Page 105 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

In the blink of an eye—or rather, a wink from a dashing gentleman—Mary was shoved onto the carriage and the door slammed shut. And locked.

“Hello?” She called out. “Lady Blackburn?”

Sybil waited.

Mary tried the handle. Pounded on the door. “Hello?”

“You’ve been abducted, Lady Mary,” Sybil called out. “And you are now, regrettably, on your way to Gretna Green with a man who is quite enamored of your twenty thousand pounds. Now what do you do?”

Mary screamed.

It was much louder than expected. Sybil and Peony exchanged an approving nod.

“Good,” Peony said. “But you’ll have to do better than that.”

“Sir!” Mary shouted through the cracked window. “I will pay you double what he is paying you to release me.”

Sybil beamed. “Oh, I do like you, Lady Mary. Well done! What else?”

The footman yanked open the door and Mary nearly tumbled out. She found her balance, but too late. He already had her. Again.

She cursed. Clawed. Tried to bite him.

Peony nodded at him, and he tossed the girl into the grass.

She landed on her back, wind knocked out of her, hair falling from its pins. Sybil leaned over to look down at her. “First lesson: a helping hand into a gentleman’s carriage could turn into an abduction by a fortune hunter heading to Gretna Green.” She glanced at the others. The new students gaped back. “There are steps to take should that occur. Messages to leave at inns along the Great North Road and so forth. We’ll get to that. But the first step is not to be taken. Who’s next?”

“Don’t worry,” Margaret added, helping Mary to her feet. “It gets easier. And later we get to punch a dummy filled with straw. It’s very cathartic.”

“Try it again with a flour sack over her head,” Sybil said.

Mary gulped.

Seeing as everything was well in hand, Sybil went back to the house. She had a ridiculous list of invitations to decline. Behind her, the girls shouted encouragement at the next effort to escape the carriage. It was the best sound in the world. And the best weapon.

The house was bright and not quite tidy. It was home as much as Montgomery House was home, now that it had been stripped of every drapery and gold tassel and delicate teacup. The ornate atrocity of a clock was sold and the funds used to furnish her school.

Strong hands pulled her abruptly into one of the closets where they stored sharpened hatpins and parasols with fortified handles. The door shut firmly behind her. She knew those hands, the curve of that mouth against her neck, even in the darkness. “Is this a test?” she teased. Peony enjoyed springing situations on her students almost as much as she enjoyed springing them on Sybil herself.

Keir’s only answer was a gentle nip at the side of her throat, and she leaned into him, already tingling with need. She gripped his arms, adoring the bulk of muscle shifting under her touch, the heat of his body already warming her. “What are you doing here?” she murmured on a gasp when he dragged his teeth up to her earlobe. “Shouldn’t you be at home? Doing whatever it is that marquesses do?”

“You left too early this morning, and it’s been very quiet over there. Very well mannered,” he complained. “I don’t care for it at all.” He backed her against the wall, kissing her deeply. “And this is what a marquess does. He makes love to his wife.”

“How very”—she whimpered when he used his boot to nudge her legs wider—“proper of you.”

“I take my duties very seriously.”

“Thank God.”

The kiss seared her even after all these months. Still. Always.

His mouth was clever and demanding and he was desperate for her, almost as desperate as she was for him. She nipped at his bottom lip, at his tongue, until he pressed against her, pulling her knee up to better rock into the cradle of her thighs. She gasped at the friction, the perfect pressure.

When there was a sound from the hallway, Keir turned the key in the lock without moving his attention away from her. He gripped the inside of her thigh under her skirts, trailing up to slide his fingers through her wet heat. Her gasp turned into a whimper. Need pulsed through her, her bud already swollen and throbbing.

“Shh,” he scolded in her ear. “You need to be quiet, my little scoundrel.”

Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “You first, Lord Blackburn.”