Page 115 of The Viscount's Seduction
Perhaps she could impose a bit more. “I should very much like it if my husband and his father come home soon. I should send a note, if I but knew the destination. I am not at all at ease tonight.”
“Yes, my lady. And perhaps we should send the artist home?”
Send him home?Whoever he was, that would not serve Shaldon and Bakeley’s needs, nor, she feared, her own. How had her goals become aligned so much with theirs that she would trap a fellow Irishman in the web of this English spymaster?
Only, perhaps he was not truly her sort of Irishman.
“And incur Lady Perry’s disappointment? Let him work. Perhaps an extra footman on the door if any are still awake.”
“As you wish.” He bowed and left.
At the writing table, Sirena found a sheet of parchment and a pencil. Her hand began to trace the soothing form of the knot. Hand, hearth, head, heart. Every time her brother had come home from school or his travels, he’d told her the tale of it. And if the man in the next room did not know it, he was not Jamie.
She took in a ragged breath. If he was someone sent here to hurt them, Shaldon and Bakeley would take care of him, of that she was certain.
Perhaps being protected was not so bad.
And if he had information about her brother, Shaldon and Bakeley would thrash it out of him.
She squeezed her eyes shut. What had truly happened to her brother? And was he alive or dead?
A breeze ruffled her paper and sparked the fire. The window was open.
Fear galloped through her. She braced her fists on the edge of the desk. Too late, too late.
“You liked my design?”
The man with the scar, the man who was not Jamie, was looking over her shoulder.
