As he led her up the stairs, Bakeley let his hand drift along Sirena’s waist under yet another ugly woolen shawl. Shaldon had not been in the library and they were on their way to his father’s private study.

He liked the feel of her soft curves without the tight boning. “You don’t really need stays.”

She bounced up the steps. “I saw almost everything today. But not this room. The housekeeper begged off letting us in.”

“She doesn’t have the key,” he said.

Her manner had been chilly, and not from the lack of heat in the frigid dressing room. He’d offended her in some way unrelated to her cousin or his father.

And blast it if he could figure out what was wrong. “I’ve been told that dresses don’t fit properly without stays. Perhaps I shall ask your dressmaker to make you a whole wardrobe that doesn’t require them.”

She stopped on the stairs, indignation lighting her face. “Aye, your Paddy bride, flopping about in public all over the isle of Britain. I think not. I’m bought and paid for, and you can have me without stays every night, Bakeley, but I’ll be respectable when I’m out and about.”

The words slammed him. Bought and paid for—was that what she thought of him? Or…was that what she thought of herself.

He drew himself up. “What is really wrong?”

She chewed her lip. “Nothing.”

“I see. Or, I don’t see. I have a feeling that father can shed some light on your cousin, and if you’re coming with me, than you need to be with me. We need to work together. Agreed?”

“You want me to what…charm him?”

He ignored the sarcasm. “If that works, yes. And if it doesn’t, try something else. You’ve not had more than one chat with him after our wedding. He seemed inclined to be conciliatory.”

“We spoke this afternoon also.”

“Did you? Yes, he did tell me he would speak to you. Is he having you keep secrets from your husband?”

Her eyes flashed, and she quickly sent them rolling.

Sirena would keep secrets. She would lie to him. Jocelyn had been right—he’d need to seduce her.

“Oh, now I am curious. What did he say?”

“Nothing of import. He hopes I’ll be happy here, or some such. The housekeeper came to take me to look at the silver, and that was all that was said. I believe he set her up for the interruption so he wouldn’t have to share anything of importance with me.”

A flood of affection swept through him and he pulled her closer. “Then your perceptiveness puts you one step ahead of him, love.” He squeezed her hip. “Come. Let us find out what he really knows.”

Insides quaking, Sirena let Bakeley handle the door-knocking. A gruff voice called out and they entered. Two lamps shed pools of light and a low fire warmed the small room. Half-hidden behind a dark wooden desk, Shaldon sat erect. A brown file lay precisely squared up an inch from the edge of the desk, like it had been laid by the footman preparing the dining table.

Shaldon did not look at all surprised to see them, but, she reflected, in the few times they’d met, his face had worn that same haughty bored look she saw often on Bakeley’s handsome mug. Her own father had been like a badly loaded musket most of the time, easy to set off and unpredictable. Not at all like the Shaldon men. It would be her greatest achievement to rouse some emotion in her new father.

“Yes?” Shaldon asked rather impolitely. That one lonely word dropped off into a conversational abyss.

Next to her, her husband had stiffened up like the fireplace poker.

“I received a message tonight I wish to speak with you about.” Bakeley moved a chair from before the fireplace for her, but he remained standing.

Very well. She would play the demure lady. She wrapped her shawl a little tighter and sat.

Shaldon took the proffered paper and scanned it. “Who is this about?”

“Sterling Hollister.”

Shaldon’s eyes flickered, but he shuttered his gaze before turning it on her. “Your cousin.”

“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, and that combined 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.”

She heard a loud audible sigh that did not echo in Bakeley’s chest.

“You’ve sent someone to watch him?” Shaldon asked.

“I borrowed Bink’s groom, Johnny.”

“A good man. Sirena, my dear, are you all right?”

She had squeezed back the tears, though her face must be blotchy.

Bakeley looked down on her. “I’m glad you’ve not got my coat wet.”

“My dear.” Shaldon was next to her, freeing one of her hands from Bakeley, his grip as firm and as solid as his son’s. There was none of the papery smoothness of old age in that hand, or in truth, anywhere about the man. He pushed her chair closer to the desk and seated her again.

“Bakeley, pour us all a brandy. You’ll have one, my dear?”

“Only a bit.” She sat up straight. Brandy weakened the mind. So could a sneaking man’s kindness. “Did you know all of this about my cousin already?”

“That he tried to molest you? No. That he’s the worst sort of villain? Yes.”

He accepted the glass from Bakeley and looked hard at him. “You’ve done well, son.”

