Page 53 of The Viscount's Seduction
A frown line was etched between her eyebrows. He hoped she would save some of that spirit for later.
“I believe I knew you weren’t quiet and meek when I saw you with a blade yesterday. I do hope you’ll limit your challenges to sharp words.”
“Of course. Unless your father threatens my person.”
“No, my dear, I mean with me. Over the course of our marriage, we’re bound to have a disagreement or two.”
She rolled her eyes. He had distracted her from worry about his father, he hoped.
Leave Shaldon to him. His lordship was up to something, and it was his job to make sure it didn’t ruin the wedding night.
“I’m looking for a man,” Lord Shaldon said. He’d taken a wing chair set near to the fireplace in Hackwell’s library.
Sirena turned her gaze to the man called Kincaid, who didn’t so much as shift against the mantle. Honestly, he would burn his breeches should he keep leaning so close.
While everyone had toasted the bride and groom and nibbled at the generous repast, Paulette’s uncle—for that was Kincaid’s kinship—had alternated Paulette’s wee baby and the Hackwells’ two little ones on his knees and played a game he called skat with Hackwell’s young nephew and brother, all without his dour face breaking a smile. Paulette said that her uncle and his lordship were thick as brothers, two men who could finish each other’s sentences, that was how long they’d fought side by side.
On the chair next to her, Bakeley was as stiff as one of the Beltany Stones. Waiting his father out, he was. Quite patiently. And so should she bide her peace also, if ever so impatiently. She’d hold her tongue and see which way this conversation uncoiled.
Well, but it seemed his lordship was being direct, and what did that mean?
Shaldon cleared his throat. Bakeley remained mum.
Oh, good Lord.’Twould be left to her to spur the talking. “And who would you be looking for, Lord Shaldon?”
His lordship’s hard eyes turned on her. “Father.”
The hair on her neck rose. “I beg your pardon?”
“I should very much like for you to call me ‘Father’, Lady Sirena.”
Heat swamped her. What was the old man about?
Bakeley’s face slipped into a confounded frown. “Who is the man you’re looking for?”
“Would it be possible for you to call me ‘Father’? I know your own father is deceased. A fine horseman he was.” His fingers thumped the chair arm. “It was a bad day when your brother disappeared, but that is the pity and the foolishness of war.”
Her heart quaked within her and sudden anger sparked her tongue.
She bit it back. He thought the Irish were fools, including the Hollisters.
Certainly her father had been foolish, spending all on his horses and drinking himself to death. Perhaps ifhe’dsold the rest of the horses she’d helped build up after Bakeley’s purchase, perhaps he’d have lived longer instead of succumbing to the black bile. Or perhaps his daughter wouldn’t have been left to live as a pauper with Lady Jane.
Shaldon couldn’t be any worse of a father than that. Well, except that she still didn’t know what his tie was to her brother. If there was a tie.
Her chest quaked like a cauldron boiling. She blinked hard and cleared her throat. “Certainly I’m without a father now, and if you wish me to call you that, then I will.”
“It’s very hard for a man to lose a son and a wife. Very hard indeed.” He looked away, ruminating on something that hadn’t happened to him. He’d lost a wife, but not a son. And surely a man this hard wouldn’t besentimental.
She felt the press of Bakeley's hand on hers.
“I count myself quite fortunate to have three sons and a daughter, and now two daughters by marriage.”
She held her breath. Fortunate to have her?
“Father, who’s the man you’re looking for, and what does that have to do with Sirena and me?” Bakeley’s frown had been a momentary wrinkle. He’d turned back into a standing stone—the bored aristocrat, the dispassionate Englishman—these men all played so well.
That, in truth, was much of what James Everly, Lord Bakeley was. Queen Brighid, help her.
