The Last True Gentleman by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952443350
Publisher: Grace Burrowes

“Dorning Hall is a little worn around the edges,” Sycamore said, “but worn in a comforting way. We decorate the place with Papa’s botanical prints because he loved them, and we loved him.”

Ash glanced up from whatever catalog of wines he was reading. Increasingly, he was to be found in the Coventry’s office only during daylight hours.

“Botanical prints are pretty,” Ash said, “and Oak drew a lot of them, so we had to pay nothing for them.”

“That’s not the point,” Sycamore said, pacing before the office’s desk. He’d slept in the adjoining bedroom last night—again—and dreamed of Jeanette. “The point is, those prints mean something to us. We know where Papa found many of the specimens, we’ve actually read the plant properties he listed in the margins for this weed or that blossom, and we like seeing his handwriting framed on our walls.”

“They are Casriel’s walls. I gather champagne is becoming more popular. These prices are ridiculous.”

“You are ridiculous,” Sycamore said, turning a straight-backed chair away from the desk and planting himself on it astraddle. “I am trying to pour out my heart to you, and you babble about the price of wine.”

Ash closed the catalog. “The price of wine matters when we’re giving the stuff away by the barrel. Tavistock suggested we serve our champagne in slightly smaller glasses to achieve an economy.”

“A brilliant idea, except we’d need to order special glasses, which would not be an economy. Have you ever been to Tavistock House?”

“I sent a reconnaissance officer,” Ash said, smiling slightly.

Sycamore knew that smile. “Della paid a call on the marchioness?”

“Earlier in the week. Della claimed the house reflects dull taste two decades out of fashion, the staff is antediluvian, and the whole place is quiet as a tomb.”

“A portrait of the late marquess hangs in the foyer,” Sycamore said. “Another two in the library—boyhood and young manhood. I suspect we’d find the baby portrait in the nursery and the marquess as a new husband in the bedroom. He haunts that house like a grumpy Scottish ghost.”

Ash watched as Sycamore rose and resumed his pacing. “This bothers you.”

“Of course it bothers me. What wall space the marquess doesn’t occupy, his sainted antecedents take up, each one more dour than the last. The lot of them look like they suffer a serious case of the wind, and the staff wouldn’t hear the French army marching past trumpeting La Marseillaise as they approached. Her ladyship can be neither safe nor happy in such an abode.”

Ash leaned back and propped his boots on a corner of the desk. “Why would you, who have driven out with the woman exactly once, have a care for her safety?”

“Because I am a gentleman, and somebody should.”

Ash crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling. “Sycamore.”

“Because she is being followed, because she is concerned for her safety. Because her late husband made her life a genteel hell when she did not conceive his blighted spares.”

“She struck me as a sensible woman. Why does she fear for her safety?”

Sycamore closed the door to the bedroom.

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