His Wicked Christmas Wager. ANNIE BURROWS

      And speaking of Arbuthnot…she scanned the throng swiftly. Even through the haze of tobacco smoke he was easy to spot, leaning nonchalantly against one of the supporting timbers, away to her left.

      Directly in front of him, his booted feet stretched towards a blazing fire, slouched her quarry.

      Lord Sinclair.

      Her heart squeezed to see he had a woman sprawled across his lap. He was using one hand to stroke her thigh, while the other held a tankard very similar to the one clutched in Arbuthnot’s massive paw.

      She rebuked herself for minding so much as she stalked across the room toward him. Naturally, he would have had women over the years. But she managed to blank out the catcalls and vulgar gestures that came her way with greater ease than she could deal with the vicious pangs of jealousy. The woman made matters worse by nuzzling at his ear. She could see why the woman appeared so fond of him. Although the Lord Sinclair she was looking at was a far cry from the youth with whom she’d so disastrously fallen in love six years before, he was the kind of customer she would have favoured, had she been a whore. Even with more than a day’s growth of beard darkening his jaw, his clothing neither new nor all that clean, and his blue-black hair straggling down almost to his shoulders, he was still the most compellingly virile male she’d ever seen.

      So greatly did her hostility mount, with every step she took, that when she reached the table at which they sat, all she had to do was raise one haughty eyebrow, and the woman he’d been groping scrambled off his lap as though he’d turned white hot.

      “No, Molly, don’t go,” Lord Sinclair drawled. “I like you.” Molly had offered a kind of comfort he’d sometimes needed after Caroline had casually destroyed him. And she had the gall to look down her haughty nose at them both.

      Lady Caroline gave Molly a hard smile as she sat down on a bench on the opposite side of his table.

      “We can conduct our discussion with Molly on your lap, if you prefer,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.”

      “No, it wouldn’t,” he sneered. “You always do just as you please, and to hell with everyone else.”

      She quirked one eyebrow. “Really? I rather thought that was your particular speciality.”

      He could hardly believe his ears. She was accusing him of selfishness?

      “Sebastian and Phoebe want you home,” she said. “The wedding…”

      “Wedding?” Molly took a swift backward step. “I ain’t wasting my time with you if you’ve got marriage to some gentry mort in mind.”

      “No, Molly, you’ve got it wrong…”

      But it was too late. She’d flounced off.

      “Happy now?”

      He lifted his drink to a suddenly dry mouth, thanking God he’d suppressed any outward sign of how the mere sight of Caroline had affected him. When she’d walked in through the door, in spite of all she’d done, his heart had pounded, his stomach had clenched, and he’d gripped Molly’s leg so hard he’d probably left a bruise.

      But she’d only come to deliver yet another message from his brother. So far he’d resolutely ignored all the increasingly impassioned requests to watch Sebastian marry Lady Caroline’s younger sister, telling himself he couldn’t be bothered. But the way he’d reacted when she’d stalked into this hell-hole was a mocking reminder that his reasons for avoiding the ceremony went so much deeper.

      Lady Caroline watched him glaring at her over the rim of his tankard as he drained it to the last drop. Happy? She could not recall the last time she’d applied that word to her state of mind. Before the last time she’d seen him, probably. When she’d had dreams of marrying for love, to a man who claimed to love her too.

      What a goose she’d been!

      “No,” she said bluntly. “But that is beside the point.”

      “The point being?”

      “Oh, don’t be so obtuse. You know very well why I’ve come. You said as much.”

      “That damned wedding,” he snapped. “Do you seriously think there is anything you can say that would induce me to attend that farce?”

      “It is not a farce! Phoebe and Sebastian love each other.”

      “Love,” he snorted with contempt. “There’s no such thing.”

      Her heart, which she’d long since thought immune to anything that anyone could throw at it, abruptly revealed she had been wrong. Once, this man had said he loved her. Passionately. Devotedly. Madly enough to defy the world and create a scandal that would have set the ton rocking on its heels.

      She smothered the memory before it grew strong enough to wound her, took a deep breath, and said, “Even if that was true, your brother and my sister believe in it.”

      “More fool them.”

      She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. “If you don’t believe in love, what is there to keep you away from their wedding?”

      “What do you mean by that?”

      “Oh, come. Everyone is saying you mean to stay away because you are still broken-hearted over me. That you cannot bear to see me, especially not at a wedding. But if you don’t believe in love…” She leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “…then what is the reason you have so far refused to attend?”

      My God, but she was a cold, hard woman. Every word had been like a dagger thrust to the heart.

      But he would be damned if he let her know just how accurately she’d summed him up.

      “Perhaps I don’t wish to waste my time watching my baby brother making a fool of himself over a female from your family,” he snarled.

      “And I can see how profitably you normally spend your time,” she retorted, casting a swift glance around the shoddy tavern in which he looked very much at home. “From the rumours abounding about your life, of late, one would think your brother would be glad you have so far adamantly refused to answer his invitation. What man of good ton would want someone like you to darken his doors, after all? A notorious womanizer, gambler, drunkard, and even, if the latest on dit has any substance to it, a man who is not beyond breaking the law.”

      “Your point being?”

      The lazily lifted left eyebrow made him look every inch the viscount, in spite of the shabby clothing, and the situation in which she’d found him, in spite of the fact that he had not denied even one of the accusations she’d flung at him.

      “The point being,” she replied, “that no matter how low you have sunk, your family still care about you. They love you, though you would deny the emotion exists. They want you to be there to celebrate the event with them.”

      He knew that! His brother had done all he could to prevent his downward slide. Even when he’d sunk about as low as a man could get, Seb had taken pains to get word to him that the door would always be open.

      And part of him yearned to go back.

      If only she weren’t going to be there, this wedding would be the perfect opportunity to start mending fences.

      “It would mean so much to them if you could just…” She gave him an exasperated look. “…clean yourself up, and pretend, just for a few days, that there is still some remnant of the gentleman left in you.”

      He glared into his empty tankard—a remarkably apt symbol of his life.

      “Oh,” she said, in such a way that he braced himself for what was coming next.

      “It has not occurred to anyone that you might not be able to afford to purchase decent clothes, let alone stand the cost of travelling all the way to Berkshire. Is that the case Crispin? If so, I can give you the money…”

      “Damn