Page 25

When Sybil went to move away, Lady Pontefract’s hand closed over her arm. Her nails were sharp. “A moment, Miss Taunton?”

Sybil stifled a sigh. She had been so close to escape. She could already feel the pitying glances, but they were nothing. She was used to them. “Yes, Lady Pontefract?”

“I do wonder how that rumor began in the first place?”

“As I said, a misunderstanding.” It wasn’t, of course. She had known exactly what she was doing and had done it anyway. Although, in all fairness, she had not seen Keir in weeks, not anywhere except from her front step. She did not know what he did with his days. She had heard he was courting, but one heard all manner of things.

Such as that Sybil had stolen a duke’s favorite coat, embroidered in Italy, the one he would not stop boasting about, and had put it on a donkey.

Not a perfect example, perhaps, as it was true.

And the duke deserved it. She felt no remorse over it whatsoever. The donkey had been well compensated with ear scratches and apples. She would feel remorse, however, if she had truly interfered with Violetta’s prospects. Or with Keir’s. It had certainly not been her intention, despite everything.

Lady Pontefract knew none of this, of course. She only knew that a wild hoyden of questionable breeding had trampled through her carefully orchestrated plans for her daughter. Keir was the catch of the Season, every Season. He was a marquess. He was handsome and courteous. His brows had that little divot between them when he was studying Sybil as though she were a runaway animal from the Royal Menagerie. He was strong enough to hold her up against a garden wall.

“Do not obstruct my daughter,” Lady Pontefract said.

Sybil did not stifle her sigh this time. Sometimes it was best to get to the meat of it straightaway. “Lady Pontefract, let’s be frank, shall we? It will save us both a lot of fuss and bother.”

“Do go on.”

“Do you really believe that any marquess, least of all Lord Blackburn, bound to duty as he is, would throw your daughter over for someone like me?”

Lady Pontefract narrowed her eyes as though it was a riddle. Her expression cleared as the music swelled and Keir swung Violetta into a waltz. They belonged in a painting. The gold light caressed her hair, her delicate nose. The white of her gown glowed. And he looked like some warrior of old, strong, confident. They were made for this world and it was made for them.

“You are quite correct, Miss Taunton,” Lady Pontefract finally said.

One point, Sybil.

It did not feel like winning. It felt more like a splinter, disagreeable and hard to ignore.

Sybil went to stand by the row of chairs set out for wallflowers and chaperones to do her penance, though it was hardly required. Not with Violetta glowing like an angel. Sybil’s gown was pretty and fashionable, in a stunning shade of green, but she did not glow. Her reticule was stretched out of shape from smuggling in posters that accused half the men in this room. She remembered the damp smell of the rookeries: stone and coal smoke and mud. Wet garbage. Urine.

She did not remember her first parents very well, only brief memories of the smell of her mother’s medicine and her father’s clumsy hands trying to braid her wispy hair the rare times he was back from being at sea.

A little disdain from the ton was nothing.

And it was not exactly disdain. Only an unspoken agreement that she was tolerated here, sometimes even fondly, but she did not truly belong. Not when there were men like Keir to be married off and young debutantes like Violetta, angelic in their beauty and flawless in their ancestral ties. Her grandfather had been a duke, her great-grandmother the third daughter of a prince.

But if there was even a hint that the natural order of things might be threatened, the ton reacted immediately. Peppering the air with comments meant to sting, like little wasps. Reminders. Lines drawn in the sand.

Luckily, they were not very creative. She had heard them all before. She did not even bother to fight a yawn when it slipped through.

Better than the barest flinch when Miss Renfield stopped deliberately within earshot. “How desperate,” she said. “As if a marquess would marry someone like her.”

“What can you expect? Blood will out.”

Sybil considered turning around with suggestions for better insults. More interesting barbs. Something entertaining. She did not. She would have, had she not been proving a point about her connections to the Marquess Blackburn. They were meant to think such things about her tonight. Her unsuitability.

And they did not even know about the time she had stolen a letter from an earl during a ball and slid down the banister, chased by two footmen. Or when she had jumped into the Serpentine in order to draw attention away from a debutante avoiding a duke’s son.

They did not know her at all, truly.

It helped. A little.

So did the perpetually cheerful Lord Victor Bailey, second son of an earl and still too good for her, but it did not matter, as their only interest in each other was saving one another from boredom. He was a hero, in his own way.

“Dance with me, Miss Taunton,” Victor said, too loudly as always. His golden curls flopped over his forehead in a way that made many girls sigh. Sybil only itched to push it back where it belonged and slap some pomade through it. “No one is nearly as fun as you are, and they all come with sticky matrimonial strings and expectations.”