A Wedding Wager

by Jane Feather

  “Beg pardon, sir.” The child suddenly twisted, bent his head, and bit Sebastian’s hand. Sebastian let go with a yelp. The lad ducked away and with a sinuous twist was off down the alley. Sebastian realized instantly that the small coin purse he kept in an inside pocket of his coat was missing.

  “Fool,” he castigated himself, examining his hand. The skin was not broken. He looked back down the alley. As he’d expected, there was no sign of the pickpocket. They were so small and quick, these street children, they could disappear into a hole in a wall barely big enough for a cat. It was an ordinary enough occurrence if one ventured into the back alleys. He should have been more alert. But oddly, the incident had restored some part of his customary equanimity. It had brought him back to earth, anyway.

  He walked back up the wider, brighter thoroughfare of St. James’s Street towards the lodgings he shared with Peregrine on Stratton Street.

  Candlelight shone from the long windows of the sitting room at the front of the narrow house. The front door opened directly on the street, and Sebastian let himself into the narrow hall. “Perry … you in?”

  “Aye, in here.”

  Sebastian pushed open the door to the small but comfortably appointed sitting room. Peregrine was reading in a deep armchair beside the grate where a small fire burned to combat the night’s chill. The contents of a brandy goblet on a small table beside him glowed amber in the candlelight.

  Perry greeted his brother with a smile, closing his book over a finger to keep his place. “Good evening?”

  Sebastian shrugged slightly. “So-so.” He filled a goblet from the decanter on the sideboard and took the chair opposite his brother. “Harley and I visited the Pickering Place hell.”

  Peregrine looked a little alarmed. Something was troubling his brother, and he could think of only one thing. “Did you lose too much?”

  “No.” Sebastian shook his head dismissively. “You know me, Perry. I like the excitement, but I hate to lose more. At the tables, I’m as timid as an infant and as tight-fisted as a miser. The play was far too rich for my blood. More in Jasper’s line.”

  “Jasper don’t like to lose, either,” Perry pointed out, stretching his feet on the andirons.

  “Jasper, my dear, don’t lose,” his twin retorted smartly, and they both laughed. Their elder brother had a gift for the cards.

  Sebastian swirled the brandy in his goblet, watching the light play across the amber surface. Peregrine watched him. Eventually, Peregrine said, “So, what is it?”

  His brother didn’t raise his eyes, said only, “Serena and that damned stepfather of hers are running the hell.”

  A shiver of apprehension touched Peregrine’s spine. He looked closely at his twin, and the apprehension grew stronger. Sebastian had the same bleak expression that had haunted his face for so many dreadful months three years ago. Neither of his brothers had been able to get close enough to his unhappiness then to help him. His previous happiness, on the other hand, he’d been more than willing to share. For close to a year, Sebastian had been deliriously happy with the woman he described without embarrassment as the love of his life. Jasper had raised an elder brother’s skeptical eyebrow and murmured something about puppy love, but he’d done nothing to quell Sebastian’s joyful exuberance. Perry had merely enjoyed his twin’s happiness and been delighted for him. They had shared in each other’s highs and lows all their lives.

  And then something had happened, and Sebastian’s world had come crashing down. When pressed, he had said only that Lady Serena and her stepfather had left the country, and neither of his brothers could get anything further from him. They had watched and waited until eventually the pain had eased, the bleakness had left Sebastian’s eyes, and he had plunged wholeheartedly back into the whirling social scene. There had been an edge of wildness for a while, but gradually, the Sebastian they both knew and loved had been restored. He was his old amused and amusing self.

  And now Peregrine, looking at his brother’s expression, feared that the bad times were beginning again, and he was filled with anger at the woman who, having so callously abandoned his twin, should now reappear to break open the old wounds.

  “You won’t be playing there, then, I assume,” Peregrine said neutrally, reaching for his glass.

  Sebastian raised his eyes and gave his brother a cool smile. “As I said, Perry, the play on Pickering Place is too rich for my blood.”

