Page 17 of Seduced by a Scoundrel (The Spinster Society #3)

I t was one thing to be told he could not marry Sybil when he was younger, to even say it himself, numerous times, for very different reasons.

It was quite another thing to hear Sybil say it. So plainly, so stoutly.

He did not care for it.

That was an understatement. It made him want to bare his teeth at the world. It was his own fault, and his father’s. She was only saying the exact words he had said to her by her bedroom fire after Fortingham’s. Like an idiot.

Because he thought he must, not because he wanted to.

Because he had been a coward, afraid of a dead man.

But seeing her in danger, twice in one day, was more than he could handle. And exactly enough to crack the rusty armor his father had forced upon him. It was his fault for letting it remain as long as it had. For choosing anything or anyone but Sybil.

There was no doubt that he had kept her safe from his father by pulling away. But that was years ago, when he was too young to know any other ways to fight. Before he was seasoned. What was his excuse now?

He had not stopped hearing his heartbeat in his ears since she had stumbled into his house talking of abduction. It muffled the litany of his father’s voice in his head.

But the sound of that rock crashing through glass silenced it.

Utterly.

He had battled it for so long, and now it was strangled, choked. Murdered, as it ought to have been so long ago. He had his own cellars to burn. He should have started there.

He couldn’t change the past. But he would damn well do everything in his power to change the future.

Sybil sat up, the sheet slipping off her shoulder. She was magnificent, soft and ample, heavy breasts and wide hips and wider grin. He was never going to get his fill of her. He had known that since she first called to him through the crack in the garden wall.

“Why do you look like that?” she demanded. “I just told you I would not marry you. You ought to look relieved. Not stubborn. And pompous,” she muttered.

“I do not recall proposing.” He would, of course. Would have at that very moment if he thought she would say yes. But first he had to convince her that he could be trusted. That he was strong enough. Truly honorable, not just the pap that they spouted to make themselves feel bigger. Sybil was right about that.

“Oh. Well, that’s true. But I know you.”

She did know him. And he knew her just as well, no matter the time or distance that had lapsed between them.

How had he survived it?

He knew enough, at least, not to push. She would expect him to put his honor above all else, her reputation. Society.

Hang Society and the honor of his family name.

It felt so good to think it, just once, finally , that he nearly laughed.

She stared at his grin, which he knew must make him look cracked. “Keir?”

“And just think of the trouble you could cause as a marchioness. Burn Mayfair to the ground, love. I don’t care. I’ll carry the matches for you. No?” But he could see that she was tempted. He would take it. “How about an agreement, then?” he asked. “I promise that when I propose to you, it will have nothing to do with reputations and all that rot .”

Her eyes were narrowed, suspicious. Beautiful. “ When? Not if?”

“When,” he confirmed, very firmly. “Or you can propose to me, if you like. And I’ll tell you a secret. I will say yes.” Had he ever felt lighter than right now?

“You are vexing.”

He was still grinning. “I can see that I am still the romantic one between the two of us.”

She snorted.

He fell in love all over again.

He would have said so, plans and strategies be damned, but her stomach growled. She pressed a hand above her belly button. He frowned. “You’re hungry.”

“A bit.”

He was already off the bed, pulling on his breeches. He tossed over her dressing gown, which was draped on a chair. She was appallingly messy. It should have annoyed him to no end. Instead, he found it endearing.

He pulled her to her feet when she was not moving as quickly as he liked.

“Keir, I’m hungry, I’m not in danger of expiring.”

“Not while I’m around,” he agreed. “Are you getting up or am I carrying you to the kitchens?”

She huffed out a startled laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m hardly a waif to be plucked up off the ground.”

“Carried it is.”

It was one thing to carry her a few paces outside of a gentlemen’s club and another to carry her throughout the house and down two flights of stairs.

“You can’t be serious,” she said, even though she was thoroughly enjoying it. “Put me down.”

“Certainly not.”

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

He only raised his eyebrow in that imperious way of his. She shook her head, before resting it on his sturdy shoulder. His arms flexed around her. She dragged her fingernails through the soft pelt of hair on his bare chest just because she wanted to. Because she could. She nearly purred.

“Keep that up and I’ll stop right here and take you in this hall. We’ll utterly scandalize that portrait of Joan of Arc.”

“Believe me, she’s already scandalized.” Sybil nuzzled his throat, then bit his earlobe. His breath went harsh. “I dare you.”

“You are incorrigible.”

“Utterly.” And this was the easy part of what lay between them. The attraction, the need. The fire. That , she understood.

Keir turned his head and kissed her, hard, quick. Possessive. “But you’re still hungry, so you’ll be fed first.”

He ducked under the doorjamb into the kitchen, as if he did this sort of thing all of the time. Maybe he did. Perhaps he had spent all the years they were not on speaking terms carrying women around his house in his giant arms as though they were goose down.

But she didn’t think so.

Something had happened in that complicated brain of his when she told him she would not marry him. Some puzzle had been solved.

Marriage was not the answer, of course. He would realize that in the cold light of the morning. She was still a foundling. A spinster. Still referred to as That Girl , with a shake of the head, even though she was not a girl and had not been one for some time. Some of that was the persona of her own making. Some of it was not.

But for now, she was the woman who knew that he growled deep in his chest and shuddered when she took him in her mouth.

