A Wedding Wager (25 page)

“You weren’t supposed to realize anything,” he said with another complacent smile. He leaned out of the window, calling up to the box, “The last cottage on the right, just before the Bear and Ragged Staff, Baker.”

“Right y’are, sir.” The coachman drew rein outside the cottage, and the groom hurried to open the door and let down the footstep.

Sebastian jumped down, disdaining the step, and reached in for Serena’s hand, helping her down to the lane. She stood looking around. The cottage sat in a pretty garden, ablaze with chrysanthemums and dahlias. A small gate opened onto a narrow path that wound its way between two small patches of lawn to the front door, which had bay windows on either side.

“How pretty,” she observed, fascinated by this bucolic retreat. What on earth did Sebastian have in mind?

“Take the horses to the inn, Baker. They’re expecting you. We’ll be ready to leave again at four o’clock.”

The coachman nodded, touched his forelock, and drove the coach the few hundred yards to the inn.

“Does it please you?” Sebastian asked softly, watching Serena’s face.

She smiled. “Yes, indeed, but what is it for?”

“Oh, Serena, can’t you guess?” he exclaimed. “I had really thought you sharp-witted. How could I have been so mistaken?”

She pulled a face. “I am sharp-witted, more than you’ll ever know. But how could I possibly know what you have in mind?”

He merely looked at her in silence, and slowly she realized that she was, indeed, being dim-witted. “Oh,” she said.

“Precisely. You expressed a wish for somewhere private of our own. Well, here it is.” He made an expansive gesture to the cottage. “I have taken a lease for six months. That should be long enough to settle Miss Abigail’s future.”

Serena shook her head in wonder. “How could you afford it, Sebastian?”

He shook his head in mock reproof. “That, my dear girl, is no concern of yours.” He unlatched the gate. “’Tis a most indelicate question. Now, let us go in.” He put a hand at the small of her back and propelled her unceremoniously ahead of him up the path to the door, where he banged the shining brass knocker.

It was opened by a plump, smiling lady of middle years. She curtsied, smoothing down her apron. “Ah, there you are, sir. And this is the young lady you mentioned.” She looked Serena up and down, a searching but not unfriendly scrutiny. “I trust you’ll be comfortable, ma’am.”

Serena, still slightly bemused, looked around the small hall. Everything gleamed, and the air was scented with beeswax and dried lavender. “I’m sure I shall, Mistress…?”

“This is Mistress Greene, Serena. She is our landlady and will look after us when we’re here,” Sebastian explained.

“I daresay you’ll be glad of a little refreshment after your journey.” The landlady opened a door onto a parlor whose bay window looked onto the garden. “I’ll fetch you up some of my cowslip wine and a few little cakes. Just baked ’em, I have.”

Serena could smell the aromas of baking mingling with the beeswax and lavender. She went to the fire, pulling off her gloves. The fender was polished to an impossible shine.

Sebastian came up behind her, reaching over her shoulders to unclasp her cloak. He slipped it away from her, dropping it onto a wooden settle. “We have all day to ourselves,” he told her. “No one will disturb us. No one apart from Baker knows where we are.”

“’Tis perfect, love.” She turned into his embrace, smiling up at him. “How clever of you to find it.”

“Oh, ’tis only one of several things I have found,” he declared with a chuckle, stroking the curve of her cheek as he loved to do. But he was not yet ready to reveal his pièce de résistance. Not until he was sure of Serena’s response. This time, he was taking nothing for granted.

Mistress Greene knocked discreetly on the door and then came in with a tray. She set it down on a gate-legged table in the bay window. “When you’ve refreshed yourself, ma’am, I’ll show you around.”

“Oh, no need for that, Mistress Greene,” Sebastian said swiftly. “I know my way around. I will show Lady Serena myself.”

“Very well, sir.” The landlady curtsied and left them alone.

