The reason for his smile became obvious as soon as their coach neared the great house. She had told Jason that she had always planned to be married in a little village with all the villagers there to help celebrate the occasion, and in a strangely quixotic gesture, the enigmatic man she had just married was trying to fulfill at least part of her dream. He had transformed the lawns of Wakefield into a fairy-tale bower of flowers. Enormous canopies of white orchids, lilies, and roses stretched above huge tables laden with silver plate, china, and food. The pavilion at the far end of the lawns was covered in flowers and strung with gaily colored lamps. Torches burned brightly everywhere she looked, driving off the encroaching dusk and adding a festive, mysterious glow to the scene.
Instead of being annoyed at leaving most of the wedding guests in London, Jason had obviously spent a fortune turning the estate into a haven of whimsical beauty for her, and then he had invited all the village to come and celebrate their marriage. Even nature had collaborated with Jason’s scheme, for the clouds began to vanish, driven away by the setting sun, which decorated the sky in splashes of vivid pink and purple.
The coach came to a stop in front of the house, and Victoria looked around at this evidence of Jason’s thoughtfulness—a thoughtfulness that was in direct opposition to his normal facade of callous indifference. She glanced at him, seeing the little smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes despite his best efforts to hide it, and she laid her hand softly on his arm. “Jason,” she whispered, her voice shaky with emotion. “I—I thank you.” Recalling his admonition to thank him with a kiss, she laid her hand against his hard chest and kissed him, with shy tenderness pouring through her veins.
A man’s laughing Irish voice jerked Victoria back to reality. “Jason, my boy, are you going to get out of that coach and introduce me to your bride, or must I introduce myself?”
Jason swung around and a look of surprised pleasure broke across his tanned features as he bounded down from the coach. He reached out to shake the brawny Irishman’s hand, but the man enfolded him in a great bear hug. “So,” the stranger said finally, grasping Jason’s shoulders and beaming at him with unhidden affection, “you’ve finally gotten yourself a wife to warm up this big, cold palace of yours. At least you could’ve waited until my ship put into port, so I could’ve attended the wedding,” he teased.
“I didn’t expect to see you until next month,” Jason said. “When did you get back?”
“I stayed to see the cargo unloaded, then I came home today. I rode over here an hour ago, but instead of finding you hard at work, I learned you were busy getting yourself married. Well, are you going to introduce me to your wife?” he demanded good-naturedly.
Jason turned to help Victoria down and then he introduced the seaman to her as Captain Michael Farrell. Captain Farrell was about fifty, Victoria guessed, with thick auburn hair and the merriest hazel eyes she had ever seen. His face was tanned and weathered, with tiny lines feathering out from the corners of his eyes, attesting to a life spent on the deck of a ship. Victoria liked him on sight, but hearing herself referred to for the first time as Jason’s wife shook her composure so badly that she greeted Mike Farrell with the reserved formality she had been required to maintain since coming to England.
When she did so, Captain Farrell’s expression altered. The warm approval vanished from his eyes, and his manner far surpassed hers in rigidity. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Fielding,” he intoned with a brief, cool bow. “You’ll pardon my lack of proper attire. I had no idea when I came here that a party was soon to commence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been at sea for six months and I’m eager for my own hearth.”
“Oh, but you can’t leave!” Victoria said, reacting with the unaffected warmth that was far more natural to her than regal formality. She could see that Captain Farrell was an especially good friend of Jason’s, and she wanted desperately to make him feel welcome. “My husband and I are overdressed for this time of day,” she teased. “Besides, when I was at sea for only six weeks, I positively longed to dine on a table that didn’t tilt and sway, and I’m certain our tables will stay just where they are.”
Captain Farrell scrutinized her as if uncertain what to make of her. “I gather you did not enjoy your voyage, Lady Fielding?” he asked noncommittally.
