Where to now? Should she continue peeking into bedchambers, or assume that the maid had visited them all already, and there was nothing to find? Staff was usually assigned to certain areas. If an upstairs maid hadn’t seen anything suspicious, then mayhap the dresses were downstairs. An unused parlor, perhaps?
Before she could decide how to proceed, the door across from her swung open, revealing the surprised face of a twenty-something-year-old gentleman whose meticulous tailor must have cost every penny as much as Mme. Blanchet.
This was Heloise’s elder brother Orville, the youngest of the three male heirs to the viscountcy. What the devil was he doing away from the ballroom?
Orville’s eyes glittered in the sconce-light, and a dangerous smile curved his lips. “Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Chapter 8
“Um.” Sybil gripped the handle of her basket with both hands. “I’m…”
“A new maid. I can see that.” Orville lounged against the doorjamb as though there were no party awaiting him downstairs, and he had all the time in the world. “I thought you all were downstairs.”
Sybil had thought everyone was downstairs.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said with what she hoped was an air of brisk efficiency. “I’m very busy.”
Not that she could continue to search the Vanewright family’s private quarters in full view of the youngest male heir.
“I’m busy, as well. Or will be soon.” He straightened away from the doorframe and gave an impossible-to-misconstrue wink. “If you see the lady friend I’m meeting, you won’t tattle on us, will you?”
Sybil shook her head. “Your secret is safe with me.”
That one, anyway. As soon as she found the missing gowns, however—
“Good girl.” As Orville slipped past Sybil, his fingers cupped her backside and gave a little pinch.
She hit him in the face with her basket.
“Yeow!” The heir staggered backwards, his hands covering his face. “Why, you little—”
Sybil ran. Or tried to.
Strong fingers clamped about her upper arm before she could take more than a single step, halting her in her place.
Gooseflesh rippled across her skin as her heart beat far too fast. She’d wanted attention from a gentleman, but not like this. She wanted small talk about the weather, an eagerly fetched glass of too-warm lemonade, a light press of the palms from an eligible bachelor as they executed the prescribed pattern of a public quadrille. She’d wanted to be flirted with by someone who wanted her, not toyed with by some cad while he awaited someone else.
Lord Vanewright pointed at the new marks on his cheek. “You scratched my face!”
“You pinched my…” Sybil’s voice shook too much to choke out the rest.
“I won’t be doing it again, will I? You’re no longer employed here.” He pushed her away. “Get out. And leave that basket behind. You’re not to take a single stick from this house, including any hope of a letter of recommendation.”
“It’s my basket,” Sybil said in alarm, and sprinted toward the stairs with the handle gripped tight.
Orville was right behind her and gaining fast. “Stop, thief!”
She skidded down the stairs, her feet flying faster than ever before. The basket contained the second-nicest dress Sybil owned, and the expensive trimmings she’d borrowed from Mlle. LaChapelle. When Sybil left, this basket and its prized contents were coming with her.
The viscount caught up to her halfway between the foot of the stairs and the front door and wrapped his fingers about the other half of the wicker handle.
No! Sybil needed to flee this house. The entire Vanewright family was terrible. She couldn’t wait to expose them as thieves and villains and put paid to their reign of terror.
But she wasn’t going anywhere without that basket.
She and Orville engaged in a fierce tug-of-war a few feet from the startled butler, who was just allowing in a cinnamon-haired young lady of perhaps eighteen years of age and a woman of similar coloring who could only be her aunt or her mother.
Orville dropped the basket handle and struck a lordly pose.
