Page 12 of Seduced by a Scoundrel (The Spinster Society #3)

S ybil knocked once at Montgomery House and was already slipping inside before the butler had finished opening the door. He was a frightfully proper sort, with whiskers that curled with the aid of pomade and a monocle he liked to look through with great disdain. But he was secretly fond of her, ever since she had shared her sugarplums one Christmas morning, reaching over the iron railing between their houses with her short, little arms.

“Good afternoon, Chevril,” she greeted him with a weary smile, dropping onto the bench that was still sitting under a painting of a hunting dog no one in the family had ever owned. The bench was in the exact same place as it had been the one other time she had dared venture through the front door of dreary Montgomery House. It was that day she was fourteen and decided to bring a doll for the newly born Sophie and a basket of plums for Keir, who only stared at her. Rightfully so—who brought plums to a young man after his mother died? Especially when they had not spoken for months.

The things he had said to her then. In this very hall, by this very bench. That there were expectations of his title, that she was too much but also not enough. Beneath him. Still a child when he had grown up.

Words calculated to enrage her, now she thought about it.

She hated this hall, this bench.

Perhaps this was a bad idea.

He still stared at her, after all. Only now it was different. It was all different.

She nearly went up in flames, spent nights tangled and sweaty in the sheets, unable to stop replaying their trysts in her head, and he just went about his day, doing whatever it was that he did when he was not courting Lady Violetta and being pelted with snow.

She should come up with another plan. Any other plan.

But as she could not, and as she was desperate, she remained where she was.

If she was lucky, he would not be at home.

As she had not been lucky for a single moment since she woke up that morning, from spilling her breakfast tea on her dress to her abduction, she was not at all surprised when his footsteps sounded down the hall. The light struggled to get between the heavy drapes, the swaths of velvet.

There was, of course, just enough light to readily display the state of her hair: falling out of its pins in tangles.

The state of her face: flushed and blotchy. Red around her neck where the sack had been tied too tightly.

The state of her dress: wet and torn and wrinkled beyond what could be reasonably explained.

The state of her in general: bedraggled.

Chevril and Keir both stared at her. She tried a cheerful smile despite suddenly feeling bone tired and as if her veins were full of coffee and champagne bubbles and cold, sharp pins.

They continued to stare as a small puddle melted under her boots.

Keir was the first to speak. “What the hell happened to you?”

It was more of a roar. A bellow. From a man best known for his quiet, stoic commands.

“Good afternoon, Lord Blackburn,” Sybil said, more primly than she had ever said anything in her entire life. “Chevril, might I trouble you for a cup of tea?”

Chevril turned on his very well-kept heel and departed in what could only be called a canter. “And call for the doctor!” Keir called after him, his eyes never leaving her.

“I don’t need a doctor,” she assured him.

He did not look assured.

He finally crossed the marble floor and crouched in front of her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “Not a bit.” All things considered. Although, truthfully, she felt several bruises blooming from her knee to her hip. She probably ought not mention those. “It was only a minor abduction.”

Keir went still. As he had not been particularly restless, the effect was chilling. His eyes glittered. The fire popped somewhere in a room behind him, a warning. “I beg your pardon?”

“Miniscule,” she insisted. She knew she should have kept her mouth shut. “Honestly, I’m not sure they knew what they were doing.”

She felt certain they knew exactly what they were doing, but as Keir looked to be on the verge of some kind of apoplectic fit, she decided a small, comfortable lie was in order.

He stood slowly. “Are you telling me someone tried to abduct you?”

“Just a little?”

“ Who? ”

She looked up at him, looming and menacing, and felt inexplicably warm. Downright cheerful.

How odd.

“Who was it, Sybil? I want a fucking name.”

“I don’t know who it was,” she said, blinking at his language. She was quite certain she had heard him curse more in the last five minutes than in the last five years. Not that they spent much time actually talking. Apparently, she had that effect on him. “They put a sack over my head.”

She had thought he was a mountain before, but now he was an avalanche, shivering on the precipice, ready to destroy entire villages, flatten anything in his way.

His jaw clenched and the tendons in his neck moved as he struggled to hold back a kind of primal storm she had not thought him capable of. And still, despite the icy fury in his eyes and the dangerous set of his mouth, he was indescribably gentle as he tugged her to her feet and brought her to the parlor, sitting her before the fire. He wrapped a blanket around her. Stared at her and added a second blanket. He had a third in his grasp when the housekeeper rolled in the tea cart.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hawkins,” Sybil said. She glanced at Keir after he growled at her when she dared put a hand outside of her blanket cocoon. “I am beginning to feel like a sausage roll baking in a skillet.”

