“Should we develop an itinerary?” Trevor asked, brows knitting. “Jeanette will want to know where we bide, and we must find a suitably obscure village in which to deposit Beardsley.”
“I know just the village,” Orion said. “Run by an order of nuns and abetted by a phalanx of grannies. Let’s repair to your club, and we can sketch out our route.”
Too late, Jeanette realized that her darling brother and her doting step-son were conspiring to leave her alone with Sycamore. She rose, and Sycamore stood as well.
“I will want that itinerary,” she said. “And I will see you off as well.”
“Of course,” Trevor said, patting her shoulder. “We will not leave without giving you a full accounting of our plans first.” He bowed and pulled Jerome by the arm from the room.
“I can’t speak for Jerome,” Sycamore said, “but heed me on this, Goddard. Tavistock is one of those people who never says much, and thus you assume he’s not thinking much. Then he opens his mouth, and you realize he’s not only noticed every single detail, he’s pondered and parsed the connections you never made. I had hopes for him at the Coventry, but alas, he’s off to France.”
“A bright lad,” Orion said. “He’s had the benefit of good examples. Nettie, I will call on you tomorrow.”
Do you promise? Jeanette could not quite put that question into words, so she instead hugged her brother for the first time in years.
“We’ll talk,” he murmured. “I have much to tell you, and we’ll talk.”
“Come early,” Jeanette said. “Please come early.” She stepped back, though she never wanted to let him out of her sight again. She did not realize she’d taken Sycamore’s hand until he linked arms with her, and they walked Orion to the front door.
When Orion had gone jaunting on his way, Sycamore bowed over Jeanette’s hand, kissed her cheek, and followed the others out the door.
Chapter Fourteen
“You’ve been invited to supper,” Ash said, passing Sycamore a single folded sheet of vellum. “Looks like her ladyship penned it herself.”
Sycamore snatched the paper from Ash’s grasp. “You opened my mail?”
Ash made his way between the club’s tables, which were deserted at this midmorning hour. “If she was tossing you over with one of those dreadful letters about fond memories and eternal friendship, you would need somebody to get you drunk.”
Sycamore perused the invitation, which had, indeed, been written in Jeanette’s tidy hand. “You’ve received many such letters?” Sycamore sniffed the page, though he knew Ash watched him do it. So bloody what? He was rewarded with a faint whiff of jasmine—and hope.
“I’ve written a few myself,” Ash said, using a hooked device to open a window on the alley side of the club. “Della thinks you should call on her ladyship privately.”
“Why?” Sycamore reread the invitation, looking for some clue that it was anything more than a polite gesture to scotch talk.
Ash opened another window. “Because what you have to say to the marchioness requires privacy.”
“How can Della know what I have to say to Jeanette—to her ladyship—when I’ve hardly sorted that out for myself?” A week ago, Sycamore had kissed Jeanette’s cheek and left her alone in her foyer. She had been buffeted by multiple betrayals and intrigues. Piling a renewed marriage proposal onto her plate would have seemed… opportunistic, impetuous, ungentlemanly.
Rash and selfish, and those were not attributes Sycamore aspired to.
“You love her,” Ash said. “Tell her that.”
“I already did. Told her I wanted to marry her, keep her safe, and spend the rest of my life with her, more or less. She wasn’t impressed.” He’d told her that he cared for her too.
Ash set aside the hook and ambled behind the bar. He poured two glasses of lemonade and brought Sycamore one of them.
“But did you tell her you love her? Did you say the words, Sycamore? You are among the bravest men I know, but those three little words, when sincerely offered, make even the stoutest knight quake in his armor.”
“I’m brave?” Sycamore did not feel very brave. “I am frustrated, uncertain, and lonely in ways that… If Jeanette refuses me this time, Ash, I can’t tell myself she’s again protecting me as she protected every dunderheaded male in her family.”
“If she turns you down,” Ash said, touching his glass to Sycamore’s, “she’s the dunderhead, and I do not take her ladyship for a dunderhead. Neither does Della.”
The lemonade was both tart and sweet, as Jeanette could be. “Della said that?”
“She says you’re perfect for each other, and no less authority than our own Lady Casriel concurs. Jacaranda has also been consulted and agrees you and the marchioness would make a fine match.”
Three formidable Dorning women had rendered judgment. Not long ago, Sycamore would have brushed aside their pronouncements as so much casual matchmaking. He knew better now. If a woman deigned to offer her considered judgment on a delicate matter, a man of sense listened to her.
“Wish me luck,” Sycamore said, setting aside his drink. “I’m off to woo a damsel who has professed an abiding desire to remain independent.”
Ash cuffed him on the shoulder. “Which is precisely why you and she are perfect for each other. Give her the words, Sycamore. You are magnificently honest even when those around you wish you’d keep your mouth shut. Don’t turn up reticent and retiring on us now, and if the lady accepts, you and I will have a long talk about where I fit into the future of this club.”
“You’re scarpering on me?” The idea ought to engender panic and bluster, possibly even outrage. The past months had proved that Ash did not need the Coventry, though, and—apparently—the Coventry did not precisely need Ash.
As a brother, Sycamore