  Chapter Two

  “Well, I must say, my dear, that bonnet looks very well on you.” Marianne Sutton nodded, her towering and elaborately powdered coiffure swaying precariously, as she regarded her only daughter with complacence. “Such a pretty little thing as you are, ’tis no wonder the general has taken such a fancy to you.”

  “Mama, I don’t believe he has,” Miss Sutton protested, blushing to the roots of her fair curls. “Indeed, General Heyward is … is far too used to … to fashionable women to find anything pleasing in me.” What she meant was that the general was old enough to be her grandfather and could have absolutely no appeal for a young girl of barely seventeen hovering on the brink of her first London Season.

  “Nonsense, child.” Mrs. Sutton snapped her fan at her daughter. “You mark my words, once the general has returned to London, your father will bring him up to scratch before Christmas.” She sighed pleasurably, leaning back against the leather squabs of the very fashionable barouche, raising her lorgnette to look around the thronged street as they drove up Piccadilly, her attention piqued to catch an eye of even a nodding acquaintance.

  If they were to launch the dear child as they wished, her dear husband, the admirable Mr. Sutton, had told her to miss no opportunity to ingratiate herself with London’s fashionable world. He would ensure their enterprise did not lack for funds but, being a bluff and somewhat down-to-earth fellow himself, was more than happy to leave the social side of the business to his wife, who had some pretensions to move, if not in the upper circles, at least in the next tier down.

  “Ah, I believe that is Lady Barstow …” She bowed, smiling, to a passing landaulet, receiving the merest nod in response. Her smile faded, and her voice took on an acid edge. “What a sorry-looking carriage. You’d think Lord Barstow would set his wife up in a more commodious vehicle. Quite the drab she looks.”

  Abigail said nothing. It was always better to let her mother’s tongue follow its own path. She tucked herself up into a corner of the barouche and was content to observe the passing scene. She had been in London only three weeks, and it was still a city of wonderment. She never tired of gazing into the shop windows with their lavish merchandise or watching the ladies, often followed by little black pages, maneuvering their widehooped gowns through narrow doors. The gentlemen were for the most part magnificent creatures, with their powdered wigs and embroidered coats with deep-turned back cuffs, jeweled pins nestling in rich lace cravats.

  She yearned to be part of this scene, to move confidently among these glorious butterflies, to acknowledge bows and greetings with her own graceful curtsy and sophisticated tilt of the head, but as yet she had not made her debut. London was still thin of company, as the Season would not officially begin until after the opening of Parliament, and their social life was limited to her parents’ friends and those few acquaintances they had made during their two months’ sojourn on the Continent.

  Abigail had not cared for Paris, and even less for Brussels. The foreign tongue, so fast and strange, made her head ache, and the people were all so supercilious they seemed to look right through her. Except for General Sir George Heyward and his stepdaughter, Lady Serena, without whom Abigail had often thought she would have died of boredom. But Serena had introduced her to the libraries and the musical salons. She had accompanied her shopping, gently teaching her what suited her and what didn’t. She was so much more worldly, knew so much more than Mama about prevailing fashion, it had been like having an elder sister. They had promised to be in touch as soon as they had returned to London, and Abigail waite
d every day for the knock that would bring the visiting card that would open this world to her.

  But so far, it had not come. General Heyward knew where they were lodging—her father had made a point of giving him the address before they left Brussels—but perhaps the general and his stepdaughter had not yet returned to London. They were still in Brussels when the Suttons had left on a packet bound for Dover. It was an infinitely preferable explanation to the thought that once in London, Lady Serena had forgotten all about her protégée.

  Or perhaps there was something not right about their London address. Perhaps it was an address that no lady of quality would visit. This thought haunted Abigail. What did her father know of the fashionable residential streets of London’s ton? He was a bluff, good-natured merchant from the Midlands, wealthy enough after years of shrewd business practices and careful acquisitions to satisfy his wife’s social aspirations. Aspirations that could not be satisfied among Staffordshire’s County set. To give Marianne her due, as he had often acknowledged, her aspirations were more for her daughter than for herself. And William Sutton was a very proud father, who doted on his golden-haired angel of a child.

