Ways to Be Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the movement.
    Though the temptation arose, she knew turning on her heel and fleeing was no longer an option. Her journey
must
end here.
    On the imposing door, a snarling brass lion held a loop of metal in its teeth; Sylvie took a deep breath for confidence, took the knocker in her hands, and rapped hard twice.
    Her breath came short now. What if the woman who lived in this house had nothing at all to do with her?
    Would she be kind? Would she be stunned to discover her sister was a ballerina, someone who had occupied a twilight world where she was admired and envied by women like herself—but only from a distance? And, not infrequently, courted and pursued by their husbands?
    But Etienne had promised to buy her a home. He owned many homes, homes she had never seen, homes, she was certain, many times the size of this one.
    Moments later, the door opened; a butler stared at her. His face was bland, as impassive as the walls of the home itself, his hair and skin were a matching shade of gray-white, no doubt the result of a life spent indoors.
    “May I be of some assistance to you, Madame?” A neutral sort of politeness, the sort at which servants excelled, and he’d employed it because he hadn’t the faintest idea who she was and to which social stratum she belonged. She saw his eyes flick up, note the hackney at the foot of the steps. Flick back to her. Searching for clues as to whether he should warm the temperature of his voice.
    He doesn’t know who I am,
Sylvie reminded herself.
Doesn’t know I’m a dancer, with a lover, who fled across the Channel.
    “Is Lady Grantham at home, please?” She tried not to sound defensive. She also tried not to sound French, but this was virtually impossible.
    The impassive expression changed not a fraction. “The viscount and Lady Grantham are away, Madame. Would you care to leave your card?”
    “A-away?” Perhaps he meant they’d...gone to the shops or for a stroll, she thought desperately. Though, somehow, given the tenor of her journey thus far, she suspected this was optimistic bordering on the delusional.
    “By
away,
I mean they’ve gone to France, Madame.” Something that might have been the beginnings of a frown shadowed the place between his eyes.
    Suddenly the ramifications of the viscount and Lady Grantham going to France struck.
    “Did they perhaps go to visit...Lady Grantham’s sister?”
    “‘Sister,’ Madame?” It was almost sharply said.
    And then his face, in a heartbeat, went from bland to cynical and wary.
    “I am Lady Grantham’s sister,” Sylvie said with some dignity.
    She heard the sound of a cleared throat eloquently from the street. The hackney driver.
    “Of
course
you are, Madame.” Sylvie blinked; his words were all but chiseled from scorn. “You and every other opportunistic female on the Continent. Ever since the trial. It’s not an original idea, though I must admit your widow’s weeds are a new approach.”
    “T-trial?” “Trial” was seldom a good word in any language.
    “Come now, Miss. Mr. Morley’s trial. What a sordid business it was, what with him involved in the murder of Richard Lockwood, and Anna Holt blamed for it, and out it came that Lady Grantham—the wife of a
very
wealthy viscount, mind you—had two sisters who disappeared when she was very young, and she doesn’t know what became of them. Oh my, the letters we’ve received, the young ladies who’ve appeared on the doorstep...the story seems to have inspired every opportunist on the Continent. You’re not the first to think of it, Madame. Quite a nuisance, it’s been, the flocks of young ladies and the pleading letters. Posing as a widow, however, is a novel approach, I will say that for you, Madame. And you’ve shown a certain amount of daring—or would it be stupidity?—in telling such a story when my employers have begun to prosecute the transgressors. They are, in fact, offering a rather large reward for the apprehension of