A Wedding Wager Read Online Free Page A

examining his hand. The skin was not broken. He looked back down the alley. As he’d expected, there was no sign of the pickpocket. They were so small and quick, these street children, they could disappear into a hole in a wall barely big enough for a cat. It was an ordinary enough occurrence if one ventured into the back alleys. He should have been more alert. But oddly, the incident had restored some part of his customary equanimity. It had brought him back to earth, anyway.
    He walked back up the wider, brighter thoroughfare of St. James’s Street towards the lodgings he shared with Peregrine on Stratton Street.
    Candlelight shone from the long windows of the sitting room at the front of the narrow house. The front door opened directly on the street, and Sebastian let himself into the narrow hall. “Perry … you in?”
    “Aye, in here.”
    Sebastian pushed open the door to the small but comfortably appointed sitting room. Peregrine was reading in a deep armchair beside the grate where a small fire burned to combat the night’s chill. The contents of a brandy goblet on a small table beside him glowed amber in the candlelight.
    Perry greeted his brother with a smile, closing his book over a finger to keep his place. “Good evening?”
    Sebastian shrugged slightly. “So-so.” He filled a goblet from the decanter on the sideboard and took thechair opposite his brother. “Harley and I visited the Pickering Place hell.”
    Peregrine looked a little alarmed. Something was troubling his brother, and he could think of only one thing. “Did you lose too much?”
    “No.” Sebastian shook his head dismissively. “You know me, Perry. I like the excitement, but I hate to lose more. At the tables, I’m as timid as an infant and as tight-fisted as a miser. The play was far too rich for my blood. More in Jasper’s line.”
    “Jasper don’t like to lose, either,” Perry pointed out, stretching his feet on the andirons.
    “Jasper, my dear, don’t lose,” his twin retorted smartly, and they both laughed. Their elder brother had a gift for the cards.
    Sebastian swirled the brandy in his goblet, watching the light play across the amber surface. Peregrine watched him. Eventually, Peregrine said, “So, what is it?”
    His brother didn’t raise his eyes, said only, “Serena and that damned stepfather of hers are running the hell.”
    A shiver of apprehension touched Peregrine’s spine. He looked closely at his twin, and the apprehension grew stronger. Sebastian had the same bleak expression that had haunted his face for so many dreadful months three years ago. Neither of his brothers had been able to get close enough to his unhappiness then to help him. His previous happiness, on the other hand, he’d been more than willing to share. For close to a year,Sebastian had been deliriously happy with the woman he described without embarrassment as the love of his life. Jasper had raised an elder brother’s skeptical eyebrow and murmured something about puppy love, but he’d done nothing to quell Sebastian’s joyful exuberance. Perry had merely enjoyed his twin’s happiness and been delighted for him. They had shared in each other’s highs and lows all their lives.
    And then something had happened, and Sebastian’s world had come crashing down. When pressed, he had said only that Lady Serena and her stepfather had left the country, and neither of his brothers could get anything further from him. They had watched and waited until eventually the pain had eased, the bleakness had left Sebastian’s eyes, and he had plunged wholeheartedly back into the whirling social scene. There had been an edge of wildness for a while, but gradually, the Sebastian they both knew and loved had been restored. He was his old amused and amusing self.
    And now Peregrine, looking at his brother’s expression, feared that the bad times were beginning again, and he was filled with anger at the woman who, having so callously abandoned his twin,