She put that vexation into her throw, put the bewilderment—why him, why now?—into the speed and power of her arm.
“That is the smoothest arc you’ve made so far,” he said. “You’re finding your rhythm.”
Rhythm. Would he be a slow and sweet lover, or sexually relentless? Probably both, damn him. “Knife.”
Jeanette allowed herself only one breath, then sent the knife flying. This one also struck close to center, and struck hard.
“Excellent balance between force, speed, and precision, and the release was perfect. Do that again.”
Do that again. “Knife.” She hit the only side of the target’s center not already occupied by a knife, the pattern of the blades cause for dark satisfaction. “Knife.”
“Choose where you sink the blade, my lady. High noon, just off ten of the clock, a shade beneath four o’clock. You decide, and the weapon does your bidding.”
“High noon,” she said, eyeing the top of the target. Her aim was a hair off to the right, but only a hair. “Knife.”
“You’ve finished the set. What is different today from last week?”
I want to kiss you. “I am less worried about Trevor, I suppose.” And more fixated on watching Sycamore Dorning’s mouth.
“He’ll come right. When a man wants to be of use, but he’s born to idleness, charting a course can too easily descend into protecting his right to remain idle. I’ll retrieve the knives, and we can hope the second set goes as well as the first.”
He ambled forward, no coat, just waistcoat and shirt, cuffs turned back, and pulled the knives one by one from the target.
“My lady, you are staring at me,” he said, prowling toward her and laying the knives in their velvet case. “I am undone?”
Jeanette focused on the target sitting in the shadows down the corridor. “I was trying to discern whether you are… in a state suggestive of…” Heat flared in her cheeks.
“Whether I’m aroused?” he asked, sounding ever so nonchalant. “I am, moderately, but the experience of desire when I’m around you is apparently my normal condition. Watching you hit that target today tests my usual restraint. I can often think myself into a more genteel frame of mind. I contemplate ledger books and how long the coal in the cellar will last until we need another load delivered into the hole… But today, even that analogy fuels my imagination.”
“So why aren’t you pawing at me?”
He smiled faintly. “Why aren’t you pawing at me? I am more than willing to be pawed, my lady. Mauled and bitten even, provided you start gently.”
He stood two steps away, as luscious and cool as a chocolate ice, and Jeanette felt tears threaten.
“I don’t know how, damn you. You aren’t like the others. All they wanted was a tame little romp before drifting off to dream about the price of wool. Thank God you are not like my husband either.”
Sycamore came half a step closer. “I am not at all like your miserable excuse for a spouse. If you take me as a lover, there will be no holding still, and if anybody gets to whimpering, the cause will be an unbearable excess of pleasure.”
The cellar held subterranean quiet, while Jeanette’s heart pounded with both dread and anticipation. If you take me as a lover… Sycamore Dorning was offering her something no other man had offered her.
The power to choose. The power to decide, to change her mind, to refine on her options, to come closer or to walk away. At the same time, he was warning her. If she chose him, she’d be flying into the unknown, with him.
“I choose to allow you to kiss me,” Jeanette said, her voice steadier than her nerves. “So please be about it.”
Sycamore could hear a chorus of older brothers all nattering at him in unison: Do not bungle this one and only opportunity to coax the marchioness into sampling your limited charms.
“How fortunate,” Sycamore replied, “for I choose to allow you to kiss me as well. I am at your service, my lady.” The initiative had to be hers. Sycamore was not sure why—he was happy to play the pursuer in the usual course—but instinct told him that with Jeanette, restraint on his part was imperative.
She gave him the sort of look a new footman would earn when he’d buttoned his livery wrong. “You expect me to sashay over there and make free with your person?”
“I long ardently for that very fate. Nobody has made free with me in such a long, lonely time, you see, and until you do, I cannot reciprocate the pleasure.”
“But you seem like such a flirt.”
She was stalling, bless her. “Flirtation is a skill I hope I can claim,” Sycamore said, “a harmless social accomplishment. You inspire desire, my lady, and that is a very different and more precious article.”
“You called me Jeanette earlier.”
“While you have yet to call me Sycamore. I suppose you could call me Mr. Dorning in bed, in that prim, maidenly way you have. I would probably expire of lust on the spot, set the sheets on fire, and singe you in the process.”
That earned him a slight, bewildered smile. “Sycamore, I have no idea how to proceed. With Endicott and Forster, I didn’t even permit any kissing.”
“And they, poor lads, allowed you to deny yourself that pleasure. I will delight in kissing you, Jeanette, in fondling you where and how you wish to be fondled, in encouraging your explorations of my person to the most intimate degree, but you have to give me some encouragement too.”
That a man could need encouragement was apparently a new thought for her. She stepped closer, slid a cool hand up Sycamore’s chest and around to his nape, and touched her lips to his cheek.
“Like that?”
“Lovely,” he said, though damnably,
