Page 6 of Seduced by a Scoundrel (The Spinster Society #3)

J ust because she was a spinster long on the shelf and about to embarrass herself at the Willoughby ball did not mean that Sybil had to look the part. So if she washed her hair three more times than was necessary to scrub away the last of the tea-stain hue, that was perfectly within her rights.

And if she wondered if Keir would notice, it was no one else’s business.

Also, utterly ridiculous.

Because it was not her business either.

He was not her business.

He was not the boy who had met her at the gap in the garden wall to share sweets and secrets and a laugh, that surprised, rusty laugh of his, which only too seldom made an appearance. He was not the boy who had broken another boy’s nose for calling Sybil a guttersnipe. Or the boy who had taught her a secret language using the light of a lantern, such as smugglers were said to use in Cornwall.

He was not a boy at all, of course. He was a man grown, more solemn and serious with each and every day.

Except for those brief moments that took them both over. A collision, a conflagration. It made her miss him all the more. Made her crave him with every fiber of her being. The girl from the gutter and the marquess.

It did not matter. The girl from the gutter was a little busy at present.

She did not have time to replay the way he had groaned into her neck, the play of the blue light from the fireworks on his cheekbones. The way her body came alive for him, each and every time.

Willoughby House was lit from top window to kitchen cellar, golden light spilling over the bare rosebushes, the slender trees shining like swords in the cold mist. The heavy London fog settled low, thick and smoky, as coal fires were lit against the unseasonable chill. The wheels of carriages echoed behind her as Sybil made her way between the lit torches.

She stepped inside and handed her cloak to a footman but ducked down the hall, away from the ballroom and the master of ceremonies waiting to announce the guests. The house simply sparkled: the polished marble floors under her dancing slippers (her toes were already cold), the crystal beads of the chandeliers overhead, the ornate gilt frames showing off paintings of generations of family spaniels. And one cow roughly the size of a barn. Hothouse lilies stood sentry, perfuming the air so thickly that she coughed a little as she made her way to the ladies’ retiring room.

It was too early in the evening for the ladies to crowd inside for a rest between dancing sets, or to fix a dropped hem. Sybil ducked behind the painted screens used to give some privacy to the row of chamber pots. There were baskets of cloths, perfume, a washstand with jasmine-scented soap.

Sybil unrolled the notices she had tucked inside her reticule. This was not her usual work for the society, but as she was here anyway, she may as well make herself useful. Her friend Clara used to do this before she married a retired captain and moved to the seaside. They had many secret members, who would never be associated with the society and therefore could work covertly for these sorts of things.

Sybil was not such a member.

At least not in London. Not in Mayfair. Not anymore.

She pinned the papers to the fabric at the back of the folding screen: the names of men who ought to be avoided for a woman’s own safety, and proof of their transgressions. Fortune hunters who pretended they were well-to-do. Widowers whose wives had died under mysterious circumstances. How to procure certain teas and tinctures. Midwives who did not judge or ask too many questions. A hastily scrawled drawing of how to use a hatpin to do as much damage with as little force as necessary.

More information than the Bow Street Runners could gather. Sybil felt more than a bit smug about that, actually.

She was still smirking when she slipped into the ballroom.

And nearly collided with Lady Pontefract.

And her daughter.

Sybil was going to have to eat crow with a serving of humble pie for dessert.

Lovely.

“You!” Lady Pontefract all but screeched. Her brown ringlets bobbed with outrage. Guests glanced in their direction, eager for more gossip.

Sybil kept her smile in place. “Lady Pontefract, I understand that you are upset.”

“ Upset? ”

“Maman, please,” Lady Violetta said. She was tall and slender and beautiful. Her smile was genuine, soft. A little bit desperate. She did not appear to care for the attention.

“I assure you this is all a misunderstanding,” Sybil continued soothingly. “Which I will make clear with all alacrity, I promise you. In the meantime, it can only help that we are seen to be friendly and unaffected, don’t you think?”

Lady Pontefract paused.

“It will prove the rumors false better than anything I could ever say or do, and your daughter will come away with everyone noting her graciousness and dignity.” And Sybil’s indignity, but it would not be the first time. She enjoyed her escapades and did not regret them, but it would be foolish to pretend there was not a price to pay every time.

Lady Pontefract released her breath, gathered for another screech. Her expression turned abruptly mild and bland. It was slightly terrifying. She might have made a good Spinster. “I take your point, Miss Taunton.”

“Thank you, Maman,” her daughter murmured.

“And how do you intend to rectify this situation?” Lady Pontefract snapped from behind her fan. It dripped with pink and pearl tassels. If she grew any more agitated with the fluttering of it, her eyes would be in very great danger.

Before Sybil could reply, Keir appeared behind her.

