Page 31 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

As he was not a stupid man, Arthur did not linger.

Sybil made it to Spinster House in record time. There was ice in her hair, quite possibly in her ears too, and her feet were soaked through in her pathetic excuse for dancing slippers. But she was smiling. Invigorated.

Not at all wondering if Keir was even now seeing Lady Violetta home.

Or kissing the back of her hand.

He would never—that was too forward.

But so was cradling Sybil on his lap. Taking her against the garden wall. Gripping her bare thighs.

But Sybil was Sybil. She already knew the rules were different.

She tossed her sodden cloak on a hook and determined not to waste the rest of her evening thinking about Keir Montgomery, who would definitely not be thinking of her. He would be reading something serious, drinking scotch. Looking over the terms of Violetta’s dowry.

Gah.

Sybil went straight to the kitchen for a very large piece of cake and took it to the ballroom and the basket of knives and the incongruous hay bale set up in one corner, on which Matilda had painted the face of a gentleman who had once insulted her. The mustache was a thing of legend.

They liked to aim for it.

Peony was already there, dangling from a rope attached to the ceiling.

Home. There was nothing quite like it.

Keir gave serious consideration to climbing Sybil’s trellis again, which was when he started questioning his own sanity.

He was overreacting.

It was not Sybil’s fault that he found he could not breathe if he did not know she was safe. He had seen that carriage barrel past her, had watched the force of the wind set her back on her heels. She could have been trampled. Tossed to the ground. Broken in a dozen different ways. Locked in a damned cellar.

But she wasn’t.

And he still could not stop it from repeating in his mind like a terrible play with an unwilling audience of one.

There was no light in her window. She could already be under the blankets.

A much nicer image to play in his mind’s eye as he went to sit in his chair and brood at the view from his window. First, he would make certain she was safe even if it was forward of him. And presumptuous. She did not have to know about it.

Which might have worked a charm if he had not instantly scrawled her name at the top of the paper on his desk.

Sybil was dangling from the ceiling when the note arrived.

It had been delivered to her house, and from there a footman had sent it here. Her hands were cramped around the rope as she turned in a lazy circle, peering down. “A note for me?”

“Yes, miss,” Peter replied, unfazed by the ladies dangling from the ceiling.

“At this hour?” Peony asked. “That does not bode well.”

“Perhaps not,” Sybil admitted. When notes arrived at Spinster House in the middle of the night, they did not generally herald an invitation to take tea. There was more often than not subterfuge involved. Criminal activity.

Not a message written by a marquess.

“A love letter?” Peony asked, grimacing. Peony did not care for love letters. She did not understand the fuss.

“Not exactly.”

Where the bloody hell was she?