This was Lady Sybil, and heknew her.
ChapterEight
“Lady Sybil,” he started, approaching with his hand outstretched. Emotions—too many to name or count—flooded through him, dismantling his thoughts until all he could remember was the way she had looked at him with wine-flushed cheeks and starry eyes and asked him to seduce her.
The way hehadseduced her. And now she was in his drawing room, having been brought here by his mother on some scheme to force him to marry, and—
She ducked her head, accepting his hand briefly as she dropped into a neat curtsy. “Your Grace,” she murmured.
He stopped short, aware that his mother stood in the doorway, watching everything that happened. “Please,” he said after a moment. “Have a seat.”
“If you will excuse me, Your Grace, I believe I came here under a misapprehension.” Her voice was cool, betraying no sign that she recognized him. The only indication she might have done was the shock and anger in her eyes when he had first walked through the door.
Could she truly have forgotten him? Or did she hate him for what he’d done? The way she’d fled suggested that turn of events, but he’d held her gaze as she’d climaxed and there had been nothing suggestive of hate there.
“A misapprehension?” He sat, forcing his thoughts away from their last encounter. “How so?”
Her gaze rose to his, but briefly. “I heard you informing your mother that you would not call on me, and I have no wish to force my presence on anyone.”
“Then rest assured you are not forcing your presence on me.” He waved a hand at the chair opposite him. “Sit, Lady Sybil. I will ring for some tea. Mother, will you not also sit if you are acting as a chaperone?”
His mother’s eyes were narrowed, but she came into the room and took her place at the opposite end of the sofa from Sybil. “How charming you are, George,” she said, the coldness in her voice implying the opposite.
Sybil’s hands clenched in her dress for a moment. George noted the movement and wished more than ever that he could get her alone. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, about why she had fled, why she had spent a year in the country, why she was now in town.
Did she truly not know he was the Duke now? Had she believed him to be the footman he’d been posing as?
“How did you come to know my mother?” he asked. “Is she friends with your mother, perhaps?” A low blow but, as his mother winced, a satisfying one.
Sybil glanced at the Dowager before looking back at her hands. “I believe not, Your Grace,” she said quietly.
“You astonish me.”
“I know the Marquess of Averley,” his mother said after a moment. “This is his step-daughter.”
George knew that well enough now; he had been working in Averley’s household when he’d first met her, humiliated and crying.
Now, he suspected she was just as humiliated, but although her jaw was tense and her eyes guarded, nothing else about her demeanor gave her away. “Then it is my honor to make your acquaintance,” he said. Her shocked gaze flicked to him, then away. “Are you and your family in London for the Season, Lady Sybil?”
She gave a short answer, and soon after, he decided to let her go. They would meet again, but the next time, he would contrive a way to be alone with her—without his mother threatening to heap more scandal on her head. Sybil already had enough scandal of her own to contend with.
As they left, he took her hand and bowed over it, pressing his lips to her fingers. It was an archaic gesture now, but a slight shudder ran through her at his touch, and when her eyes met his, it was as though a banked fire had suddenly lit within her hazel eyes. Interesting. Very interesting.
“Goodbye, Lady Sybil,” he murmured.
She all but wrenched her hand from his. “Goodbye, Your Grace,” she managed, before fleeing.
His mother paused in the doorway, a snide smile curling her lips. It was more uncertain than before, however. His behavior had dulled her edge of victory.
He gave her a sardonic bow. “My congratulations, Mama. You’ve finally provided me with a lady I would be interested in courting. I shall send word to her step-father at once.”
* * *
This was terrible. Awful. The absolute worst in a situation where she had not known it couldbeany worse.
Sybil paced her room, tossing her reticule from hand to hand, knowing that soon her mother would summon her downstairs to ask how the visit with the Duke had gone.
She turned to the mirror. “It transpires the Duke posed as a footman at Thomas’ estate last year and I begged him to seduce me, which he did, and now I am ruined and he has knowledge of it.”