“Just don’t move for a full minute,” he said, pouring her tea and bringing it to her even though he had a household of people hired to do just that. “A full minute where I know you are not racing horses in the snow or being grabbed off the damned street.”

“I really am fine,” she said before sipping her tea. It was too strong and too sweet. Perfect. How did he remember how she took her tea? She took a few more sips and waited until the set of his shoulders looked less like boulders ready to crack. He wasn’t just an avalanche—he was an earthquake waiting to happen.

For her.

For any woman in her situation, no doubt, but at least a little bit for her.

She remembered this feeling.

If she grinned at him now, there was no telling what he would do.

Oh, it was tempting.

She set the cup down and wriggled free of the blankets. He scowled at her. “I’m sweltering,” she protested.

“You’re seeing the doctor when he gets here.”

“I’m hot because you wrapped me up like a Christmas pudding on the boil, not because I am ill with a fever,” she pointed out. “I went for an unexpected carriage ride, a couple of men blustered and brayed like donkeys, which is an insult to donkeys now that I think about it, because donkeys are charming. And now I’m fine. I only came here to clean up a bit so my parents would not worry. And because people were starting to stare.” She froze. “Oh dear.”

“What now? You were taken to Newgate Prison? Bedlam hospital? You saw a fairy king in Berkeley Square?”

She waved that away. “Of course not. It’s only that if anyone saw me come here, it might make things awkward with Lady Violetta. Again. I didn’t think. Again.”

“I don’t care about that.”

He would, when he had a moment to think about it. “I’m so sorry. I promise I am not doing it on purpose.”

He shook his head. “ That gets more of a reaction from you than a kidnapping?” She shrugged. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Sybil, you can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever it is that gets you abducted .”

She shrugged again, even though it made the vein in his temple throb. “London is London.”

“Most ladies live their entire lives in London without so much as a head cold. Never mind stealing horses and being abducted.”

“ Barely abducted.”

“Sybil. You need a doctor. More tea. An evening of rest.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, kicking fully free of the blankets, lest he decide he could trap her inside them. “I have plans tonight.”

“Cancel them.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

“To Miss Copperwhite’s musicale?” she asked, very doubtfully.

He crossed his arms. “Yes.”

She also crossed her arms. “You weren’t invited.”

“I am a marquess.” It was confidence tipping into arrogance. But also, regrettably true. There were few doors closed to a marquess. Certainly not the drawing room doors of Miss Copperwhite’s interminably long musicale on the south side of the river.

“It’s going to be dreadfully dull.”

Keir snorted. “Not if you’re there.”

“What happened to you?” Peony asked an hour later when Sybil managed to escape Keir’s doctor and Mrs. Hawkins’s bribery of fresh muffins with butter and jam and Chevril wringing his hands with worry. When she slipped out the door wearing one of Sophie’s cloaks to hide her disarray, Keir was already waiting for her with his carriage.

He did not speak.

Not a single word when she gave him Priya’s address, not a word when he tucked the warming brick under her boots, not even a word when she reminded him that Miss Copperwhite liked to sing an aria at her musicales. She believed she sang like an angel.

She did not.

Keir had insisted on walking her to the door, pausing only for his gaze to rake over her, leaving heat and a shivery kind of awareness. “I will be back at nine o’clock to pick you up.”

“I already have an escort, thank you.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Farraway.”

He’d frowned, confused. “Mrs. Farraway.”

Mrs. Farraway was eighty-one years old and not known for her kindness.

“She needs a companion.”

“Since when are you a companion? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Oh, a great deal, I imagine.”

He’d nearly smiled. She knew the signs now. The twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way he tightened his lips as though to smile at her was dangerous. It might well be—only for her, surely not for him. He was immune to her smiles. If not her particular kind of pandemonium.

No one was immune to it, which was rather the point.

Even when it was uncomfortable to be judged and whispered about. It would happen regardless, so she may as well make use of it. They were not idle words she had spoken to Sophie about using her own reputation as a weapon that cut away instead of toward oneself.

Keir had only turned and stridden off without a backward glance.

And now she was in the Fern Parlor while the other Spinsters stared at her.

“Was that Lord Blackburn?” Priya asked from her chair, which was nowhere near a window or even the front of the house. Her ability to know things really was disconcerting.

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” Matilda said, raising her brows.

“It is the least interesting thing that happened to me today, actually.” And yet it wasn’t. And it was far more enjoyable to think about him than it was to focus on her bruises and her aching knee and shoulder.

