“Not brigands. I sought your instruction with knives because I was uneasy. Then Trevor had that brawl, now you tell me he’s been attacked again.” She watched the little bird hopping from crumb to crumb. “I have received two notes, Sycamore. One came some time ago, telling me a widow riding a step-son’s coattails was a pathetic creature who’d be well advised to rusticate out of Society’s view. That was merely insulting, and I have learned to ignore insults.”
“And then somebody started following you.”
“Then I noticed somebody following me, and now Tavistock has had not one but two encounters with London’s purveyors of street violence. And just yesterday I received a second note, telling me I’m not safe in London. I could dismiss the first as the infantile dramatics certain members of society are prone to. The second is more threatening than insulting. I was going to tell you about it, but then I became indisposed. One wants to be on one’s mettle when one broaches such a topic.”
Sycamore battled the impulse to gather Jeanette in his arms and spirit her away to some safe place—Dorning Hall came to mind, a very hard two days’ journey from London if the roads were dry. Oak, out in Hampshire, could provide sanctuary, as could Jacaranda at Trysting.
“This is why Viola’s threat to consign you to the dower house upset you so,” he said. “Because you had been threatened before. May I see the notes, Jeanette?”
“I keep them with me,” she said, fishing in a pocket. “If the notes are real, then my fear is justified. I hate even saying those words.”
Sycamore took two folded pieces of foolscap from her. “How did these arrive?”
“With the morning post on both occasions. The mail sits on the sideboard in the foyer for half the day. Any of Trevor’s friends who come and go with him could have added those notes—the young men put locusts to shame when they join us at breakfast. A servant could have found the notes on the floor and included them with the stack of letters on the sideboard.”
Sycamore unfolded the first note.
A widow past her prime trading on a step-son’s consequence is a blight upon Society. Get thee to a dower property, where you belong, and stay there.
The second was more to the point: London is no longer safe for you. To the country, my lady, posthaste!
“Nasty,” Sycamore said, holding the paper up to the light. “No watermark, suggesting we are not dealing with a complete fool. Educated handwriting, proper spelling, a vague allusion to Hamlet’s insults.”
Jeanette balanced the knife horizontally on her fingertip. “‘Get thee to a nunnery’?” she quoted.
“Meaning Ophelia was to go to either a convent or a brothel, but either way, a low insult to one’s intended.”
“Unless Hamlet was trying to keep her safe.”
“Hamlet broke her damned heart and drove her mad, but an uneducated person isn’t likely to have alluded to Shakespeare. Why haven’t you left London, Jeanette?” Sycamore wished the answer could be that she hadn’t wanted to leave him, but that was foolish. The first note had arrived before he and Jeanette had become lovers.
“I refuse to be cowed,” she said, watching the sparrow fly away with a crumb held in its beak. “For the first twenty-four years of my life, I did what I was told to do. I am no threat to anybody, and these notes could be from some matchmaker who thinks I’m preventing Trevor from standing up with her niece. I was afraid of my husband. He never raised a hand to me, but I disgusted him, and he took infinite, intimate pains to make sure I knew that. I retreated and retreated and retreated in the face of his disapproval. Recovering the ground I yielded has taken me years.”
Jeanette gripped the knife firmly now, and it fit her hand exactly.
“Tell me what you know of Trevor’s first encounter with street roughs.”
She angled a glare at him.
“Please,” Sycamore amended. “Won’t you please tell me what you know of that incident?”
“He was coming home from supper and a late-night round of cards at Jerome’s club. Jerome stayed behind, though several other fellows left when Trevor did. Trevor had lost, he was half-seas over, and he hadn’t bothered to hire a linkboy. A pair of ruffians set upon him, and his friends apparently came around the corner in the next instant. Trevor hasn’t exactly boasted of the occasion, but I gather he gave a good account of himself.”
“And the whole business in our great and elegant metropolis is entirely unremarkable. Not so this week’s incident.” Sycamore took Jeanette’s free hand. A pale measure compared to spiriting her off to Dorning Hall, but he hoped his touch reassured her.
As hers reassured him.
“As best I can tell,” Sycamore said, “Friday morning, Tavistock apparently had an appointment to fence with a chum at Angelo’s. Jerome and the usual gang of foplings came to watch. The agenda had been for Jerome and Trevor to share lunch at the club following Trevor’s session. Jerome became engrossed in observing the next match, so Trevor left on his own. He wanted a nip from his flask, but was too much of a gentleman to drink on the street and popped around to an alley. Three professional bullyboys met him there, one with a knife.”
Jeanette shifted her grip on Sycamore’s hand to lace her fingers with his. “He could have been killed.”
“Not likely. I suspect both attacks were a case of mistaken identity. If three men wanted to kill one unsuspecting marquess in an alley, they would all come armed, they would wait for cover of darkness, and they would finish the job.”
Jeanette watched the sparrow return to snatch up the last of the crumbs. “You think Jerome was the target?”
How Sycamore loved her mind, as quick and sharp as a Damascus blade. “The facts line up with that hypothesis, and Jerome and Trevor look very much alike.”
“Trevor is taller and leaner, not half such a dandy
