Page 86 of The Viscount's Seduction
“Gareth died at Waterloo, and Sterling walked away unscathed?” Bakeley asked.
“Quite. Fought side by side, they did.”
A hard look passed between father and son, and Sirena’s skin quivered. “They both knew my brother was dead. And with Gareth gone, Sterling stood to inherit.”
Shaldon’s lips thinned. “Sterling sold his commission, took up Gareth’s income, and moved himself to London.”
“And waited for my father to die. I should count my blessings he didn’t come to visit us.”
“He wouldn’t have dared to enter the county. Your father had no love for Sterling.”
Her breath almost stopped. She wanted to shout questions, but she held herself still, like her husband was doing.
Bakeley glanced her way. “So Lord Glenmorrow knew his cousins?” He was asking on her behalf, bless him.
“He knew Sterling. It was Sterling who chased your brother all the way to the coast.”
A film seemed to fall from her vision. Sterling had three people between him and Glenmorrow—her father, who he could reasonably expect to outlive, her brother, who was on the wrong side of the law, or so Sterling thought, and his own brother, who’d gone so obligingly to his grave.
“He came back to your father to report on your brother’s ship sinking. Your father took a horsewhip to him.”
She closed her eyes and a memory rocked through her, her mother in tears, her father with his whip, and a soldier in a red coat receiving the lashes. One of the servants had picked her up and hauled her inside to the housekeeper’s room, where she’d done her own crying.
Her head swam with the memory. “That’s why he singled me out for his despicable offer.” It was revenge against her father, beyond the grave. Anger, hot and powerful, threatened to bubble over.
She took a deep breath. “Did my father know that my brother was spying for you?”
Shaldon grimaced and glanced at his son. “Very well. Yes, he did. And he could not share that word with the world because it would compromise others still working. And later...” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Sirena. War takes its toll on the innocent as well as the guilty. Your mother’s death—”
“Did she know?”
“He should not have told her. I don’t know if he did.”
She shook her head. “She had many friends who dropped her, and the grief of it was unbearable. I think he must not have. I think she would have borne it better if she’d known.”
He touched one finger to the file on his desk and slid it across to her. “You’ve been looking for this, I think.”
Bakeley pressed her hand, and she glanced at him. His nod jarred her out of her own reverie.
She wasn’t looking to him for permission, nor did she need it. She lifted her hand to reach for the file and noticed the shaking. She clenched and unclenched her fists, and took the brown folder.
Roland James Hollister, Baron Glenmorrow.
She’d forgotten her brother had held the courtesy title.
He’d been very young when recruited. There weren’t many original reports in his hand, but she recognized his careless scrawl from her memories of the few letters her mother had saved from his time in school, letters she’d had to leave behind at Glenmorrow. Most of his uncoded, transcribed messages had a guardedness about them, like he was not entirely forthcoming with the names of rebels, though he did report on plots and schemes the rebels had afoot.
Halfway measures from a man who was twice a traitor. Her head ached with it.
His last dispatch said he would provide them with a list of names, and that he was pursuing one particular traitor within the army.
A tight knot formed in her stomach. Did he regret his betrayals, this brother she no longer knew? Was that why he provided no names?
She slid the file to Bakeley and waited as he read through it, her gaze focused on her own clenched fists curled in her lap.
Paper swished and Bakeley cleared his throat. “I take it Sterling Hollister was the traitor providing information to the rebels?”
Shaldon chewed his lower lip. “We watched him closely. Fed him information unproductively. We were never able to prove it. But, yes, I would bet my first-born son he is.”
