A Wedding Wager Read Online Free Page B

should now reappear to break open the old wounds.
    “You won’t be playing there, then, I assume,” Peregrine said neutrally, reaching for his glass.
    Sebastian raised his eyes and gave his brother a cool smile. “As I said, Perry, the play on Pickering Place is too rich for my blood.”

Chapter Two

    “Well, I must say, my dear, that bonnet looks very well on you.” Marianne Sutton nodded, her towering and elaborately powdered coiffure swaying precariously, as she regarded her only daughter with complacence. “Such a pretty little thing as you are, ’tis no wonder the general has taken such a fancy to you.”
    “Mama, I don’t believe he has,” Miss Sutton protested, blushing to the roots of her fair curls. “Indeed, General Heyward is … is far too used to … to fashionable women to find anything pleasing in me.” What she meant was that the general was old enough to be her grandfather and could have absolutely no appeal for a young girl of barely seventeen hovering on the brink of her first London Season.
    “Nonsense, child.” Mrs. Sutton snapped her fan at her daughter. “You mark my words, once the general has returned to London, your father will bring him up to scratch before Christmas.” She sighed pleasurably, leaning back against the leather squabs of the very fashionable barouche, raising her lorgnette to look aroundthe thronged street as they drove up Piccadilly, her attention piqued to catch an eye of even a nodding acquaintance.
    If they were to launch the dear child as they wished, her dear husband, the admirable Mr. Sutton, had told her to miss no opportunity to ingratiate herself with London’s fashionable world. He would ensure their enterprise did not lack for funds but, being a bluff and somewhat down-to-earth fellow himself, was more than happy to leave the social side of the business to his wife, who had some pretensions to move, if not in the upper circles, at least in the next tier down.
    “Ah, I believe that is Lady Barstow …” She bowed, smiling, to a passing landaulet, receiving the merest nod in response. Her smile faded, and her voice took on an acid edge. “What a sorry-looking carriage. You’d think Lord Barstow would set his wife up in a more commodious vehicle. Quite the drab she looks.”
    Abigail said nothing. It was always better to let her mother’s tongue follow its own path. She tucked herself up into a corner of the barouche and was content to observe the passing scene. She had been in London only three weeks, and it was still a city of wonderment. She never tired of gazing into the shop windows with their lavish merchandise or watching the ladies, often followed by little black pages, maneuvering their widehooped gowns through narrow doors. The gentlemen were for the most part magnificent creatures, with theirpowdered wigs and embroidered coats with deep-turned back cuffs, jeweled pins nestling in rich lace cravats.
    She yearned to be part of this scene, to move confidently among these glorious butterflies, to acknowledge bows and greetings with her own graceful curtsy and sophisticated tilt of the head, but as yet she had not made her debut. London was still thin of company, as the Season would not officially begin until after the opening of Parliament, and their social life was limited to her parents’ friends and those few acquaintances they had made during their two months’ sojourn on the Continent.
    Abigail had not cared for Paris, and even less for Brussels. The foreign tongue, so fast and strange, made her head ache, and the people were all so supercilious they seemed to look right through her. Except for General Sir George Heyward and his stepdaughter, Lady Serena, without whom Abigail had often thought she would have died of boredom. But Serena had introduced her to the libraries and the musical salons. She had accompanied her shopping, gently teaching her what suited her and what didn’t. She was so much more worldly, knew so much more than Mama