Page 23 of Seduced by a Scoundrel (The Spinster Society #3)

I t took too long for Sybil to understand what she was seeing.

The darkness pulsated with red shadows, glowing menacingly. Tongues of flame licked out of a broken window of the upstairs parlor. Smoke billowed, burning the air and acrid in every breath.

Fear pulsed through her. Fire could eat the house in moments, moving to Priya’s house next door and to the other neighbor, and so on and so on.

She scrambled from the carriage, and when Keir reached for her hand she had the fleeting worry that he would try to stop her. Instead, he squeezed her fingers once and then unwound her cravat, rubbed it with snow to dampen it, and wrapped it around the lower half of her face. “Against the smoke,” he said gruffly, untying his own cravat and doing the same with it for Peony, who had left her new and precious rifle in the safety of the carriage.

Pierce was running from the main parlor, ashes in his hair, when they burst inside. “Everyone’s out,” he said. “Two fires upstairs, two down here. Fire brigade will take too long to get to us. I hope you didn’t go into that apartment without us.”

“Of course I did. Where’s Priya?” Sybil asked, coughing. The sound of the fire racing up the curtains, snapping and crackling, made her heart race.

“Finding more buckets. We’re using water from the swimming chamber.”

Peony pivoted toward the swimming chamber without another word. Footmen stampeded after her holding buckets, flower pots, a carafe emptied of whisky. The servants had formed a line, passing the water hand to hand. There were enough footmen to deal with the upstairs fires, fewer left for the parlor and the ballroom. By the time Sybil joined them, Keir was outside, shoveling snow into the flames as fast as he could.

She did not know how much time passed, only that it was filled with shouting and fire hissing and muscles cramping and cold wind sneaking in to menace them as they worked. Priya returned with a wheelbarrow of plant pots for water from the greenhouse. The domestic fire engine was filled again and again, the leather hose filling with water. More buckets. More filling of the engine. The flames were rapacious.

A single fire was bad enough, but several started at once was brutal in its efficiency.

And could not be accidental.

The Minos Society had already murdered one of their own tonight. Burning down Spinster House with the hope that they were trapped inside was not below them.

But finally, finally, there was only smoke clogging the halls and the charred remains of curtains and furniture in heaps on the wet floor, and the panting and gasping of everyone trying to catch their breath.

“I think that’s done it,” Pierce said, wiping his face with a damp cloth.

Keir strode in from the back of the house. His shirt was streaked with soot and torn in one sleeve, angry, burned flesh showing. “Nothing left out back. Not even a spark.” His eyes roamed over Sybil as he spoke, making sure she was unharmed. She lowered the cravat around her face and smiled wearily at him, already hoping the medicine baskets scattered all around had not been destroyed.

There were several burns to minister to and rough, hacking coughs to soothe with tea and honey, which the cook sent up from the kitchen. But there were no broken limbs, no loss of life. The house had suffered considerable damage, but it could have been so much worse.

In the heart of a fashionable Mayfair apartment, a dead man was still lying in his own blood.

“This was a coordinated attack,” Pierce said darkly. “If we had any fewer footmen or guards about the place, we might not have gotten off so well.”

“How did they get in?” Sybil asked.

“They didn’t. They threw a flaming bottle filled with lamp oil,” he said. “The right bastards.”

Peter came down the stairs, hair wet and clumped with ashes. “Servants’ quarters are untouched.”

“That’s something,” Priya said. “Thank you, Peter.”

“The other bedrooms suffered damage. Yours most of all, Miss Taunton, I’m afraid.”

Sybil sighed. She would be upset about her room later. Right now, she was so raw that she nearly felt numb with it. Keir poured brandy into her teacup.

“The Minos Society has truly declared war, then,” Priya said quietly. “No more warnings.”

“You have no idea,” Sybil said. “But you’ll be happy to know that Keir shot one of them in the foot.” Just for speaking her name. Had that really only been a few hours ago?

Priya smiled grimly through her exhaustion. “I knew I liked you, Blackburn. And a lord with a bullet in his foot will be easy to find.”

“I’ll go now,” Pierce said.

Sybil told them what she had seen and heard at the meeting, which was, unfortunately, not enough. But she had a list of names. Of women who could be warned.

“Those men did have one thing in common that I could tell,” she added.

“Their days are numbered?” Keir put in darkly.

“There was much talk of debt. And heiresses and dowries. They want us out of the way by the time the Season starts so we do not interfere.” She waved the list.

Keir frowned. “Where are you going with this?”

“I have an idea.”

He stilled. “No.”

“I haven’t told you what it is yet,” she protested.

“And yet every hair on the back of my neck still lifted in alarm.”

“What do you have in mind?” Priya asked.

“They want us all so badly? Let us bait a trap.”

“And you’re the bait?”

“Yes.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” Keir asked. He was beginning to look a little wild around the eyes.

When she told him, he went pale. Pale enough that she wondered if they had smelling salts in one of the baskets with the knives. Assuming those baskets had not burned, of course. “No,” he said, the calm of his voice at odds with the tension across those massive shoulders, the clenching of his jaw. “It’s not safe.”

Sybil met his gaze.

She didn’t need her house burning down around her to know that he would always be home for her.

“If you’re that concerned for the safety of my plan, I suppose you ought to marry me,” she said.

He turned slowly, his green eyes glittering, pinning her. “Everyone else heard that, right?”

The others, exhausted, covered in scratches and soot and bruises, grinned.

Keir gripped Sybil’s hand and pulled her abruptly to her feet. “Let’s go.”