“Mama will jaunt down on our coattails, hauling Hera and Diana with her. You will be engaged within a fortnight. I believe I shall court Jeanette.”
This again. “That is drink talking.” Trevor found the second slipper peeking out from under the sofa, rolled up the wrinkled cravats, and draped the smoking jacket over the back of the wing chair. He cracked open a window and set his own half-full brandy glass on the mantel, where Jerome would doubtless find it.
Jerome scrubbed a hand over his face and eyed the glass. “One of us has to marry, Tav. And Jeanette isn’t that hard to look on. I could doubtless succeed with her where the old marquess failed, too. I’d certainly give it a good go anyway.”
“Generous of you, though I suspect Jeanette would laugh any proposal from you to scorn. She did not have an easy time of it with my father, and there’s no earthly reason why she should remarry.”
“Of course there’s an earthly reason.” Jerome wiggled his eyebrows, clearly unaware of the distasteful picture he made, disheveled, unbathed, unshaven, and not quite sober.
Trevor cracked a second window to get some cross ventilation. “Keep further thoughts of that nature to yourself, please. I have said my piece, and you deserve whatever fate Jeanette chooses for you.”
“She might have me,” Jerome said, his gaze going again to the brandy glass. “I can be persuasive. She’s not as impervious to argument as you think, Tav. She has vulnerabilities. Papa has intimated as much.”
As if threats to a lady were the basis for lasting connubial bliss? “She’s also not an idiot. I will see myself out. Let me know how you fare with the new valet.”
“Will do, but I don’t suppose before you go, you could spare a fellow a coin or two? Desperation rations and all that.”
Perhaps coming here had not been such a bad idea after all. This was what shared quarters at the Albany would mean, and Trevor would become a nanny in truth.
“All I have with me,” he said, putting half a dozen coins on the tea tray. “I’ll have Cook send over a basket, and you will share dinner with me at the club tomorrow.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Jerome said, pouring himself another cup of tea. “Until then.”
No thanks, no veiled acknowledgment of kindness, no apology for poor hospitality… And Jerome thought Jeanette would willingly marry herself to such as he?
Though Jeanette enjoyed a challenge, and given that Jerome had taken to pilfering glasses from the Coventry, he would provide her at least that. Trevor stopped in the foyer to put the potted fern outside on the steps, where the poor thing would at least have some sunlight and regular rainfall.
Then too, sitting in the out of doors rather than sitting in Jerome’s foyer, the struggling plant was less likely to be misused as a chamber pot.
Trevor was halfway home when he realized that in nearly thirty minutes of conversation, Jerome had never answered the question regarding whether the incident in the alley could have been meant for him.
Given the state of his finances, the answer was all but obvious.
“Of course we’re being followed,” Goddard said. “The streets are unsafe, and many would still put period to my existence, as miserable as it is. I am considered a traitor by half the officers in my former regiment. Just when I think they’ve found somebody else to gossip about, their aspersion circles back to me again.”
Even Sycamore, in the rarefied atmosphere of the club, had heard the occasional insulting snippet regarding Orion Goddard, but then, half-pay officers and former military were prodigiously accomplished grumblers.
“What harm can talk do you?”
Goddard slanted him a look. “Your beautiful club could be closed overnight if the right word were whispered in the ear of the right magistrate.”
A nightmare possibility Sycamore managed to ignore most of the time. “You are not running a questionable enterprise, that your fortunes can be destroyed by tattlers.” Sycamore hoped that was true, but many merchants relied on the coastal trade to import their goods from the Continent, thus putting money directly into the hands of smugglers and their families rather than tithing to the exciseman.
“My business is entirely legal,” Goddard replied, “but I earn my coin by selling my family’s champagne here in London. This, among other failings, apparently makes my loyalties suspect.”
Sycamore surveyed the shady alley behind them. The boy who’d been shuffling along in their wake was nowhere to be seen.
“A half-grown boy in unmatched boots isn’t a likely assassin, Goddard, and ending your life while I stroll along at your side on a Sunday afternoon hardly demonstrates the sort of discretion such a task calls for.”
Goddard gave two short, shrill whistles. “A half-grown boy can be a more effective assassin for being unexpected. Theodoric has turned over a new leaf, though. He is a purveyor of safety rather than mayhem these days, or so he claims.”
A rustling in the branches above was Sycamore’s warning to step back. An instant later, the boy dropped to the ground before him, as silently as a cat.
“Everything all right, guv?” the lad asked, eyeing Sycamore as a stern nanny regards a habitually naughty charge who has yet to begin the day’s round of offenses.
The lad was not quite the genuine article. His boots were unmatched, true, but they fit, they were neatly laced, and they were sturdy enough. His clothing was wrinkled past all hope, though clean. His hands were also clean—a sure sign of some security in life, for soap and water to wash with were in short supply on the street. Then too, the lad was skinny but not gaunt.
Somebody fed him regularly, and that somebody was apparently Colonel Sir Orion Goddard.
“Greetings, Otter,” Goddard said. “My