  Nothing but the best would do for Abigail, so she had been sent to a school for young ladies, far away in Kent, where she had been wretchedly homesick, but the Midland vowels had been knocked out of her speech, and she had been made to walk with books on her head until her back was ramrod straight and her head beautifully poised on a swanlike neck. A few weeks on the Continent had been intended to round out her education and prepare her for a London debut. Occasionally, Marianne allowed herself to dream of her daughter’s presentation at a Drawing Room, if somehow they could move in circles where a patroness could be found to present Abigail. If such a miracle occurred, then so, too, could vouchers for Almack’s. It was a far-fetched dream, Marianne had to acknowledge, but London Society encompassed more than the Upper Ten Thousand. There were gentlemen aplenty, minor aristocrats, impoverished for the most part, who would exchange their name and breeding for the fortune that would devolve upon William Sutton’s daughter.

  General Sir George Heyward, whose late wife had been the widow of an obscure Scottish earl, could be considered a little old for Abigail, but his credentials were impeccable. He got along famously with William, whom he introduced to the military gentlemen littering the salons and clubs of Brussels, and his stepdaughter, Lady Serena, was clearly out of the top drawer, a perfect example and mentor for Abigail. Marianne swallowed what misgivings she had about the general’s age and concentrated her mind on the delightful prospect of a well-married daughter who had the entrée into social circles that she herself could only dream of.

  “I do hope General Heyward has not misplaced the card your father gave him.” Marianne spoke directly to her daughter’s thoughts, startling her.

  “He did not say when he and Lady Serena would be returning to London, Mama.”

  “No … no, true enough. But it has been three weeks already.” Marianne’s voice was fretful, and she began to tap her gloved hands on her knee, warmly covered with a woolen lap rug.

  “Perhaps the address on Bruton Street is not one the general would care to visit.” Abigail gave voice to her fear, trying to make her tone light and careless, as if, of course, she were in jest.

  “Nonsense, my dear. Your father had it on the best authority that Bruton Street is a most select address. And you must agree, the house is very elegant and well furnished.”

  Abigail nodded. It was true, but she was less confident of her father’s best authority. She loved him dearly, but from the first weeks at the school in Kent, she had been forced to acknowledge that his manners left much to be desired, and his bluff good humor would come across as rough and countrified in more sophisticated company. It stood to reason that those whose opinions he relied upon would not necessarily move in the elegant circles of high fashion.

  The barouche drew up outside the house on Bruton Street, and Abigail was obliged to acknowledge that with its gleaming paintwork and brass, its sparkling windows and flourishing window boxes, it certainly gave the appearance of a gentleman’s residence. She followed her mother into the house, the footman in their wake laden with parcels.

  At the sound of their steps on the parquet, the door to the library opened, and the jovial figure of William Sutton loomed large, beaming at them, one hand resting on his ample paunch. “Ah, there you both are … looking as lovely as ever. What have we here … a few trinkets, I daresay. I’ll be lucky if you don’t bankrupt me between you.” He laughed heartily at this witticism. “So, have you had a pleasant outing, my dears?”

  “Very, thank you, Papa.” Abigail stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “And I promise we won’t bankrupt you … just a scarf and some new ribbon for an old bonnet and a piece of lace to touch up Mama’s blue gown.”

  “Oh, I spoke in jest, puss, you know that.” He chuckled and patted her cheek. “Nothing is too good for you. Indeed, you should be buying new bonnets, not refurbishing old ones. Shame on you, Mrs. Sutton. I said no expense was to be spared.”

  “And none has been, my dear sir.” His wife soothed him with a well-practiced hand. “Go back into the library, and I’ll have Morrison set out a light repast. It’s been several hours since breakfast, and you know how hungry you get. Dinner will not be served until six o’clock. We live by London hours now, you must remember.”

  “How could I forget?” William said with a mock grimace. “How a man’s to eat his dinner that late and then sleep afterwards, I’ll never understand.”

