Page 96 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“Those men did have one thing in common that I could tell,” she added.

“Their days are numbered?” Keir put in darkly.

“There was much talk of debt. And heiresses and dowries. They want us out of the way by the time the Season starts so we do not interfere.” She waved the list.

Keir frowned. “Where are you going with this?”

“I have an idea.”

He stilled. “No.”

“I haven’t told you what it is yet,” she protested.

“And yet every hair on the back of my neck still lifted in alarm.”

“What do you have in mind?” Priya asked.

“They want us all so badly? Let us bait a trap.”

“And you’re the bait?”

“Yes.”

“And what exactly does that mean?” Keir asked. He was beginning to look a little wild around the eyes.

When she told him, he went pale. Pale enough that she wondered if they had smelling salts in one of the baskets with the knives. Assuming those baskets had not burned, of course. “No,” he said, the calm of his voice at odds with the tension across those massive shoulders, the clenching of his jaw. “It’s not safe.”

Sybil met his gaze.

She didn’t need her house burning down around her to know that he would always be home for her.

“If you’re that concerned for the safety of my plan, I suppose you ought to marry me,” she said.

He turned slowly, his green eyes glittering, pinning her. “Everyone else heard that, right?”

The others, exhausted, covered in scratches and soot and bruises, grinned.

Keir gripped Sybil’s hand and pulled her abruptly to her feet. “Let’s go.”