Page 32 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

Why had she not replied? Was she in trouble?

A footman left her house, but he did not come to knock at Keir’s door. He walked away down the street. She was not safely at home.

Keir would have followed him, if his little sister had not chosen that very moment to take ten years off his life.

Sybil,

When you are nearly flattened by a carriage and then offered an escort home, you do not run away on foot without a word. In inclement weather. In the middle of the night. Pray, send word that you are unharmed. I am not playing at games. Blackburn.

Sybil read the note three times, which was two times too many. There was no reason to read it more than once. It was hardly poetry. There was nothing private or personal about it.

Though he did seem worried for her wellbeing.

Which was kind.

Or merely dutiful?

This was the Most Stoic and Most Dutiful Marquess Blackburn, after all.

“Keir, why are you sitting in the dark like a bloody specter,” Sophie yelped—once she had stopped screaming. His ears echoed with it.

“Why are you lurking about the house so late?” he returned. “And don’t say ‘bloody.’”

She rolled her eyes. “I couldn’t sleep.” With her hair knotted in rags and her slippers peeking out from a thick nightdress, she looked like his little sister again, not just the girl ready to be a debutante who rolled her eyes every time he said anything. “What are you doing?”

“Also not sleeping.”

“I came to borrow a book,” she said, then sighed. “But everything in this house is so deadly dull. Farming techniques and the history of water clocks and those etiquette manuals Father loved so much.”

“You clearly have not read those manuals—how would you know if they are dull?”

She rolled her eyes again. One day he would keep a tally of how many times she did that in one conversation. “I would rather start a proper bonfire with them.”

He did not blame her. If she only knew how many times he had been forced to read them, as well as every dry treatise dating back to the Romans. Dissertations on the Empire. Lectures. Papers. Broken rulers over his knuckles when he got something wrong. When he dared say at eight years old that he would much rather climb trees or learn to play the pianoforte than learn Latin.

“Even finishing schools have the odd novel,” she muttered.

He hadn’t thought about the library in the house. Everything was mostly the same as it had always been. Almost as though he were secretly afraid his father would come barreling out of his study shouting if Keir changed a single candlestick. But it was not his study any longer. It was Keir’s.

“I’m not going back to that school,” Sophie said defiantly.

“I know. They won’t have you,” Keir pointed out drily. “I’ve already made other arrangements.”

She frowned briefly before tugging her shawl closer together. “I should have guessed you would want to be rid of me as quickly as possible.”

“That’s not it,” he said, honestly surprised. “Girls go to finishing schools.” Didn’t they?

“Never mind.”

Dear Most Stoic and Dutiful Lord Blackburn,

I am perfectly capable of looking after myself. I am, however, sorry if you were worried. I can’t think why. I am a very staid and dull person and never cause trouble.

Dear Sybil,

Ha.

Dear Marquess of All Things Proper,