Tonight, she entertained once again, and I was asked to play the piano for her friends. I played, but while I did, I sang the song you and I wrote when we were children—we called it “Sisters Forever,” remember? I could tell from the blank expression on Grandmama’s face that she was most annoyed with me. When her friends left, she informed me that she had decided to send me to Devonshire for an entire week.
If I provoke her again, I’ve a notion she’ll send me off to Brussels or somewhere for an entire month. Still, I shall persevere. Enough about that for now.
How shocked you must have been to learn that your engagement to Lord Fielding had been announced. How upset Andrew would be if he but knew it. However, since all that is settled now and nothing is to come of it, you must enjoy your new gowns and not feel badly that you haven’t been able to observe a proper period of mourning for Mama and Papa. I wear black gloves, which Grandmama says is the proper way of mourning in England, although there are some who dress in black for six months and then in gray for the next six months.
Grandmama does not believe in flouting propriety, and even if she accepted my assurances that you are already betrothed to Andrew, which you are, I would not be able to make my come-out until next spring. She says a full year must pass after a close family member dies before one is permitted to attend anything except quiet, informal affairs. I do not mind in the least, because the prospect of balls and all that goes with them seems very frightening. You must write and tell me if it is quite as bad as it seems.
Grandmama will be going to London from time to time to attend the theater, which she likes very well, and she promised I may accompany her now and then. I will send word to you as soon as I know when that will be, and we will contrive a way to meet.
I must go now, for Grandmama has hired a tutor to teach me how to go on in society when I do make my come-out. There is so much to learn that it makes my head spin. . . .
Victoria put the letter in a drawer, glanced at the clock on the mantel and sighed. She knew very well what Dorothy meant by her last paragraph, because Miss Flossie Wilson had been drilling rules of comportment and propriety into her own head for nearly two weeks, and it was time now for another lesson.
“There you are,” Miss Flossie beamed as Victoria entered the salon. “Today, I think we ought to go over the correct forms of address as they apply to members of the peerage. We can’t risk your making a mistake at your ball tomorrow night.”
Suppressing the wild urge to snatch up her skirts and flee from the house, Victoria sat down near Charles, across from Miss Flossie. For nearly two weeks, Miss Flossie had dragged her from dressmaker to milliner to mantua-maker in between seemingly interminable lessons on comportment, dancing, and French. During these lessons, Miss Flossie listened to Victoria’s diction, observed her every mannerism, and questioned her on her accomplishments and interests, all the while nodding her curly head and fluttering her fingers in a manner that reminded Victoria of a fidgety little bird.
“Now, then,” Miss Flossie chirped. “I shall begin with dukes. As I told you yesterday, a duke is the highest nonroyal title in the British peerage. Dukes are technically ‘princes,’ but although it may seem to you that a prince is higher in rank, you must remember that royal sons are born princes, but are raised to the rank of duke. Our dear Charles,” she finished triumphantly and unnecessarily, “is a duke!”
“Yes,” Victoria agreed, returning Uncle Charles’s sympathetic smile.
“After a duke comes a marquess. A marquess is the heir to a dukedom. And that is why our dear Jason is called a marquess! Then comes an earl, a viscount, and lastly a baron. Shall I write all this down for you, dear?”
“No,” Victoria assured her hastily. “I have it in my mind.”
“You are such a clever child,” Miss Flossie said approvingly. “Now, then, on to forms of address. When you speak to a duke, you must call him ‘your grace’; never," she warned in dire tones, “address a duke as ‘my lord.’ A duchess is also addressed as ‘your grace.’ However, you may call all the other peers ‘my lord’ and their wives ‘my lady,’ which is the proper form of address for them. When you are a duchess, you will be addressed as ‘your grace,’ ” she finished triumphantly. “Isn’t that exciting.”
“Yes,” Victoria mumbled uncomfortably. Uncle Charles had explained to her why it was necessary for society to think her betrothal to Jason was real and, since Flossie Wilson was such a chatterbox, he had decided that Flossie must believe as everyone else did.
