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Chapter Four
“Sybil 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.