Bakeley’s mouth dropped open, but he quickly recovered and handed Sirena her drink.

“Let us drink to the next Lady Shaldon.” His lordship lifted his glass, took a drink, and promptly had a fit of coughing.

Perhaps the stories of his illness were not entirely unfounded. “Are you unwell, sir?” Sirena asked.

Shaldon shook his head and cleared his throat. “We shall send someone to take a room at that inn.”

“Kincaid?” James asked.

“Even in disguise, he’s too well known, I fear. Besides, he’s not back yet from Little Norwick. I’ve another man, just returned from the Continent.”

He got up, went into the hallway and spoke to someone, someone who hadn’t been there when they’d entered.

“Good heavens,” she whispered.

“Yes. Will you have another?”

“No.” She handed him her glass and glanced back. Shaldon was still in the hall. “Shall we have a look at that file?”

“He means to show it to us, else it wouldn’t be there.”

But there wouldn’t have been time since Shaldon soon returned and took his seat. “Sterling was in the army, did you know that?”

His abruptness took her by surprise.

“Yes, I’d heard that,” she said.

“He was in the cavalry for many years and never made it past captain.” Shaldon frowned. “A squirrelly, unreliable fellow during the Irish troubles, and one who had a dodgy period of service in the Peninsular campaign, managing to get himself shifted back to England. He was about to be sent to America when Napoleon escaped. Much to his chagrin, Hollister wound up at Waterloo.” He took a drink and his frown deepened. “As did his brother.”

She thought back to the short twenty-four hours she’d spent with the man. “He never mentioned a brother.”

“Gareth Hollister was the elder, first in line for the Glenmorrow title. Gareth had studied law and had a small income, but otherwise lived the useless life of a landless gentleman. Got caught up in the patriotic fervor and followed his brother to Brussels. He wasn’t regular army, but he took his horse out with the cavalry anyway.”

“And was killed.” Sirena felt sick. “Was he also a villain?”

“He was mainly a fool.”

“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.”

Her breath whooshed out. “Did you send Mr. Gibson north to draw out Hollister?” She shook her head. “I’m so confused.”

Shaldon almost smiled. “It is only a figure of speech. I should have known Hollister was here. I didn’t.” He drummed his fingers on the desktop. “My intelligence was lacking, but it’s all the fault of these many plots and schemes against the government, and the preparations for the coronation. We’re spread too thinly.”

Bakeley’s skin rippled with awareness, the two people who should be the closest in the world to him, his father and his wife, were tied together by this intrigue and he wasn’t sure he could trust either one of them to share everything. “Sirena, why did you believe your brother might be alive?”

Her momentary press of lips was matched by a widening of her eyes, and his own excitement built, wondering if she would lie to him.

“The first mate on the packet we took from Dublin was, well, he was very friendly with me, and I did tell him about my brother, as I tell everyone so that they…will be warned off, as it were, and he said he’d met a sailor who’d told him there were survivors of the sinking, and that he’d sailed with one of them on an Atlantic crossing. Well, I asked the O’Brians to check at the docks for me, to see if anyone had names of survivors, and they came up with Donegal. I suppose that was your ploy, Lord Shaldon.”

He shook his head. “They did make contact with him. Brief, and he was very careful, very cagey. They let him know that you were looking for your brother. And we believe he may have known your brother some twenty years ago. We have no reason to believe he knew your brother was working for us.”

“So why would he have any interest in Sirena?”

“Ah, well, about that. What the O’Brians also told him is that you might have clues to your brother’s whereabouts.”

Her head shot up and color spiked her cheeks. “Which I do not. Which means that Jamie is d-dead.”

Bakeley reached for her, but she pushed him away and glared at his father. “You’re using me, Lord Shaldon and I know not if this man Donegal is quite so bad as you suspect.”

“Perhaps he does have information about your brother, my love,” Bakeley said, “or knows something that will set us on the path to investigate more.”

Her gaze met his, and he felt the fire melting out of her. This one was not used to gentling. The my love had disarmed her.

“You are still willing?” she asked, her voice shaky, as if she expected him to turn on her.

“Of course. I’ll do everything to help you find your brother, if he’s still alive. Father, tell us about Donegal. What leads you to believe he’s plotting?”

Shaldon sighed deeply. “What I tell you must be held in confidence.”

“Agreed. Sirena?”

She bit her lip. “Agreed.”

He lifted her hands. “See, Father. No fingers crossed for either of us.”