Ash glanced up from whatever catalog of wines he was reading. Increasingly, he was to be found in the Coventry’s office only during daylight hours.
“Botanical prints are pretty,” Ash said, “and Oak drew a lot of them, so we had to pay nothing for them.”
“That’s not the point,” Sycamore said, pacing before the office’s desk. He’d slept in the adjoining bedroom last night—again—and dreamed of Jeanette. “The point is, those prints mean something to us. We know where Papa found many of the specimens, we’ve actually read the plant properties he listed in the margins for this weed or that blossom, and we like seeing his handwriting framed on our walls.”
“They are Casriel’s walls. I gather champagne is becoming more popular. These prices are ridiculous.”
“You are ridiculous,” Sycamore said, turning a straight-backed chair away from the desk and planting himself on it astraddle. “I am trying to pour out my heart to you, and you babble about the price of wine.”
Ash closed the catalog. “The price of wine matters when we’re giving the stuff away by the barrel. Tavistock suggested we serve our champagne in slightly smaller glasses to achieve an economy.”
“A brilliant idea, except we’d need to order special glasses, which would not be an economy. Have you ever been to Tavistock House?”
“I sent a reconnaissance officer,” Ash said, smiling slightly.
Sycamore knew that smile. “Della paid a call on the marchioness?”
“Earlier in the week. Della claimed the house reflects dull taste two decades out of fashion, the staff is antediluvian, and the whole place is quiet as a tomb.”
“A portrait of the late marquess hangs in the foyer,” Sycamore said. “Another two in the library—boyhood and young manhood. I suspect we’d find the baby portrait in the nursery and the marquess as a new husband in the bedroom. He haunts that house like a grumpy Scottish ghost.”
Ash watched as Sycamore rose and resumed his pacing. “This bothers you.”
“Of course it bothers me. What wall space the marquess doesn’t occupy, his sainted antecedents take up, each one more dour than the last. The lot of them look like they suffer a serious case of the wind, and the staff wouldn’t hear the French army marching past trumpeting La Marseillaise as they approached. Her ladyship can be neither safe nor happy in such an abode.”
Ash leaned back and propped his boots on a corner of the desk. “Why would you, who have driven out with the woman exactly once, have a care for her safety?”
“Because I am a gentleman, and somebody should.”
Ash crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling. “Sycamore.”
“Because she is being followed, because she is concerned for her safety. Because her late husband made her life a genteel hell when she did not conceive his blighted spares.”
“She struck me as a sensible woman. Why does she fear for her safety?”
Sycamore closed the door to the bedroom. “Her in-laws resent her, her brother keeps his distance, the young marquess is becoming an unreliable ally, and she has no idea why anybody would watch her comings and goings. She is worried, Ash, and I cannot abide to see a lady made to fret for no reason.”
“You are worried,” Ash said. “Not simply your usual fretful, grumbling self. You are worried.”
Sycamore was spared further statements of the obvious by a rap on the office door.
“Enter,” Ash called, removing his boots from the desk and sitting up.
Trevor, Marquess of Tavistock, joined them, though not the natty version of his lordship Sycamore usually saw.
“My lord,” Ash said, getting to his feet, “if you are the worse for drink, I suggest you go home and sleep it off.”
Tavistock’s coat was missing two buttons, his cravat was ripped and dangling askew, his sleeve was muddy, and his knuckles were scraped. One cheek sported a rising bruise, and he was bleeding from the lip. The scent of brandy hung thickly in the air.
Sycamore stuck his head into the corridor. “Ice, now! Bandages, arnica, and I do mean instantaneously!” He closed the door and considered the marquess. “Either you’ve been scrapping, or you’ve consorted at close range with the wrong sort of pickpockets.”
“I’d just left Angelo’s,” Tavistock said, panting slightly. “A fine session with épées. I popped around to the alley to have a nip—one doesn’t want to drink in the actual street, does one?—and three unsavory-looking fellows blocked my egress.”
“You can form complete Etonian sentences,” Sycamore said, drawing the marquess’s coat gently from his shoulders. “The unsavory fellows must not have done too much damage.”
“They probably didn’t expect me to give any account of myself,” Tavistock said as Sycamore unknotted what was left of a once-fine cravat. “I dashed my brandy in their faces—good brandy, it was, and now I’m wearing some of it—and did that business where you hook your boot behind a fellow’s knees and drop him. The largest of the three wasn’t having any of my cleverness, though.”
“How did you best him?” Ash asked, accepting a basin and box of medicinals from a waiter at the door.
Tavistock blushed. “Knee to the cods, a move you showed me months ago. Not sporting, but neither is three against one. I would rather not go home looking like this, so I came here. Step-mama will worry, though London’s street gangs are hardly worth panicking over.”
“Sit,” Sycamore said, exchanging a look with Ash. “Shirt off. If your ribs are injured, for the next six weeks at least, you do nothing more strenuous than lift a tankard of ale or escort a lady at the promenade. Breathe deeply as often as you can to ward off lung fevers, even though it hurts like your best profanity.” And stay out of deserted London alleys, for God’s sake.
Getting Tavistock’s shirt off necessitated cutting the fabric to spare his lordship the pain of raising his arms above his head.
“You’re putting on muscle,” Sycamore
