Page 86 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

“Sybil, I want those consequences. That is a risk I am entirely comfortable with you making. Unlike challenging powerful men who are hunting you.”

He was so serious. So handsome. So Keir. Her stomach dropped but her pulse picked up. Her body was as confused as her mind.

“Let me convince you,” he added. It was tempting to let him try. She had never wanted anything more, in fact.

Instead, she sighed. “Have your coachman take us to Seven Dials. Or as near as he dares.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Why?”

“Please, Keir.”

“As you wish.”

Seven Dials was a crowded warren of narrow streets, houses barely holding each other up, the sky crisscrossed with lines of laundry. It teemed with residents who lived too many to a room, sometimes without a window or candle between them. Clean drinking water needed to be fetched from a well that was decidedly not clean. Safer and easier to drink at one of the gin mills or the flash houses that were a combination of pub, brothel, and criminal den. There was theft and violence—but no more than in Mayfair, as Sybil had discovered.

It was crowded, stinking of coal smoke and urine and the Thames and refuse. And it was cold, always in danger of burning down or falling down.

And for years, it had been Sybil’s home.

She took Keir to the alley now because she did not know how else to explain it to him.

There were so many versions of her. How to explain it when sometimes she could not explain it to herself? He had seen the truest version of her for so many years, but it had not been enough. And anyway, these other parts were real too. They were important. The spinster, the governess, the ill-treated companion, Lord Singleton. The flighty, messy adopted daughter. The street urchin.

Sometimes, it was a little complicated being Sybil Taunton.

Sybil Smith, as she was before the Tauntons.

It was a crowded business.

And it had started here. In a one-room flat with a window. Then a smaller room without a window. And finally, after her nan died of the same fever that claimed her mother, the alley.

And she was lucky.

Some part of her felt guilty that she had escaped. Had been plucked at random like a flower from the roadside. There was no rhyme or reason to it. She could have ended as a pickpocket, a prostitute. Or died of hunger long before that. It made her head hurt to think about it too long. Her chest ached.

Amandine always said the reason was that Sybil was her daughter, but it had taken her some time to find her, and it was as simple as that.

Sometimes, it was.

And sometimes she woke from hazy dreams of a grandmother she barely remembered, of her gray shawl. The sounds of coughing and dogs barking and the time she had burned her toes against a fire barrel because they were so cold she was afraid they were going to fall off. No one lived in the Dials because it was comfortable. Because it was safe. It was just there. And too often, that had to be enough.

Most houses did not have the means for cooking, no grate, no coin for coals. Definitely no ice box. But there were always street carts, selling meat pies, toasted muffins. She found one selling hot baked potatoes and handed him coins and a request to bring a potato to every child in the alley. She made the request several times a week, but he did not recognize Lord Singleton, only Miss Taunton. And he warned her every time that it was not safe for her. “Thank you, Tom.”

Keir had not spoken yet. He was too intent on watching her, while keeping an eye on the pickpockets who had spotted two flash culls from Mayfair with more money than sense. Even if one towered over everyone and looked as though he could crush a man’s skull with one hand.

“He’s no goldfinch to rob. I wouldn’t risk it,” Sybil warned, street cant returning. He was welcome to her coins, but she needed the list of names and those curious numbers to stay in her pocket. “Tell your Captain Tom.” She remembered the gangs of Seven Dials—even the children had their own. They had named themselves the Sixes and Sevens. And their Captain Tom was an older boy of twelve who protected them as best he could. She had tried to find him years later, but with no success.

One of the pickpockets blinked at her use of street cant in surprise, took in the width and breadth of Keir, and melted back into the shadows.

The rookery throbbed with sound at all times of the day and night: songs being sung, fights being fought, babies crying, dogs barking, shouts, threats, laughs. Sybil stopped at the mouth of the alley she knew best. Keir might be the size of a standing stone and she might be quick on her feet, but it wasn’t wise to wander the Dials. It wasn’t wise to stop too long in one spot, either.

“This is where I come from, Keir. And I’m not ashamed of it. There’s no shame in surviving, and that’s what everyone in the rookeries is trying to do. But the ton think differently. A girl from the gutter does not marry a marquess.”

There. It had to be said. Out loud. And right here, where the snow had already turned to muck and puddles gleamed with garbage. Where eyes watched them warily from doorways.

Keir turned slowly to pin her with his gaze.

“Did you think I would see this and be shocked? Disgusted?” he demanded. “Do you think so little of me?” He made a sound of frustration. “Of course you do—why wouldn’t you? I was an ass.”