Page 84 of The Viscount's Seduction
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“We may have met at some point.”
She glanced at Bakeley. His arms were folded under his hastily-tied neck cloth, and his hair still glistened from the bath. And he hadn’t shaved. He wore his I’m-a-lord-and-intensely-bored look, andthatcombined with the delicious, disreputable appearance niggled at her hard-won composure.
“The note is from the landlord of the inn where he’s taken rooms,” Bakeley said. “I went to visit Hollister today, and he was away. He and his servants have been gone. They’ve returned, as you see, with injuries.”
His lordship’s chin came up an inch. “And what is that to me?”
Bakeley moved another chair and sat, lolling back and kicking one foot over his knee.
Both men looked at each other. Not as if they were staring daggers, or not even butter knives. They were two icicles facing one another, not even melting.
Anger rolled through her in great waves. At this rate, the conversation would stretch until bacon and toast were laid out for breakfast. Aye, she must intervene. What was Sterling Hollister to Shaldon? If he was another one of Shaldon’s spies, some hard facts for his lordship might move things along, and let him hear what he’d got for a new daughter.
Sirena rose. “Father—you did ask me to call you that, sir—Sterling Hollister was a distant cousin of my father, who was, you know, the Earl of Glenmorrow. Sterling appeared at Glenmorrow last summer, coming to claim title to the land, bringing along papers and my father’s solicitor from Belfast to explain them all. I’d been expecting it, ’twas true.” She paced to the fireplace. “I’d had but a few friends in the neighborhood. My brother was a scandal, and my father became one with his drinking, and in any case he’d given up on everything except his horses.”
Shaldon still watched her.
She sensed him thawing, even as icy anger built within her. She forced her fists open and took a deep breath.
“Might I have a season? No. Might I entertain a regular kind of courtship from a respectable man? No. We were outcasts, you see, and also, the meager bit that was to be my dowry was gone. Yes.” A hard knot of anger strangled that last word and she swallowed it down. “So, no social standing. No gentlemen callers. I know horses, and I can manage their breeding and training, but I had no dowry. Even a yeoman wants a wife to bring something more than unwomanly skills and her fair self to the marriage. And then along comes Sterling Hollister.”
Warm hands settled on her shoulders, and she realized, she’d been trembling.
“Sirena, shall I tell the rest?”
Bakeley had joined her near the fireplace.
She craned her neck around and searched his eyes, glad there was no pity there.
She didn’t want pity. She wanted revenge. “I suppose he knows it already.”
“Tell it anyway.”
She took a deep breath. Bakeley’s hands circled her waist, lending her strength. “The vicar’s wife told me I could expect my cousin to provide for me, being an orphan. She said that everyone in the neighborhood was whispering he might even propose a marriage, since the rumor was he had no wife. I thought upon it, you know, and decided it wasn’t completely impossible. We weren’t rich, except in land and of course what horses we had left. If we managed better, if we switched to sheep and put more land to planting...” She shook her head. “Sterling Hollister arrived on Saturday. He accompanied me to services the next morning.” She looked down and found her hand resting in Bakeley’s. “Lord and Lady Cheswick and Lady Jane were visiting our neighbor. We met one day when both ladies came to see a horse. Well, at church on Sunday, Lady Jane pulled me from his side. She’d seen him touching me. Seen me slapping his hand away.”
Heat flooded her at the memory and she bit her lip.
“Do you need my handkerchief?” Bakeley whispered.
“No.”
Shaldon had come round his desk, as tall and as dark as his son, ready to catch her the other way.
Well, she would not collapse on either of these Englishmen.
“In short, sir, the new Earl of Glenmorrow did say he would provide for me. Since my father had mismanaged the estate so badly, the cost to me was that I would be privileged to share my cousin’s bed, while he looked for an heiress to fill his coffers. And after that, he promised he would only throw me as far as one of the crofts on the estate.”
Shaldon’s firm jaw moved, and the lines between his eyebrows deepened. Perhaps he had not already heard this story after all.
Her chest tightened and moisture pricked her eyes. She took a deep breath. “Was Sterling another of your spies, my lord?”
Shaldon blinked. “No. Never. And you are a very brave girl.”
She turned away and squeezed her eyes shut, surrendering to Bakeley’s arms. Not brave at all. Naught but a weak weeper.
“Hollister tried to violate Sirena.” His words rumbled through her. “He followed her to her chambers. The housekeeper had slowed him down by dosing his drink, the butler bashed him, and Sirena ran away. Lady Jane rescued her.”