Victoria shook her head, her smile infectious. “Not as much as I enjoyed breaking my arm or having measles—at least then I didn’t retch, which I did for an entire week at sea. I am not a good sailor, I fear, for when a storm blew up before I’d recovered from mal de mer, I was shamefully afraid.”
“Good Lord!” Captain Farrell said, his smile regaining some of its original warmth. “Don’t call yourself a coward on that account. Seasoned seamen have been afraid of dying during an Atlantic storm.”
“But I,” Victoria contradicted, laughing, “was afraid I was not going to die.”
Mike Farrell threw back his head and laughed; then he grasped both Victoria’s hands in his huge, calloused paws and grinned at her. “I’ll be delighted to stay and join you and Jason. Forgive me for being so . . . er . . . hesitant before.”
Victoria nodded happily. Then she helped herself to a glass of wine from the tray being passed by a footman and went off to visit the two farmers who had brought her to Wakefield the day of her arrival.
When she was gone, Mike Farrell turned to Jason and said quietly, “When I saw her kissing you in the coach, I liked the look of her right off, Jason. But when she greeted me in that prim, proper way—with that blank look in her eyes as if she weren’t really seeing me—I feared for a moment you’d married another haughty bitch like Melissa.”
Jason watched Victoria putting the awkward farmers at ease. “She’s anything but haughty. Her dog is part wolf and she’s part fish. My servants dote on her, Charles adores her, and every stupid fop in London fancies himself in love with her.”
“Including you?” Mike Farrell said pointedly.
Jason watched Victoria finish her wine and reach for another glass. The only way she could make herself marry him this morning was by pretending he was Andrew, and, even so, she’d damned near left him standing at the altar in front of 800 people. Since he had never seen her drink more than a sip of wine before, and she was already on her second glass, Jason assumed she was now trying to dull her revulsion at having to couple with him tonight.
“You don’t quite look like the happiest of bridegrooms,” Mike Farrell said, observing Jason’s dark frown.
“I’ve never been happier,” Jason replied bitterly, and went to greet guests whose names he didn’t know so that he could introduce them to the woman he was beginning to regret having married. He performed the function of host and acted the part of bridegroom with an outward appearance of smiling cordiality, all the while remembering that Victoria had nearly fled from him in the church. The memory was searingly painful and belittling, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind.
Stars were twinkling in the sky as Jason stood on the sidelines, watching her dance with the local squire and Mike Farrell and then several of the villagers. She was deliberately avoiding him, he knew, and on those rare occasions when their eyes met, Victoria quickly looked away.
She had long since removed her veil and asked the orchestra to play more lively tunes, then charmed the villagers by asking them to teach her the local dances. By the time the moon was riding high in the sky, everyone was dancing and clapping and thoroughly enjoying themselves, including Victoria, who had now finished five glasses of wine. Evidently she was trying to drink herself into a stupor, Jason thought sarcastically, noting the flush on her cheeks. Disgust knotted his stomach as he thought of his hopes for tonight, for their future. Like a fool, he had believed happiness was finally within his grasp.
Lounging against a tree, he watched her, wondering why women were so attracted to him until he married them, and then they loathed him. He had done it again, he thought furiously. He had made the same idiotic mistake twice—he had mar
ried a woman who agreed to have him because she wanted something/ram him, not because she wanted him.
Melissa had wanted every man she saw, except him. Victoria wanted only Andrew—good, gentle, kind, spineless Andrew.
The only difference between Melissa and Victoria was that Victoria was a much better actress, Jason decided. He had known Melissa was a selfish, calculating bitch from the start, but he had thought Victoria was closer to an angel . . . a fallen angel, of course—thanks to Andrew—but he hadn’t held that against her. Now he did. He despised her for having given herself freely to Andrew, yet wanting to avoid giving herself to her husband, which was exactly what she was trying to do by consuming enough wine to render her insensible. He hated the way she had trembled in his arms and avoided his gaze when he danced with her a few minutes ago, and then she had shuddered when he suggested it was time to go inside.
