Page 23 of The Viscount's Seduction
Chapter 7
Bakeley backed stealthilyto the door, thinking.
Soon after her arrival, Lady Sirena had left the room, and had only returned as the performance was starting, with Lady Arbrough in tow. Both had most likely been in the salon set aside for the ladies.
Lady Sirena might truly be ill. She might not have been lying about megrims.
As the host, he was entitled to check. It was more properly left to the hostess, but she was thick in the middle of an étude.
He knocked at the retiring room door, and the maid in attendance said no one was there except herself. He opened his mouth to ask about the lady in the yellow dress, but then remembered—the maid, like every other servant in this house, was likely to share his questioning with the housekeeper, who would speak to the butler, and sooner or later, Shaldon would hear of it.
The strands of music filtered through the corridors. Where would she have gone?
That was the wrong question.Whywould she go off exploring the home of the Earl of Shaldon?
Why, indeed. Shaldon was all tied up in her family’s troubles. Perhaps she, too, would be looking for the same thing he’d searched days in a row for—a file on the Hollisters.
His father’s study wasn’t on the first floor, and it would be locked. Even if she could find the room on her own, she wouldn’t be able to enter.
Unless she could pick a very complicated lock, which, being Irish, she probably could.
The other places to search were his father’s bedchamber and the library. Even if she found her way up the stairs to the correct bedchamber, the valet might be there, fussing about with his father’s things.
The library it was.
He followed the corridor to the other side of the house and listened a moment at the closed door, then turned the latch. A low fire burned in the fireplace, and the room was disturbingly quiet.
Yet he sensed a presence, heard a rustle suddenlyshushed. The only scent in the air was the stale smoke of cigars. Lady Sirena used no scent that he could recall, or perhaps her perfume was too subtle amongst the cloying perfumes of the other ladies.
As his eyes adjusted, he spotted a candelabra and went about lighting the tapers. “I do hope Perry is not disappointed that I have a megrim...also,” he said.
When he looked up from the lit candles, she had moved in front of the fire.
“I shall return then.” She stepped out toward the door.
He blocked her path and heard her small gasp. And smelled her, a faint hint of some flowery soap.
She stepped to one side, and he matched her, as in their dance at the Hackwells’ ball.
“Pray, sir, what are you about? Sure, and I mayn’t be here all alone with you.”
The lilting words warmed him. “Whatever are you doing in the library?”
“Have I offended? I am sorry. I do have the headache, and I could find no peace in the ladies’ retiring room.”
“Ah. Is that where you befriended Lady Arbrough?”
Her low chuckle moved over him. “Aye. I walked up to the fashionable lady and asked her to help poor me back to the music room.” She clucked her tongue. “Do you think? For some reason, it was the lady befriending me. Said we will be fast friends, which Lady Perry said also tonight, and her I may believe.”
“Lady Arbrough is starting trouble.”
“Are you and she friends then? Two peas from the same pod?” She tried to skirt him again, and he matched her—again. “Let me pass and the trouble will be less.”
He took a step closer, close enough to feel the swirl of her skirt, and his heart lifted. “Lady Arbrough...until very recently was averyclose...friend.”
And that friendship was over. He would talk to Jocelyn on the morrow.
He felt a shock travel through her, and when she spoke her voice trembled with it. “Your amorous congress—isn’t that what it’s called?—is nothing to me. I’m leaving now. Take your sorry self out of my way and let me pass.”
