Page 1 of The Viscount's Seduction
Chapter 1
County Donegal, Ireland, 1809
Thewhisk-whiskof the curry comb always soothed a girl’s jitters. With Papa on edge, and Mama in one of her sinking spells, the great beasts were the only creatures Sirena Hollister could rely on.
Last night, Mama said there’d be bad news coming.
“Ye’ve about taken all the hair off her.” Old Patrick came up alongside and rested a hand on the horse’s swollen belly. “It’ll be soon for this foaling. Mayhap today. Nipped you yet, has she, fiddling about with that comb?”
“Nay, and you know they never nip me,” Sirena said.
She had the touch, Jamie had always told her.
Old Patrick chuckled. “Fey girl.”
Like Gram, Mama had the sight to know what was what with the people she loved, and Sirena could whisper a horse off the worst sort of snit. Any horse.
Pity she hadn’t that skill with her papa.
One of the dogs bayed, and old Patrick’s gaze swung to the open stable doors.
A rider was coming. Around them, hooves began tapping and the mare’s nostrils flared.
The bad news was arriving.
Sirena eased in a quelling breath and let it flow out over the mare, fixing her gaze on the rolling eyes. “Shush then,” she whispered. “There now. There’s a good mama.”
She followed the gimping Patrick past stalls humming with the sense of a predator, the great beasts drawing the life from inside her, emptying her.
Death was a predator, wasn’t it?
Not the sleep that had taken her gram one soft summer day before Jamie left them for good. No, notthatdeath. For all she was no more than a girl, barely bleeding yet, she knew this death coming wasn’t that peaceful sleep.
Her heart hollowed more and the shell of it crumbled down to her belly. By the time she reached the gate, the rider was circling the house and trotting back down the Earl of Glenmorrow’s lane, his message delivered.
Sirena hiked her skirts and raced past old Patrick, down the path, through the kitchen garden. She slammed into the kitchens, through them, past the laundry and the still rooms, past the butler’s pantry with its rows and rows of whiskey, up the narrow servants’ stairs and down the hall to the parlor, where she crashed through again, panting, every breath burning her chest and stabbing her side.
Papa’s hand shook with the weight of a slim parchment packet, a yellowing lump folded over and over upon itself and sealed with a huge purple-red bruise of wax. Something inside rattled.
In the new world, there was a snake, Jamie had once told her, deadly and venomous, and it shook its tail to warn of its presence. He wanted to sail there and see it. He didn’t want to stay home, here, where she needed him.
He needed to go, he’d said. Even her father had allowed it, and so it must be. She’d dropped the chain with Gram’s magical Brighid knot round Jamie’s neck—the old magic of Queen Brighid, not that of the upstart saint—and made him promise to bring it back to her.
Outside the clouds shifted and the room brightened, thickening the air with dust motes that winked like the fairies. Mama stood gripping her chair, the hoop of white cloth in one hand dripping red thread, her cheeks as white as the bit of linen she fingered.
Papa’s face hardened.
She’d seen that same rigid cast when he’d put down a horse, her huddling behind a great oak, thanking the tree fairies it had been Papa astride when the horse tripped.
She clutched the door latch, her breath frozen, watching the wafer snap, the paper unfurl, a length of gold chain dangle.
“They’ve found a body. They say it’s his.” Papa said the words the fairies had whispered to Mama last night.
All of her numbed. Time stopped.
She’d prayed—how she’d prayed, and all for naught.For naught.
Queen Bridghid, you traitor, carry me away down the hole of your witch’s knot. Fairies, open the floor and let me fall through it.
