Free Amanda Scott by Lord Greyfalcon’s Reward Page B

considered the possibility, the more she was certain he must have done so. How could she have neglected to foresee what would happen and to plan in order to avoid this distressing outcome?
    Sighing, and unwilling any longer to gaze at any portion of her reflection—such a stupid girl, really there was no accounting for her stupidity—she turned away, swiveling her body on the dressing stool to face the chamber, a pleasant room, decorated in green and white, with a floral carpet on the polished hardwood floor and green curtains at the single, large, stone-mullioned window. Now, with little light coming through the window and only the candles’ glow within, the colors were grayed, but the scent of potpourri from the jugs near the tall, carved door was familiar, and the sense of being at home helped her to relax. If only the thought of her stupidity would cease whirling through her mind.
    It was not as though she had never fallen into a trap of her own making before. Her most brilliant ideas had almost always been edited by Christopher, and when they had not been, the pair of them had nearly always come to grief.
    She remembered the time she had been moved, at the age of eight, while awaiting Christopher in the kitchen hall at Greyfalcon Park, to replace a bowl of hard-boiled eggs destined for the supper table with newly laid eggs from the henhouse basket left temptingly upon a sideboard. She had said nothing to Christopher until they were both well away from the house, so it had been impossible for him to warn her that company was expected that afternoon. By the time they learned that none other than the haughty Lady Milford, a most intimidating acquaintance of Lady Greyfalcon’s, had been the first person to attempt to crack open an egg, it was too late. Christopher had taken the blame, insisting that he and he alone had been responsible for the prank, and Sylvia had suffered no more than a boxed ear, Christopher’s retaliation for the whipping he had taken on her behalf.
    She had attempted to explain to him on that occasion that she had intended the first egg to be his brother’s, for Christopher had complained that Francis, home from school as he was himself then for some holiday or other, had been lording it over him that he was allowed to take supper with the family and not in the schoolroom with a housemaid in attendance as Christopher still did. She had been sure, she insisted, that Francis, greedy as Christopher was always telling her he was, would certainly take the first egg. Christopher had been sadly unsympathetic, telling her then as he had on other, similar occasions that she simply didn’t think matters through, that she must learn to think out all the possible results of a plan before executing that plan. Otherwise, he warned, she would more often come to grief than not. That had not been the only occasion of the sort, of course, because although she did try to think everything through, it was when her ideas were most brilliant that she found it most difficult to think beyond their brilliance to their possibly unpleasant consequences.
    Surely, she thought now, it was hard to conceive of how she could ever have thought Greyfalcon would say nothing to Lord Arthur about what she had done, particularly since she had done everything in Lord Arthur’s name. Of course, she had anticipated neither that Greyfalcon would escort her to her very doorstep nor that Lord Arthur would be the first person he would clap eyes upon when he did so. She had thought no further than forcing Greyfalcon’s return to Oxfordshire, and that was the nut with no bark on it. Her goal had been to get him home. That goal she had achieved.
    This last thought cheered her a little, and she got up from the stool and moved toward the window to look out upon the darkness. A pair of tall Jacobean cupboards flanked the window with a padded bench between. The window curtains hung from a rod connected to the corners of the cupboards, forming an