A Wedding Wager (46 page)

The two young women sat on the wide window seat, their heads together as they spoke in low voices in the salon of Blackwater House on Upper Brook Street. When the door opened suddenly, they both looked up, two pairs of eyes turning to the door, one a deep purple, the other a soft jade, two heads, one titian, one black as a raven’s wing.

“You didn’t sit long over the port,” Lady Blackwater observed with a smile.

“Sebastian was too anxious to get back to his bride,” Jasper responded.

“That is certainly true, Clarissa.” Sebastian looked for a long moment at his wife, relishing once again the words that set the fact in concrete. “But besides that, ’tis time we left to pay our duty visit to Uncle Bradley. He has yet to meet my wife.”

“He’s met faro’s daughter before, however.” Serena’s tone was matter-of-fact, but the look she gave her husband was anything but. “He didn’t frighten me then; he’s not going to frighten me now.”

“I still don’t envy you the interview,” Clarissa said with a shudder. “He’s the most loathsome individual. I’ve never come across anyone as malicious as the viscount. He really seems to enjoy other people’s discomfort.”

“I’ll come with you if you like,” Peregrine offered. “A little leavening can do no harm.”

“By all means,” Sebastian agreed cordially. “I’ll lay odds Serena’s more than a match for the old reprobate, but there’s always safety in numbers.”

“Are you going, too, Jasper?”

The Earl of Blackwater considered his wife’s question. “On the one hand, a united front and superiority in numbers might dilute the malevolence, but on the other, I have no desire to leave you for the evening, my love.”

“I shall be perfectly content in the knowledge that I don’t have to endure another moment in the viscount’s company,” Clarissa declared crisply. “Go with them, Jasper, and then you can come home and tell me how Serena beat the old man at his own game.” She gave Serena a quick complicit smile.

Serena chuckled and got up from the window seat. “I’ll bear in mind the need to provide you with some amusement, Clarissa.”

“I’ll send to the stables for the carriage. We might as well arrive in style.” Jasper went out into the hall to give Crofton the instruction, and half an hour later, Serena and the three Sullivan brothers were ensconced in the
traveling carriage, swaying through the London streets to Viscount Bradley’s mansion on the Strand.

“So where’s your stepfather now?” Jasper inquired. “I heard he lost the house in Pickering Place.”

Serena nodded. Her plan had been successful down to the last iota. William Sutton had cheerfully bought the mortgages from the Earl of Burford for considerably more than they were worth. He’d called in the debt, had the general evicted, and just as she’d predicted, Sir George’s creditors had swarmed over him. He had had no time for his usual midnight flit, and William, ably supported by the army of creditors, had had General Heyward committed to the Marshalsea for debt.

“As far as I know, the general is still housed in the Marshalsea.”

“And likely to remain so for the foreseeable future,” Sebastian put in with his own note of satisfaction. “Unless he can pay his debts, and that’s notoriously difficult to do from the depths of debtors’ prison. I doubt he’ll see the light of day again.”

“For which I am profoundly thankful,” Serena said. “And Pickering Place is for sale to anyone who can come up with the price … Oh, are we here?” The carriage slowed to a stop.

Jasper looked out. “Yes, we’re here. Let’s hope the old man’s in the mood for visitors.” He swung open the door and stepped down, offering his hand to Serena. “Ma’am …”

“Thank you, my lord.” She stepped down beside him. The formality was in jest. In the time since her marriage to their brother, Jasper and Peregrine had embraced Serena as one of their own, and as Sebastian had predicted, she and Clarissa had become fast friends, sharing, as they did, the bond of love for the men of the Blackwater family.

The viscount’s factotum opened the door for them, giving Serena only a cursory glance. “My lord, gentlemen, madam … I will see if his lordship is receiving this evening. Would you care to wait in the antechamber?”

“As you wish, Louis.” Jasper gestured to his companions, and they followed Louis’s unhurried step upstairs.

“Who shall I say accompanies you, my lord?”

“Lady Serena Sullivan,” Jasper replied placidly.

“My wife, Louis,” Sebastian informed the man, just in case he’d missed the point.

Louis merely nodded, as if nothing could surprise him, and went through a pair of doors into the adjacent chamber.

Serena looked curiously around the anteroom. It was rather like a museum, she thought. Dark, ornate, filled with objets d’art that on a second glance revealed some very interesting quirks. “Eroticism?” she inquired a touch caustically.

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Sebastian said. “Just be thankful he’s unlikely now to show you his memoirs.”

“Why unlikely
now
?” She peered at a statue of copulating nymphs.

Sebastian exchanged glances with his brothers. “I expect he’ll come to the conclusion that they won’t have the desired effect on you,” he explained carefully. “Before our marriage, they might have done. Now there would be no satisfaction for him in your reaction.”

“Later, you’re going to have to explain that to me more fully,” Serena said.

Louis came back to the antechamber. “His lordship will see you all for a few minutes, gentlemen.”

They entered the bedchamber, Jasper in front. Despite the midwinter cold, it was overly hot, the fire in the grate burning fiercely, the window curtains drawn tight. The viscount sat in his armchair by the fire, wrapped in a fur robe, a fur lap robe across his knees, his feet on an ottoman. A glass of brandy was at his elbow. The black-clad figure of his amanuensis, Father Cosgrove, hovered in the shadows behind the armchair.

