Page 4 of Seduced by a Scoundrel (The Spinster Society #3)

“S ybil Iphigenia Taunton. ”

Sybil had only been asleep for a few hours when her bedroom door flew open with the sound and fury of a tempest. Or outright warfare.

Otherwise known as her mother.

The door smashed into the wall and bounced back. Sybil opened one bleary eye to find Lady Amandine Taunton, Countess Wentworth, bending over the bed like some vengeful spirit in a ghost story. She was not amused.

Sybil blinked. “Gah.”

“Is that any way to treat your mother?”

“To be fair, you’re very fearsome,” Sybil said, somewhat ruining the effect with a yawn large enough to make her eyes water. “Good morning, Maman .”

“Don’t you good morning me, young lady.”

“I’m nearly thirty years old, Maman.” She squinted and made a noise of protest as the sunlight threw itself at her. Violently, it had to be said. “Ouch.”

In the bright morning light streaming between the curtains her mother had just unceremoniously yanked open, her bedroom looked the same as it always did, even if it felt different. Mint-green silk wallpaper patterned with roses, prints she had pulled from La Belle Assemblee as a young debutante, tassels on the cushions, an armoire painted with bluebells. It was soft, pretty. Not at all like a room that had been host to Keir Montgomery. He was too big for Queen Anne chairs, too proper for trellises and bedrooms in the middle of the night.

Except, apparently, he wasn’t.

Her bedroom at Spinster House was filled with notes on the habits and schedules of fortune hunters and known reprobates, daggers, hatpins for poking nefarious men, and baskets of knitting.

“Sybil, are you listening to me?”

“Of course I am.”

“You are a terrible child.”

“Again, nearly thirty years old, Maman. Practically decrepit.”

Her mother kissed her forehead, then pulled Sybil’s hair. “Rotten.”

“Just as you like me.”

“Exactly so.” She narrowed her eyes. “Usually. If you’re decrepit, what am I?”

“More beautiful than anyone has any right to be.”

“Hmph. Better.”

Sybil kicked free of the coverlet. Her hair, still a strange shade between brown and blonde, fell into her face. She had used a tonic made of steeped tea leaves and walnut shells to make it mousier for her last assignment, and it had worked rather too well. At least it no longer had a green tint to it. “Maman, please tell me you brought tea. And rolls.”

“You deserve celery salad.”

Her mother detested celery. Sybil winced theatrically.

“A daughter does not keep secrets from her parents.”

Sybil snorted, just as theatrically. “You climbed over a garden wall to elope with Father. And that was after you hid in a trunk to cross the Channel.”

“That’s different.” As it happened, Amandine had brought in a tea tray but was busy drinking all of the tea. Probably out of spite. Sybil adored her mother. “Lady Cartwright cannot know that my own daughter is being courted by the Marquess Blackburn before I do .”

Oops. Sybil ought to have seen this coming. Lady Cartwright was her mother’s nemesis. They smiled at each other at the dressmaker’s, complimented each other at the Royal Art Exhibit, and spent every single moment in between plotting to outdo the other. It was exhausting for everyone but them. The Prince of Wales had less elaborate parties. In fact, he had once been forced to intervene.

“The marquess is not courting me,” Sybil admitted.

Her mother went from annoyed to deeply affronted in a single moment. “And why the hell not?”

Sybil grinned. “English countesses don’t say hell.”

“ Merde. ”

“That either, I am sure. My governess was quite clear on the matter, though we all knew I would never be a countess.” It would have been more useful if she had been allowed to practice her tree climbing or knot tying.

Amandine drew herself up, and though she barely reached most people’s shoulder, she was no less terrifying for it. “Did he say that?”

“Who?”

“Blackburn. Did he imply you were not good enough for him?”

“Of course not.”

Except that he had. A long time ago.

Sybil was the daughter of a sailor who did the best he could until the sea took him, and a mother who succumbed to a fever. When her nan also died, the rookeries had kept her alive until Amandine spotted her from her carriage window that cold winter’s day. “Regardless, Maman, all of Mayfair says it regularly.”

