by Jane Feather
Jasper nodded. “It ended badly, I remember that.”
“Well, they’re back in town, running a hell on Pickering Street. Very high stakes, in quite another class from the previous one on Charles Street.”
Jasper regarded his brother over his wine glass. “I heard a new hell had opened. I was unaware it was run by Heyward and his stepdaughter.”
“I went there not knowing it myself,” Sebastian said.
“I take it, if you had known it, you would have avoided the place.” Jasper’s voice was level.
“Like the plague.” Sebastian stared into the fire’s glow.
Jasper leaned over to refill his wine glass. He waited for a moment or two before prodding gently. “So, what happened?”
Sebastian shook his head briskly as if dispelling cobwebs. “Nothing then, but the devil of it is that I bumped into her again this morning, and I realized that we can’t possibly both live in town without meeting accidentally.”
Jasper sipped his wine with every appearance of serenity. “I can see that there could be some awkwardness.”
“Awkwardness?” The word seemed to explode from Sebastian. “That’s the least of it, Jasper. The moment I saw her again, it all came back.” He ran a distracted hand through his hair, disturbing the neat queue held at his nape with a black velvet ribbon. “Every little thing about her, everything that I had loved, everything that had driven me to distraction. And the bitterness, the anger …” He shook his head as if searching for words before continuing, “I thought I was over her. How could it be otherwise after the way she treated me? But now … now, I just don’t know, and I can’t go through that again.” He raised his eyes from the fire and looked at his brother, who saw in the blue eyes the dreadful bleakness that Perry had seen.
“No,” Jasper agreed, reflecting that he couldn’t bear to see Sebastian suffer like that again. And he could easily imagine what it would do to Perry to see his twin revisit that hell. “What can I do to help, Seb?”
Sebastian smiled suddenly. “Just be here, as you always have been. I’m going to see her, try to establish clear ground, so that we can at least nod in a civilized fashion should we have to meet. I’m a little scared that I might succumb again, that’s all.”
“Would you like me to see her for you?”
Sebastian shook his head. “No, thank you. I can’t have you doing my dirty work for me. I know you’ve done it often enough in the past, but I am all grown up now, big brother.”
Jasper laughed a little. “I don’t doubt it, Seb. But remember, Perry and I are standing behind you. There’s no shame in needing a little support now and then.”
“’Tis backbone I need,” Sebastian said ruefully.
They heard the sound of the front door, and a moment later, Lady Blackwater put her titian head around the library door. “Oh, Seb, how lovely to see you.”
“Why don’t you bring the rest of you in here?” her husband suggested, a smile in his dark eyes as they rested upon his wife’s countenance. “Where’s the lad?”
“We met the Langston boys on their way to Green Park with their tutor, so he joined them. They’ll bring him home before dark.” Clarissa went to give her brother-in-law, who had risen to his feet, a kiss on the cheek. “How are you, Seb? Perry’s not with you?”
Sebastian shook his head in mock exasperation. “Why does everyone assume that we walk the world hand in hand?”
“Because mostly you do,” Clarissa responded. “Should I leave you two alone again?”
“No, of course not,” Sebastian said swiftly. “I’m on my way, anyway.”
“Oh, don’t let me drive you away.”
“You’re not, my dear.” He kissed her lightly. “I really have to go.” He walked to the door. “Thank you for the claret, Jasper … and for the brotherly ear.”
“You’re more than welcome, dear boy, to either or both. Anytime.” Jasper walked his brother to the door, then stood thoughtfully in the hall, frowning.
Serena walked quickly to a small, unassuming house on St. James’s Place and lifted the brass knocker. The door opened immediately. The maid curtsied.
“Is your mistress in?” Serena walked past the girl into the hall.
“I don’t know as she’s receiving, ma’am.”
“Ah.” Serena hesitated. If Margaret was entertaining one of her many gentlemen friends, she would not welcome the intrusion, even of a very good friend. “Is she alone?”
