Otter shook his head. “Benny takes over from me at half past. I’ll mind the beast until then.” He swiveled a flint-hard gaze on Sycamore. “Benny takes any disrespect to the colonel hard.”
“I would be a poor host if I disrespected my guests,” Sycamore replied.
This earned him a snort. Otter took a few steps’ running start and was hidden within the oak’s branches in the time it took Sycamore to offer the lad a bow. Goddard tied the horse in the shade of the oak and once again loosened the girth.
“You have an honor guard,” Sycamore said, leading Goddard not to the carriage house—why give away a secret entrance when the likes of Otter and Benny would enjoy ferreting it out for themselves?—but through a stout gate into the little patch of potted plants and uneven flagstones that served as the Coventry’s back garden. The space was walled and had two benches, one each to catch morning and afternoon sunlight.
“Be still my lonely heart,” Goddard said, stopping to close his eyes and sniff the air. “That is roasting beef, with a touch of tarragon, basil, and black pepper.”
“All I smell is supper, and for once I do not hear my undercook cursing unreliable ovens.”
“All you smell is supper,” Goddard replied, “because you never spent weeks with your eyes bandaged, fretting that the senses of smell, hearing, and touch would have to replace eyesight as your means of navigating life safely.”
“Do those without sight have a more acute sense of taste?” Sycamore asked, opening the doorway to the Coventry’s back hallway.
“Yes, so I hope the flavor lives up to the scents, Dorning.”
That was probably supposed to be some sort of subtle warning, which Sycamore was too hungry to parse. He showed Goddard to the private dining room, let his guest use the washstand first, and poured them each a glass of claret.
“Does Jeanette know you were injured?” Sycamore asked after serving his guest a bowl of potato leek soup. He held out the plate of crumbled Stilton, and Goddard garnished his soup generously.
“Jeanette knows I was injured, she does not know the details. That’s our bargain. I know she was sacrificed on the marital altar to Tavistock’s ambitions, I do not know the particulars. Her suffering was doubtless greater than mine.”
“Why do you say that?” The soup was good—hot, flavorful, and rich—and Goddard’s expression upon taking a taste suggested he’d lucked into a bowl of ambrosia.
“You have to have known Nettie before Tavistock got his paws on her. She was everything good and sweet and dear, while our Papa’s finances were everything hopeless and rapidly worsening.” Goddard tore off a chunk of bread and dipped it into his soup. “If your cook ever goes missing, look for him in my kitchen.”
“This is the undercook’s effort, prepared at my particular request, and you make off with her at your peril. She wields a knife almost as enthusiastically as I do, and her sauces are the glory of the kitchen. Jeanette is still everything that is good and sweet and dear, but I gather you are saying Tavistock essentially bought her.”
Jeanette certainly saw it that way. Not that unusual an arrangement, if the lady had a title and the gentleman’s family had means, but Jeanette had had nothing but youth and apparent good health on her side of the ledger. Tavistock had doubtless held that against her.
That too.
“She was seventeen,” Goddard said. “As innocent as a dove. She knew only that Papa very much wanted the match, and the marquess was considered an exceptionally fine catch. Papa was a commoner, and debtors’ prison was a real possibility. We depended on income from our French holdings, and that money had disappeared. Revolution and war are ever so expensive, and the revenue owed an English family by its French cousins honestly became difficult to transfer.”
“While the Empress Josephine’s roses were guaranteed safe passage.”
“As were, thanks to the emperor’s decree, vessels of a scientific nature,” Goddard retorted. “But this brings us to Jeanette’s hard-earned state of freedom. You are not to trifle with her, Dorning.”
Sycamore dipped his bread into his soup and considered tactics. “Is she permitted to trifle with me?”
Goddard wrinkled an aquiline beak. “I want to say no, but who am I to tell my sister anything? She was sold into marital bondage so Papa could avoid prison and I could buy a commission. I did not care for how Tavistock looked at Jeanette, and yet I bought my colors with a shameful sense of relief.”
“And then what happened?”
Goddard put aside his empty bowl. With that casual gesture, his fiction of a jovial dinner guest was similarly set aside, revealing the same flint-hard, cold-as-the-grave gaze Otter had treated Sycamore to earlier.
“None of your damned business, Dorning. I am prepared to protect my privacy with my dueling pistols, if necessary.”
Sycamore lifted the lid over the roast and let the steam waft upward. Thanks to Goddard’s earlier effusions, he could detect the tarragon and basil in the roast’s scent.
“Spare me your histrionics. I have six brothers, all older than I, and they are bookended with a pair of sisters. You may breathe the flames of doom upon me all evening, but even I know that if you posit the challenge, I choose the weapons. When it comes to knives, you are unlikely to best me. Make yourself useful and pour us each another glass of that splendid wine.”
Sycamore carved off several slices of perfectly turned roast, set the dish of mashed potatoes by Goddard’s plate, and served himself a smaller portion of meat.
“Besides,” he went on, “Jeanette would take a dim view of us both if we descended into brawling. She loves you dearly.”
Goddard paused, a mound of mashed potatoes on a serving spoon over his plate. “She said that?”
“She makes it apparent. She worries for you, she
