Page 10 of Once and Always


  He shifted slightly and Victoria stole another glance at him. His dark head was tilted back, his thin cigar clamped between his even white teeth, his hands resting on the arms of his wing chair, his tanned features cast into shadow. A chill crept up her spine as she wondered what dark secrets lay hidden in his past. Surely there must be many to have made him so cynical and unapproachable. He looked like the sort of man who had seen and done all sorts of terrible, forbidden things—things that had hardened him and made him cold. Yet he was handsome—wickedly, dangerously handsome with his panther-black hair, green eyes, and superb build. Victoria couldn’t deny that, and if she weren’t half-afraid of him most of the time, she would have liked to talk to him. How tempting it would be to try to befriend him—as tempting as sin, she admitted to herself—as foolish as trying to befriend the devil. And probably just as dangerous.

  Victoria drew a careful breath, preparing to politely but firmly insist that her mourning clothes be returned, just as Northrup appeared and announced the arrival of Lady Kirby and Miss Kirby.

  Victoria saw Jason stiffen and shoot a sardonic glance at Charles, who responded with a bewildered shrug and turned to Northrup. “Send them away—” he began, but he was too late.

  “No need to announce us, Northrup,” said a firm voice, and a stout woman sailed into the salon, trailed by puce satin skirts, heavy perfume, and a lovely brunette about Victoria’s age. “Charles!” Lady Kirby said, beaming at him. “I heard you were in the village today with a young lady named Miss Seaton, and naturally I had to see her for myself.”

  Scarcely taking time to draw a breath, she turned to Victoria and said brightly, “You must be Miss Seaton.” She paused, her narrowed eyes scrutinizing every feature on Victoria’s face in a way that gave Victoria the feeling she was looking for flaws. She found one. “What an intriguing dent in your chin, my dear. However did it happen? An accident?”

  “Of birth,” Victoria averred, smiling, much too fascinated by the peculiar woman to be offended. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if England was filled with intriguing, ill-mannered, blunt people whose eccentricities were either encouraged or overlooked because of their titles and excessive wealth.

  “How sad,” said Lady Kirby. “Does it bother you—or hurt?”

  Victoria’s lips trembled with laughter. “Only when I look in the mirror, ma’am,” she replied.

  Dissatisfied, Lady Kirby swung away and confronted Jason, who had arisen and was standing at the fireplace, his elbow propped on the mantel. “So, Wakefield,” she said, “from the looks of things here, the announcement in the paper would seem to be correct. I’ll tell you the truth—I never believed it. Well, was it?”

  Jason lifted his brows. “Was it what?”

  Charles’s voice boomed out, drowning Lady Kirby’s words. “Northrup, bring the ladies some refreshment!” Everyone sat down, Miss Kirby taking the chair beside Jason, while Charles swiftly embarked on an animated discussion of the weather. Lady Kirby listened impatiently until Charles ran out of monologue; then she turned abruptly to Jason and said pointedly, “Wakefield, is your engagement on or off?”

  Jason raised his glass to his lips, his eyes cold. “Off.”

  Victoria saw the varying reactions to that one word on the faces around her. Lady Kirby looked satisfied, her daughter looked delighted, Charles looked miserable, and Jason’s face was inscrutable. Victoria’s sympathetic heart instantly went out to him. No wonder Jason seemed so grim and callous—the woman he loved must have broken their engagement. It struck her as odd, however, when the Kirby ladies turned to her as if they expected her to say something.

  Victoria smiled blankly, and Lady Kirby took up the conversational gauntlet. “Well, Charles, in that case, I gather you mean to bring out poor Miss Seaton during the season?”

  “I intend to see that Countess Langston takes her rightful place in society,” he corrected coolly.

  “Countess Langst—” Lady Kirby gasped.

  Charles inclined his head. “Victoria is Katherine Langston’s oldest child. Unless I mistake the rules of succession, she is now heir to her mother’s Scottish title.”

