Page 16 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“She has already started collecting the beetles. And last year, she tried to hire a trained bear for my birthday, remember?”

“That sounds…”

“Inevitable. Lady Cartwright had acrobats at her dinner. And an alligator during the summer.”

He snorted. “That was no alligator.”

“It was the family dog wearing a costume,” Amandine announced, marching into the breakfast room. “He chased a sausage and urinated on the vicar.” She smiled sharply. “I am quite certain I can beat that. Hardly a challenge.”

As the French Revolution had not daunted Amandine, Lady Cartwright and her gold-threaded wigs and incontinent family dog were unlikely to manage that particular feat. Sybil’s father had once told her that when her mother got bored, she got sad. And as he could not abide his wife’s unhappiness, he was perfectly content to fuel and finance all manner of feuds and falderal. It was rather sweet, really. Even if she did have to climb through holly while wearing wire wings made of real swan feathers once. They had weighed far more than one might imagine. And they did not smell nice. Sybil shuddered.

“You’re thinking about the Christmas pantomime,” her father said.

Amandine rolled her eyes. “Oh, you two. So dramatic.”

“You are not the one who got trapped in a tree,” Sybil pointed out. Covered in blood from the pinpricks of the holly bushes around the roots.

“You were fine. You loved climbing trees.”

She did. She had at ten years old, and she still did even now. Only now she did not have to wear wings and a crown of lit candles while being poked by holly leaves.

“We almost set the church on fire.” Sybil grinned.

Amandine shrugged and smiled back. “English churches ought to be made of sterner stuff, then. We barely singed the stones. It’s hardly my fault they let trees grow so wild next to the building.”

The earl had to replace two windows and buy new pews and gold candlesticks for the altar as an apology. His wife and daughter had made no apologies, as they were too busy chortling with laughter, tears running down their chins. Lord Wentworth had only smiled fondly and asked to see the rectory pianoforte. Sybil’s angel wings were unsalvageable. Thankfully.

They still talked about that Christmas pantomime some sixteen years later.

Amandine accepted a plate of eggs and herbed potatoes with Brie wedges from a footman. “Thank you, Jean-Paul.” Amandine did not care for the social rules that frowned upon thanking the household staff. And she despised English cheddar and would only eat Brie or Camembert brought from France. She maintained that even though her homeland tried to murder her, they still made the best cheese. And the best servants, even if most of them had lived very different lives in Paris. Cook, once known as Madame de Beauchamp, had danced at Versailles.

They were halfway through the meal when a knock sounded at the door. “Oh, never mind that, Papillon,” a cheerful voice floated down the hall. “I know the way.”

Papillon, seventy years old if he was a day, almost managed to outrun the young lady who burst into the breakfast room. He had been the one to help Sybil’s mother run from the guillotine, but there were few who could outrun Lady Sophie Montgomery, sister to the Marquess Blackburn.

“Sophie!” Sybil hugged the younger girl. She refused to be either relieved or disappointed to see that her brother had not accompanied her. Not a surprise, as he never would have allowed her to gallop through the house in such a manner. “I did not know you were in Town.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “My brother wants to keep an eye on me.”

Sybil grinned. “What did you do?”

“Hardly anything at all.”

“Sit down and have some cake, Sophie,” Amandine said. “I miss hearing about a good escapade. This one hardly ever makes the dowagers cry anymore.” She made a face at Sybil.

Sybil had spent a week chained in a cellar. And was regularly on the run from spoiled and powerful firstborn sons, but she had learned to keep it from her parents. Her mother might enjoy a good story, but she worried when no one was around to stop Sybil. And her father would not be thrilled to know she had stolen from his club.

“She does not deserve cake,” Keir said from the doorway. His tone was very hard, very sharp. But when he smiled at his sister, there was only fondness. Despite the crease of worry between his eyes. “Lady Wentworth, Lord Wentworth. Miss Taunton. You look… warm.”

The last time she had seen him, she had a red nose and was shivering so much her teeth clacked. She absolutely would not call up the feeling of sitting on his thighs while the fire crackled.

Or wonder if he was remembering it too.

She met his eyes and felt the force of it sizzle down her spine.

“Everyone deserves cake on my birthday,” her father said.

“Jean-Paul, bring the Marquess some coffee, s’il-vous-plait.”