Page 21 of The Viscount's Seduction
She kept her seat. “’Tis only a slight headache. Thank you for your concern.”
“Have you taken a powder? I have always found Dover’s Powders to be quite effective.”
She did not take headache powders. “Yes, yes. I will be fine in a moment, thank you.”
“Shall I send for your mother?”
She sighed. A moment alone preparing her spy craft was too much to ask, but she knew how to drive this one away. “You’ll be sending to heaven then, if ’tis my mother you’re fetching, for sure and she’s been gone these many years.”
The lady’s look sharpened.
That was interest there, Sirena decided, stifling a groan. There’d always be interest in her. She’d hoped for an interested cut. Instead, she saw a decided thawing, and more questions coming.
“You are Scottish?”
She shook her head. “Worse, madame. I am a daughter of Ireland.”
“Of course.” That came with the start of a sneer.
Sirena felt more hopeful. Perhaps she could move this lady on with some blarney. “I suppose ’tis not polite to say, but I must. Your gown is the most wonderful thing I’ve seen since arriving in London.”
That brought a smile. The lady was as vain as Sirena had suspected. Ah, but vanity was the least of the seven deadly sins.
“No one has told you that primrose is out of fashion?” the lady asked.
“Why, yes.”You just have.“But it’s this or my cerulean blue, which, you’ll be telling me, is also unfashionable.” She added a smile to soften her impertinence. One must be clever with the most high, and hope they didn’t notice one’s own retaliatory rudeness.
The lady in red laughed and actually curtsied.
“I am Lady Arbrough. Come, you must tell me your name.”
“Sirena Hollister.LadySirena Hollister, there’s the amazing thing.”
“Indeed.”
Sirena could see the wheels turning in the lady’s head, clicking down the list of peers, looking for the Hollisters. Good luck to her.
A fiddle bow squealed in the distance.
“They’re about to start,” the lady said. “Come, take my arm and we shall return together.”
So her plain Irish primrosiness could set off the lady’s fiery beauty. Fair enough. She would be invisible, and upon arrival could shed the persistent woman.
“Very well.” She linked arms and proceeded down the hall. “My lady will be worrying about me.”
Lady Arbrough stopped and dropped her arm. “Your lady?”
“Lady Jane Monthorpe. She’s taken me in, as it were. One might say she’s my employer.” Her head was feeling better. She held back the grin that wanted to break forth. “Though I suppose, if one were employed, one couldn’t expect to be a guest of thehaute ton? So I must call her ‘my lady’ instead of my employer.” She curtsied. “And you may precede me, my lady.”
Lady Arbrough froze. Her gaze raked the yellow flounces of Sirena’s dress, as though peeping under each pleat to see what was squirming there.
“You are a sly one.” She twined her arm with Sirena’s again. “We’ll make a grand entrance together, you and I.” She chuckled. “Sly and impertinent. We shall be fast friends, I think.”
That fairy hammer twinged in her head again. Another fast friend. She had even less in common with this lady than she did with Lady Perry.
When they stepped into the ballroom, several musicians were tuning up instruments. Some forward gentleman would claim Lady Arbrough immediately, and Sirena would deposit her own self in the far corner of the room between a potted plant and a door. She was counting on it.
Bakeley skirtedthe edge of the room, greeting guests and secretly searching for a golden-haired lady in a yellow dress.