  “But in general, Papa, people in Society do not sleep immediately after dinner. They rarely seek their beds until two or three in the morning, sometimes not even until the sun is up.” Abigail tried to keep a wistful note out of her voice at the thought of such nighttime revelry but failed.

  Her father looked at her sharply. Then he shook his head. “Well, I can’t be doing with it, I’ll tell you that. But you young things … another matter … quite another matter. But I’ll not have you getting all haggard and drawn, my girl, with all these late nights. Just you remember that.”

  “Oh, I will, Papa.” Abigail dropped a curtsy, giving him a dimpling smile that made him laugh again and call her a minx. Then she turned and hurried up to her own chamber.

  She untied the ribbons of her bonnet and tossed it onto the bed before going restlessly to the window. The street below was quiet, but she could hear the sounds of London, the iron wheels on cobbles, the raucous calls of barrow boys, chairmen, and piemen, the shouts of jarveys as they drove their hackneys through the unruly traffic.

  Abigail didn’t want to be in the serenity of her chamber or even on the quiet residential street below her window. She was in London, the world at her feet, and she was cooped up waiting for someone to produce the key to the door. But she could take a walk for herself, surely? Along Piccadilly, which was not very far away, just at the end of the street, really. She took walks alone at home all the time. She would be quite safe.

  Abandoning her bonnet, Abigail ran softly downstairs, hoping not to meet a servant. She flew across the hall and pulled open the front door. Miraculously, no one had come into the hall. She stepped outside onto the top step and breathed deeply. Conscience told her she should not be doing this, at least not without an escort. This was London, not the provincial town she was used to. She could have demanded the company of a footman, or even her maid, but a recklessness was in her blood, unusual because, in general, she was not one to stir the waters. She tossed her head, relishing its bonnetless freedom, and set off up the street, walking quickly, looking behind her once or twice, half expecting an arresting shout. But she reached the end of the street undetected and turned down towards Piccadilly.

  Already the scene was livelier, the sounds of the city noisier. People glanced curiously at the well-dressed young woman, hatless and coatless and unescorted, but Abigail didn’t care; it merely added to the excitement of the adventure.

  She wal
ked slowly along Piccadilly, looking in the shop windows, ignoring the stares, until a young buck in a flamboyant gold-and-scarlet-striped waistcoat put up his quizzing glass and ogled her, beckoning to her. She turned away with a toss of her head and increased her pace, aware as she did so that he was following her. Suddenly frightened, she ducked into a narrow opening and found herself in a noisome court, enclosed on four sides by the high brick walls of surrounding buildings.

  Her eyes darted from side to side as panic threatened to engulf her. A slatternly woman leaned against a wall at the far side of the court, watching her, a corncob pipe between her lips. Beside her, a man leaned, whittling a piece of wood. They both regarded the new arrival with a speculative air.

  Abigail turned to run back the way she had come and found herself confronting the man in the striped waistcoat. “Well, well, what pretty little thing have we here?” he asked. His voice was rather unpleasantly high, with a whining note that set her teeth on edge.

  “Let me pass, sir,” she demanded as confidently as she could, but she could hear the tremor in her own voice.

  “Oh, I don’t think I wish to do that,” he said, holding her upper arms tightly. “That would be looking the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. Such a tasty tidbit to run into my arms. Let’s have a kiss, chuck.” He bent his head, the full, glistening mouth descending.

  Abigail screamed and kicked at his shins. She could smell the wine on his breath, his sweat overlaid by a heavy perfume. She screamed again just as his mouth engulfed hers, and she thought she would suffocate in the vile, heated stench of him.

  And then he was spinning away from her, falling back against the wall, spluttering. A voice said quietly, “Are you hurt, my dear?”

  She let her hand drop from her mouth, where she had been desperately rubbing at the imprint of those foul lips, and looked at her savior. A young man, his fair hair tied at his nape with a black velvet ribbon, shining in the gloomy courtyard, bent his concerned blue eyes upon her. And Abigail thought she had never before seen such a beautiful creature.