He did not know how another encounter with Jeanette could live up to the initial experience, and that required thought. First times were full of excitement, but usually a little hurried and gauche too. Sycamore spared a regret for all the ladies he’d left after a first time with a cavalier bow and a smile. Had they wanted a few more minutes of conversation? Would it have been asking too much of him to rebraid their hair for them?
Might he have thanked them a little more effusively?
“That I have a lover astounds me,” Jeanette said. “I feel all over again as I did the day after my wedding, as if everybody will know I’m different simply by looking at me.”
Only Jeanette… “Would it be so bad for others to notice you are no longer that bewildered bride?”
“I have spent every day since my wedding trying not to be that bride. Who knew the solution to my dilemma was hidden in your smile?”
That sounded almost fanciful, and Jeanette was not a fanciful woman. “Or in my breeches?”
She climbed over him and tucked herself against his chest. “No, Sycamore. What’s in your breeches is lovely—astoundingly so—but that’s not the whole of it. Do not interrogate me on this point, for I lack the wits to understand it myself at present.”
That makes two of us. “You are lovely too, Jeanette. Astoundingly so.” He left it at that, the bald truth, rather than lapse into flattery or inane analogies. For another few minutes, she rested against him, and he indulged in caresses to her hair, her back, and her shoulders.
Just about the time the loveliness below his waist was waking up to future possibilities, Jeanette extricated herself from the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I am hungry, which suggests you have to be famished.”
Even the sight of her back, the untidy braid trailing down to her bum, stirred him. Oh, for brother Oak’s ability to paint and sketch, or brother Valerian’s talent with a compliment. For Casriel’s exquisite manners or Ash’s savoir faire. For Hawthorne’s earthy humor, or Willow’s quiet wisdom.
“We could toss a few more knives first,” Sycamore said, “if you’d like that.”
A guess, a blind throw, but Jeanette smiled at him over her shoulder. “I would, now that you make the offer. Though the temptation to linger with you here…” Her smile became wistful.
“I am more than willing to linger as well, but I suspect we might do better to treat this intimacy as we do a session with the knives. Limit ourselves to the prescribed pleasure and savor anticipation of the next session. Besides, you might be sore.”
She half turned and flipped back the covers to peer at his semi-flaccid cock. “Do men ever get sore?”
“Yes, either from excessive self-gratification, ill-fitting sheaths, or exuberance with the ladies.”
She patted him. “If I have not already experienced your utmost exuberance, I shudder with a mixture of dread and glee to contemplate the occasion.” She curled down to pillow her cheek against his jewels, an odd, intimate, entirely dear gesture. “Thank you, Sycamore. Don’t make me say exactly for what, because I cannot, but thank you.”
“Thank you too, Jeanette, for more than I can say.”
She did not tarry, alas, but was up and shimmying back into her chemise. Sycamore played lady’s maid, Jeanette valeted him, and they were soon presentable.
Almost. “I should redo your hair, my lady.”
She examined herself in the cheval mirror. “I look tumbled. I have never looked tumbled before.”
“You look luscious. Hold still.”
Sycamore moved behind her to undo her braid. The actual brushing out and rebraiding took only moments, but he loved the intimacy of the service, loved passing Jeanette one hairpin at a time so she could gather up that whole, shiny abundance into a demure and deceptive chignon.
“I am not fooled,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her knuckles. “You appear all tidy and collected, but I’ve seen you unraveled, and that glorious sight will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
She leaned against him for the briefest moment, then preceded him out the door. “Once more to the knives, Mr. Dorning, and you will make no further mention of my unbound hair or other lapses.”
He stopped her before she’d made it past the office. “Jeanette, I am not a lapse, and neither are you.”
She nodded. “Fair enough, though I don’t know exactly what you are—what you have become, rather—and finding my balance will take some time.”
He kissed her cheek. “We find our balance together, my lady. I am every bit as undone as you are.”
Probably more undone, in fact. Jeanette had quickly reassembled the exterior trappings she wore so convincingly—brisk movements, direct speech, calm self-possession—while Sycamore’s soul had been scattered from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.
Was this how his brothers had felt when they’d become intimate with their prospective wives? Sycamore could ask Ash that question, carefully.
He realized as Jeanette was bustling down the steps at his side exactly what such a query implied. She reached the cellar door first, and Sycamore wanted to tell her to hold still, dammit, so he could propose to her on bended knee.
Instinct kept that foolishness behind his teeth, and yet, offering marriage to Jeanette wasn’t entirely foolishness. She wasn’t ready to hear a proposal. She was owed a wooing, owed more lovemaking, owed doting and time and much that Sycamore longed to give her.
Did she but know it, the wooing had begun.
“We should have a set of knives made for you,” Sycamore said, opening the cellar door for her. “You’re working with a set cast for my hand, and the sooner you begin working with your own weapons, the faster you’ll become skilled with them.”
“My own knives?”
“Of course. Two sets, because you need replacements for any blade that gets lost or damaged, and knives all cast from the same mold and fired in the same flames give you the most uniform performance.”
She hugged him, a mere squeeze before descending the steps. “I would adore
