A Wedding Wager (16 page)

Not, of course, that she was in the least interested in dressing to please Sebastian, only to please herself.

“That’ll do, Bridget,” she pronounced finally. “The black felt hat and black woolen cloak, if you please.”

Bridget brought the garments over, and Serena adjusted the hat; it had a wide brim that covered much of her face. The cloak was voluminous and could be drawn up at the neck.

“Lord love us, m’lady, you looks a bit like a highwayman,” Bridget declared as her mistress swathed herself in the cloak. “All you needs is the mask.”

Serena smiled. “’Tis cold out, Bridget. I’ve no wish to catch a chill. Run downstairs and ask Flanagan to summon a hackney for me.”

Bridget bobbed a curtsy and hurried away. Serena followed her more slowly, and by the time she reached the hall, the hackney was waiting in the street.

She gave the jarvey the address as she climbed into the sour-smelling interior and sat forward on the edge of the seat, unwilling to touch the greasy leather squabs lining the bench any more than was absolutely necessary. It was too cold, the wind too sharp and brisk, to lift the leather curtain at the window aperture, so she took shallow breaths and prayed that the air was not infected with the breath of previous riders. Fortunately, it was not far to Stratton Street, and within ten minutes, the carriage drew up outside the narrow row house where Sebastian and his brother lived.

She opened the door and stepped down to the street, twitching her skirts aside so that they didn’t drag in the filthy water of the kennel. She paid the jarvey and raised her hand to the door knocker. But the door opened before she could even touch it, and she found herself whisked inside, the door firmly closed at her back.

“No one will have seen you,” Sebastian said. “Let me have your cloak.” He was standing behind her, reaching over her shoulders to unfasten the clasp at her throat even as she tried to take in her surroundings.

Serena almost laughed. It was so typical of Sebastian; he never wasted energy, never used two words where
one would do, and never hesitated when it came to action. She needed to remove her cloak, and he was doing just that with well-remembered efficiency. She let him take it from her and hang it on a hook while she drew off her gloves. He took those and laid them on the bench below the hook and then stood back and looked at her, a question in his blue eyes.

“Will you take off your hat? I’d like to feel you were going to stay awhile.”

“Why?” She frowned at him. “Why do you want to see me, Sebastian?”

He reached out a hand and gently placed a finger over her lips. “Let’s agree to say nothing that’s provocative or aggressive, Serena. I don’t wish to quarrel with you again.”

She took a breath, conscious of the warmth of his finger on her lips, and suddenly had the absurd urge to suck his finger into her mouth, to stroke it with her tongue, graze it with her teeth, as she had so often done in their lovemaking. She caught a surprised flash in his eye and understood that the shared memory was as vivid for him at that moment as it was for her.

She turned her head a little so that his finger fell away, and she untied the ribbons of her hat. Sebastian took it from her, setting it down with her gloves. Then he took her hands in his, regarding her with his head to one side, a quizzical gleam in his blue eyes.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I couldn’t seem to help myself,” she responded with
a tiny shrug. “Will you not tell me why you wanted to see me?”

His fingers enclosed her hand in a warm, firm clasp, and time fell away. They were back where they once had been, and Serena felt herself slipping into a strange trance. She wanted nothing more than this, even though the rational part of her mind screamed that it was madness, would only plunge them into more grief and heartache than they’d already endured.

“Come to the fire. Your hands are cold.” He put an arm around her shoulders, easing her through a door into a warm, firelit, candle-bright parlor. “We will be more comfortable here.”

Serena looked around, trying to recapture her sense of control. She had never visited the house before. In their past, she and Sebastian had rented a small room in an inn on King Street for their rendezvous. For all that it was spotlessly clean, the parlor was clearly a room inhabited by bachelors. No embroidered cushions, curtains that were a little short for the windows, no flowers, dried or fresh, no little ornaments or feminine trinkets around. There was a faint musky smell, a hint of leather and sweat in the air mingling with wood smoke and candle wax. Nothing unpleasant, but it smelled as she imagined a gentlemen’s club would smell.

“Where’s your brother? I thought you shared the house with him.” Her voice sounded amazingly normal, perfectly matter-of-fact.

