A Valentine Wedding by Jane Feather

chestnuts is to go on the block at Tatts next week. Chesterton’s breakdowns, I believe. You might be able to get them before they go for auction for around three hundredpounds. Shall I go and make my bow to Maria while you fetch what you need?” He followed her out of the music room into the hall.
    “I’ll be just a minute.” Emma hurried up the stairs to fetch her hat and gloves. She knew she could trust Alasdair to buy horses for her without her being there, but she had always made her own decisions in such matters and was not about to change the habits of a lifetime to accommodate some ridiculous notion about what a female should and should not do, or where she should or should not go.
    She surveyed herself in her mirror as she adjusted the set of her little velvet hat with its single plume curling on her shoulder. Her nose wrinkled slightly as she took inventory of her reflection. Her nose was too large, her mouth too wide, she had always thought. And her eyebrows were too thick and had a distressing tendency to fly away at the edges. Not that she cared twopence for her physical imperfections, she told herself firmly, grabbing up her gloves and heading for the door. It wasn’t as if she was out to impress anyone this afternoon. She was only running an errand with Alasdair.
    Her hand brushed unconsciously over the back of her neck as she ran down the stairs.
    Alasdair was waiting in the hall, idly slapping his gloves into the palm of one hand. He turned as she came down. “Maria is taking a nap,” he informed her. “Harris will tell her that we’ve gone for a drive.” His eyes appraised her as if it were the first time he’d noticed her appearance. “That is an entrancing hat,” he observed. “But … allow me … there, perfect.” He made a deft adjustment to the brim where it turned up on one side, and smiled down at her.
    It was his old smile, the one she’d first seen allthose years ago when an eight-year-old girl had fallen irreparably in love with her brother’s best friend.
    Emma felt the ground shift beneath her feet. It had been so long since she’d felt the pure warmth of that smile. The sardonic curl, the ironical glint, were gone, the once familiar understanding and invitation in their place.
    His hand slipped down the length of her arm, his fingers closing lightly over her wrist. “Truce, Emma?” he said quietly. “We can deal better with each other than we have been doing.”
    It was the first reference to their dreadful last meeting, and it was a relief to have it in the open. “We both said things to regret,” Emma said, her own voice as low as his. “I will engage to be civil, Alasdair.”
    His mouth took a wry quirk. “Civility? Well, I suppose I must be satisfied with that.”
    “It is perhaps a greater concession than you imagine,” she said, but without heat.
    He looked at her for a moment, his eyes unreadable, then his fingers dropped from her wrist and he cupped her elbow, escorting her to the door held open by a footman.
    Alasdair’s tiger, a wizened ex-jockey by the name of Jemmy, saluted Emma with a grin and touched his forelock. “You drivin’, Lady Emma?”
    “If I may?” Emma glanced inquiringly at Alasdair.
    “By all means,” he said without batting an eyelid. He handed her up into the curricle, adding almost apologetically, “But I should warn you that the right leader is inclined to take exception to stray dogs, pedestrians, and most other traffic on the streets. I’m trying to break him of such unsociable habits.”
    “Then of course I won’t drive them,” Emma declared.“It would be the very worst thing for him to have someone else’s hands on the reins.”
    “That was rather what I thought myself,” Alasdair agreed solemnly. “But I didn’t wish to cast aspersions on your driving skills.”
    “You are absurd!” Emma couldn’t help laughing. “You knew perfectly well I wouldn’t take it like that.”
    He cast her a quick sideways glance as