“How did you find this place?” Serena took a sip of cowslip wine and broke a little sweet cake in half. Suddenly, it seemed important to prolong this moment, to let the suspense build between them, the longing, soon to be satisfied, to grow until they could bear it no longer.

Sebastian regarded her with his head to one side. “Small talk, my sweet?”

“Polite discourse,” she amended with a wicked smile.

Sebastian set his glass down with a definitive click. “Enough. My patience is done. ’Tis time for business.”

Serena set down her own glass. Sebastian’s blue gaze seemed to hold her, pull her to him, as if they were connected by an invisible chain. She stepped forward slowly until she stood close enough to feel his breath on her cheek, the warmth of his body. She lifted her face and saw that he was looking at her with a grave intensity that had banished his usual lighthearted, smiling gaze.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“I love you,” he responded. “I love you so much it hurts. I do not know what I would do if you were not here.”

She bowed her head, feeling suddenly the weight of an enormous responsibility. She had failed him, failed the power of their love once, she must not,
could
not do so again. But she could not, not yet, give him the unconditional declaration of an undying love. She could only give him what was safe and in her hands to give. She raised her eyes again. “I love you, too, Sebastian, more than I can say.”

If he was disappointed, he gave no indication. “Come.” He surprised her by swiftly lifting her off her feet, holding her against him.

“I’m too heavy,” she murmured in faint protest as he carried her to the door.

“You weigh nothing,” he responded, and his voice was once again light and amused.

“I know that’s not true.” But she put her arms around his neck, resting her cheek against his shoulder, and allowed herself the indulgence of feeling delightfully helpless in the face of this masculine show of power. What was love play, after all, but an arena for games of make-believe?

Sebastian carried her up the short flight of stairs to a door on a small landing. “Lift the latch, love, my arms are full.”

Serena raised the latch on the door, and Sebastian pushed it open with his foot, carrying her in and dropping her on the quilted bed cover with a barely concealed sigh of relief.

“I told you I was too heavy,” she said, laughing up at him as he caught his breath. “You could probably carry Abigail with one hand, but you forget I come from the blood and bone of a Scottish clansman. We’re made tall and broad.”

“I’ll give you tall,” he said, “but I dispute broad. However, I’ve a mind to have a proper look.” He bent over her, deftly removing her shoes, before taking her
hands and hauling her upright. “You have to stand up. I can’t undress you lying down.”

Serena obliged, sliding to her feet beside the bed. Sebastian unbuttoned her gown, slipping it off her shoulders to fall in a rose velvet puddle at her feet. He untied the tapes of the hoop, tossing it aside, and turned his attention to the laces of her corset, unthreading them with experienced ease.

“You have the touch of a lady’s maid,” Serena murmured with a soft chuckle. “It seems you’ve put the three years of our separation to good use, my dear.”

“That is a thoroughly indelicate comment,” he chided, tossing the corset to the floor. He unfastened the tiny pearl buttons of her chemise and lifted it over her head, so that she stood naked, except for her gartered stockings.

He stepped back, looking her over, an appreciative smile on his lips. “Magnificent. I always forget between times how glorious your body is.” He moved his hands over her sloping shoulders in a leisurely caress, flattening his palms along her ribcage, smoothing over the curve of her hips, before caressing her belly, pressing his thumbs into the sharp points of her hip bones, moving up to cup her breasts, flicking lightly at her nipples with his forefingers.

Serena stood very still, only her skin rippling with sensation, the little pulse at the base of her throat beating faster than usual. He turned her wrists and pressed
his lips against the soft, blue-veined skin, where the same pulse beat rapidly against his mouth. Then, with a soft chuckle, he pushed her lightly so that she fell back on the bed.

He bent over her, unfastening her garters before carefully unrolling her silk stockings, easing them over her long legs. He lifted her feet in turn, kissing her toes, watching her face as she lay on the bed.

“Hurry,” she whispered as he ran his tongue over her arched instep. Her body lifted on the coverlet as lust, urgent and imperative, swept through her.

