She studied his eyes, then assayed an inspection of his boots. “Back-alley tactics. I like that.”
“Delightful. Might I remove my shirt?” He was careful to inject more impatience into the question than he felt. For her permission to disrobe, he would wait eons.
“You may remove your shirt.”
Sycamore hung his shirt on the cork of a wine bottle protruding from the nearest rack. While he bleated on about the characteristics of good throwing knives—not to be mistaken for daggers, kitchen knives, or skinning blades—he realized that he and the lady had just made substantial progress, though he could not have said toward what specific goal.
Sycamore Dorning did not preen, and his physique was spectacularly preen-worthy. The late marquess, by contrast, had strutted about the bedroom in his silk dressing gowns as if reasonably fit forty-year-olds—complete with thinning, graying hair, knobby knees, and slightly protruding ears—were the secret dream of every young bride.
Mr. Dorning discoursed about balance points, weight distribution, stance, and spin, all without any apparent awareness of his own state of undress.
Jeanette was aware of him. The ever-present caution afflicted her, because she was alone with an adult male, but so, too, did reluctant appreciation. The marquess had ridden frequently and fenced on occasion, but Sycamore Dorning’s body seethed with muscle as an ocean seethed with energy.
From broad shoulders that rippled when he shoved barrels around like so many ninepins, to biceps that flexed and bunched with power, to hands… Jeanette was supposed to study his hand, to attend how he seated the hilt of the knife right against the base of his thumb, but in those hands, she saw competence and skill.
An alarming degree of competence and skill.
“Your turn,” he said, passing her a knife, hilt first. “Don’t think too much. Just let fly and start getting a feel for the blade.”
Knives for throwing had smooth hilts so that nothing impeded the hand’s release of the blade. They were weighted more toward the blade and less toward the handle, and they were sharpest at the point. The feel of the knife in Jeanette’s hand was warm from Mr. Dorning’s grip, heavy, and exotic.
“This is a weapon,” she said, “not a tool. I can feel the difference.”
Sycamore moved behind her. “Much like conversation can be a tool or a weapon. Try to get the knife stuck in the target, your ladyship. Don’t be concerned if it bounces off the first few times.”
The target lay on the floor, a circular surface about a foot and a half thick. Jeanette was two steps away, and she knew she would somehow contrive to miss the target. She was not a quick study, as her late husband had frequently informed her.
“I don’t like you lurking back there, Mr. Dorning.”
“Would you like me better with a blade protruding from my handsome foot?”
“No.”
“Focus is an important part of success with a knife, your ladyship. You have a goal: Get the knife to stick in the target. Ignore me, as dazzling as I am. Pretend my magnificent form is somewhere in the Peak District. My sparkling wit and joie de vivre have removed to Paris. My towering intellect and visionary instinct for—”
Jeanette let fly with the knife, which embedded itself in the wood with a satisfying thump. “I hit it!”
“Dead center.” He removed the knife and passed it to her. “Take a step back and try again.”
Another half-dozen throws all sank into the wood, though, granted, Jeanette was standing nearly on top of her target. Mr. Dorning propped the target against the wall, still resting on the floor, and two of her next six knives bounced off.
She had hit the target most of the time. Her joy was eclipsed only by her surprise.
“Your aim is good,” Mr. Dorning said, “and the knife bouncing off has to do with your release, not with your accuracy. Watch me, watch my hand in particular, and the index finger that rests on the balance point. I will try for a slower throw.”
Even with him moderating his speed, Jeanette found it difficult to discern when in the downward arc of his arm the knife left his hand.
“You put your body into it,” Jeanette said. When armed, that body was a lean curve of lethal male.
“You can throw from the wrist, the elbow, or the shoulder, but we all have a natural throw. I do best over longer distances, with more of my body behind the motion, but the most powerful knife strikes are usually in close quarters. Give it another try.”
As they moved gradually farther and farther from the target, he demonstrated, he corrected, he watched and commented, and slowly, Jeanette’s awareness of him as a man faded into her determination to master the knife.
Which, apparently, was not an impossible objective.
“Your shoulders, being female, are designed differently from mine,” he said, passing her the knife yet again. “But that doesn’t affect how accurately you can throw. Your throw will simply look different from a man’s.”
Imagine that. The female version was simply different, not weaker or worse. Jeanette threw again and buried her blade a few inches off-center in the target, which was now sitting on a chair several yards away. She and Mr. Dorning had a rhythm now. He passed her a half-dozen knives, one at a time, and then retrieved them for her.
“I can see why you enjoy this,” she said as he ambled forward to pick up the one knife that had bounced off the target and pulled the other five free. “It’s entrancing, like an intricate passage at the pianoforte. You work your way through it slowly, over and over, until you can add a touch of speed, but only a touch. You can feel the music, but you can’t produce it, not until you’ve paid the price in patience.”
Though, according to Jeanette’s late husband, she’d never demonstrated any feeling for the music, no matter how perfect the notes.
Mr. Dorning resumed his place behind