“ Salots. ” When Amandine reverted to her mother tongue, it was never a good sign. There were men in the highest ranks of the royal court who ran for cover at the thought. Amandine had survived the very real threat of the guillotine before being smuggled to England. Nothing scared her. “I thought they had stopped being so… English. ”

“Only around you.” Sybil hugged her fondly and used the opportunity to steal a raisin bun from the tray behind her. “It hardly signifies.”

“Hmph.”

“Truly, Maman. It’s of no consequence.” She had come to terms with it within the first month of being in this house, even if her parents flatly refused to, even now. Her mother would fight the devil himself. Her father just got that slightly bemused and sad look on his face when anyone dared disrespect her in his hearing. Then he promptly went behind their back, if it was a gentleman, and voted against their bills in Parliament and paid off their mistresses very handsomely to break with them somewhere public. Her mother began rumors about the pox and unsatisfying bed-sport skills.

She really did adore them both.

“It’s all a misunderstanding,” Sybil added. “I will clear it up tonight at the ball.”

“Your father still will not let me host a party for him, not even for his birthday.” Amandine was very close to pouting. “He turns sixty next year, and just see if he can stop me them. Not to mention that Lady Cartwright had those acrobats last week at her dinner. Not a single one of them fell on their heads or scattered spangles in the pudding.”

“Most disobliging.”

“I thought so.” She narrowed one eye. “Are you quite certain he is not courting you? I should dearly love to plan a betrothal ball. We could release swans.”

“Quite sure.” The idea Keir considered courting someone like her was… well, laughable. “He is courting Lady Violetta. Unofficially, I think, but still.” Enough that he had been concerned for her feelings and reputation straightaway. Which was very honorable. Proper.

Sybil’s insistence on doing things that regularly threatened her reputation would make him cry daily.

“And swans are vicious to anyone but you, Maman.”

Amandine sighed. “Pity. I like the Marquess.”

“You like his muscular shoulders.”

“ Certainement. Have I taught you nothing, ma puce ?”

Sybil’s father, Charles Taunton, Lord Wentworth, was a kind, intelligent, and extremely distracted gentleman. And currently distracted enough by the new music sheets in his hand to blink at Sybil as though he did not recognize her. One more blink and his smile beamed from his handsome, dignified face. “Sybil! Did I know you were home, ferret?”

She kissed his cheek. “As you demanded it for your birthday, yes, you did.”

“I’m sure I do not demand .” He winked at her over his coffee cup. “Your mother is trying to get me to eat cake for breakfast.”

“My mother is going to make you parade around in a frock coat spangled with beetle wings next year while an opera singer serenades you and the Prince of Wales drinks all of our champagne.”

“She wouldn’t.” He looked briefly queasy.

“She has already started collecting the beetles. And last year, she tried to hire a trained bear for my birthday, remember?”

“That sounds…”

“Inevitable. Lady Cartwright had acrobats at her dinner. And an alligator during the summer.”

He snorted. “That was no alligator.”

“It was the family dog wearing a costume,” Amandine announced, marching into the breakfast room. “He chased a sausage and urinated on the vicar.” She smiled sharply. “I am quite certain I can beat that . Hardly a challenge.”

As the French Revolution had not daunted Amandine, Lady Cartwright and her gold-threaded wigs and incontinent family dog were unlikely to manage that particular feat. Sybil’s father had once told her that when her mother got bored, she got sad. And as he could not abide his wife’s unhappiness, he was perfectly content to fuel and finance all manner of feuds and falderal. It was rather sweet, really. Even if she did have to climb through holly while wearing wire wings made of real swan feathers once. They had weighed far more than one might imagine. And they did not smell nice. Sybil shuddered.

“You’re thinking about the Christmas pantomime,” her father said.

Amandine rolled her eyes. “Oh, you two. So dramatic.”

“ You are not the one who got trapped in a tree,” Sybil pointed out. Covered in blood from the pinpricks of the holly bushes around the roots.

“You were fine. You loved climbing trees.”