“I have obtained permission from the patronesses of Almack’s for you to dance the waltz at your come out, my dear. But enough on that subject. Now, shall we look over a section of Debrett’s Peerage?” But Victoria was spared that agony by Northrup, who stepped into the salon, cleared his throat, and announced the arrival of Countess Collingwood.
“Show her in, Northrup,” Uncle Charles said jovially.
Caroline Collingwood walked into the salon, noted the open etiquette books and the volume of Debrett’s Peerage, and cast a conspiratorial smile at Victoria. “I was hoping you might accompany me for a drive in the park,” she told Victoria.
“I’d love it above everything!” Victoria exclaimed. “Would you mind terribly, Miss Flossie? Uncle Charles?” Both gave their permission and Victoria rushed upstairs to tidy her hair and fetch her bonnet.
Waiting for her, Caroline turned politely to the two older occupants of the salon. “I imagine you must be very eager for tomorrow night.”
“Oh, yes, very,” Miss Flossie averred, nodding her blond curls energetically. “Victoria is a delightful young lady, which I don’t have to tell you, who are already acquainted with her. Such charming manners she has, so easy and conversable. And what eyes! Such a lovely figure, too. I have every confidence she’ll be a great success. I can’t help wishing she was blond, however.” Miss Flossie sighed and bobbed her head dejectedly, oblivious to Lady Collingwood’s mahogany tresses. “Blond is all the rage, you know.” Her birdlike gaze darted to Charles. “Do you recall Lord Hornby as a youth? I used to think he was the handsomest man alive. He had red hair and such nice address. His brother was so very short . . .” And so she continued, leaping from topic to topic as though from branch to branch.
* * *
Victoria looked around at the park and leaned back in the open carriage, closing her eyes in sheer bliss. “How peaceful it is here,” she said to Caroline, “and how kind you’ve been to come to my rescue so many afternoons with these drives in the park.”
“What were you studying when I arrived?”
“The correct forms of address for members of the peerage and their wives.”
“And have you mastered it?” Caroline asked.
“Absolutely,” Victoria said, suppressing a tired, irreverent giggle. “All I have to do is call the men ‘my lord,’ as if they are God, and their wives ‘my lady,’ as if I am their maid.”
Caroline’s laughter brought an answering chuckle from Victoria. “The thing I find hardest is French,” she admitted. “My mother taught Dorothy and me to read it, and I do that well enough, but I cannot call the right words to mind when I try to speak it.”
Caroline, who spoke fluent French, tried to help. “Sometimes it is best to learn a language in useful phrases, rather than single words; then you needn’t think how to put them together, and the rest can come later. For example, how would you ask me for writing materials in French?”
“Mon pot d’encre veut vous emprunter votre stylo?” Victoria ventured.
Caroline’s lips trembled with mirth. “You have just said, ‘My inkpot wishes to borrow your pen.’ ”
“At least I was close,” Victoria said, and they both burst into gales of mirth.
The occupants of the other carriages in the park turned at the musical sound of their gaiety and it was again noted that the dashing Countess Collingwood was showing particular partiality for Lady Victoria Seaton—a fact that had already added considerably to Victoria’s
growing prestige amongst the ton who had yet to meet her.
Victoria reached over to Wolf, who regularly accompanied them on their outings, and stroked his head. “Amazing, is it not, that I learned mathematics and chemistry from my father easily enough, but French defies me? Perhaps I can’t grasp it because learning it seems so pointless.”
“Why is it pointless?”
“Because Andrew will arrive soon and take me home.”
“I shall miss you,” Caroline said wistfully. “Most friendships take years before they feel as comfortable and easy as ours is now. When, exactly, do you think your Andrew is likely to arrive?”
“I wrote him within a week of my parents’ death,” Victoria replied, absently tucking a strand of hair into place beneath the pleated brim of her lemon yellow bonnet. “The letter would take about six weeks to reach him, and it would take him six weeks to come home. It will take him another four to six weeks to sail from America back here. That totals somewhere between sixteen and eighteen weeks. Tomorrow will be exactly eighteen weeks since I wrote him.”