She knew he was there before he said a word. The attention of the other guests was a honed arrow, nocked at the bowstring and aimed directly at them. No escaping.

Keir Montgomery did not blend into the wallpaper at the best of times. He was too large, too rugged, even with the fine cut of his coat, the engraved gold buttons. The hewn line of his jaw, the patient, piercing green of his eyes.

It would have been so much easier if he stank of herring and old cheese.

He smelled like rain and wood smoke.

Unforgivable.

The absolute blighter.

“Lady Pontefract.” He bowed politely. His expression warmed. “Lady Violetta.” And then turned inscrutable. “Miss Taunton.”

“Lord Blackburn,” Sybil murmured to him when no other chatter was forthcoming. The gossips would be in their glory if the four of them stood about awkwardly staring at each other in silence. Not to mention that Lady Pontefract was about to explode, which would not do anyone any favors. “You should dance.”

“Oh, should I?” he replied, faintly amused. Violetta blinked at him as if surprised. Sybil did not blame her. His brief smile, rarely seen, was devastating.

“Yes. Dance with Lady Violetta, and I will stand with the other wallflowers and look appropriately subdued.”

“Is that a skill you have?” He sounded dubious.

“I have many skills.” She sounded positively suggestive, and she had not meant to. His eyes flared. Heat bloomed in her lower belly in response. That would not do. Not here. “Just go so I can fix this as I promised.”

“What if I want to dance with you ?” he asked so softly that only she could hear him, and she was not convinced she had heard him correctly.

“You don’t,” she pointed out. Was he flirting? The man did not flirt. With anyone. And certainly not with her. This was against all of the rules.

“I don’t?” he said. “You sound very sure.”

Was this his idea of revenge? She had thought him too proper for that.

“I am sure.” She did not know what this game was, but she had no intention of playing. She did not play games where she lost before she even started. It was hardly sporting. And the possibility for devastation was too great.

“Did you hit your head on the way here?” she asked, crossly.

He chuckled.

Out loud.

In the middle of a crowded ballroom.

Both Sybil and Violetta turned slowly to stare at him.

“Lady Violetta,” Keir said, his voice whisky and cream. Delicious. “It appears that we have our marching orders.” He held out his hand. “Will you dance?”

Violetta smiled prettily. “Of course, my lord.”

They were perfect together. Polished, gracious. Refined in a way that drew the eye, held it.

When Sybil went to move away, Lady Pontefract’s hand closed over her arm. Her nails were sharp. “A moment, Miss Taunton?”

Sybil stifled a sigh. She had been so close to escape. She could already feel the pitying glances, but they were nothing. She was used to them. “Yes, Lady Pontefract?”

“I do wonder how that rumor began in the first place?”

“As I said, a misunderstanding.” It wasn’t, of course. She had known exactly what she was doing and had done it anyway. Although, in all fairness, she had not seen Keir in weeks, not anywhere except from her front step. She did not know what he did with his days. She had heard he was courting, but one heard all manner of things.

Such as that Sybil had stolen a duke’s favorite coat, embroidered in Italy, the one he would not stop boasting about, and had put it on a donkey.

Not a perfect example, perhaps, as it was true.

And the duke deserved it. She felt no remorse over it whatsoever. The donkey had been well compensated with ear scratches and apples. She would feel remorse, however, if she had truly interfered with Violetta’s prospects. Or with Keir’s. It had certainly not been her intention, despite everything.

Lady Pontefract knew none of this, of course. She only knew that a wild hoyden of questionable breeding had trampled through her carefully orchestrated plans for her daughter. Keir was the catch of the Season, every Season. He was a marquess. He was handsome and courteous. His brows had that little divot between them when he was studying Sybil as though she were a runaway animal from the Royal Menagerie. He was strong enough to hold her up against a garden wall.

“Do not obstruct my daughter,” Lady Pontefract said.

Sybil did not stifle her sigh this time. Sometimes it was best to get to the meat of it straightaway. “Lady Pontefract, let’s be frank, shall we? It will save us both a lot of fuss and bother.”

“Do go on.”

“Do you really believe that any marquess, least of all Lord Blackburn, bound to duty as he is, would throw your daughter over for someone like me?”

Lady Pontefract narrowed her eyes as though it was a riddle. Her expression cleared as the music swelled and Keir swung Violetta into a waltz. They belonged in a painting. The gold light caressed her hair, her delicate nose. The white of her gown glowed. And he looked like some warrior of old, strong, confident. They were made for this world and it was made for them.

“You are quite correct, Miss Taunton,” Lady Pontefract finally said.

One point, Sybil.

It did not feel like winning. It felt more like a splinter, disagreeable and hard to ignore.