Sebastian dropped her foot to the bed, stepped back, and began to take off his clothes, each movement tantalizingly slow and deliberate. Serena rolled onto her side, resting her cheek on her elbow-propped palm as she drank in every inch of his body so slowly revealed.

When he pushed off his underdrawers and stood naked beside her, she reached for his engorged penis, enclosing it between her fingers, feeling the corded veins pulsing against her palm.

Sebastian knelt on the bed, straddling her as she continued to hold him. He caressed her nipples, making small circles with a fingertip until she groaned in need. Only then did he slide his hands beneath her bottom, lift her on the shelf of his palms, and enter her welcoming body one minute fraction at a time, until she thought she could bear it no longer, as the exquisite sensation filled her pulsing body, every sensitized nerve
ending throbbing with delight as he sheathed himself within her.

Much later, when pale afternoon sunshine shone through the bedroom window under the eaves, Sebastian disentangled himself from Serena, gently sliding his legs out from beneath hers, flung warm and heavy across his hips. He shivered a little. The fire in the hearth was burning low. He threw on kindling and watched as the fire caught again, before he threw on several larger logs.

“What time is it? Must we go now?” Serena struggled onto an elbow, aware of a deep sense of impending loss. The prospect of leaving this sanctuary, going back to the life she had to live, filled her with desolation.

“Not yet. I thought you were still sleeping.” Sebastian turned from the fire as the logs crackled. He came over to the bed, drawing back the covers, drinking in the sight of her body, naked, supple, glowing in the firelight. “Are you hungry?”

“Ravenous.” She stretched, smiling up at him, determined that he should not see her unhappiness. “Something smells wonderful.”

“Mistress Greene will be preparing something for us. I’ll go in search.” He pulled on his breeches and shirt and went barefoot to the kitchen, where the landlady was busy with pots and cauldrons over the black-leaded range.

She turned, flourishing a ladle, as he entered the room. “Oh, sir, you startled me.”

“I beg your pardon, Mistress Greene. Something smells delicious, and we find ourselves famished.”

The landlady beamed. “Well, not knowing quite what you and the lady might feel like, I’ve artichoke soup, a nice roast duckling with juniper sauce to follow, and a good blackberry and apple pie. Apples from our own orchard, and I preserved the blackberries straight from the bush a month or so past. Will that suit?”

“Admirably, Mistress Greene.”

“Will I lay the table in the parlor, or will you dine abovestairs?”

Sebastian thought of Serena, naked and languid in the feather bed, and said swiftly that they would eat abovestairs, but he would carry the tray himself.

The landlady made no demur, piling cutlery, plates, and a soup tureen on a tray, which Sebastian carried with some difficulty upstairs. He’d left the door unlatched and was able to elbow it wide enough to give him entrance. Serena was sitting, still naked, on the rug in front of the fire, one elbow propped on a crossed knee, gazing into the crackling flames.

“Shameless,” he chided with a chuckle. “Supposing Mistress Greene had brought up the tray.” He set his burdens on a table beside the fire.

“She would have knocked,” Serena said, rising to her feet. She came over to the table and sniffed hungrily.

“There’s a second course,” he said, momentarily distracted by the long, graceful curve of her naked body leaning over the table. He smoothed a hand over her
backside. “For God’s sake, sit down, before you give me other ideas.”

She chuckled and sat down, shaking out a square linen napkin, saying with a wicked smile, “I wouldn’t want to spill soup at the moment.”

“No,” he agreed, ladling soup into a bowl and placing it in front of her. “That could be a little uncomfortable.”

She smiled but said only, “How long do we have, Sebastian?”

He took a mouthful of soup, covertly watching her expression as he said deliberately, “As long as you wish, Serena.”

She looked at him, startled. “You know I must be back by seven at the latest.”

“Today, yes,” he agreed. He passed her a piece of bread on the tip of a knife, his eyes still on her expression. “You should try Mistress Greene’s bread. ’Tis excellent.”