She did. She had at ten years old, and she still did even now. Only now she did not have to wear wings and a crown of lit candles while being poked by holly leaves.

“We almost set the church on fire.” Sybil grinned.

Amandine shrugged and smiled back. “English churches ought to be made of sterner stuff, then. We barely singed the stones. It’s hardly my fault they let trees grow so wild next to the building.”

The earl had to replace two windows and buy new pews and gold candlesticks for the altar as an apology. His wife and daughter had made no apologies, as they were too busy chortling with laughter, tears running down their chins. Lord Wentworth had only smiled fondly and asked to see the rectory pianoforte. Sybil’s angel wings were unsalvageable. Thankfully.

They still talked about that Christmas pantomime some sixteen years later.

Amandine accepted a plate of eggs and herbed potatoes with Brie wedges from a footman. “Thank you, Jean-Paul.” Amandine did not care for the social rules that frowned upon thanking the household staff. And she despised English cheddar and would only eat Brie or Camembert brought from France. She maintained that even though her homeland tried to murder her, they still made the best cheese. And the best servants, even if most of them had lived very different lives in Paris. Cook, once known as Madame de Beauchamp, had danced at Versailles.

They were halfway through the meal when a knock sounded at the door. “Oh, never mind that, Papillon,” a cheerful voice floated down the hall. “I know the way.”

Papillon, seventy years old if he was a day, almost managed to outrun the young lady who burst into the breakfast room. He had been the one to help Sybil’s mother run from the guillotine, but there were few who could outrun Lady Sophie Montgomery, sister to the Marquess Blackburn.

“Sophie!” Sybil hugged the younger girl. She refused to be either relieved or disappointed to see that her brother had not accompanied her. Not a surprise, as he never would have allowed her to gallop through the house in such a manner. “I did not know you were in Town.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “My brother wants to keep an eye on me.”

Sybil grinned. “What did you do?”

“Hardly anything at all.”

“Sit down and have some cake, Sophie,” Amandine said. “I miss hearing about a good escapade. This one hardly ever makes the dowagers cry anymore.” She made a face at Sybil.

Sybil had spent a week chained in a cellar. And was regularly on the run from spoiled and powerful firstborn sons, but she had learned to keep it from her parents. Her mother might enjoy a good story, but she worried when no one was around to stop Sybil. And her father would not be thrilled to know she had stolen from his club.

“She does not deserve cake,” Keir said from the doorway. His tone was very hard, very sharp. But when he smiled at his sister, there was only fondness. Despite the crease of worry between his eyes. “Lady Wentworth, Lord Wentworth. Miss Taunton. You look… warm.”

The last time she had seen him, she had a red nose and was shivering so much her teeth clacked. She absolutely would not call up the feeling of sitting on his thighs while the fire crackled.

Or wonder if he was remembering it too.

She met his eyes and felt the force of it sizzle down her spine.

“Everyone deserves cake on my birthday,” her father said.

“Jean-Paul, bring the Marquess some coffee, s’il-vous-plait .”

“ Oui, madame. ”

Sybil found herself with the ridiculous urge to fidget when Keir sat across from her, taking up all of the space. All of the attention. All of the air. This was not how they occupied each others’ lives. There were strict rules, however unspoken.

“How did you find me?” Sophie pouted. “I was gone barely three minutes.”

“You always storm the Wentworth house when you’ve been sent down in disgrace,” Keir said mildly.

“I was not.”

“You put porridge in the headmistress’s shoes. You were kicked out of the best finishing school in England.”

“She deserved it,” Sophie maintained with a sniff. “She called me a slattern.”

Keir narrowed his eyes. “Pardon?” His voice could have frozen the Thames at midsummer.

“Oh, she did deserve it,” Sybil said, just as cross. “Next time, use honey.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” Sophie said.

Keir pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t. I will deal with the headmistress.”

“Anyway, I only came to wish Lord Wentworth a happy birthday. It’s only polite.”

“You came because you knew there would be cake.”

“ Your cook won’t make sweets,” she said.

