“Trouble.”
As there had been nothing bad about the morning Sybil had spent with Nolan, it took several moments for her sister’s words to penetrate that joy. Book in hand on her way to the library, Sybil came up short. “What?”
Aria bounded down the stairs, her tight black curls flying about her shoulders. “Mother,” she rasped, as though she’d run a mile. Her sister, breathless, dropped her hands onto her knees and leaned forward, sucking in breath.
A kernel of panic pitted in her belly. Do not be silly. Aria has always been one of those dramatic sorts.
“Hannah told her.” A vicious glitter lit Aria’s eyes. “Blasted Hannah.”
Oh, no. The kernel grew to the size of a boulder. Sybil took her sister by the shoulders. “What?” she demanded, unheeding a servant passing by. A servant who studiously avoided them.
Aria opened her mouth and then looked to that rapidly fleeing maid. “Come.” Grabbing Sybil by the hand, she dragged her through the halls. All the while, the girl muttered under her breath something about disloyal maids and heartless mothers.
Oh, God. Mother knows. As soon as the dark possibility came forward, she fought it back. I am logical and reasonable. I do not act on fear. I ask questions. Sybil tried to force questions out through the fear clogging her throat.
“Here,” her sister exclaimed, stopping at the library. This room that was, on any other day, Sybil’s sanctuary. They stumbled inside and Aria kicked the door closed behind her. “She knows.”
There could be any number of things or people of whom Aria referred. It’s me, twit. It’s me.
“Mother and Father were arguing and I found this.” Her loyal sibling uncurled her palm revealing a single scrap.
Sybil’s stomach dipped. With trembling fingers, she accepted it. …I’ve decided against our earlier plans to meet at Gipsy Hill. She froze. They’d agreed upon that location that morning. I’ll not meet you at that place I once left you. Meet me in Hyde Park… Sybil reflexively crushed the page and it crinkled loudly. “Oh, God,” she whispered. They’d been discovered.
“Rather romantic stuff,” Aria put in. “Of course, Mother does not see it that way.”
No, she wouldn’t. Sybil’s breath came hard and fast until it felt as though her lungs would burst.
“Who is this Baron Webb?”
“I…” Sybil shook her head. How to explain who Nolan was and what he’d come to mean? She couldn’t. Not even to her youngest sister; the only real friend she had.
Aria plopped onto the arm of the ivory satin settee. “Mother says he is a rake.”
That is how the world did see him. “He’s no rake,” she whispered, more to herself.
“That is disappointing,” Aria said, her tone dejected. “I’d hoped you’d found a good scandalous gentleman to wed.”
Sybil’s world continued to ratchet down about her, crumbling piece by piece with her innocent sister’s prattling. “No. No. No. You misunderstand. It’s not to wed.”
Aria opened her mouth. “Well, that is going to be problematic. Mother is insisting Father meet him.”
Society, her parents, they would all expect Nolan do right by her. And though the thought of spending every last day with him, laughing and teasing one another, filled her with more joy than she’d ever known in her nine and twenty years, she could not have him. Not like this. A tortured moan spilled from her lips and she closed her eyes, wanting to wake up and find this was nothing more than a horrible dream.
“Where is she?” That sharp wail penetrated the panel.
Moments later, the viscountess stormed in with her husband close at her heels.
“Aria,” their mother said, not deigning to look at her youngest child. Her furious regard remained solely on Sybil. She, who held Nolan’s latest, damning missive in her fingers.
Aria hopped to her feet. “Mother. Papa,” she greeted, with a cheerful wave. “I take it you are here to discuss the Christmastide plans—”
“Get out,” Mother ordered.
God love Aria for her loyalty. Instead of immediately scuttling off as any servant or peer would do when presented with the shrewish viscountess, she lingered, giving Sybil’s fingers a slight squeeze. “Know your own happiness,” she whispered Mrs. Austen’s words.
“Aria,” their mother said brusquely.
With a wink, her sister beat a slow retreat, pausing beside her father. “Papa?” she greeted, as though they met in a formal parlor.
“Hullo, my dear—”
“Lord Lovell,” the viscountess cried out in an unexpected snap of her composure. Father and daughter gave another discreet wink before Aria skipped off, leaving Sybil—alone.
It wasn’t truly alone. Papa was here. Of course, Papa was no match for his wife. No one was. Slowly shifting her hands and the damning page behind her back, Sybil donned one of those practiced smile. “Mother. Papa.”
“This is what you’d say?” her mother barked, rushing forward. She stopped and cast a look over in her husband’s direction. “This is where you are to say something, Archie.”
“Ah, yes, of course, of course,” he said belatedly. “We are most concerned.”
“Gravely concerned, Archie. Gravely concerned,” his wife wailed, dropping her head into her hands.
And if the topic of discussion was not, in fact, Sybil’s own precarious-for-now life, she would have found mirth in this farcical-like exchange between husband and wife. How had two such opposite souls been joined? She’d always assumed that theirs had been one of those formal arrangements coordinated between powerful families.
Now, after knowing Nolan, she looked at life through new lenses. Saw the Chinese philosophy she’d spoken to him of. Mayhap, her parents, too, were seemingly opposite but when together, complemented one another.
“Are you listening to me, Sybil Holly?” her mother demanded, snapping into that musing.
“Uh…”
“She is woolgathering, my lord. Oh, it can only mean that it is true.” The viscountess wrung her hands together and a rush of tears flooded her eyes.