  “Even so,” Lady Kirby said stiffly, “you’ll not have an easy time making a suitable match for her.” She turned to Victoria, oozing feigned sympathy. “Your mama created quite a scandalbroth when she ran off with that Irish laborer.”

  Indignation on her mother’s behalf shot white-hot sparks through Victoria’s entire body. “My mother married an Irish physician,” she corrected.

  “Without her grandmother’s permission,” Lady Kirby countered. “Gently bred girls do not marry against their families’ wishes in this country.” The obvious implication that Katherine was not gently bred made Victoria so angry she dug her fingernails into her palms.

  “Oh, well, society eventually forgets these things,” Lady Kirby continued generously. “In the meantime, you will have much to learn before you can be presented. You will have to learn the proper forms of address for each peer, his wife and children, and of course there’s the etiquette involved in paying calls and the more complicated problems of learning seating arrangements. That alone takes months to master—whom you may seat next to whom at table, I mean. Colonials are ignorant of such things, but we English place the greatest importance on these matters of propriety.”

  “Perhaps that explains why we always defeat you in war,” Victoria suggested sweetly, goaded into defending her family and her country.

  Lady Kirby’s eyes narrowed. “I meant no offense. However, you shall have to curb your tongue if you hope to make a suitable match as well as live down your mother’s reputation.”

  Victoria stood up and said with quiet dignity, “I will find it very hard to live up to my mother’s reputation. My mother was the gentlest, kindest woman who ever lived. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

  Victoria shut the door behind her and went down the hall to the library, a gigantic room with Persian carpets scattered across the polished wood floors and bookshelves lining the long walls. Too angry and upset to actually sit down at one of the desks and write a letter to Dorothy or Andrew, she wandered over to the shelves of books, looking for something to soothe her spirits. Bypassing the tomes on history, mythology, and commerce, she came to a poetry section. Her gaze wandered distractedly over the authors, some of whom she had already read—Milton, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Without any real interest in reading, she haphazardly chose a slender volume simply because it was protruding several inches beyond the others on the shelf and carried it over to the nearest grouping of comfortable chairs.

  She turned up the oil lamp on the table and settled down in the chair, forcing herself to open the book. A sheet of pink, perfumed notepaper slid out and drifted to the floor. Victoria automatically picked it up and started to put it back, but the first words of the torrid little note, which was written in French, leapt out at her:

  Darling Jason,

  I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me. . . .

  Victoria told herself that reading another person’s letter was ill-bred, unforgivable, and completely beneath her dignity, but the idea of a woman waiting impatiently for Jason Fielding to come to her was so incredible that Victoria couldn’t bridle her amazed curiosity. For her part, she would be more inclined to wait impatiently for him to go away! She was so engrossed in her discovery that she didn’t hear Jason and Miss Kirby coming down the hall as she continued to read:

  I am sending you these lovely poems in the hope you will read them and think of me, of the tender nights we have shared in each other’s arms. . . .

  “Victoria!” Jason called irritably.

  Victoria leapt to her feet in guilty nervousness, dropped the book of poetry, snatched it up, and sat back down. Trying to look absorbed in her reading, she opened the book and stared blindly at it, completely unaware that it was upside down.

  “Why didn’t you answer me?” Jason demanded a
s he strolled into the library with the lovely Miss Kirby clinging to his arm. “Johanna wanted to tell you good-bye and to offer her suggestions if you need to buy anything in the village.”.

  After Lady Kirby’s unprovoked attack, Victoria couldn’t help wondering if Miss Kirby was now implying that Victoria couldn’t be trusted to choose her own purchases. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you call,” she said, trying to compose her features so she’d look neither angry nor guilty. “As you can see, I’ve been reading, and I was quite engrossed.” She closed the book and laid it on the table, then forced herself to gaze calmly at the pair. The look of revolted disgust on Jason’s face made her step back in alarm. “Is—is something wrong?” she asked, fearfully certain that he somehow remembered that the note was in the book and suspected her of reading it.

  “Yes,” he snapped, and turned to Miss Kirby, who was staring at Victoria with an expression similar to his. “Johanna, can you recommend a tutor from the village who can teach her to read?”

