Page 9 of The Scandalous Spinster

“We forced that viscount to reinstate the dowager viscountess’s annuity.”

Matilda had “accidentally” pushed him into a pond and held him under until he acquiesced. She did have a pattern.

“We need one of his secrets.” Priya tapped her chin absently with the end of her quill.

“The fact that he is lecherous and unscrupulous is clearly not a secret,” Matilda replied. “So do tell.”

“I don’t know,” Priya admitted.

Matilda widened her eyes. “You don’t?”

“Yet. I don’t know everything about everyone.”

“Next you’ll tell me fairies don’t exist and quite break my heart.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive the shock.”

It was the quick, easy way they bantered that Clara envied the most. It sent a twinge through her, not quite pain but too close to it.

She sat up straighter. Bram found her with his eyes again.

“It’s not just a house party,” Priya said. “It’s now a Devil’s Night.”

A sharp and heavy silence thrummed.

“How did I not know this?” Matilda finally demanded. She knew every social event from the Thames to the Isle of Skye.

“I only found out an hour ago.”

A Devil’s Night was even more notorious than the marquis’s house parties. It was hosted twice a year by Lord Birmingham, nicknamed Devil. He carried the bank for an exclusive gaming hell that lasted a single night, hosted by a different lord. Earls, marquises, and dukes only need apply. It had to be someone unlikely to be punished—Devil’s Nights never ran entirely smoothly.

And this year, the task of hosting had landed on the Marquis of Eastbourne.

No wonder Sybil had run. It was one thing to take on a lord, another thing entirely to take on the worst of the lot all at once with no assistance.

This could be Clara’s chance to prove herself. To refuse to be banished to the drawing room once again.

Priya smiled grimly. “I’d go myself, but I’ve been banned from Devil’s Nights by the Devil himself,” she added. “Ridiculous nickname.”

“I threw soup on the marquis last month when I was trying to get into that locked closet in his townhouse.” Matilda shrugged. “I don’t think I’d be welcome.”

“I’ll go,” Clara blurted out.

She may as well have stood up on the furniture in her undergarments and declared she wished to race otters over the Serpentine. It would have drawn less of a reaction. Or more of a reaction. At the moment, the others were frozen.

“You cannot be serious,” Matilda finally said.

“Maddie,” Emmeline said quietly.

Clara tried not to take it personally when everyone turned to eye her dubiously. Very dubiously. Well, Emmeline and Matilda were dubious—Priya only looked more thoughtful.

Clara refused to glance at Bram. She did not want to see amusement or skepticism. Bad enough that he was always there to witness her humiliations.

“You?” Matilda asked. Emmeline nudged her with her elbow. Matilda glanced at her, then back at Clara. “It’s not an insult,” she insisted. “Only it’s not exactly your…milieu.”

“It’s not,” Clara agreed. But some perverse part of her, the stubborn, rebellious part she kept chained up, insisted.

Loudly.