Sybil went to stand by the row of chairs set out for wallflowers and chaperones to do her penance, though it was hardly required. Not with Violetta glowing like an angel. Sybil’s gown was pretty and fashionable, in a stunning shade of green, but she did not glow. Her reticule was stretched out of shape from smuggling in posters that accused half the men in this room. She remembered the damp smell of the rookeries: stone and coal smoke and mud. Wet garbage. Urine.

She did not remember her first parents very well, only brief memories of the smell of her mother’s medicine and her father’s clumsy hands trying to braid her wispy hair the rare times he was back from being at sea.

A little disdain from the ton was nothing.

And it was not exactly disdain. Only an unspoken agreement that she was tolerated here, sometimes even fondly, but she did not truly belong. Not when there were men like Keir to be married off and young debutantes like Violetta, angelic in their beauty and flawless in their ancestral ties. Her grandfather had been a duke, her great-grandmother the third daughter of a prince.

But if there was even a hint that the natural order of things might be threatened, the ton reacted immediately. Peppering the air with comments meant to sting, like little wasps. Reminders. Lines drawn in the sand.

Luckily, they were not very creative. She had heard them all before. She did not even bother to fight a yawn when it slipped through.

Better than the barest flinch when Miss Renfield stopped deliberately within earshot. “How desperate,” she said. “As if a marquess would marry someone like her .”

“What can you expect? Blood will out.”

Sybil considered turning around with suggestions for better insults. More interesting barbs. Something entertaining . She did not. She would have, had she not been proving a point about her connections to the Marquess Blackburn. They were meant to think such things about her tonight. Her unsuitability.

And they did not even know about the time she had stolen a letter from an earl during a ball and slid down the banister, chased by two footmen. Or when she had jumped into the Serpentine in order to draw attention away from a debutante avoiding a duke’s son.

They did not know her at all, truly.

It helped. A little.

So did the perpetually cheerful Lord Victor Bailey, second son of an earl and still too good for her, but it did not matter, as their only interest in each other was saving one another from boredom. He was a hero, in his own way.

“Dance with me, Miss Taunton,” Victor said, too loudly as always. His golden curls flopped over his forehead in a way that made many girls sigh. Sybil only itched to push it back where it belonged and slap some pomade through it. “No one is nearly as fun as you are, and they all come with sticky matrimonial strings and expectations.”

He did not intend to be rude and would have been shocked at the accusation. Sybil, though not a wallflower in the strictest sense, was a spinster. She could not be expected to marry particularly well, at least in this particular crowd, and so no one much worried about dancing twice in a row or being seen alone chatting on the balcony. She was not on the market.

The market did not care for her.

She did not much care for the market either, to be fair.

The sight of Keir’s legs in his kilt would not change that.

And anyway, Victor’s cheerful candor was refreshing. It had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the rules. There was many a fortune hunter who would have disregarded those rules for a crack at her dowry. Which was exactly why her parents let it be known that she did not have one.

It was not true. Her dowry and inheritance were substantial, but to protect her from fortune hunters and families who would not respect her or treat her well, they had chosen to hide it from Society.

Victor danced with more enthusiasm than finesse. Sybil laughed as he whirled her too fast and too wildly until they were both dizzy. They danced another set while Keir escorted Violetta to the refreshment tables and procured her a glass of ratafia, frowning at Sybil’s display. As ratafia was created by the devil himself, Sybil much preferred to keep dancing. She danced until her feet ached and her hair slipped its elegant twist, until her breath burned and she stopped seeing Keir’s hand clasped around Violetta’s waist.

“I heard a story about you today,” Victor said, thrusting a glass of champagne into her hand.

“I am quite sure you did,” Sybil replied drily. “I assure you, Lord Blackburn is not courting me.”

“Obviously.” Victor dismissed it immediately.

Hmph.

Valid. But hmph nonetheless.

“No, this is about Fortingham’s.”

“I was only there because the weather was dreadful,” Sybil said, forcing her tone to be light. Positively effervescent. “And then I could not help myself—I had to poke a little fun at the marquess. He is so proper. Was it terribly wicked of me, do you think?”

Victor laughed. “Blackburn deserved it, I’m sure. The man is dour.”

Sybil found she did not like that. It was suddenly very tempting to shove Victor’s head into the punch bowl.

Very tempting.

“No, it’s only that the betting book went missing last night.” He looked around furtively. “I should not say so out loud. It’s a secret. The club is terribly embarrassed.”

Ha! Good.

Sybil blinked. “Lord Bailey, are you asking me if I stole a… What was it? A book from the club? I did not think you read in such places.”

He studied her, then laughed again. “I suppose not. I fancied myself a hero returning with the booty, like the eagle standard of the Roman army.”

Sybil’s expression remained impassive. A touch bewildered.

