His cravat was a lacy old-fashioned jabot, and yet, like any conscientious London street tough, he wore no gloves.
“Put your little toy away,” Sycamore’s assailant growled. “Continue to disport with my sister as if she’s a common doxy—and on the Sabbath, no less—and a blow to the face is the least you’ll have coming to you. Consider yourself warned.”
Even the voice was a contradiction, a dark baritone that yet managed to convey public school elocution. He got a half-dozen steps down the alley before the puzzle pieces formed a pattern in Sycamore’s mind.
“Orion Goddard?”
“Sir Orion to you, Dorning.” He kept walking, his gait uneven and less than brisk.
“Good day to you too,” Sycamore said, catching up to him easily. “You have a peculiar way of skipping the introductions, Sir Orion.” Also a formidable uppercut.
“You have a peculiar sense of decorum, imposing yourself on a lady whose hems you are not fit to touch.”
“Lady Tavistock likes me,” Sycamore replied. “I more than like her. Because she apparently has a care for you as well, I will allow your little tap to my chin to go unreciprocated—for now.”
“I’m a-tremble with dread.” Goddard turned at the intersection of two alleys, confident of his direction. “Jeanette has been through too much already at the hands of a randy arsewipe from a titled family. Leave her alone.”
“My brother Willow has dogs like you,” Sycamore said, beginning to enjoy himself. “They growl, they show their teeth, they are quite menacing, until some child tosses a ball for them in the back garden.”
Goddard shoved Sycamore hard against a stone wall, and abruptly, there was a knife at Sycamore’s throat.
“Bother Jeanette again, you randy pestilence, and I will leave you for the crows to feast upon.”
“If my English serves adequately,” Sycamore replied, “what you meant to say is that you love your sister dearly and wish to know if my intentions are honorable. And by the by, that slight pressure you feel at your crotch is the knife I had in my left boot—always carry two, you know. You are welcome to slit my throat—my affairs are in order, after all—but be assured that your cods will be parted from your irascible person ere I take my last breath.”
Sycamore moved the blade a quarter inch. A throwing knife was not made for slicing, but Goddard would get the point, as it were.
Goddard smiled, an incomprehensibly charming flash of teeth and humor. That smile turned a saturnine countenance sunny and revealed either hidden warmth of heart or a criminal’s black-souled ability to regard violence as entertainment.
He stepped back and bowed. “Well done, Dorning. A bit slow, but an adequate performance. You are teaching Jeanette to wield a knife?”
“To throw a knife,” Sycamore said, slipping the blade back into its sheath. “Hand-to-hand combat for a lady wielding a knife is not well advised.” Goddard’s question, though, revealed that he’d been lurking in the alley for the better part of an hour. “Why are you spying on your sister?”
Goddard approached a stout, roman-nosed bay gelding dozing in the shade of a plane tree.
“Because if I demanded to escort Jeanette openly, she would fillet me more effectively than you threatened to. I am not good ton, and she has worked endlessly to keep a place in Society she has earned twenty times over. I could ruin that for her in a single evening and without even trying to.”
The horse was no longer young, with gray around the muzzle, and the wizened eye of an old campaigner. He’d been well cared for, though, and was in good weight and good condition.
“I can escort her openly,” Sycamore said. “She has in fact given me leave to…” Not pay his addresses, but what, exactly?
“Yes?”
“To escort her. To respectfully show my esteem and liking.”
“But not to pay her your addresses,” Goddard said, taking up the girth a hole. “How much has she told you about her marriage?”
“Enough. Tavistock was fixated on having more sons.”
“Many a man is fixated on having sons, but he doesn’t have to be mean about it. Jeanette could have popped out a baby boy annually, and Tavistock would still have made her life hell. He wanted a dog to kick as well as a wife to pester. Why did you offer to show Jeanette how to use a knife?”
“We are to air your sister’s business in an alley? You could instead come to the Coventry and share a meal with me. The club is closed, but the kitchen has made a Sunday feast nonetheless. And lest you think your scurrilous company will redound to my discredit, my staff is discreet.”
“And is your cook competent?”
“The undercook is on duty at present. Quite competent, does not suffer fools, well compensated.”
“You never answered my question,” Goddard said, untying the horse’s reins from the oak tree. “Why teach Jeanette to use a knife?” He ambled off down the alley, a man who clearly held a map in his head of London’s lesser byways, for he was making directly for the Coventry.
“Her ladyship asked me to show her the rudiments, and natural talent and determination are doing the rest. Did Tavistock abuse her physically?”
Goddard was silent for a good dozen yards, the only sound his horse’s hooves clip-clopping against old cobbles.
“I don’t know, but Jeanette came to loathe his marital attentions. When I left for Spain, she was a shy bride with a brusque new husband twice her age. By the time I came home on my first winter leave, the light in her eyes was all but gone. By then, it was too late. Tavistock had bought my commission as part of Jeanette’s marriage settlements, and Jeanette was the one taken captive by hostile forces.”
They reached the mouth of the alley, and Goddard crossed the thoroughfare, tossed the crossing sweeper a coin, and took the next alley rather than travel on the main street.
“How did the late Marquess of Tavistock die?” Sycamore asked.
“I didn’t kill him, more’s the pity. I was traveling in France
