Page 48 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

Sophie pointed to her left, where the reasonable members of Society promenaded and stopped to greet each other. They were dry and fashionable and not at all sweaty and messy. They were like Keir.

Just like Keir, in fact.

Standing there, large as a standing stone, with his dark hair and his strong shoulders and perfect posture. Sybil would know him anywhere, even from the back. His coat was dark blue, cut simply. His hair curled, just a bit at his nape, under his beaver-crown hat. He looked nothing like the man who had taken her in a carriage just that morning.

Sophie waggled her eyebrows.

Sybil, never able to refuse a challenge or a really bad idea, took aim.

Her perfect snowball arced over the heads of fascinated children, a dog with long, floppy ears, an older woman eating a peppermint candy.

And then it hit Keir squarely in the back of the head.

Sophie positively crowed with laughter.

Keir turned slowly, and when his eyes met Sybil’s, he did not seem even a little surprised to see her.

Lady Violetta, however, was.

She had been blocked by Keir’s towering body, her lilac pelisse rimmed with white fur to match her muff. Her rosebud mouth made a moue of surprise. Her eyes twinkled with a giggle under the brim of her bonnet.

Sophie darted toward her big brother, flushed and happy and thinking not at all about Mr. Pelham, and that made it worthwhile. Made the sour worm inside Sybil’s chest easier to ignore. The one that said, once again, that she was too wild, too impulsive. Too much.

Always too much when she was not pretending to be a wallflower, a young lord, a fine lady lost in the rain.

When she was herself.

Especially when faced with someone who was just right.

Sybil had been jealous before, of course. One did not grow up without wrestling with some unbecoming emotions. When she was very little, she had been jealous of the sea for keeping her father away for so long. Later, of the bigger children for being able to muscle closer to the fire barrels. Of people who walked right into bakeries and bought whatever they liked. After Amandine brought her home, her rare jealousy was reserved for country house parties or Parliament, which claimed her parents for long hours or days at a time.

It was humbling to be jealous of a woman who had done nothing wrong and who was, indeed, the wronged party from any angle. Lady Violetta was kind and patient and had a sense of humor. She also had Keir as a suitor.

While Sybil was digging snow out of her ear, put there by a little boy missing his front teeth, Lady Violetta was strolling daintily, her hand around Keir’s muscular forearm.

Sybil was quite sure that Lady Violetta had never assaulted a peer of the realm with a snowball to the back of the head.

Because Sybil suddenly felt odd and awkward and did not care for it one whit, she curtsied at the couple with a cheeky and wholly unrepentant smile.

And then she hurried home, head held high, eyes stinging from the cold.