“Well, someone pushed me onto Piccadilly Road last night,” Matilda said. “I could have been flattened. May the crows eat their eyeballs.”

Sybil tilted her head. “Really?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m fine too.”

“Why, what happened to you?”

“I was abducted not two hours ago.”

Peony sat up straighter. “Did you break all their teeth?”

“Alas, no. And that is vexing.”

“Someone dropped a heavy box from a window right above my head,” Emmeline added.

Matilda stared at her. “You never told me that!”

“You were on a rampage about Piccadilly traffic.”

“I can rampage for the both of us!”

“Yes, I know, darling.”

“Three accidents,” Priya said. “How… coincidental.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence,” Sybil reminded her.

“No, I do not.”

The women exchanged grim glances. The fury boiling beneath the surface was the kind that burned cities to ash.

“It’s clear someone has figured out at least three members of the Spinster Society.”

“And they do not like us very much,” Sybil said. “Which is quite discourteous, really. We are delightful .”

“Peony?” Priya asked. “What about you?”

“I am also delightful, but I did not go out last night.”

“And no one came here?

Peony shook her head.

“Good.”

“Kitty had something to add about the symbol. As did my abductors,” Sybil said, reaching for the tea. If her hand trembled faintly, no one mentioned it. “It was suggested to her that it is the mark of a society of gentlemen.”

“Is it indeed.” Priya’s eyes narrowed.

“And in the carriage, one of the fellows, who goes by the name of Alfie, said something about Minos.”

“Minos was the king of Knossos in ancient Crete. When his son was killed in Athens, he forced them to send seven girls and seven boys every nine years to enter the labyrinth.”

“The same labyrinth with the minotaur. The man with a bull’s head?” Emmeline asked.

“The very same. They were eaten.”

“What a lovely nom de guerre. Very subtle.”

“But is it a person or a society?” Priya asked. “Did Alfie say anything to help us there?”

“Either? Both? I can’t be sure. The suggestion is that he or they are not to be trifled with.”

Peony smiled, showing all of her teeth. “I happen to like trifle.”

“It’s not much to go on,” Sybil admitted. “But thank you, Alfie, you incompetent ass.”

“We shall find him, I can assure you of that.”

“What do we do in the meantime?” Emmeline asked.

“For one thing, we tell our wife when someone tries to crush our skull,” Matilda muttered, her Spanish accent thickening. She spoke at least seven languages but always reverted to her mother tongue when upset.

“We carry on as best we can,” Priya added. “Although it is definitely not safe anymore.” A line formed between her brows.

“It’s never been perfectly safe,” Sybil pointed out with a shrug. She had the scars to prove it. And did not regret a single one. “And if all of us miraculously survived assorted attempts, it seems likely this was just a warning, which they said as much to me. An order to stop.” She lifted her chin. “And I do not take orders.”

“And I know just where they can stuff those orders,” Peony muttered.

“That’s what I said! They were not keen on hearing my suggestion. There were two men, maybe three. No aristocratic accents, though I suppose they could have been using street cant to throw me off. Seems unlikely. More likely they were hired off the street so as not to be accidentally recognized. It was broad daylight, after all. Very risky.”

“Yes, I do not care for that either,” Priya said, gold bangles flashing as she drummed her fingers on the armrest of her chair. “Too bold by half.”

“It was a hackney carriage. I could not see inside, given as there was a sack over my head.”

“Very rude indeed,” Matilda said.

“Quite. But if someone is coming for us,” Sybil added, “then I intend to do as much damage as I can in the meantime. Especially as we appear to be effective in meddling in ‘men’s affairs’.”

“I am going to have that printed on my calling cards,” Emmeline murmured. “ Meddling in Men’s Affairs Since 1815. ”

“I think I’ll open a second house,” Priya said. Sybil could all but see the cogs and wheels turning inside her head. “Just in case. Clearly, we are no longer as secure—or as secret—as we once were. If they are coming for us one by one, then they already know too much.”

“And use this house for misdirection?” Sybil asked.

“Precisely.”

“Well, I’m staying here,” Peony declared. Everyone knew she would not leave the heated pool or her obstacle course for love or money. Or threat to life and limb, as it were.

“As are we,” Emmeline added, her fingers linking with Matilda’s. “This is our home.”

They looked at Sybil. She snorted. “What do you think? But first, I must change for the Copperwhite musicale.”

“You were already abducted today.” Matilda winced in sympathy. “Haven’t you suffered enough?”

“Sadly, no. I’m to be Mrs. Farraway’s companion.”

“Worse and worse.”

“Care to take my place?”

“I’d rather be pushed into traffic again.”