The Last True Gentleman (True Gentlemen #12) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,50

She studied him, no longer visually dismissing him, evading his eyes, or turning a wary regard on him.

“My dear marchioness, looking rather destroys the element of surprise, which is half the beauty of a well thrown knife.”

She crossed the room and withdrew the blade. “Teach me to do this, and you can demand almost anything of me in return.”

Almost. A prudent woman. “You hate to be in anybody’s debt, don’t you?” Sycamore had made her a loan once before, at a rural house party, and she had paid it back to the penny within days of the house party’s conclusion. The sum had gone to paying off her step-son’s gambling debts, and what consideration she had extracted from the hapless lad was a secret between her and his young lordship.

She passed Sycamore his knife and watched as he returned it to the sheath in his boot. “I loathe being in debt to anybody, particularly a man. Women have little enough power, and a woman in debt is a woman all but asking to be exploited.”

Sycamore understood an independent nature, but not the bitterness behind her ladyship’s words. He also understood pride, however, and to become her ladyship’s instructor, he would have to surrender some scintilla of his own pride.

He had a bit to spare, after all. “Here is the favor I will accept in return for teaching you what you seek to know: Once a week, we will meet at the Coventry to practice throwing, and then you will dine with me on the premises.”

“Supper?” With a single word, she conjured a reference to all manner of hedonistic excesses.

“Food, wine, conversation. I can inflict some of my laughable French on you, you can tell me who is walking out with whom.”

The wariness had returned to her gaze, muted by curiosity. “You are serious?”

“I do not dissemble, even when my family dearly wishes I would.” Her ladyship still looked doubtful, so Sycamore resigned himself to explaining his situation to her.

“My brother Ash is my business partner, or he used to be. Now he’s too besotted with the wedded state to do more than keep an impatient eye on me at the club, not an eye on the club, mind you, an eye on me. When we talk it’s Della says, Della hopes, and my dear Della tells me. I love my sister by marriage—I love the entire herd of them—but Lady Della has entirely made off with my dearest brother.”

Sycamore rose to pace rather than sit passively before her ladyship’s scrutiny. “I cannot gossip with anybody about club business, or with nobody but Tresham, and with him it’s Theodosia believes, my darling Theo would say, and more of same. Casriel is the worst of the lot. He’s awash in daughters, which adds entire rhapsodic chapters to his litany.”

Sycamore paused before the corkboard, which would soon have to be replaced, because the center was too pitted from multiple throws hitting the same mark.

“I spend almost every night,” he said, “amid the witty and wealthy, and while I can flirt, make small talk, and flatter until my eyelashes fall off, that’s not the same as a good meal with a pleasant companion.”

Her ladyship rose. She was tallish, but more than that, she carried herself regally. “I am rarely pleasant.”

“One of your many fine attributes.” Also one of Sycamore’s. “You are intelligent, well read, honest, and knowledgeable about polite society. Let’s give it a month, shall we? The Coventry is closed on Sundays. We’ll have privacy there and some room to practice.”

She had come to make him a proposition, but he’d purposely put himself in the position of one making an offer.

“Four lessons and four suppers?”

“Or I can simply teach you to throw.”

She stuck out a hand. “We have a bargain, Mr. Dorning. I will meet you at the side entrance to the Coventry at five on Sunday.”

Sycamore shook, pugilist-fashion, then bowed over her hand, gentleman-fashion. “I will look forward to it. Shall I call for my coach, or would you rather I walk you home?” He was several inches over six feet, though those inches had taken forever to show up. He also fenced, rode, and boxed, and considered himself a match for any footpad, even without his knives.

“I prefer to walk, please.”

The faster option, given that a groom and coachman would have to roused and the horses put to. Also the less conspicuous choice.

Sycamore contented himself with the role of gallant escort, and parted from the lady at her front door. He