That sounded dire. A cook who would not make sweets was grounds for a riot, in Sybil’s opinion.

And in her mother’s, if the flash in her eyes was anything to judge. “Whyever not?”

“Cook says I’m getting fat.”

“Cook is fired,” Sybil muttered.

Oblivious, Keir continued, “And you came without a chaperone.”

Sophie rolled her eyes so empathically this time that they were in very great danger of falling out of her head and rolling across the embroidered tablecloth. “I don’t need a chaperone to walk next door.”

“In very great point of fact, you do. This is London,” he pointed out before drinking from his cup as though it was not dwarfed entirely in his massive hand. “And you are you.”

“Rude.” She forked up an enormously large mouthful of cake in defiance.

“You are, yes.”

“Keir!”

“Oh, I do miss this.” Amandine smiled wistfully.

“Sybil can be my chaperone,” Sophie declared. “She’s… old. No offense.”

“Decrepit,” Sybil’s mother agreed, smiling into her coffee.

Sybil was not sure who appeared more horrified at the suggestion: herself or Keir.

Keir.

Definitely Keir.

“Your brother thinks I am a bad influence.” He was probably even now panicking over the idea of her teaching his sisters to swoon and steal and climb trellises. She ought to do it anyway. A girl needed hobbies. Not to mention, certain skills to survive.

And funny how he was perfectly able to make facial expressions when Sybil was around. Even if they only ranged from exasperated to horrified. The stoic Marquess no more.

“That’s because you are a bad influence,” Sophie returned cheerfully.

“Traitor. You should be nice to me. Who else do you think will sneak you out to meet your many beaux?” Whom she would research most thoroughly first. Girls of sixteen fell in love. And love was not logical.

The look Keir sent her way was thunderous. Stern. Very strict. Demanding of respect.

It had the opposite effect on Sybil. She very much wanted to break all of his rules just for the fun of it.

But not today. Not at her father’s table. And not when she already owed Keir an apology for possibly ruining his courtship of Lady Violetta. At the very least, complicating it. Even thinking about it made the back of her throat ache.

“Now you’ve done it,” Sophie muttered. “When he glowers like that, it’s never good.”

Sybil smiled, even if there was something about the clench of Keir’s jaw that made her sad.

Just a little.

He was not actually made of stone, despite the width of his shoulders and the demands made upon him by his father. And Society. She wondered, for the first time, if he even knew that.

Another knock sounded at the front door.

“So many visitors today,” Amandine said, smugly pleased. “And before noon! Your birthday is always such an occasion. I do wish you’d let me order fireworks.”

“You already did so regardless of the fact that I said no.” Charles smiled at his wife.

“True.”

Papillon led Lord Bentley through the doorway. He was very tall, his shirt points starched into tiny knives aimed at his eyeballs. Sybil did not understand fashion sometimes. Keir’s shirt points were always so normal, his cravat simple and elegant.

“Wentworth, regards of the day.”

“Thank you, Bentley.”

“I’m afraid I’ve come with some bad news from the club.” Bentley was already turning red with affront. “Which your daughter purportedly entered last night.”

All eyes turned to Sybil. She smiled. She had learned to smile at anything. Everything.

“Did she, now?” Charles asked, unperturbed. “That’s hardly bad news.”

“It was raining quite dismally, Papa,” she explained. She could not look at Keir.

“I am quite sure no one would begrudge you shelter,” Amandine said, thorns poking through the roses. “Isn’t that so?”

“Of course, my dear. Bentley,” Charles added, “I know you recognize my wife.”

“Apologies. Lady Wentworth, you look lovely as always.”

“ Merci ,” Amandine replied, twinkling. She always twinkled and spoke French to the aristocrats who disdained her home country. “Have we been introduced?”

She also pretended not to remember them.

It infuriated them.

And if they insulted her daughter, she eviscerated them.

“Lord Bentley.” He bowed stiffly, introducing himself needlessly. Sybil bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. He frowned at her. “Did you take anything last night?”

