Page 54 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“Sybil. You need a doctor. More tea. An evening of rest.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, kicking fully free of the blankets, lest he decide he could trap her inside them. “I have plans tonight.”

“Cancel them.”

“Certainly not.”

“Then I’m going with you.”

“To Miss Copperwhite’s musicale?” she asked, very doubtfully.

He crossed his arms. “Yes.”

She also crossed her arms. “You weren’t invited.”

“I am a marquess.” It was confidence tipping into arrogance. But also, regrettably true. There were few doors closed to a marquess. Certainly not the drawing room doors of Miss Copperwhite’s interminably long musicale on the south side of the river.

“It’s going to be dreadfully dull.”

Keir snorted. “Not if you’re there.”

“What happened to you?” Peony asked an hour later when Sybil managed to escape Keir’s doctor and Mrs. Hawkins’s bribery of fresh muffins with butter and jam and Chevril wringing his hands with worry. When she slipped out the door wearing one of Sophie’s cloaks to hide her disarray, Keir was already waiting for her with his carriage.

He did not speak.

Not a single word when she gave him Priya’s address, not a word when he tucked the warming brick under her boots, not even a word when she reminded him that Miss Copperwhite liked to sing an aria at her musicales. She believed she sang like an angel.

She did not.

Keir had insisted on walking her to the door, pausing only for his gaze to rake over her, leaving heat and a shivery kind of awareness. “I will be back at nine o’clock to pick you up.”

“I already have an escort, thank you.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Farraway.”

He’d frowned, confused. “Mrs. Farraway.”

Mrs. Farraway was eighty-one years old and not known for her kindness.

“She needs a companion.”

“Since when are you a companion? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Oh, a great deal, I imagine.”

He’d nearly smiled. She knew the signs now. The twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way he tightened his lips as though to smile at her was dangerous. It might well be—only for her, surely not for him. He was immune to her smiles. If not her particular kind of pandemonium.

No one was immune to it, which was rather the point.

Even when it was uncomfortable to be judged and whispered about. It would happen regardless, so she may as well make use of it. They were not idle words she had spoken to Sophie about using her own reputation as a weapon that cut away instead of toward oneself.

Keir had only turned and stridden off without a backward glance.

And now she was in the Fern Parlor while the other Spinsters stared at her.

“Was that Lord Blackburn?” Priya asked from her chair, which was nowhere near a window or even the front of the house. Her ability to know things really was disconcerting.