  “Teach me to read?” Victoria gasped, flinching from the scornful pity on the brunette’s beautiful face. “Don’t be silly, I don’t need a tutor—I know perfectly well how to read.”

  Ignoring her, Jason looked at Miss Kirby. “Can you name a tutor who would come here and teach her?”

  “Yes, I believe so, my lord. Mr. Watkins, the vicar, might do it.”

  With the long-suffering look of one who has already been forced to tolerate too many insults and will not endure yet another one, Victoria said very firmly, “Oh, really, this is absurd. I do not need a tutor. I know how to read.”

  Jason’s manner turned to ice. “Don’t lie to me ever again,” he warned. “I despise liars—particularly lying women. You can’t read a word and you damned well know it!”

  “I do not believe this!” Victoria said, oblivious to Miss Kirby’s horrified gasp. “I can read, I tell you!”

  Pushed past endurance by what he perceived as her flagrant attempt to deceive him, Jason took three long strides to the table, grabbed the book, and thrust it into her hands. “Then read it!”

  Angry and humiliated at being treated this way, particularly in front of Miss Kirby, who was making no attempt to hide her enjoyment of Victoria’s plight, Victoria snatched open the cover of the little book and saw the perfumed note.

  “Go ahead,” he mocked. “Let’s hear you read.”

  Deliberating, Victoria slanted a speculative, sideways glance at him. “Are you absolutely certain you want me to read this aloud?”

  “Aloud,” Jason said curtly.

  “In front of Miss Kirby?” she questioned innocently.

  “Either read it or admit you can’t,” he snapped.

  “Very well,” Victoria said. Swallowing the laughter bubbling in her throat, she read dramatically: “Darling Jason, I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me. I am sending you these lovely poems in the hope you will read them and think of me, of the tender nights we have shared in each other’s ar—”

  Jason jerked the book out of her hands. Raising her eyebrows, Victoria looked him right in the eye and blandly reminded him, “That note was written in French—I translated it as I read.”

  She turned to Miss Kirby and said brightly, “There was more, of course. But I don’t think this is the sort of reading material one ought to leave lying around when there are gently bred young ladies about. Do you?” Before either of them could reply, Victoria turned and walked out of the room, her head high.

  Lady Kirby was waiting in the hall, ready to leave. Victoria bid both women a cool good-bye, then started up the stairs, hoping to escape Jason’s inevitable wrath, which she was certain he intended to unleash upon her the moment the ladies left. However, Lady Kirby’s parting remark caused an explosion in Victoria’s mind that obliterated everything else. “Don’t feel badly about Lord Fielding’s defection, my dear,” she called as Northrup helped them into their cloaks. “Few people actually believed the betrothal announcement in the paper. Everyone was certain that once you had actually arrived here, he’d find some way to cry off. The rogue has made it plain to everyone that he won’t marry anyone—”

  Charles pushed her out the door under the guise of escorting her to her carriage, and Victoria halted and swung around on the stairway. Like a beautiful, outraged goddess she stood trembling with wrath, staring down at Jason. “Am I to understand,” she enunciated furiously, “that the engagement you said was ‘off’ was our engagement?”

  Jason’s only answer was a tightening of his jaw, but his silence was a tacit admission, and she glared at him with blue sparks shooting from her eyes, heedless of the servants who were staring at her in paralyzed horror. “How dare you!” she hissed. “How dare you let anyone think I would consider marrying you. I wouldn’t marry you if you were—”

  “I don’t recall asking you to marry me,” Jason interrupted sarcastically. “However, it’s reassuring to know that if I ever took leave of my senses and did ask you, you’d have the consideration to turn me down.”

  Perilously close to tears because she was losing her composure but could not shake his, Victoria passed a look of scathing scorn over him. “You are a cold, callous, arrogant, unfeeling monster, without respect or feeling for anyone—even the dead! No woman in her right mind would want you! You’re a—” Her voice broke and she turned and ran up the stairs.

