Page 131 of The Viscount's Seduction
Of all the players in this game, the only one he truly trusted was this bundle of woman whose hair was tickling his nose.
He stroked a hand down her back. In the council of war at the Home Office, they’d concluded that Sterling Hollister wanted many things—to acquire power through his radical colleagues, to ensure Roland Hollister stayed dead, to retrieve any evidence of his treason, and to accomplish it all without any blame pointing his way.
He wanted revenge on the late Lord Glenmorrow also, and one thing Bakeley was certain of—Sirena had thwarted him once. Perhaps he suspected she was the blackmailer.
The villain thought himself on the way to becoming a powerful man, destroying his enemies without so much as removing his gloves.
If all went as planned, they would strip him bare.
Unease settled over him. He thought about Shaldon’s whispered conversation with Fox. Bakeley had shared all his secrets with Sirena, but he sensed Father had more.
Sirena pattedthe sable ribbon tied at her neck. A narrower, matching one twined through her hair which Jenny had braided and curled and piled atop her head.
A diamond brooch—Bakeley’s mother’s—had been pinned to the wide ribbon, and she wore the matching earbobs.
The necklace that was part of the set was back in the safe. She would wear that when her bruising had cleared.
“A bit more paint on her cheek, Jenny.” Madame had personally supervised the final arranging of her hair and her jewelry and her dressing—or, as it had been, re-dressing.
When Madame arrived with the forgotten ball gown, Sirena had already been wearing the fine gold and red dress from her wedding.
The sight of it had given Madame pause.
While Jenny helped her out of the dress and her stays and into a new steel-boned set that Madame had made especially for her, there’d been some low conversation between the modiste and Barton. And then Madame had proclaimed the wedding dress exquisite, and then everyone had agreed Sirena should wear the new one, of a deeper shade of gold, and which, as it turned out, had been crafted with specially concealed pockets for weapons. Madame had whispered that fact to her as she’d stitched her into the dress.
Aye, the world was filled with ex-spies. If Barton or Lady Jane popped up and said she was working for Talleyrand, she’d not be surprised.
Madame handed Jenny a painter’s brush, and the fine bristles whisked over her cheeks smoothing out the pink dabs there.
“Well, I look less like a bosky tavern wench now.”
Jenny frowned.
“Do not be vexed, Jenny. I’m only having you on.”
“She’s nervous,” Lady Jane said.
“I should say we all are.” Paulette handed Sirena a pair of golden gloves and she worked them up over the scrapes on her hands. “You look like a queen, Sirena. Golden. Glowing.”
“Like Brighid, Queen of fire,” Perry said.
Upon their return to the house that morning, Sirena had shared the story of her brother, the quaternary knot, and Brighid with Perry, who’d rushed to write it all down.
“I am positively green with jealousy,” Paulette said. “I would just like for once to be something other than little and dark.”
“Jealousy?” Sirena said. “And you in your crimson gown? You look like a Spanish contessa. I should never be able to wear that shade without it swallowing me alive.”
Perry pushed her glasses higher. She wore pale green, laced with silver and embellished with matching seed pearls and embroidery, and looked like a tall, bespectacled wood sprite. “You don’t need to worry that Bink’s eyes will stray, Paulette. They will be only on you, well, and perhaps—”
Sirena cleared her throat. Though a hoard of men had descended on Shaldon House early that morning, swarming the garden and the public rooms and even the cellar, Lady Jane, Barton, and Jenny were not privy to the night’s undertaking. Though, knowing Jenny, she’d probably sniffed out the impending conflict. And the lord only knew what Madame had been told.
Perry had almost been left out, but Sirena had insisted Perry had to know. Bink had tried to keep Paulette home, and had finally told her why. After that, there was no holding her back.
Someone scratched at the door and Barton answered it.
Kincaid filled the doorway, dressed to the hilt in Shaldon livery. “All the dinner guests have arrived,” he said.
Madame’s back stiffened and she cast him a withering look. One that he returned.
