A Wedding Wager by Jane Feather Page B

angry for that. Her cruel-to-be-kind strategy had certainly worked, she reflected, thinking of the coldness in his voice, the flicker of contempt in his eye. He had requested this meeting to clear the ground sufficiently for them to meet with a convincingsemblance of civility in public if and when it happened. And she was perfectly happy with that.
    “Should I bring up your guest as soon as he arrives, Lady Serena, or announce him first?” Margaret Standish’s butler knew his job well.
    “You may bring up the Honorable Sebastian Sullivan as soon as he arrives, Horace. Thank you.”
    She went to the window as the door closed on the man and looked down at the street. From here, she would see Sebastian as he turned the corner of the square. She felt unaccountably nervous and found herself twitching at the curtains, moving around the room, straightening perfectly aligned cushions, adjusting the arrangements of the flowers in the vases. It was close to noon, ten more minutes. Sebastian would be punctual. He was nothing if not courteous.
    Precisely at two minutes to noon, Sebastian rounded the corner exactly as she’d predicted. He was on horseback, in buckskin breeches and a dark wool coat, a brilliant scarlet plume in his silver-laced bicorne hat. Her heart turned over. How many times in the old days had he come to her like this, while she waited in the little room above the taproom of the inn on King Street, all impatient anticipation for his arrival? For a moment, as she watched him dismount beneath the window, she could almost imagine she was back in that halcyon past … that in a moment, she would hear his feet on the stairs, racing to be with her. He would fling open the door as he had so often done and be beside her with twolong, quick strides, catching her up into his arms, his mouth on hers in a long kiss that would seem to draw her very soul from her body.
    She lost sight of him as he stepped to the front door, but she heard his firm, decisive knock. She seemed to be having trouble breathing, and her face felt flushed as she waited for his step in the corridor outside. She heard his voice, so achingly familiar, speaking to the butler, and then the door opened. “Mr. Sullivan, my lady.” Horace stepped back as Sebastian entered the parlor. The door closed, and they were alone.
    Sebastian stood with the door at his back. He tucked his whip under his arm while he drew off his gloves. “So, Serena” was all he said as he looked at her, a strange light in his blue eyes.
    “So, Sebastian,” she responded, trying for a light tone but failing miserably. Just speaking his name seemed weighted with significance, with so many memories now flooding back in a tidal wave of emotion and loss.
    She turned away hastily, afraid that he would see the sheen of incipient tears.
    “Thank you for coming.” It sounded absurdly stiff, laughably incongruous in the circumstances.
    “Not at all,” he responded politely, tossing whip, hat, and gloves onto a console table.
    He was waiting for her to make the first move, Serena realized, which was unfair, considering that he had insisted on this meeting. Annoyance banished tears, andshe said rather sharply, “So, what did you wish to talk about?”
    He laughed, a short crack of mirthless amusement. “Don’t be ridiculous, Serena.”
    She spun around, her eyes now snapping with anger. “You call me ridiculous? You’re the one who insisted on this ground-clearing meeting. So let’s get on with it. Start clearing the ground, Sebastian.”
    He sighed and glanced around the cozy room. “This is a pleasant house,” he observed. “Whom does it belong to?”
    She should have remembered Sebastian’s adroit way of changing the subject to small talk when tempers were inclined to get heated, Serena reflected. She responded in like manner. “An old friend. She happens to be out of town for the day.”
    “I see. ’Tis certainly a discreet rendezvous.” His eye fell on the decanters on