Page 19 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

She widened her eyes. “Pardon me?” She had been accused of stealing more times than she could count. Whenever anything went missing, the ton whispered about ill breeding. Every tea party until she was eleven years old and refused to attend involved hiding the silverware from her, all while gently born aristocratic girls got away with everything by blaming her.

Sybil did not bother pointing out that she only stole from them after they accused her. For justice. Vengeance. A lark.

If she did not take them seriously, they could not hurt her.

“Yes, Bentley,” her father said. “What exactly are you accusing my daughter of?” He sounded bemused, confused. Also furious, if you knew how to read the way he drummed his thumb on the table, waiting for a response.

“Fortingham’s betting book is missing,” Lord Bentley announced in resounding tones best suited for the stage.

“Is that all?” Amandine waved her hand, dismissing the subject entirely. “How… dull.”

Lord Bentley drew himself up. “The gentlemen in that book would consider it a breach of honor, Lady Wentworth.”

“Then those gentlemen clearly need to find themselves a hobby. Something soothing, like flower arranging.”

Lord Bentley was as visibly confused as Sybil’s father, and as furious, but for obviously different reasons. Her parents had that effect on people when they joined forces, which was often. “The only other shocking event of the night was Miss Taunton crossing the threshold of a gentlemen’s club. Badly done.”

“Do not reprimand my daughter,” Charles said, suddenly looking a lot less distracted.

Keir did not say a single word, but he rose slowly to his feet. Lord Bentley glanced up at him. Up and up and up.

Sybil fluttered her eyelashes. She felt like an absolute idiot, but it always worked on men such as Lord Bentley. “What is a betting book, exactly?”

Keir glanced at her. Just once. She fluttered her eyelashes harder, at him this time.

He raised an eyebrow.

“A betting book… is a ledger. It’s no concern for a lady,” Bentley said.

“What does it look like?”

“Why does that matter?”

“How can one help you find it if one does not know what to look for? There are hundreds of books in London. Thousands. It must be very vexing to have misplaced it.”

“It was not misplaced.”

“Well, as I am a woman and it is not my concern, as you say, then I am sure I cannot help you.” She kept her smile in place. “Regrettably.”

“This is a serious matter, Wentworth,” Bentley insisted. “Homes will be searched.”

Interesting. Sybil filed that away for a later discussion with Priya. As well as Bentley’s agitation, though she put that down to privilege and entitlement. “You are welcome to search my chambers,” she offered.

“The hell he is,” Keir snapped, before anyone else could reply. Amandine smiled at him slowly. “Bentley, you’re leaving,” he added. “Now.”

“Blackburn, it’s your club too.”

“And I could not care less about the betting book.”

“You were there! You carried her out!”

“I swooned, was all,” Sybil explained. “It was very womanly of me. So feminine, wouldn’t you say? Lord Blackburn was very courteous.”

Keir’s expression hardened, sharpened. Phantom swords and claymores clashed. A cannonball whistled through the air. “Be very careful, Bentley.”

Lord Bentley swallowed.

“Yes, you do seem overwrought,” Amandine said. “Men can be so emotional.”

Lord Bentley was not just emotional—he was utterly flummoxed. He glanced from Charles’s shocked and sad expression—which he did not yet know meant that his next session in Parliament would be contentious—to Amandine, who looked like the cat who had caught the hapless mouse who thought he had free run of the larder. Keir was a tower of quiet menace. Sybil sat as demure as a debutante.

“I’ll walk you out, Bentley,” Keir said. It was not a suggestion. “Come along, Sophie,” he added.

Sophie stood up, eyes round. Breakfast was probably seldom so exciting at school, porridge in the shoes notwithstanding. “See you soon, Sybil.”

Keir did not look pleased. He did not look anything at all, in fact. His face was stone again.

“Of course,” Sybil said, lifting her chin, feeling too many things and unable to name a single one. “Call anytime, Sophie.”

Her mother turned to Sybil and smiled her mysterious smile, the one her father called her French smile. The smug one that strongly suggested she knew more than you and always would.

“The courtship was just a misunderstanding, you say?”