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 into a chair, 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 blades fanned into a gleaming half circle on the wall for after her polite notice of ferns and botanical prints?
“You are reported to be quite handy with a knife, Mr. Dorning.”
By firelight, her hair was a palette of myriad colors. Gold, russet, garnet… If asked, Sycamore would have said her hair was the color of a midsummer night bonfire, 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, imbuing that statement with not even a hint of prurience.
“Will you teach me how to throw a knife?”
Of all the things she might have asked of him, that request hadn’t been even remotely near 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 women rode to 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 powder and shot prior to each use. Because a knife can be carried in a reticule or pocket or sheathed against the body. A knife is silent and can be used again if the first throw misses—or if it doesn’t.”
Sycamore had only two sisters, and neither of them had much use for their Dorning menfolk. His mother had been a perpetually disappointed and disappointing virago, and by his choice, his lovers were more interested in pleasure than the man providing it.
He did not, in other words, have much experience fathoming the labyrinth of the adult female mind to any useful depth.
“I understand the allure of knives,” he said, “but why do you want to acquire skill with them?”
She picked up her drink and took another visual inventory of Sycamore’s private parlor. “I am not in the habit of explaining myself. Will you teach me or not?”
Her ladyship was very good at the subtle set-down, but not quite good enough. “You are asking not only for instruction, but for my utmost discretion.”
“I am.”
She was a widowed marchioness of substantial means and considerable self-possession, and she wanted to learn—in secret—how to make a knife throw count.
“You can’t acquire the skill in a night,” Sycamore said. “Not in a week of nights.” Though practice would result in progress, a lot of practice would be difficult for her to manage if she was bent on secrecy.
“Then we’d best get started, hadn’t we, Mr. Dorning?”
Would she be all business in bed too? No kissing, no touching her hair, God forbid anybody broke a sweat? For her sake, he hoped not.
“If I spend thankless hours teaching you the basics of how to handle a blade, what do you offer me in return?”
She turned a frankly curious gaze on him. “What do you want, Mr. Dorning?”
Sycamore wanted his brother Ash to take the same interest in The Coventry Club that he had before matrimony had turned Ash into a doting dimwit.
He wanted Casriel to get his lordly arse—and wife and offspring—up to Town to vote his damned seat like a good little earl.
He wanted brother Oak to extricate himself from the embrace of rural Hampshire—and the embrace of marital bliss—and come to London to do some lecturing at the Royal Academy.
Of course, a romp or twenty with the marchioness would have been lovely, too, but romping undertaken in return for services rendered wasn’t romping at all.
“Can you buy out Jonathan Tresham’s interest in the Coventry?” Sycamore asked.
“One wondered what the arrangement was. Yes, I can, but no, I will not. I am not a quick study, Mr. Dorning, but I am determined to acquire skill with a knife.”
She was also very good at keeping her emotions to herself, as any successful gambler must be.
Sycamore crossed an ankle over a knee. “You are doubtless a paragon in many regards, my lady. I am not a paragon, though I am a gentleman. I will show you the rudiments of the art of knife-throwing as a favor between friends.”
She wrinkled her nose, probably because Sycamore had referred to himself as her friend. “How good are you?”
Sycamore smiled and sat forward as if to impart a confidence. In the next instant, the blade he carried in his left boot was silently quivering in the middle of the cork target across the room.
“I am that good.”
Her ladyship studied the blade until it was still. “You didn’t even look.” The marchioness, however, swiveled her gaze to Sycamore. She inspected him, no longer visually dismissing him, evading his eyes, or turning a wary regard on him.
“My dear marchioness, looking rather destroys the element of surprise, which is half the beauty of a well-thrown knife.”
She crossed the room and withdrew the blade. “Teach me to do this, and you can demand almost anything of me in return.”
Almost. A prudent woman. “You