“Oh, yes, m’lady.” The girl bobbed a curtsy. “The gentleman left half an hour ago.”
“Well, why don’t you run up and ask her if she’ll receive me?” Serena suggested gently. “I’ll wait here. If she’s unable to see me, I’ll leave her a note.”
The girl curtsied again and scampered upstairs. Serena stood examining a painting she didn’t recognize on the far wall. Margaret’s house was all her own, paid for, for the most part, by her gentlemen friends, but she had always managed to avoid being under the singular protection of any of them. Serena had long envied her, and one day, she was determined, she, too, would have her own little house and entertain her own friends. Except that somehow the prospect of emulating Margaret’s way of life didn’t sit well with her, however she looked at it.
“Madam will see you at once, m’lady.” The girl bounced down the stairs.
“Thank you … no, no need to show me up. I know the way.” She went up to the pleasant salon that looked down on the street at the front of the house.
Margaret Standish was a young widow, whose brief marriage to an elderly merchant had left her in possession of a respectable if not lavish settlement, which she had turned to good use, setting herself up in a charming house on St. James’s Place, where she entertained her numerous gentlemen friends, some more personally than others, and graciously received their appropriate expressions of gratitude.
She greeted Serena warmly. “My dear, how delightful of you to call.” She came towards her, hands outstretched in welcome. “I have been moping for the last hour and am sadly in need of diversion.” She took Serena’s hands and kissed her on both cheeks. “I can’t tell you how happy I was to get your note saying you were back in London. Brussels seems an age ago, doesn’t it?” She drew her guest to the fire. “Take off your things, and I’ll ring for tea.”
“An age,” Serena agreed, discarding her hat and pelisse on a chair before sitting down on an upholstered Chippendale sofa before the fire. “We have been so busy setting up the house since we arrived I’ve had no time to visit anyone.”
“But you are established now. The house on Pickering Place is on everyone’s lips these days … tea, Clara, please.” She nodded at the maid who had come in answer to the bell.
“Well, we’ve only been in business for a week, but the general seems happy enough with progress so far … thank heaven,” Serena added with a significant sigh.
Margaret gave her a look of sympathetic understanding. She knew that when the general was unhappy, everyone in his vicinity suffered accordingly.
Serena shrugged, effectively dismissing her stepfather from the conversation. “So, why are you moping? ’Tis not like you.”
“Oh, I was obliged to give young Lord Peter his congé,” Margaret explained, turning a dainty diamond bracelet around on her wrist. “He was becoming rather possessive. But his ardor was always very invigorating … I shall miss him.”
Serena chuckled. Margaret was a few years older than she, a woman who made the most of her unconventional looks. Her features were sharp in an angular countenance, her nose a very prominent aquiline, her chin pointed and more than decisive. Her pallid complexion was sadly freckled, and her hair was an unmistakable carrot, but she had flair and a mesmerizing pair of green eyes that drew attention away from whatever faults there were in her appearance. Her clothes and lavish jewelry were always at the forefront of fashion; her plunging décolletage made the most of a rather insignificant bosom. Her tongue was sharp, her wit acerbic, and she was the one person with whom
Serena felt she could truly be herself, the one person she could confide in.
Apart from Sebastian. But Serena quashed that reflection; it did her no good, but it brought her back to the business in hand. The maid brought in the tea tray, and she accepted a dish with a slightly distracted smile.
Margaret noticed the distraction immediately. Her green eyes narrowed as she stirred her tea with a delicate silver spoon. “So, is this purely a social call, my love, or is there an ulterior motive?”
“Both,” Serena said frankly. She sipped her tea, then set the dish back on the side table beside the sofa. “I need a quiet, private place for a rendezvous, Margaret.”
“And where better than here in my little love nest?” Margaret swept her arm in an encompassing gesture at their surroundings. “Is this some new liaison?” Her gaze sharpened with curiosity. “I thought you not interested in such affaires.”
