Page 94 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

Keir sat back and tried to convince his heart that it no longer needed to be lodged inside his throat. Sybil was safe. Peony, bless her soul, was also safe, pistol in hand. “Someone was following you,” she said. “I think.”

“You think?”

“I felt it was prudent to shoot at him just in case.”

Keir wondered if she would get the wrong idea if he bought her flowers. Many of them.

“Is that a warming brick?” she asked Sybil. “Share it, you ingrate—I’m more than half frozen from lying on the roof.”

Sybil moved over. “Why were you on the roof? I thought you had set up in the apartment across the walk?”

“I did, but the occupant came home early. With two women. And another gentleman. It was a bit crowded.”

“They were probably too busy to notice you.”

“I decided not to take that chance. There are some things I cannot unsee.”

They sounded unbothered by the evening’s event, although Keir knew that to be untrue. Sybil’s fingers were tangled together, knuckles white. He himself was so on edge that it was a wonder his back teeth had not cracked from the clenching of his jaw.

Sybil pulled off her mask and lifted her eyebrows at him. How did she manage to make an ordinary hat and frock coat look so dashing? “You shot him.”

“I did not like the sound of your name in his mouth.” His jaw clenched again.

“So you shot him in the foot?”

“I would have shot him in the chest, but I did not have the right angle.”

“I didn’t have any angle at all,” Peony grumbled.

“Well, you shot that bloke who was following me, so thank you both.”

Peony just shrugged, more interested in the rifle leaning against Keir’s knee. “Is that a Baker’s Pattern rifle?”

“Yes, it is.”

“With the rifling grooves?”

“Yes.”

She pointed to her double-barrel flintlock. “I can shoot twice with this without reloading, but it does not quite have the same accuracy. I’ve read Baker’s alteration means that the rifle can shoot farther than any other gun!”

“Oh, here we go.” Sybil grinned. “Now you’ve done it.”

Peony turned to her. “Thomas Plunkett shot a French general at six hundred paces during the war, I’ll have you know.”

“Who?”

“He was a rifleman, Sybil. Honestly.”

Keir was not sure how they had gone from secret societies, murder, and shooting people, at one of London’s most fashionable addresses, to this. He handed Peony the rifle. “Take it. It’s yours.”

Her eyes shone. She grabbed it. “Really?” She clearly had no intention of giving it back.

“Really.”

“Thank you.” She clutched it to her chest, running her fingers along the proof mark shaped like a crown on the barrel. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s poking me.”

“Then move. Did you get anything useful from that lot in there?”

“They stabbed a man right in front of me,” Sybil said. “They are worse than we thought. But they all wore masks and cloaks. They were only familiar in the way anyone of the ton is familiar. But I did get this!” She waved a piece of paper. “A list of their next victims, which I intend to—”

Sybil went silent.

Keir frowned at her, then followed her frozen, horrified gaze.

Fire reached into the sky outside the window as the carriage rolled to a halt, painting it red and orange. They now knew exactly why Pierce and the others had not shown.

Spinster House was burning.