“Never mind, Miss Taunton,” Victor added. “I am being a fool. Shall we dance more? I can almost feel my lungs again.”

Sybil smiled back. “Let’s.”

“What a shame you don’t have a dowry,” he sighed.

If one more person smiled at him in commiseration and suggested Sybil was a desperate wallflower no better than she should be, Keir would hold their head inside the punch bowl.

Even if it was a dowager who smelled like liniment.

Not to mention that he’d woken up to the rumor that he had three mistresses. By later afternoon, it was said he was caught frolicking with four different courtesans outside a brothel.

Keir did not have a mistress, never mind four courtesans. And he did not frolic.

Certainly not outside in winter.

He wasn’t an idiot.

Except that he was. Clearly.

Because only an idiot mooned after a feral madwoman while courting another woman. Who had the perfect bloodlines, the perfect estate bordering his, the perfect dowry. The perfect smile.

Sybil’s smile was not perfect.

It was not Lady Violetta’s fault that she had been handpicked by his father. Only months dead and the old despot was still trying to control him from the grave. He couldn’t even swan about in heaven—or more likely, hell. He had to meddle and control.

Lady Violetta was lovely.

And Keir was an idiot.

Simple as that.

He could not picture her walking the Highland crags, the wind catching at her bonnet strings. Walking in the rain.

Climbing a trellis into her own bedroom.

He could not picture her letting down her hair, stepping out of her chemise. Climbing into his lap. Naked.

All things he could picture Sybil doing. Had seen her doing. Had helped her to do.

The way she had curled up in his lap, the firelight playing over her hair, her soft cheek. The smell of warm skin and soap and rain. How he had to hold her at an angle so she would notice his erection pressing against the placket of his breeches, desperate at her nearness. They both knew where that led. But he wanted that quiet moment, so rare between them.

It was torture.

Perfect, beautiful torture.

That carefully constructed wall between them was crumbling as though it were made of sugar paste.

He was known for his sense of duty and responsibility, but there was absolutely nothing dutiful about the way he felt around Sybil. Uncivilized was more accurate. Starving.

Savage.

His monster of a father would have blamed it on his mother’s Scottish blood. On Keir’s own selfish weakness. A hundred things. But the only culprit was right now laughing as Lord Bailey whirled her too fast between several disapproving couples. If she had been an earl’s legitimate daughter, they would have smiled, murmured about her joie de vivre . But Sybil was different.

In all the best ways.

He always knew where she was in a room. It was like that from the first moment he saw her: a glimpse through the crack in the garden wall. An unexpected voice, a silly jest to make him laugh when he was struggling not to give in to the pain of the new bruises on his cheek. She had proceeded to scamper up the plum tree and drop down into the grass behind him, dress hem muddy, hair in a braid ornamented with twigs and more than a few leaves. Her immediate offer to sneak into the very elegant Montgomery townhouse and put frogs in his father’s bed. When he pointed out his father was a marquess, she only shrugged and said, “Worms, then.”

For years they met at the garden wall, leaving notes, posies of flowers, sugared almonds.

And then his father noticed the orphan girl next door.

And everything changed.

Keir had spent considerable energy pretending not to notice her, not to see her after that.

But he always, always saw her.

His father had never been allowed to know that. Not one glance, not for one moment. Even as a young lad, Keir knew that in his bones. His father already sneered at the Tauntons adopting a half-starved orphan girl covered in mud from some alley and making her their daughter. He had refused to allow her inside the Montgomery house and sneered when she made too much noise in the Tauntons’ own back garden, which was often.

Keir did not make noise. He did not draw attention.

Except to keep his father’s attention away from Sybil.

He went to Eton, to Oxford, to Parliament. He did what was expected of him. He pretended so well that everyone thought of him only as a dutiful heir, a marquess devoted to responsibility. Assumed that he worshipped at the altar of the family name, like his father. Forgot that his mother was Scottish, that he was Scottish enough not to want to sacrifice every ounce of joy to a British title.

Too late.

But his father was right about one thing and one thing only: Keir had an estate to take care of. Tenants and farmers and villagers. A little sister who rolled her eyes at him every time he said anything at all. Who put porridge in her headmistress’s shoes.

Honestly, he was damned proud of that last one. He had already spoken to the headmistress, who had promptly decided she would much rather take up some other post that had nothing to do with schools or young ladies. Their father would have sent Sophie right back, demanded she apologize in some humiliating way, and paid for a new wing of the school.

Their father had been a rigid, dictatorial, cruel ass.

Keir wanted to be anything but that.

Even as his father’s voice barked in his head.

He bowed over Lady Violetta’s hand, trying not to feel like an ogre with a fairy princess. “Another dance, Lady Violetta?”

“It would be an honor, Lord Blackburn.”

Honor.

How he hated the word.