Page 73 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“You know, you are frightfully wealthy. You can replace all the cups in your house. Your father had atrocious taste.”

“He really did.”

“That ornate clock with the gold and the sapphires?” She shuddered.

“He wanted to have it buried with him.”

“You should have obliged him.” She did not speak false words of sympathy. She was more sorry that Keir had that man as a father than she was that he was gone. “Apples or plums?” she asked instead.

“Plums,” he said. The fire outlined him in gold. “Always. They are still my favorite.”

“They are?”

“Ever since you gave me that basket of plums.”

Sybil tilted her head. “That doesn’t sound like the boy who told me I would never truly understand the demands of a title and that you needed to consider your future.”

Keir winced. The rough suggestion of a beard shadowed his jaw, his cheeks. He had not been that boy for a very long time. “I’ve never said how sorry I was.”

“You haven’t,” she agreed, and although she was much more interested in nibbling her way across his chest, she supposed this was more important.

“I am sorry. So very sorry.”

She nodded. “I would rather know what happened. I thought it was grief over your mother, but you never came back, not even months later.” She had missed him so much that she had scaled the garden wall more than once, only to stare at the candlelight in his bedroom window and then climb back down into her own garden. And after a while there was not even any candlelight to stare at. “Was it just that you were a lad off to Eton and Oxford and never thought of me again?”

When he looked at her, his eyes were tempest green. “I thought of you every single day.”

“That doesn’t make sense. It never did and it still doesn’t. We were… friends, if nothing else.”

“My father did not approve.”

She sat back. “Oh.” That was not a surprise. She had already known that. There were very few people who truly approved of her back then. Or now.

“He threatened you,” Keir explained, voice harsh.

She frowned. “He did?”

“I didn’t know how else to protect you. So I went away. I pretended I had outgrown our friendship. He was listening that day at the front door.” He rubbed his jaw. “I was an idiot. A cowardly idiot.”

“You were sixteen years old,” Sybil pointed out. Oh, how she wished, for the first time, that his father was still alive that he might know the justice of the Spinster Society. She was angry, a little disappointed. Saddened for the boy she knew. But also relieved. Finally, an explanation. An answer. “Your father was, and I am not at all sorry to speak ill of the dead, a monster.” She remembered every bruise that man had put on Keir growing up.

“Still. I should have fought harder.”

“Keir, he nearly killed you more than once as it was. Grown men, earls and viscounts among them, were terrified of your father. Never mind a lad thoroughly under his power.”

“We could have run away.”

“He would have found us,” she said. “An heir to a marquessdom does not just get to disappear. Even without that beast for a father.”

“I just couldn’t let him hurt you,” he said quietly. “He said I was getting too attached. He had a footman watch you for a week, just to prove he could.”

She shuddered. “The man really was an ass.”

Keir choked on a half laugh. “You were always the only one brave enough to say so. I think he knew it, too.”

“I wish you had said something. At least later. When you could.” She supposed the man had only been dead a few months now. Sophie ought to be in her mourning blacks. It was telling that she was not and that Keir had not pushed the matter.

“My father’s reach was long. Too long.”

“Did you really eat those plums? I felt a proper idiot for bringing you fruit.”

“It was the only food I could stomach for two days. We had to find a wet nurse after my mother died, and my father was not… quick about it. If Sophie had been a son, there would have been one already waiting, just in case.” He stared at the flames. “I didn’t know the first thing about finding one. Mrs. Hawkins had to intercede. We were afraid Sophie might not make it.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“As soon as she was old enough, I made sure she was sent away to school. No governess, despite the fact that it’s the thing. Anything to get her out of that house.” When his hand curled into a fist on the table, Sybil rubbed his knuckles. He glanced down as if surprised. “This is not a night for such a conversation.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I’d rather remind you that there are two more hours until dawn and I intend to make use of every single minute.”