Again, it was enough.

She did not know whom she was arguing with, because the insufferable mountain of a man was not discussing any of it. He was clearly on a mission. He set her down on the long table near the grate, where the fire had fallen to coals, and urged them back to flames. She memorized the way he crouched, the play of muscles under his skin. The material of his breeches tight over his thighs. The light gilding his strong jaw. She wanted to live in this perfect, quiet moment.

The kitchen was not fussy or large, but it was clean and comfortable. There was a rocking chair by the grate, shelves of jars containing staples like flour and salt and boxes of spices, jelly molds, butter stamps, and copper pans hanging on the walls. There was a cat, Parsnip, who eyed them disdainfully for interrupting her rest and stalked away down the hall to the housekeeper’s private parlor. It was chilly, but not unbearable. It smelled of smoke and sugar.

“There’s cake in the blue tin just there,” Sybil pointed out, since she had tried to reach it herself but Keir had immediately turned his head to growl at her.

She still hopped down from the table to fetch the wheel of cheese and the last of the previous day’s bread, wrapped in a cloth. Mostly because the stern, disapproving look he sent her never failed to make her tingle.

When the water in the kettle boiled, he wrapped the handle and carried it to the teapot, pouring it over the leaves Sybil had already put inside. She brought out the honey and two clay mugs, not at all the fancy bone china the Marquess Blackburn was used to drinking from. “Finally,” he approved. “Something I won’t be terrified of snapping in two.”

“You know, you are frightfully wealthy. You can replace all the cups in your house. Your father had atrocious taste.”

“He really did.”

“That ornate clock with the gold and the sapphires?” She shuddered.

“He wanted to have it buried with him.”

“You should have obliged him.” She did not speak false words of sympathy. She was more sorry that Keir had that man as a father than she was that he was gone. “Apples or plums?” she asked instead.

“Plums,” he said. The fire outlined him in gold. “Always. They are still my favorite.”

“They are?”

“Ever since you gave me that basket of plums.”

Sybil tilted her head. “That doesn’t sound like the boy who told me I would never truly understand the demands of a title and that you needed to consider your future.”

Keir winced. The rough suggestion of a beard shadowed his jaw, his cheeks. He had not been that boy for a very long time. “I’ve never said how sorry I was.”

“You haven’t,” she agreed, and although she was much more interested in nibbling her way across his chest, she supposed this was more important.

“I am sorry. So very sorry.”

She nodded. “I would rather know what happened. I thought it was grief over your mother, but you never came back, not even months later.” She had missed him so much that she had scaled the garden wall more than once, only to stare at the candlelight in his bedroom window and then climb back down into her own garden. And after a while there was not even any candlelight to stare at. “Was it just that you were a lad off to Eton and Oxford and never thought of me again?”

When he looked at her, his eyes were tempest green. “I thought of you every single day.”

“That doesn’t make sense. It never did and it still doesn’t. We were… friends, if nothing else.”

“My father did not approve.”

She sat back. “Oh.” That was not a surprise. She had already known that. There were very few people who truly approved of her back then. Or now.

“He threatened you,” Keir explained, voice harsh.

She frowned. “He did?”

“I didn’t know how else to protect you. So I went away. I pretended I had outgrown our friendship. He was listening that day at the front door.” He rubbed his jaw. “I was an idiot. A cowardly idiot.”

“You were sixteen years old,” Sybil pointed out. Oh, how she wished, for the first time, that his father was still alive that he might know the justice of the Spinster Society. She was angry, a little disappointed. Saddened for the boy she knew. But also relieved. Finally, an explanation. An answer. “Your father was, and I am not at all sorry to speak ill of the dead, a monster.” She remembered every bruise that man had put on Keir growing up.

“Still. I should have fought harder.”

“Keir, he nearly killed you more than once as it was. Grown men, earls and viscounts among them, were terrified of your father. Never mind a lad thoroughly under his power.”

“We could have run away.”

“He would have found us,” she said. “An heir to a marquessdom does not just get to disappear. Even without that beast for a father.”

“I just couldn’t let him hurt you,” he said quietly. “He said I was getting too attached. He had a footman watch you for a week, just to prove he could.”

She shuddered. “The man really was an ass.”

Keir choked on a half laugh. “You were always the only one brave enough to say so. I think he knew it, too.”

“I wish you had said something. At least later. When you could.” She supposed the man had only been dead a few months now. Sophie ought to be in her mourning blacks. It was telling that she was not and that Keir had not pushed the matter.

“My father’s reach was long. Too long.”

“Did you really eat those plums? I felt a proper idiot for bringing you fruit.”

“It was the only food I could stomach for two days. We had to find a wet nurse after my mother died, and my father was not… quick about it. If Sophie had been a son, there would have been one already waiting, just in case.” He stared at the flames. “I didn’t know the first thing about finding one. Mrs. Hawkins had to intercede. We were afraid Sophie might not make it.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“As soon as she was old enough, I made sure she was sent away to school. No governess, despite the fact that it’s the thing. Anything to get her out of that house.” When his hand curled into a fist on the table, Sybil rubbed his knuckles. He glanced down as if surprised. “This is not a night for such a conversation.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’d rather remind you that there are two more hours until dawn and I intend to make use of every single minute.”