  Jason watched her from the foyer, where two footmen and the butler stood riveted to the floor, waiting in frozen dread for the moment when the master would unleash his fury on this chit of a girl who had just done the unforgivable. After a long moment, Jason shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked round at the stricken butler and lifted his brows. “I believe I have just received what is commonly called ‘a crushing setdown,’ Northrup.”

  Northrup swallowed audibly but said nothing until Jason had strolled up the stairs; then he rounded on the footmen. “Attend to your duties, and see that you don’t gossip about this with anyone.” He strode away.

  O’Malley gaped at the other footman. “She fixed me a poultice and it cured me sore tooth,” he breathed in awe. “Mayhap she fixed his lordship something to cure his temper, while she was at it.” Without waiting for a reply he headed straight to the kitchen to inform Mrs. Craddock and the kitchen staff of the amazing incident he had just witnessed. With Monsieur André gone—thanks to the young lady from America—the kitchen had become a pleasant place to pass an occasional moment when Northrup’s eagle eye was focused on someone else.

  Within an hour the well-trained, perfectly regimented household staff had all paused just long enough to listen in disbelief to the tale of the drama that had occurred on the staircase. Within another half hour, the story of his lordship’s unprecedented lapse from icy dignity to warm humanity in the face of extreme provocation had spread from the house to the stables and the gamekeepers’ cottages.

  Upstairs, Victoria’s hands shook with pent-up anguish as she pulled the pins from her hair and stripped off the peach gown. Still fighting her tears, she hung it in the wardrobe, pulled on a nightdress, and climbed into bed. Homesickness washed over her in drowning waves. She wanted to leave here, to put an ocean between herself and people like Jason Fielding and Lady Kirby. Her mother had probably left England for the same reason. Her mother . . . Her beautiful, gentle mother, she thought on a choked sob. Lady Kirby wasn’t fit to touch the hem of Katherine Seaton’s skirts!

  Memories of her former happy life crowded in around Victoria until the bedroom at Wakefield was filled with them. She remembered the day she had picked a bouquet of wild flowers for her mother and soiled her dress in the process. “Look, Mama, aren’t they the prettiest things you’ve ever seen?” she had said. “I picked them for you—but I soiled my dress.”

  “They’re very pretty,” her mother had agreed, hugging her and ignoring the soiled dress. “But you are the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She remembered when she was seven years old and
sick from a fever that had brought her near death. Night after night, her mother had sat at her bedside, sponging her face and arms while Victoria drifted between wakefulness and delirium. On the fifth night, she had awakened in her mother’s arms, her own face wet from the tears running down her mother’s cheeks. Katherine was rocking her back and forth, weeping and whispering the same disjointed plea again and again: “Please don’t let my little girl die. She’s so little and she’s afraid of the dark. Please, God . . .”

  In the plush, silken cocoon of her bed at Wakefield, Victoria turned her face into the pillow, her body shaking with wrenching sobs. “Oh, Mama,” she wept brokenly. “Oh, Mama, I miss you so. . . .”

  Jason paused outside her bedroom and raised his hand to knock, then checked himself at the sound of her harsh weeping, his forehead furrowed into a frown. She would probably feel better if she cried everything out of her system, he thought. On the other hand, if she continued crying like that, she would surely make herself ill. After a few seconds’ uncertainty he went to his own room, poured some brandy into a glass and returned to hers.

  He knocked—as she had arrogantly instructed him to do earlier—but when she didn’t answer, he opened the door and went inside. He stood at her bedside, watching her shoulders shake with the spasms of wrenching grief that tore from her. He had seen women cry before, but their tears were always dainty and deliberate, intended to bend a man’s will. Victoria had stood on that stairway hurtling verbal spears at him like an enraged warrior, then had retreated to her own room to weep in pathetic secret.

  Jason put his hand on her shoulder. “Victoria—”

  Victoria rolled over onto her back and jerked up onto her elbows, her eyes the deep blue of wet velvet, her thick sooty lashes sparkling with tears. “Get out of here!” she demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Get out this very minute, before someone sees you!”