Dispassionately, Jason wondered why he could make his mistresses cry out in ecstasy, but the women he married wanted nothing to do with him the moment the vows were said. He wondered why making money came so easily to him, but happiness always eluded him. The vicious old bitch who had raised him had evidently been right—he was the spawn of the devil, undeserving of life, let alone happiness.
The only three women who had ever been part of his life—Victoria, Melissa, and his foster mother—had all seen something in him that made him loathsome and ugly in their sight, although both his wives had hidden their revulsion until after the wedding, when his wealth was finally theirs.
With implacable resolve, Jason approached Victoria and touched her arm. She jumped and pulled away as if his touch burned her. “It’s late and it’s time to go in,” he said.
Even in the moonlight her face turned noticeably pale and a trapped, haunted look widened her eyes. “B-but it’s not really late—”
“It’s late enough to go to bed, Victoria,” he told her bluntly.
“But I’m not the least bit sleepy!”
“Good,” Jason said with deliberate crudity. He knew she understood because her whole body began to tremble. “We made a bargain,” he said harshly, “and I expect you to keep your part of it, no matter how distasteful you find the prospect of going to bed with me.”
His icy, authoritative voice chilled her to the bone. Nodding, Victoria walked stiffly into the house and up to her new rooms, which adjoined Jason’s.
Sensing her withdrawn mood, Ruth silently helped Victoria remove her wedding gown and put on the cream satin and lace negligee Madame Dumosse had created especially for use on her wedding night.
Bile rose in Victoria’s throat and terror clutched at her insides when Ruth went over to turn the bed down. The wine she had drunk, hoping to quiet her fears, was now making her dizzy and sick. Instead of calming her as it had earlier, it was making her feel violently ill and horribly unable to control her emotions. She wished devoutly she hadn’t touched it. The only other time she’d had more than a sip of the stuff was after her parents’ funeral, when Dr. Morrison insisted she have two glasses. It had made her retch that time, and he had told her she might be one of those people whose systems couldn’t tolerate it.
With Miss Flossie’s lurid description screaming through her mind, Victoria walked toward the bed. Soon her blood would be spilled on these sheets, she thought wildly. How much blood? How much pain? She broke out in a cold sweat, and dizziness swept over her as Ruth plumped up the pillows. Like a puppet she climbed in, trying to control her quaking panic and rising nausea. She mustn’t scream or show her revulsion, Miss Flossie had told her, but when Jason pulled the connecting door open and strode into the room wearing a maroon brocade dressing robe that showed much of his bare chest and legs, Victoria couldn’t stifle her gasp of fear. “Jason!” she burst out, pressing back into the pillows.
“Who were you expecting—Andrew?” he asked conversationally. His hands went to the satin belt that held the sides of his dressing robe together, and Victoria’s fear escalated to panic. “D-don’t do that,” she pleaded wildly, unable to speak or think coherently. “A gentleman surely doesn’t disrobe in front of a lady, even if they are m-married.”
“I think we’ve had this conversation before, but in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you again that I’m no gentleman.” His hands pulled at the ends of the satin belt. “However, if the sight of my ungentlemanly body offends your sensibilities, you can solve that problem by closing your eyes. The only other solution is for me to get into bed and then remove my robe, and that option offends my sensibilities.” He opened the robe, shrugging out of it and Victoria’s eyes widened in mute terror on his huge, muscular body.
Whatever tiny, secret hope Jason had harbored that she might yet submit willingly to his advances vanished when she closed her eyes and averted her face from him.
Jason stared at her and then, with deliberate crudity, he yanked the sheets from her fists and swept them away. He got into bed beside her and wordlessly untied the bow at the low bodice of her satin and lace negligee; then he sucked in his breath as he beheld the nude perfection of her body.
Victoria’s breasts were full and ripe, her waist tiny, her hips gently rounded. Her legs were long and incredibly shapely, with slim thighs and trim calves. As his gaze roved over her, a blush stained her smooth ivory skin and when he laid his hand tentatively against one voluptuous breast, her whole body lurched and stiffened, rejecting his touch.