Serena shook her head vigorously. “I’m not. This is, if anything, the opposite. I need to settle matters once and for all with Sebastian.”
Margaret’s eyes widened. “Ah,” she murmured. “Has he made an appearance, then?”
“’Tis impossible not to bump into him at every turn,” Serena said a little crossly. “First he was at Pickering Place, and then, of all things, he pops up at the Suttons’, when I was visiting there this afternoon.”
“The Suttons?” Margaret’s well-plucked eyebrows rose. “I remember them from Brussels. Decent enough people but hardly the kind of company the Blackwater family would keep.”
“He apparently did Abigail some service when she was out shopping … some unpleasantness she encountered in the street. Sebastian is, if nothing else, always chivalrous.” She heard the acidity in her voice and welcomed it. It gave her much-needed armor against something, she just wasn’t sure what.
Margaret was regarding her in thoughtful silence. After a moment, she said, “So is this meeting to be in the nature of a reconciliation?”
“No, how could it be?” Serena shook her head. “You know how things stand with my stepfather, Margaret.”
Her friend gave a sober nod of assent. “Has he been up to his tricks again?”
“Not exactly … but I think he’s cooking something up with that loathsome Lord Burford.” Serena twisted her fingers into a knot in her lap. “He won’t find it so easy this time.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Margaret heard every word.
“If you need sanctuary, love, you know you will find it here.” She leaned over and grasped Serena’s busy fingers, stilling them with her own long, thin hand.
“I know, and believe me, the thought of that is ineffably comforting, Margaret. But I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.” She laughed a little. “And I believe I can handle the general. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.”
“As they say.” Margaret sat back again. “So when would you wish to meet with the Honorable Sebastian? I can be out at any time if you tell me when.”
“Oh, I don’t want to dispossess you, Margaret. Indeed, there’s no need. A few minutes’ conversation is all that’s necessary, just to clear the air, so to speak. I can meet him in the dining parlor downstairs.”
“No, I won’t hear of it. You will entertain him in civilized comfort up here.” Margaret got to her feet and went to the secretaire. She flipped through the pages of a day book. “On Thursday, I can be out the whole day. Will Thursday do for you?”
“I don’t need the whole day,” Serena protested. “Just an hour or even half an hour will be sufficient.”
“I shall be out all day Thursday,” Margaret responded firmly. “You may set whatever half-hour you wish from eleven in the morning until late evening. In fact,” she mused, “I may not even return in the evening.”
Serena was intrigued. “A new conquest?”
“Possibly. We will see how he performs on Thursday. He has a small hunting lodge in Windsor Park, and since he is rather beautiful and even more wealthy, I am anxious to try his paces.”
Serena laughed, feeling lighthearted for the first time in weeks. “You are incorrigible, Margaret. Very well, I’ll write to Sebastian and suggest he meet me here at midday on Thursday.”
She rose to her feet as the dainty ormolu clock on the mantel struck five.
“I must go back. We dine at six before the doors open at eight.” She set her hat on her head, adjusting the position in the mirror above a console table, then slipped her arms into her pelisse before turning to embrace her friend. “I can’t thank you enough, Margaret.”
“Nonsense” was the robust response. “I would be of service to you in many more ways if you’d let me, you know that, Serena.” Margaret hugged her, then stood back, holding Serena’s arms, looking closely at her. “Why don’t you just pack your bags and leave, my dear?”
“Not yet.” Serena smiled a little mistily. “But soon. There’s one particular piece of mischief that I must forestall first.”
“Oh?” Margaret raised her eyebrows again.
“He’s getting his hooks into an innocent with a very wealthy papa. I have to stop it, and to do that, I must be there watching the general, ready to step in. If I don’t, the poor child will end up like my mother.” Her face closed, and shadows crossed her eyes. “I can’t stand by and let that happen.”
Margaret said nothing. There was nothing to be said. She knew only a very little about Serena’s and her mother’s life with General Heyward before the latter’s death of what Serena had described once as desperation. But what she did know was enough to convince her of Serena’s resolution now to prevent anyone else suffering the same fate.