“You’re assuming that he received that first letter in Switzerland, but mail to Europe is not always reliable. Besides, suppose he had already left for France, where you said he was going next?”
“I gave Mrs. Bainbridge—Andrew’s mother—a second letter to mail to France, just in case that happened.” Victoria sighed. “If I had known when I wrote to him then that I was going to be in England now, he could have stayed here in Europe, which would have been much more convenient. Unfortunately, I didn’t know it, so all I told him in the first letters was that my parents had died in an accident. I’m certain he started for America as soon as he discovered that.”
“Then why didn’t he arrive in America before you left for England?”
“There probably wasn’t quite enough time. I would guess he arrived within a week or two of my departure.”
Caroline slanted Victoria a thoughtful, hesitant look. “Victoria, have you told the Duke of Atherton you are certain Andrew is coming for you?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t believe me. And because he doesn’t, he’s determined I must have this season.”
“But doesn’t it seem odd that he wants you and Lord Fielding to pretend to be betrothed? I don’t mean to pry,” Caroline apologized quickly. “If you’d rather not discuss this with me, I’ll understand.”
Victoria shook her head emphatically. “I’ve been longing to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to take advantage of our friendship by unburdening myself to you.”
“I’ve unburdened myself to you,” Caroline said simply. “And that is what friends are for—to talk things out. You can’t imagine how wonderful and how unusual I find it to have a friend in the ton who I know will not breathe a word I say to anyone else.”
Victoria smiled. “In that case . . . Uncle Charles says the reason he wants everyone to believe I’m betrothed is because it will make it possible for me to remain free of other ‘entanglements’ and ‘complications.’ As an engaged woman, he says, I’ll be able to enjoy all the excitement of my come-out without feeling the slightest pressure from suitors, or from society, to make an eligible match.”
“In a way, he is right,” Caroline remarked, her expression faintly puzzled, “but he is going to a deal of trouble just to keep the gentlemen from pressing offers on you.”
Victoria stared thoughtfully at the neat beds of daffodils blooming beside the path. “I know that, and I’ve wondered about it. Uncle Charles is fond of me, and I sometimes have the feeling he still harbors the hope Lord Fielding and I might eventually wed if Andrew doesn’t come for me.”
Concern clouded Caroline’s gray eyes. “Do you think there’s such a chance?”
“None at all,” Victoria said with smiling earnest.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Caroline sat back against the squabs. “Good. I should worry about you if you married Lord Fielding.”
“Why?” Victoria asked, her curiosity thoroughly aroused.
“I wish I hadn’t said that,” Caroline murmured miserably, “but since I have, I suppose I ought to tell you. If your Andrew doesn’t come for you, you ought to know what sort of man Lord Fielding really is. There are drawing rooms where he is admitted but not really welcome. . . .”
“Whyever not?”
“For one thing, there was some sort of scandal four years ago. I don’t know the details because I was too young at the time to be privy to any really scandalous gossip. Last week, I asked my husband to tell me, but he is a friend of Lord Fielding’s and he won’t talk about it. He says it was all trumped-up nonsense circulated by a spiteful woman, and he forbade me to ask anyone else because he said it would stir up the old gossip again.”
“Miss Flossie says the ton is always on fire with some sort of gossip and that most of it is flummery,” Victoria commented. “Whatever it was, I’m certain to hear all about it in the next few weeks.”
“You won’t,” Caroline predicted emphatically. “In the first place, you are a young, unmarried female, so no one will tell you anything even slightly scandalous for fear of offending your sensibilities or sending you into a swoon. Secondly, people gossip about others, but they rarely tell their tales to the people involved. It is the nature of gossip to be carried on behind the backs of those most intimately concerned in the story.”
“Where it does the most damage and provides the most titillation,” Victoria agreed. “Gossip was not unknown in Portage, New York, you know, and it was mostly flummery there, too.”