“Well, well. This is an unexpected pleasure. All three of my nephews, and Lady Serena to sweeten the pudding.” The viscount sat up a little straighter as he raised his quizzing glass to examine his visitors. “So, nephew, this is the whore you’ve taken to wife, is it?”

“Lady Serena Carmichael did me the great honor of becoming my wife, sir,” Sebastian said evenly.

“Great honor … don’t give me that nonsense, boy.” The viscount turned his glass on Serena. “She always
did clean up well, I’ll say that for her. How is she, then, Sullivan? Worth the price in bed? I always did wonder if I should have fought Burford for her.”

Serena silenced Sebastian with a quick hand gesture before sweeping an elaborate curtsy. “You do me too much honor, sir. Did you really consider I was worth fighting for?”

He regarded her through suddenly narrowed eyes. “Were you?”

She shook her head. “I have never considered myself to be the spoils of victory, my lord. It required more than swordsmanship or a fat purse to win me. Your nephew had the right currency. Something I doubt you would ever even consider.” Her tongue was tipped with poison, her voice hard. She felt as if with every word, she was demolishing her stepfather’s memory and the memory of every degradation he had forced on her and on her mother.

Lord Bradley dropped his quizzing glass and turned his gaze on Sebastian. “So you consider you’ve satisfied the terms of the will with this travesty of a marriage?”

“Sir, as Serena has just reminded you, you considered my wife to be a whore, to be bought if you so chose. She is now Lady Serena, wife of the Honorable Sebastian Sullivan. No longer for sale. I do not see how those facts do not satisfy the terms of the will.”

“Neither, my lord, do I,” Jasper declared.

The viscount pursed his lips and then with a shrug let the issue go by default, as he knew he must. He had
been outplayed somehow. But the raw facts were in his nephews’ favor. Instead, he turned his attention to Peregrine, who stood a little back from the fireside. “And what about you, boy? There’ll be no inheritance for any of you until you satisfy the terms.”

Peregrine sketched a bow. “Oh, I believe I will do that, sir.” His tone was nonchalant, but his blue eyes were clear and sharp. “If you can prolong your existence until you’ve finished your memoir, I do believe I will present you with
my
reclaimed soul in good time.”

Jasper exchanged a glance with Sebastian, who pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. It was the first either of them had heard of a possible candidate, but when Peregrine dropped hints, they were to be taken seriously.

The viscount dismissed them with an irritable wave. “I have a mind to die before morning,” he declared. “Cosgrove, you black crow, I’ll write my own obituary now.”

The priest went to the secretaire and sharpened his quill. “Whenever you’re ready, my lord.”

The four visitors took their leave without further courtesies, and the viscount, suddenly impatient, snapped, “Get out, Cosgrove. I don’t need you.”

The priest bowed and slipped silently from the room. The viscount stared into the fire, nursing his brandy goblet. There was a faraway look in his eyes as he thought back to the time when he, too, had had his life ahead of him, when he believed he could choose his own path,
love whomever he pleased. Just as his nephews believed now. Those two young women they’d married … what were they, really? He had wanted vengeance for his own ruined life, but looking at Jasper and Sebastian, he could see only their happiness in their wives. And the women themselves, hopelessly in love, the pair of them. It would seem, as he tried to avenge himself upon the puritanical family that had so cruelly destroyed his own young love, that he had merely enabled his nephews to find for themselves their own love matches. Love matches that his fortune would support. Always assuming Peregrine came up to scratch before the Grim Reaper came for his uncle.

Viscount Bradley’s thin lips curved in an ironic smile. He had learned long since the tricks that life could play upon the best-laid plans.

The carriage took Sebastian, Serena, and Peregrine to Stratton Street before returning Jasper to his wife. Peregrine turned into the parlor. “A nightcap?”

Serena shook her head and started up the stairs. “Not for me, thank you. Good night, Perry.”

“Not for me, either.” Sebastian moved to follow her.

“I’ll bid you both good night, then.” Peregrine went into the parlor, closing the door behind him.

There was an awkwardness in the living arrangement now, and once Sebastian and Serena reached their own
bedchamber, Sebastian drew Serena close against him. “Thank God that’s over.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “And for Perry’s sake as much as my own, could we please go and find the sunshine?”

“Rome? Venice? Where would you like to go?”

She hesitated. “Venice … but first, I’d like to go back to Scotland, to the lake where we sailed close to my home.”

He looked at her quizzically. “The Scottish Highlands in the middle of winter, love? I thought you wanted the sun.”

“Yes, I do. But … but I need to find myself again first. I need to be who I was before the general came and took it all away.” She touched his mouth with the tip of her little finger. “Before I can become … properly become … who I am now, I must find that part of me again. ’Tis the only way to lose the bad part. Do you understand, my love?”

“Oh, yes, my sweet, I understand.” Sebastian held her tightly. “But you must also know that I love all that you have been and all that you are and all that you will be. I embrace
you,
my Serena, my love, for everything that you are.” His kiss stopped her mouth, but her body gave him all the affirmation he needed.