“Oh, Perry’s out and about,” he said easily, following
her lead. “He has his own circle of friends. Strange birds they are, scientists and philosophers, poets and men who write pamphlets for the edification of the ignorant.” He shook his head with a faint self-deprecating smile. “I’m certain Perry puts me firmly in the latter category.”

“I only met him a few times,” Serena said. “You’re so startlingly alike; once or twice, when I saw him without you, I was convinced he was you.”

Sebastian inclined his head with a smile. “Most people, apart from our older brother, have that problem. But there are little differences. Perry has a widow’s peak.” He touched his brow.

“So do you,” Serena pointed out.

“His is more pronounced. And my nose is longer.”

Serena laughed. “Is that all that distinguishes you from each other?”

“Physically, yes. But in every other respect, we’re chalk and cheese.” Sebastian patted a cushion on a sofa. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Thank you.” Serena sat down. The cushion at her back was hard and scratchy, pieces of horsehair protruding through the fabric.

“Tea?” Sebastian asked. “Or coffee, if you’d prefer.” He yanked on the bellpull by the mantelpiece.

“Tea, thank you.” Serena looked up at him as he stood hovering over her, a puzzled frown in his eye. “Why am I here, Sebastian?”

“Devil take it, why is this so difficult?” he exclaimed abruptly. “I need to be alone with you like this, with no
fear of interruption. I know exactly what I want to say, but now I feel like a schoolboy, all big red hands and huge feet that won’t go where they’re supposed to.”

Serena made a move to stand up, but the door opened, and the boy who helped the housekeeper stuck his head around. “Yes, sir?”

“Fetch tea, Bart.” Sebastian welcomed the interruption. It gave him a moment to compose himself. He hadn’t expected this sudden yearning, but he probably should have done. All rational thought was blocked by the overwhelming need to feel her against him again, to explore that glorious body, find again the little nooks and crannies that had once been so familiar to him. It had been so long, so many bad feelings had soured the loving memories, that he had thought he would be impervious to the old longings. He should have known better.

“’Tis unusual to find tea in a bachelors’ establishment,” Serena remarked, searching for a neutral topic. The tension was like a high wire stretched taut between them, thrumming with unspoken memories and the need to speak them.

“Perry drinks tea on occasion.” Sebastian bent to poke the fire. “I confess I find it an insipid drink, not worth the trouble.”

“I enjoy it on occasion,” she returned, wondering how long they could keep up the inanity of small talk before Sebastian finally got to the point.

The lad returned with a tray with a small casket of
tea, two shallow dishes, a porcelain teapot, and a copper pot of hot water. Without instruction, he set it down on a table beside Serena. “Water’s just boiled, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at him and opened the casket. “So you won’t drink tea, Sebastian?”

He shook his head with a grimace. “No … no, thank you. I prefer claret.”

Serena measured tea into the teapot and poured on hot water. She let it rest while Sebastian poured himself claret, then she poured the pale liquid into the shallow cup. She raised the cup to her lips and sipped, aware of his searching gaze.

“I have ached for you, Serena,” he said in a low voice.

And slowly, Serena felt the tension loosen, felt herself slide into peaceful acceptance of what had to be, of what she had known had to be from the moment she’d received his summons. They were not done with each other yet.

“When you came to Pickering Place, you gave me such a look of contempt, I thought you could never forgive … never understand,” she responded as softly as he. “I had no choice, Sebastian. I thought …” Her voice faded.

“You thought what?” His voice had sharpened a little, his eyes still searching her face.

She shrugged. “That I had hurt you so deeply three years ago that there could be no going back.” She sipped her tea, then set the dish back in the saucer. “It was what I had tried to make happen, so I should have been
glad … instead, I was even more miserable than I had been on that dreadful afternoon.”

“I was angry,” he admitted. “Furiously angry, dreadfully hurt, because I didn’t understand. I still don’t, Serena. I know you weren’t speaking the truth, so why …
why
?”

She hesitated, her little finger tracing the embroidered pattern in the silk of her skirt. How much could she safely tell him? The degradation of the full truth was more than she could ever confide to anyone. But she owed him some part of it. Something genuine.