“Well, you know best, of course.” She accompanied Serena to the head of the stairs. “But don’t forget you have a friend and a roof here whenever you need either or both.”
“Thank you.” Serena’s violet eyes filled with tears for a moment as she fought the temptation to throw everything to the four winds and cast herself upon her friend’s bosom. But now was not the time. She would be strong for a while longer.
Chapter Four
Sebastian received Serena’s note early that evening. It was brief and to the point: I will await you at 12 St. James’s Place next Thursday at noon. Do not reply to this. S.
Sebastian’s gaze lingered over each pen stroke. He knew her writing so well, and it never failed to set his pulses racing. They had written many letters to each other in the past, ardent pages of lyrical prose, rekindling memories of passionate nights and equally passionate days. Serena had never been shy about expressing her feelings, and how he had relished the frankness of her desire, the naked lust apparent in her sensuous descriptions of their erotic encounters. Now he looked at the bald sentence and felt oddly bereft. Where was she? That woman who had so inflamed him.
When he thought of those dreadful moments of her betrayal three years earlier, he thought he must have imagined the Serena he had loved with such passion. What he had said that morning was true: “I don’t know you … I don’t know you at all.” The cold cipher who had dismissed him with such hard, emotionless words was a stranger to him. It was as if some malign spirit had occupied Serena’s loveliness. And judging by these cold instructions on the smooth vellum, nothing had changed.
He scrunched the paper and threw it into the fire, then poured himself a glass of madeira, staring into the fire, one arm resting along the mantel.
“In the doldrums, Seb?”
He looked up as Perry came into the parlor, buckskin breeches and boots dusty with the fine sand of the riding path in Hyde Park. “No, why should you think so?”
“Because you only ever stare into the fire like that when you’re hipped,” his twin observed, tossing his riding whip onto a table. “What’s amiss?” He poured himself madeira.
“Nothing of any moment. D’you have plans for the evening?”
“Nothing that couldn’t be changed.” Perry’s gaze sharpened. “Serena?” he hazarded.
Sebastian gave a short laugh and left the fireplac
e. “The very same. I ran into her this afternoon in the strangest circumstances.” He described the events of the afternoon to his brother, who listened attentively from deep in an upholstered armchair to the right of the fire. “I assume she came across the family in Brussels; the little Abigail was full of their travels. Not much impressed by them, either, I gather.” He smiled rather more cheerfully and brought the decanter over to refill their glasses. “A lively little innocent but not much to her. Father was a decent man … good, honest folk, I think would describe the family.”
“In trade?” Perry sipped madeira.
“Indubitably. Not quite sure of the details, but in the Potteries, I gather. Wedgwood was mentioned as a neighbor.”
“Doesn’t sound as if they’ll receive vouchers for Almack’s,” Perry observed. “I’m not sure the Wedgwoods, for all their fine work, are quite acceptable Society.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t decent people,” his twin retorted.
Perry held up a hand in disclaimer. “Did I say they weren’t?”
“No, you didn’t,” Sebastian conceded. “But you’re right, brother dear, as so often. I doubt I’ll be seeing anything more of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton and the sweetly pretty Abigail.” He returned the decanter to the sideboard. “What d’you say to a mutton chop at Whites this evening? Followed by a hand or two of whist. There’s always someone there willing to make up a four.”
Perry shrugged easily. For all his brother’s careless demeanor, he could tell Seb needed company and distraction, and he was more than willing to provide both. “If that’s what you have in mind, it’ll suit me. I have no firm engagements this evening.” He stood up and stretched before going to the door. “I’ll go and change.”
In the house on Bruton Street, Mrs. Sutton was having one of her earnest conversations with her husband, who, in her opinion, did not fully grasp the vital importance of the right kind of social contacts. “I wonder if we could invite Mr. Sullivan to a small gathering, nothing as formal as a dinner—”