Sybil recoiled. Was her mother…crying? The closest in the whole of her life she’d seen the viscountess moved to such grief was the day her godson had chosen to wed Philippa Gage, Lady Winston, over her. That, ironically, had also been one of the most freeing moments in Sybil’s then eight and twenty years. Oh, this was dire, indeed.
“There, there, Alaina,” he offered in gentling tones, patting his wife in the greatest display of affection Sybil had ever witnessed between them. She blinked several times. Had she stepped into an alternative existence?
All moisture immediately dried from the viscountess’ eyes and the world righted itself, once more. “You’re marrying—”
“No,” Sybil interrupted.
“—the baron.”
He’d not offered, nor had he given any indication that he wished for anything more with her than the agreement they’d struck.
“Have you met him alone, Sybil Holly?”
Nearly thirty years of age, she’d not be made to lie to her displeased—furious—mother. She met that demand with stony silence.
The viscountess tossed her hands up and did something she’d never done in the whole of Sybil’s existence. She looked imploringly at her husband. When finding no assistance there, she made another appeal to Sybil. “Notes have been passed between you.” From him. “If Society learns you’ve exchanged intimate correspondence and met the gentleman, you are forever ruined.”
“I love you,” Sybil said softly. “And I know you mean to protect me, Mother. But I’ll not demand he marry me.” She’d not have Nolan like that.
Her mother let loose another exasperated cry.
“Will you excuse us, my Lovell.”
My Lovell. Sybil started. Odd, how she’d forgotten until that quiet murmur from her father that gentle term of endearment he’d used. She’d focused so much on her mother’s haranguing and gossiping ways that she’d failed to see there was, indeed, a modicum of warmth between her parents. Mayhap, even more.
Husband and wife exchanged a look. Some unspoken language was shared. “Lord Lovell,” Mother said stiffly and, eyes forward, she marched from the room.
Father strolled over. “This is the part where I’m to tell you that you must marry the baron or you’ll be turned out forevermore, without home or family ever in your life.”
Her lips twitched. “You could not do that, Papa.” Mother, mayhap. But never Father.
“No,” he whispered. “And despite her blustering, neither would your mother.” He followed that up with a wink. “Must have a care. She’s surely listening at the door.” Her loyal father drummed his fingertips together. “Have you gone off meeting a gentleman, Sybil Holly?”
She hesitated and then nodded. This was, after all, her father.
He sighed. “Do I have reason to call him out as your mother informs me I must?”
If her situation weren’t so dire she’d have managed a laugh at the idea of her monocle-wearing father, with ink-stained fingers, trying to work the handle of a pistol as he faced an athletic Nolan at dawn. “Nothing untoward happened,” she assured him.
“Eh, gel. I heard the pause there.”
Heat bathed her cheeks. “Nothing happened,” she repeated, fiddling with the scrap of paper in her hands. For with the exception of one stolen kiss that left her breathless still, there had been none of those scandalous embraces that saw couples hastily wed. Only, the moments she’d shared with Nolan, beyond that, had been more intimate than any touch or kiss. Restless, she wandered over to the fireplace and, with her back to her father, she unfolded the note. “But I wished that it might have,” she said softly, her voice faintly cracking. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was conducting research, determining whether I’d be truly content as a spinster.”
“You wouldn’t be,” her father correctly surmised.
No. The muscles of her throat bobbed painfully. It was a foolish research of a topic she was better off never having the answer to. But now she did. She wanted a life not only of learning, but of love and laughter—which she’d known more of these past five days than the whole of her life. “It was never anything more than an assignment to him,” she said softly. It was why she’d never, ever dare allow either of her parents or any of Society to put demands to him. “You may tell Mother as much.” And she had, in her plans that involved Nolan, unwittingly used his vulnerabilities against him for her own selfish reasons. Shame squeezed like a vise about her insides. I must set him free. In every way. She tossed the note into the fire and watched as the flames licked at the edges, curling them, and then it was consumed in a great red blaze that fanned the fire. Sybil drew in a shuddery breath.
“Mayhap, this gent loves you,” her father said with his usual gentle optimism. His footsteps indicated he’d moved close.
A sad smile pulled at her lips. “The only reason Nolan…” She grimaced. “…the baron met with me was because I paid him to do so. He’ll not give me another thought after this day.” She caught the hard mantel and curled her fingers around the wood. “And it would be wrong for either of us to be wed because Society might find out that we met. When the reality is, we only met because I paid him.” But how she wished in one of her many Seasons, the affable, charming Nolan Pratt, Baron Webb, had seen her. Not because she’d forced herself upon him and begged a favor with coin and the logic that she prided herself on.
“Ah, Sybil.” Her father settled his hands on her shoulders. “Do you know, there isn’t a gent who can hold a candle to your cleverness?”
And what had that gotten her? No friends. No suitors. No husband and family of her own. She thrust aside that self-pitying. For she didn’t want just any gentleman. She wanted Nolan, who’d taught her that possessing a mind and feeling beautiful were not mutually exclusive. “Knowledge makes for a lonely bedfellow.”
Her father snorted. “I’d rather not think of you with any bedfellow, poppet.”
A sad little laugh shook her frame. “Oh, Papa.” And because it was tearing at her heart thinking of Nolan and what would never be, she fixed on another, in this instance, far safer discussion. “Mother will be liv—”
He patted her cheek. “Do not worry after your mother. I will handle the viscountess.”
As he took his leave and closed the door behind him, Sybil wished he was the all-powerful father she’d always seen as larger than life who could put together the pieces of her broken heart.