His enthusiasm this year was tempered by a hint of resignation to drudgery, perhaps because Ash was preoccupied with wedded bliss. Surely that reasoning explained why a session of knife throwing with Lady Tavistock held inordinate appeal and had taken eons to arrive?
Sycamore watched for her at the staff entrance, appalled when she arrived on foot and without an escort.
“You walked?” he asked, drawing her into the Coventry’s back hall.
“My brother’s coach dropped me off at the corner,” she replied, untying the ribbons of her plain bonnet. “I trust you will see me home?”
“Of course.”
“Are we alone, Mr. Dorning?”
Did she want to be alone with him? Her expression suggested she was dreading the prospect. “The undercook and her assistants will remain in the kitchen until we dine, and we will have the rest of the premises to ourselves.”
“Then let’s get started.” The marchioness stalked off down the corridor, removing her bonnet as she went.
“My lady?”
She turned, her cloak swishing as she smoothed her hair with one hand and held her bonnet by its ribbons with the other.
“We’ll be in the cellars for this lesson. Stone walls mean wild throws have less chance of doing any damage.”
Her return journey was slower. “Wild throws?”
“You are here to learn to wield a knife, are you not?”
“Well, yes, but I thought we’d start with how to stab a footpad.”
Sycamore held the cellar door for her. “You are bloodthirsty, my lady.”
“I am determined to remain safe.” She processed down the steps with more dignity than a duchess at a state funeral. Sycamore had lit every sconce on the stairway and in the main cellar passage, and still, the space had the feel of a private lair.
“The wine cellar runs the length and breadth of the street,” Sycamore said, “and this passage becomes a tunnel connected to the kitchens beneath my private rooms. Shall I take your cloak?”
She peered up at the shadows dancing on the stone ceiling, then at the racks and cabinets of bottles. “I had no idea this was down here. You must have a fortune in wine.”
“The club consumes a fortune in wine, and our inventory is high now in anticipation of our busiest season. I’ve suggested to Tresham that he invest in a champagne vineyard, but he does not listen to me.” If Mrs. Theodosia Tresham had made that suggestion, the vineyard would have been purchased within the fortnight.
“This doesn’t smell like a cellar,” her ladyship said, wrinkling her nose. “The scent is more that of a lumberyard, oak rather than pine.”
“We have a few barrels of Scottish whisky for the stout of heart, and a small ocean of ale. You will want to remove your cloak.”
“I’m chilly.”
No, she wasn’t. Not in any sense. Uncertain and mistrustful, but in no wise chilly. “You’ll warm up fast enough once we’re throwing, and you need the ease of movement that fewer clothes provide.” Sycamore shrugged out of his coat and slipped his sleeve buttons free of his cuffs, then draped his coat over an upright barrel at the foot of the steps.
“What are you doing?”
Marshaling my patience. “If you cannot see how I achieve the results I do, you will have a harder time emulating my success. I, too, need ease of movement to throw at my best. You were married. A man in undress should not shock you.”
“A husband in undress is one thing. You, however…” She still had not taken off her cloak, and now Sycamore understood why. The marchioness was ambivalent about this venture that she’d so boldly embarked upon earlier in the week.
Her courage, in other words, was flagging.
“I am much the same as any other man,” Sycamore said, unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Arms, legs, hands, ribs. The design varies little from one specimen to the next. The more clearly you can see what I’m doing, the faster you’ll be able to pick it up yourself.”
“And do you expect me to peel down to my shift?”
“Not unless you’d like to.” Sycamore set the target in the center of the passage. For this occasion, he’d selected an eighteen-inch-thick disk of spruce trunk measuring a good two-and-a-half feet in diameter. “We’ll start with the target on the ground,” he said, undoing his neckcloth, “standing right next to it. Then we prop it against the wall, still on the floor, then we gradually raise it to chest height. Your cloak, my lady?”
She passed him her bonnet, which he set atop his clothes on the barrel. She was again watching him as she undid the frogs at her throat.
She laid her cloak over his coat and remained standing by the barrel. “Now what?” Her gaze went to the steps, as if she visually assessed whether she could beat Sycamore out of the cellar.
This wealthy, attractive, self-possessed woman was afraid of him—not merely reserved or cautious in an awkward situation—and that made Sycamore incandescent with… frustration? Ire? He wasn’t sure what, but the emotion was powerful and angry.
He stepped closer, and she held her ground, though he had the sense it was a near thing. “If I should in any way menace or insult you, you drive your knee into my cods, hard. No mercy, your ladyship. Jab your fingers into my eyes, stomp your heel for all you’re worth onto my instep. Fight as if you mean it, not as if we’re having a polite disagreement over afternoon tea, then leave the scene at a dead run.”
“Your… cods?”
“My stones. Testicles are the Creator’s joke on male hubris. Funny looking, delicate, and ever so vulnerable. A single well-placed kick, and I will be retching on the floor.”
She brushed a glance south of Sycamore’s waist. “Why are you telling me this?”
Because I want your trust, and I want to kill whoever abused it. “You seek to learn to throw a knife, so I gather personal defense generally is of interest to you. Knives are lovely, but not
