Free Amanda Scott by Lord Greyfalcon’s Reward Page A

be.”
    “Oh, I’ve no doubt of that now, sir,” said Greyfalcon, his words sounding to Sylvia much like the cracks of a whip. When his arm came around her shoulders, pressing her forward toward her father, she found herself most reluctant to obey but forced to do so whether she would or not. His voice went on, over her head, and she knew this words were creating more trouble for her than she had ever thought possible. “You must ask your daughter, sir, about her trip to London, about the letters she brought from you, supposedly written in your hand, to be delivered to the Times and the Gazette. I must thank you for your courtesy in sending them to me first, and for your warning that they would be published unless I returned at once to Oxfordshire.”
    Lord Arthur glanced over at the interested postboys. “Have your rig sent ’round to the stables, lad, and come you inside. We’ve much to discuss.”
    Sylvia found her voice at last and stepped forward. “Papa, do not be angry. I only did what I—”
    “Enough,” Lord Arthur said in a tone she could not remember having heard from him before. “You will retire to your bedchamber at once, daughter. Your apologies can be made at a more appropriate time.”
    “But, Papa—”
    “Not another word,” he said, standing aside and pointing toward the open door. “Bid his lordship good night and go, at once.”
    His tone this time brooked no further argument. Muttering “Good night, sir,” Sylvia fled past her father and up the great-hall stairs to her bedchamber.

5
    A LONE IN HER BEDCHAMBER, Sylvia lit the three candles in the silver holder on her dressing table and sat down to peer at her reflection, noting that the flames of the candles were as nothing to the flames in her cheeks. Sent to her room like a child … and with Greyfalcon as a witness. How could her father do such a thing to her?
    As the question flashed through her mind, however, she had difficulty meeting her own eyes in the looking glass. Her father had done nothing, really, and considering that Greyfalcon had roused Lord Arthur’s temper to a greater heat than she could remember ever having done herself, Lord Arthur had acted with great restraint in simply dismissing her. He might just as well have reprimanded her severely right there in front of Greyfalcon. This was all Greyfalcon’s fault.
    Again, she had difficulty meeting her own gaze in the mirror, for her innate honesty forbade blaming the earl alone. Greyfalcon had done no more than she had provoked him into doing. And, she decided, despite, or perhaps in view of, everything, she would give a great deal to know what was taking place in the library at this very moment.
    She could not doubt that the two men had retired to Lord Arthur’s favorite room. The hall, with its magnificent chimneypiece, was an impressive chamber and the one they used whenever they entertained formally at the manor house, but the library was where Lord Arthur spent nearly every hour of every day that he was not sleeping, and even a certain number of those hours. He enjoyed a comfortable doze before the roaring fire with his book lying open on his lap and one of his dogs curled at his feet. Picturing him in that familiar pose, Sylvia smiled. Then the smile faded as she pictured him standing instead by his great desk, stiffly listening while Greyfalcon, no doubt having taken a place before the great fire to warm himself, told him of her perfidy in no doubt painstaking detail.
    Would he tell Lord Arthur about keeping her overnight in his house on Curzon Street? She doubted it. But she did not doubt for a moment that he would describe her visit to Brooks’s down to the numbers on the cards she had seen, and the ribald comments that had followed them from the Great Subscription Room, or that he would describe those damning letters right down to the last flourish of Lord Arthur’s forged signature. Indeed, he might well have brought the letters with him. The more she