Page 27 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

He wasn’t an idiot.

Except that he was. Clearly.

Because only an idiot mooned after a feral madwoman while courting another woman. Who had the perfect bloodlines, the perfect estate bordering his, the perfect dowry. The perfect smile.

Sybil’s smile was not perfect.

It was not Lady Violetta’s fault that she had been handpicked by his father. Only months dead and the old despot was still trying to control him from the grave. He couldn’t even swan about in heaven—or more likely, hell. He had to meddle and control.

Lady Violetta was lovely.

And Keir was an idiot.

Simple as that.

He could not picture her walking the Highland crags, the wind catching at her bonnet strings. Walking in the rain.

Climbing a trellis into her own bedroom.

He could not picture her letting down her hair, stepping out of her chemise. Climbing into his lap. Naked.

All things he could picture Sybil doing. Had seen her doing. Had helped her to do.

The way she had curled up in his lap, the firelight playing over her hair, her soft cheek. The smell of warm skin and soap and rain. How he had to hold her at an angle so she would notice his erection pressing against the placket of his breeches, desperate at her nearness. They both knew where that led. But he wanted that quiet moment, so rare between them.

It was torture.

Perfect, beautiful torture.

That carefully constructed wall between them was crumbling as though it were made of sugar paste.

He was known for his sense of duty and responsibility, but there was absolutely nothing dutiful about the way he felt around Sybil. Uncivilized was more accurate. Starving.

Savage.

His monster of a father would have blamed it on his mother’s Scottish blood. On Keir’s own selfish weakness. A hundred things. But the only culprit was right now laughing as Lord Bailey whirled her too fast between several disapproving couples. If she had been an earl’s legitimate daughter, they would have smiled, murmured about her joie de vivre. But Sybil was different.

In all the best ways.

He always knew where she was in a room. It was like that from the first moment he saw her: a glimpse through the crack in the garden wall. An unexpected voice, a silly jest to make him laugh when he was struggling not to give in to the pain of the new bruises on his cheek. She had proceeded to scamper up the plum tree and drop down into the grass behind him, dress hem muddy, hair in a braid ornamented with twigs and more than a few leaves. Her immediate offer to sneak into the very elegant Montgomery townhouse and put frogs in his father’s bed. When he pointed out his father was a marquess, she only shrugged and said, “Worms, then.”

For years they met at the garden wall, leaving notes, posies of flowers, sugared almonds.

And then his father noticed the orphan girl next door.

And everything changed.

Keir had spent considerable energy pretending not to notice her, not to see her after that.

But he always, always saw her.

His father had never been allowed to know that. Not one glance, not for one moment. Even as a young lad, Keir knew that in his bones. His father already sneered at the Tauntons adopting a half-starved orphan girl covered in mud from some alley and making her their daughter. He had refused to allow her inside the Montgomery house and sneered when she made too much noise in the Tauntons’ own back garden, which was often.

Keir did not make noise. He did not draw attention.

Except to keep his father’s attention away from Sybil.

He went to Eton, to Oxford, to Parliament. He did what was expected of him. He pretended so well that everyone thought of him only as a dutiful heir, a marquess devoted to responsibility. Assumed that he worshipped at the altar of the family name, like his father. Forgot that his mother was Scottish, that he was Scottish enough not to want to sacrifice every ounce of joy to a British title.

Too late.

But his father was right about one thing and one thing only: Keir had an estate to take care of. Tenants and farmers and villagers. A little sister who rolled her eyes at him every time he said anything at all. Who put porridge in her headmistress’s shoes.

Honestly, he was damned proud of that last one. He had already spoken to the headmistress, who had promptly decided she would much rather take up some other post that had nothing to do with schools or young ladies. Their father would have sent Sophie right back, demanded she apologize in some humiliating way, and paid for a new wing of the school.

Their father had been a rigid, dictatorial, cruel ass.

Keir wanted to be anything but that.

Even as his father’s voice barked in his head.

He bowed over Lady Violetta’s hand, trying not to feel like an ogre with a fairy princess. “Another dance, Lady Violetta?”

“It would be an honor, Lord Blackburn.”

Honor.

How he hated the word.