She took a deep breath and spoke slowly, picking her way through the tellable and the untellable. “When the general married my mother, what she did not know … indeed, neither of us knew … was that he was a mere heartbeat away from debtors’ prison. He needed my mother’s fortune, and as soon as he had it, he took us both off to Paris, where he lost nearly every last penny at the tables. He dragged us to Brussels, and with the small sum he had managed not to lose, he set up his own gambling hell. When he fell afoul of some players who didn’t like the odds at his tables, he dragged us to Vienna, to Salzburg, anywhere where the play was high. And in each place, we were obliged eventually to flee in the middle of the night a step ahead of those he had cheated.

“My mother could not endure such a life. She faded day by day, and the weaker she became, the more demanding he was, until finally she just faded into nothing.”

Serena turned slowly from the fire to face Sebastian. “There you have it. The whole sordid story.”

“But I don’t have
your
story,” Sebastian said. “I understand you could not leave your mother while she was alive, but after her death…? Surely there was someone you could turn to for help …”

“An obvious solution, of course.” She sounded bitter, and Sebastian winced a little. “But not as easy as it sounds. I had no confidantes of my own by that time; the general made sure of that. He had also spent my own fortune, my mother’s jointure, so I was, and am, penniless and utterly dependent upon him. When he decreed that our London venture on Charles Street was failing and we had to run again, I had no choice but to follow him. I didn’t feel able to tell you the truth.” She blinked away inconvenient tears. Now was not the moment to show her vulnerability. She didn’t want Sebastian’s pity.

Sebastian was standing by the fireplace, one arm resting along the mantel. He looked down into the fire’s glow. “I wonder why you didn’t feel you could tell me the truth. Why was it impossible to confide in me? I can’t say I would have known what to do to help you then …” He gave a small, reluctant laugh. “I was so young, so naïve in so many ways, I probably would have protested and exclaimed in a positive flurry of sound and fury, but I would have achieved nothing. I understand that now. But at least, if you had told me, I would have known that you had not suddenly become another person. I would have known that the love we had shared
was true, that I had not imagined the feelings we had for each other.”

“Oh, Sebastian, I thought that if I gave you a disgust for me, you would be less hurt,” she said with a helpless smile. “We may have had all sorts of superficial sophistication, but we were each other’s first love. We didn’t have a chance when a fantasy of perfect love came face-to-face with the harshness of the real world.”

“I disagree,” he said quietly, raising his eyes from the fire. “We knew how to love. That was no fantasy.”

And Serena bowed her head in acknowledgment. “Yes,” she agreed as softly as he. “We knew how to love.”

Sebastian set aside his glass. “And we still know, Serena.” He came towards her, hands outstretched. “Could we try this again?” A tiny smile touched his mouth.

Silently, she put her hands in his and let him draw her to her feet. There was a sense of inevitability now, but more than that, an overwhelming need for him, for his touch, for his body, for the power of his desire that shone bright and dazzling as a desert sun as his blue eyes seemed to devour her. He would make her whole again. Only Sebastian’s love, his passion, could do that, and her own would rise to meet his, and she would find her true self again, the violations vanquished.

He kissed her, gently at first, a kiss of rediscovery, his tongue exploring her mouth, sliding along her lips, dipping into the corners of her mouth. She inhaled his scent, tasted his mouth, remembered with a piercing sweetness how it had been, and with a surge of joy realized
that it was still as wonderful, as sensual, as lustful as it had ever been.

His hands moved to her hips, cupped her buttocks, pulling her against the hard jut of his loins, and Serena reveled in the full flood of desire, sliding a hand between them to caress the wonderful bulge of his penis pressing against his breeches. He moved her sideways without taking his mouth from hers, easing her back onto the chaise, coming down with her. His mouth moved from hers to kiss the fast-beating pulse in the hollow of her throat as his hand slid upwards beneath her skirt, caressing her silk-clad thigh. She moved against him, her own hand pressing into the hard-muscled backside. She shifted slightly, putting one leg over his hips, pulling him closer as he pushed down the neck of her gown, lifting her nipples for his lips. She murmured with delight as he flicked her nipples with his tongue, suckled, grazed the sensitive crowns with his teeth, and she was lost for the first time in an eternity in the glorious swirl of lust.