by Jane Feather
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.
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