“Perhaps, but there’s more I wish to warn you about,” Caroline continued, looking guilty but determined to protect her friend. “Because of his rank and his fortune, Lord Fielding is still considered a splendid catch, and there are a great many ladies who also find him extremely handsome. For those three reasons, they’ve hung out for him. However, he hasn’t been at all nice in his treatment of them. In fact, there’ve been times he’s been positively rude! Victoria,” she concluded in a tone of the direst condemnation, “Lord Fielding is not a gentleman.”
She waited for some reaction from her friend, but when Victoria merely looked at her as if that defect in Lord Fielding’s character was no more significant than a wrinkled neckcloth, Caroline sighed and plunged ahead. “The men are nearly as afraid of him as many of the ladies are, not only because he’s so very cold and aloof, but because there’ve been rumors about his duels in India. They say he’s fought dozens of them and killed his opponents in cold blood, without a flicker of emotion or regret—they say he’ll challenge a man to a duel for the most minor offense—”
“I don’t believe that,” Victoria put in with unconscious loyalty to Jason.
“You may not, but others do, and people are afraid of him.”
“Do they ostracize him, then?”
“Just the opposite,” Caroline said. “They positively pander to him. No one would dare give him the cut direct.”
Victoria looked at her incredulously. “Surely everyone who knows him isn’t afraid of him?”
“Almost everyone. Robert genuinely likes him and he laughs when I say there is something sinister about Lord Fielding. However, I once heard Robert’s mother tell a group of her friends that Lord Fielding is wicked, that he uses women and then discards them.”
“He can’t be as bad as all that. You said yourself he is considered a splendid catch—”
“Actually, he’s rated the best catch in England.”
“There, you see! If people thought he was as terrible as you think they do, no young lady, nor her mama, would ever seek marriage to him.”
Caroline snorted indelicately. “For a dukedom and a magnificent fortune, there are those who would marry Bluebeard!”
When Victoria merely chuckled, Caroline’s face clouded with confusion. “Victoria, doesn’t he seem strange and frightening to you?”
Victoria carefully considered the answer to that as the driver turned their carriage back toward Jason’s townhouse. She
remembered the biting lash of Jason’s tongue when she first arrived at Wakefield and his awesome anger when he caught her swimming in the creek. She also remembered the way he had smoothly outcheated her at cards, consoled her the night she cried, and laughed at her attempt to milk the cow. She also remembered the way he had held her close against his body and kissed her with fierce, demanding tenderness, but she immediately cast that recollection out of her mind.
“Lord Fielding’s temper is quick,” she began slowly, “but I have noticed that he is soon over his anger and willing to let bygones be bygones. I am much like him in that respect, although I don’t become angry as easily as he does. And he didn’t challenge me to a duel when I threatened to shoot him,” she added humorously, “so I cannot believe he is so very eager to shoot people. If you asked me to describe him,” Victoria concluded, “I would probably say that he is an exceedingly generous man who might even be gentle underneath his—”
“You’re joking!”
Victoria shook her head, trying to explain. "I see him differently than you do. I try to see people as my father taught me I should.”
“Did he teach you to be blind to their faults?” Caroline asked desperately.
“Not at all. But he was a physician who taught me to look for causes of things, not merely symptoms. Because of that, whenever someone behaves oddly, I start wondering why they are doing so, and there is always a reason. For example, have you ever noticed that when people don’t feel well, they are frequently ill-tempered?”
Caroline nodded instantly. “My brothers were cross as crabs if they felt even slightly unwell.”
“That’s what I mean: your brothers aren’t mean people, but when they don’t feel well, they become bad-tempered.”
“Do you think, then, that Lord Fielding is ill?”
“I don’t think he’s very happy, which is the same thing as not feeling well. Regardless of that, my father also taught me to place more importance on the things a person does than on what he says. If you view Lord Fielding in that way, he has been very kind to me. He’s given me a home and more beautiful clothes than I could use in a lifetime, and he’s even let me bring Wolf into the house.”