She flipped back the covers and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Pale, slender, lovely feet, and the sight of them sent the last pretension to manners from Sycamore’s grasp.
“Jeanette, don’t be foolish. You aren’t in any fit state to go anywhere, much less—”
She stood and put a hand on his chest, a gentle touch that filled Sycamore with a sense of implacable doom.
“You have no right, Sycamore, to keep me here. You are not in a position to allow anything where I am concerned. If you want a plan, then I will make it a point to eat nothing that Trevor hasn’t also partaken of. I should be going.”
“You cannot leave.” He managed, barely, not to seize her by the shoulders. “Jeanette, you are not safe.”
She eased around him and went behind the privacy screen. “I will be careful. I will hire some new footmen, loyal to me. I will pension off Peem and suggest Trevor do the same with his valet. I will, if necessary, retire to Tavistock Hall, and Jerome and Trevor can have the town house for their youthful bacchanals, and—”
“I cannot permit you to remove to Tavistock Hall.” Sycamore had nearly shouted. “If you remove to the Hall, then you can’t use young Tavistock as your personal taster, and besides, he’s out most evenings, and you can be poisoned at supper as easily as at breakfast. For the love of God, Jeanette, why won’t you marry me?”
She emerged from the privacy screen wearing her dress, and Sycamore wanted to tear it off her, the better to hold her hostage. The Marchioness of Tavistock would not be seen on London’s streets in her chemise.
“I like you,” Jeanette said. “I like you exceedingly, Sycamore, and I believe your motivation is honorable, but you cannot know—you cannot have any idea—how it chills me to hear you telling me what to do, accusing me of a want of logic, speaking to me in terms of allowing and permitting. I never wanted to remarry, and I have been honest about that.”
She was probably making a sort of female sense. All Sycamore knew was that the woman he loved was preparing to resume a life where she’d be vulnerable to harm.
“I married once to safeguard my father’s fortunes,” she said, taking the seat at the vanity, “and to give my brother a start in the military. I married because it was a spectacular match for a mere Goddard. I married because I hadn’t been allowed or permitted to dream of any other future. Now you demand that I marry again, because of some bad eggs.”
“Bad eggs, beatings in alleys, threatening notes, family desperate for money… How can you not see a pattern in those events, Jeanette?”
She coiled her braid at the nape of her neck and began shoving pins into the resulting bun. “I do see a pattern, and I will take steps to ensure that pattern doesn’t escalate, or affect innocent parties, but how can you fail to see a pattern in your dealings with me, Sycamore?”
He was losing her, possibly forever, and that was the only pattern he saw. “I care for you. I am protective of you. The two go hand in hand.”
“The marquess married me to secure his dynasty. He did not need a young wife—he had an heir and spare, of sorts—but he desired more security than that. Jerome wants to marry me, of all the daft notions, because he, too, has a need to safeguard the Vincent family fortunes. You seek to safeguard my person, a commendable goal compared to the others.”
More female logic, and all of it beyond Sycamore’s comprehension. “And my commendable goal makes me like your bleating, rutting marquess?”
Jeanette rose from the vanity, looking damnably tidy and serene. “What do I want, Sycamore?”
“To never again spend a day as you did today, sweating on the banks of the River Styx and so far gone in bodily misery that you didn’t particularly care if Charon invited you into his boat.”
Don’t leave me. Please, just don’t leave me.
“What an ambitious creature I must be that the sum of my longings is to avoid future occasions of food poisoning. I have desires and needs beyond that, for your information.”
Sycamore wanted to stand before the door and physically prevent her departure. “You admit you were poisoned.”
“I admit I probably ate the wrong kind of mushroom. Will you lend me your coach to see me home?”
She wasn’t asking him to see her home in person. “I do not understand why you are willing to return to a household where you are not safe, Jeanette. Please explain that to me.”
“If I was deliberately poisoned, then the malefactor won’t make another attempt using that means. I will send to the agencies for more footmen and maids tomorrow, Sycamore. I have the means. You must not worry.”
She kissed him on the cheek, and he caught her up in a hug. “All I will do is worry, Jeanette. Every waking and sleeping moment, I will worry. I will do nothing but worry.”
“Then throw your knives and know that I will be practicing with mine as well.”
In the part of Sycamore’s mind that always stood a little apart and kept vigil, he saw the irony: Jeanette was telling him what to do. He must not worry, he must throw his knives, he must pretend she had not become the most precious person in the world to him.
She was telling him what he could and could not do, how to feel and what to think, and he despised it.
Jeanette slept, as the expression went, like the dead, though she forced herself to put in an appearance at the breakfast table. Trevor was already seated at the head of the table, still in