For an experienced woman, she was as cold and unyielding as a stone, lying there, her averted face twisted with revulsion. Jason considered trying to seduce her into cooperating, then tossed the idea aside with contempt. She had nearly left him at the altar this morning, and she obviously had no desire to suffer his prolonged caresses.
“Don’t do this,” she pleaded frantically as he caressed her breast. “I’m going to be sick!” she cried, trying to lunge out of bed. “You’re going to make me sick!”
Her words hammered into his brain like sharp nails, and black rage exploded inside him. Shoving his hands into her luxurious hair, Jason rolled onto her. “In that case,” he growled on a raw, infuriated breath, “we’d better get this over with in a hurry.”
Visions of blood and terrible pain roared through Victoria, adding their horror to the nausea the wine was causing. “I don’t want to!” she cried piteously.
“We made a bargain, and as long as we’re married, you’ll keep it,” he whispered as he pried her stiff thighs apart. Victoria whimpered as his rigid manhood probed boldly at her, but somewhere in the depths of her stricken mind, she knew he was right about the bargain and she stopped fighting him. “Relax,” he warned bitterly in the darkness above her, “I may not be as considerate as your dear Andrew, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
His vicious mention of Andrew at a time like this cut her to the heart, and her anguish erupted in a scream of pain as Jason rammed into her. Her body writhed beneath his, and tears poured from her eyes in hot, humiliated streaks as her husband used her without kindness or caring.
The instant his weight lifted from her, Victoria turned onto her side, burying her face in the pillow, her body racked with sobs that were part horror, part shock. “Get out,” she choked, pulling her knees up to her chest and curling into a ball of anguish. “Get out, get out!”
Jason hesitated, then rolled from the bed, picked up his robe, and walked into his room. He closed the door, but the sounds of her weeping followed him. Nude, he went over to his dresser, snatched up a crystal decanter of brandy and half-filled a glass with the potent brew. He swallowed all of the burning liquid, trying to drown out the memory of her resistance and the sound of her heartbroken revulsion, to blot out the thought of her stricken face when she tried to pull her hand free of his at the altar.
How stupid he’d been to believe he’d felt warmth from Victoria when she kissed him. She’d told him when he first suggested they marry that she didn’t want to marry him. Long ago, when she discovered they were supposedly betrothed, she’d told him what she reall
y thought of him: “You are a cold, callous, arrogant monster. . . . No woman in her right mind would marry you. . . . You aren’t worth a tenth of Andrew. . . .”
She’d meant every word.
How stupid he’d been to convince himself she actually cared for him. . . . Jason turned to put the glass down on the dresser and caught his reflection in the mirror. Traces of blood were smeared on his thighs.
Victoria’s blood.
Her heart might have belonged to Andrew, but not her beautiful body—that she had given only to Jason. He stared at himself while self-loathing poured through his veins like acid. He had been so damned jealous, so wounded by her attempt to leave him at the altar, that he hadn’t even noticed she was a virgin.
He closed his eyes in agonizing remorse, unable to bear the sight of himself. He had shown Victoria no more tenderness or consideration than a drunken seaman shows a paid doxy.
He thought of how dry and tight her passage had been, how small and fragile she had felt in his arms, how viciously he had used her, and a fresh surge of sickening regret ripped through him.
Opening his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror, knowing he had turned her wedding night into a nightmare. Victoria was indeed the gentle, courageous, spirited angel he had thought she was from the very beginning. And he—he was exactly what his foster mother had called him as a child: the spawn of the devil.
Shrugging into his robe, Jason took a velvet box from a drawer and went back into Victoria’s room. He stood beside her bed, watching her sleep. “Victoria,” he whispered. She flinched in her slumber at the sound of his voice and he ached with remorse. How vulnerable and hurt she looked; how incredibly beautiful she was with her hair spilling over the pillows and gleaming in the candlelight.