She widened her eyes. “Pardon me?” She had been accused of stealing more times than she could count. Whenever anything went missing, the ton whispered about ill breeding. Every tea party until she was eleven years old and refused to attend involved hiding the silverware from her, all while gently born aristocratic girls got away with everything by blaming her.

Sybil did not bother pointing out that she only stole from them after they accused her. For justice. Vengeance. A lark.

If she did not take them seriously, they could not hurt her.

“Yes, Bentley,” her father said. “What exactly are you accusing my daughter of?” He sounded bemused, confused. Also furious, if you knew how to read the way he drummed his thumb on the table, waiting for a response.

“Fortingham’s betting book is missing,” Lord Bentley announced in resounding tones best suited for the stage.

“Is that all?” Amandine waved her hand, dismissing the subject entirely. “How… dull.”

Lord Bentley drew himself up. “The gentlemen in that book would consider it a breach of honor, Lady Wentworth.”

“Then those gentlemen clearly need to find themselves a hobby. Something soothing, like flower arranging.”

Lord Bentley was as visibly confused as Sybil’s father, and as furious, but for obviously different reasons. Her parents had that effect on people when they joined forces, which was often. “The only other shocking event of the night was Miss Taunton crossing the threshold of a gentlemen’s club. Badly done.”

“Do not reprimand my daughter,” Charles said, suddenly looking a lot less distracted.

Keir did not say a single word, but he rose slowly to his feet. Lord Bentley glanced up at him. Up and up and up.

Sybil fluttered her eyelashes. She felt like an absolute idiot, but it always worked on men such as Lord Bentley. “What is a betting book, exactly?”

Keir glanced at her. Just once. She fluttered her eyelashes harder, at him this time.

He raised an eyebrow.

“A betting book… is a ledger. It’s no concern for a lady,” Bentley said.

“What does it look like?”

“Why does that matter?”

“How can one help you find it if one does not know what to look for? There are hundreds of books in London. Thousands. It must be very vexing to have misplaced it.”

“It was not misplaced.”

“Well, as I am a woman and it is not my concern, as you say, then I am sure I cannot help you.” She kept her smile in place. “Regrettably.”

“This is a serious matter, Wentworth,” Bentley insisted. “Homes will be searched.”

Interesting. Sybil filed that away for a later discussion with Priya. As well as Bentley’s agitation, though she put that down to privilege and entitlement. “You are welcome to search my chambers,” she offered.

“The hell he is,” Keir snapped, before anyone else could reply. Amandine smiled at him slowly. “Bentley, you’re leaving,” he added. “Now.”

“Blackburn, it’s your club too.”

“And I could not care less about the betting book.”

“You were there! You carried her out!”

“I swooned, was all,” Sybil explained. “It was very womanly of me. So feminine, wouldn’t you say? Lord Blackburn was very courteous.”

Keir’s expression hardened, sharpened. Phantom swords and claymores clashed. A cannonball whistled through the air. “Be very careful, Bentley.”

Lord Bentley swallowed.

“Yes, you do seem overwrought,” Amandine said. “Men can be so emotional.”

Lord Bentley was not just emotional—he was utterly flummoxed. He glanced from Charles’s shocked and sad expression—which he did not yet know meant that his next session in Parliament would be contentious—to Amandine, who looked like the cat who had caught the hapless mouse who thought he had free run of the larder. Keir was a tower of quiet menace. Sybil sat as demure as a debutante.

“I’ll walk you out, Bentley,” Keir said. It was not a suggestion. “Come along, Sophie,” he added.

Sophie stood up, eyes round. Breakfast was probably seldom so exciting at school, porridge in the shoes notwithstanding. “See you soon, Sybil.”

Keir did not look pleased. He did not look anything at all, in fact. His face was stone again.

“Of course,” Sybil said, lifting her chin, feeling too many things and unable to name a single one. “Call anytime, Sophie.”

Her mother turned to Sybil and smiled her mysterious smile, the one her father called her French smile . The smug one that strongly suggested she knew more than you and always would.

“The courtship was just a misunderstanding, you say?”