Trevor sipped his brandy, he didn’t gulp it. Jeanette took some consolation from that.
“Deception is required of a gentleman,” Trevor said, sounding slightly exasperated. “If I told you of the vulgarities that pass for humor at the club, the low talk that passes for gossip, or the nocturnal strolls through the park my friends delight in, you would box my ears.”
After dark, most of London’s public parks turned into open-air sex markets, a situation that the newspapers delicately decried at least once a quarter. The streets around the theater were similarly thronged with those intent on risqué pleasures, which only added to the popularity of the theater as an evening entertainment.
“I expect decent manners from you, Trevor, but I also expect honesty regarding something as important as a violent crime committed against your person. This is the second time you’ve been accosted on the street, and you do not frequent bad neighborhoods.”
“All of London is a bad neighborhood, to hear the preachers tell it.”
She marched up to him, unwilling to indulge his masculine pouts. “You could have been killed, Trevor, and I would mourn your passing deeply. I have watched you grow from boy to man, and I dearly want to see the man take his proper place in Society. I will never have children. You are the only person I have left to love in this world, and when you lie to me, it hurts.”
That he would lie was also frightening, proof that the darling boy was gone forever, replaced by a dear but increasingly distant young man whom Jeanette didn’t know as well as she’d thought she did.
“Don’t cry,” he said, sounding genuinely horrified. “I have never seen you cry, and if I give you occasion to cry now, I will have to call myself out.” He passed her a handkerchief and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You are upset, the very thing I sought to avoid. I have made you cry, and this is all Mr. Dorning’s fault.”
“Your mendacity has upset me, and I am not crying, Trevor. I am disappointed that you would not trust me with the truth.”
Trevor offered her his drink. She shook her head.
“Both Dorning brothers told me to be honest with you,” he said. “I thought them daft. Why burden my step-mama with a recounting of such villainy? And here you’ve been nipping out to the mews to throw knives. Why, my lady?”
My lady, not Step-mama. “Somebody has followed me, Trevor, on many occasions.”
He set his glass down rather too hard. “I beg your pardon? Followed you?”
“Somebody followed my coach when I borrowed my brother’s less conspicuous conveyance and followed our town coach when I took it out midweek.”
Trevor gazed across the library at nothing in particular. “You borrowed Orion Goddard’s coach? Whatever for?”
“Privacy. I got in the habit when your father was alive. If his lordship took the town coach, and I did not want to travel in an open vehicle, I borrowed Orion’s. Rye seldom goes out, at least not to society’s usual entertainments, and I have never cared for ostentation anyway.”
Then too, sending along a note asking to borrow the carriage was one way to ensure Orion still drew breath. He never scrawled more than a word or two in reply, but that was better than the long silence that had followed his return from France.
“So I take the town coach,” Trevor said, “and you get up to God knows what, God knows where, without a word to me? Throwing knives, for example? Being followed? Having Mr. Dorning procure a whole set of knives for you?”
Jeanette produced the blade she’d carried in from the mews. “You are attempting to distract me from your own dishonesty, Trevor. It won’t wash.”
He peered at the knife lying across her palm as if it would writhe to life before his eyes. “That is a formidable accessory you have there. Perhaps I ought to carry a knife myself.”
“Ask Sycamore Dorning for advice. He’ll probably show you the rudiments of throwing if you want him to. Tell me about the men who accosted you behind Angelo’s.”
Trevor took a wing chair before the empty hearth and recited the facts more or less as Sycamore had relayed them.
“I wasn’t afraid at the time. I was annoyed,” he concluded. “Then I arrived at the Coventry, and it occurred to me that I’d had a narrow escape. As Sycamore said, if there had been a fourth man, or a second knife, perhaps a cudgel or two… Those fellows were expecting to thrash a fop, and if they come after me again, I won’t have the element of surprise on my side.”
Jeanette sat opposite him, her knife wrapped in a handkerchief and slipped it into her pocket. “Are your debts paid?”
“Of course. The increase in my allowance was more than sufficient to bring everything up to date, and you apparently know my arrangement with the Coventry.”
“Have you offended anybody?”
Trevor stared at the ceiling. “What do you take me for, my lady?”
“A young man new to Town, who is the dearest person in my world. Answer the question.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are Jerome’s bills up to date?”
Trevor swiveled a puzzled gaze to her. “Cousin’s affairs are quite in hand, I’m sure.”
“You look like him, Trevor, and both times you were accosted, he might well have been accompanying you, but he sent you out alone instead.”
Trevor shot to his feet. “Madam, that is the outside of too much. Jerome has earned more respect from you than that—he’s considered offering for you, if you must know—and I will not hear a word against him.”
Jeanette knew she’d blundered badly, but the conversation wasn’t over, and Jerome had never earned her respect. He wasn’t considering offering for her, he was considering a cockeyed scheme by which to get his hands on her wealth—or his mother was.
“I’m not saying Jerome sent you out to be set upon
