”
Not if Jerome took after his uncle, it wouldn’t. “You want to make Jerome’s situation better, don’t you?”
Trevor studied his coffee. “I am the marquess. That makes me the head of the family in one sense, despite my eternal youth and endless inexperience. Jerome is a good sort, my only male cousin, and he spends most of his time escorting his sisters to every boring entertainment in Mayfair, unless I can be impressed into performing that office. I don’t like to see him so miserable.”
Miserable… to while away his days lounging about Piccadilly, calling upon one bachelor friend after another. For entertainment, Jerome would accompany another fellow to a fitting at the tailor’s, then hang about the print shops to gawk at the latest satires. In the afternoon, he’d drop by a favorite tavern for some drunken singing, call upon a chère amie to grab a nap and indulge his manly humors until supper, then nip off to the theater, dancing, cards, or—for a variety—the cockpits, Jackson’s, or Angelo’s for a pleasing hour of gratuitous violence.
Rye had as much contempt for the average lordling-about-Town as he did for arrogant generals and stupid captains, and he was quite articulate on the details when provoked. The late Marquess of Tavistock hadn’t had much taste for cockfights—too many low sorts in attendance—but the rest of the litany had still fit him twenty years after he’d finished at university.
Where on that continuum, between contempt for and mindless pursuit of masculine pleasures, would Sycamore Dorning fall?
“Your compassion for your cousin does you credit, my lord,” Jeanette said, choosing her words carefully, “but what, exactly, is Jerome’s problem?”
“Lack of blunt.”
No, not quite. “And if you passed him a sum of money, would that solve the problem?”
Trevor scrubbed a hand over pale, unshaven cheeks. Because he was fair, and eighteen, he looked only slightly rakish for having come to the table without benefit of a razor.
“Unless I passed over a substantial sum—say, ten thousand pounds—I would not be solving the problem. Jerome wants an income.”
“Does he?”
Trevor peered at her owlishly. “You think if he had an income, Auntie would only dun him all the harder?”
“He has an income adequate to keep himself independently in London.” An income provided by a spinster great-auntie,
