Robert Collingwood raised his brows and grinned at the envious young woman. “The Thames, perhaps?”

To Jason, who had never before known the joy of being loved and admired not for what he possessed or for what he appeared to be but for what he really was, the quiet inner peace he felt was sheer bliss. At night, he could not hold her close enough or long enough. During the day, he took her on picnics and swam with her in the creek at Wakefield Park. When he was working, she was there on the perimeters of his mind, making him smile. He wanted to lay the world at her feet, but all Victoria seemed to want was him, and that knowledge filled him with profound tenderness. He donated a fortune to build a hospital near Wakefield—the Patrick Seaton Hospital—then he began arrangements for another one to be built in Portage, New York, also named for Victoria’s father.

Chapter Thirty-one

On the one-month anniversary of their wedding, a message arrived that required Jason to travel to Portsmouth, where one of his ships had just put into port.

On the morning of his departure, he kissed Victoria goodbye on the steps of Wakefield Park with enough ardor to make her blush and the coachman smother a laugh.

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Victoria said, pressing her face to his muscular chest, her arms around his waist. “Six days seems like forever, and I’ll be dreadfully lonely without you.”

“Charles will be here to keep you company, sweet,” he said, grinning at her and hiding his own reluctance to leave. “Mike Farrell is just down the road, and you can visit with him. Or you could always pay another visit to your great-grandmother. I’ll be home on Tuesday in time for supper.”

Victoria nodded and leaned up on her toes to kiss his smoothly shaven cheek.

With great determination, she kept herself as busy as possible during those six days, working at the orphanage and supervising her household, but the time still seemed to drag. The nights were even longer. She spent her evenings with Charles, who had come for a visit, but when he went up to bed, the clock seemed to stop.

On the night before Jason was expected to return, she wandered around her room, trying to avoid getting into her lonely bed. She walked into Jason’s suite, smiling at the contrast between his masculine, heavily carved, dark furnishings and her own room, which was done in the French style with gossamer silk draperies and bedhangings of rose and gold. Lovingly, she fingered the gold-inlaid backs of his brushes. Then she reluctantly returned to her own room and finally fell asleep.

She awakened at dawn the next day, her heart full of excitement, and began planning a special meal for Jason’s homecoming.

Dusk faded into twilight and finally into chilly, starlit darkness as she waited in the salon, listening for the sound of Jason’s coach in the drive. “He’s back, Uncle Charles!” she said delightedly, peering out the window at the coach lamps moving along the drive toward the house.

“That must be Mike Farrell. Jason won’t be here for at least another hour or two,” he said, smiling fondly at her as she began smoothing her skirts. “I know how long it takes to make his journey, and he’s already shaved off a day in order to get back tonight, rather than tomorrow.”

“I suppose you’re right, but it’s only half past seven, and I asked Captain Farrell to join us for supper at eight.” Her smile faded as the carriage drew up before the house, and she realized it wasn’t Jason’s luxurious traveling coach. “I think I’ll ask Mrs. Craddock to delay supper,” she was saying when Northrup appeared in the doorway of the salon, an odd, strained look upon his austere face.

“There is a gentleman here to see you, my lady,” he announced.

“A gentleman?” Victoria echoed blankly.

“A Mr. Andrew Bainbridge from America.”

Victoria reached weakly for the back of the nearest chair, her knuckles turning white as her grip tightened.

“Shall I show him in?”

She nodded jerkily, trying to get control over the violent surge of resentment quaking through her at the memory of his heartless rejection, praying she could face him without showing how she felt. So distracted with her own rampaging emotions was she that she never noticed the sudden pallor of Charles’s complexion or the way he slowly stood up and faced the door as if he were bracing to meet a firing squad.

An instant later, Andrew strode through the doorway, his steps long and brisk, his smiling, handsome face so endearingly familiar that Victoria’s heart cried out in protest against his betrayal.

He stopped in front of her, looking at the elegant young beauty standing before him in a seductive silk gown that clung to her ripened curves, her glorious hair tumbling riotously over her shoulders and trim back. “Tory,” he breathed, gazing into her deep blue eyes. Without warning, he reached out, pulling her almost roughly into his arms and burying his face in her fragrant hair. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he whispered raggedly, holding her more tightly to him.

“Obviously!” Victoria retorted, recovering from her stunned paralysis and flinging his arms away. She glared at him, amazed at his gall in daring to come here, let alone embrace her with a passion he’d never shown her before. “Apparently you forget people very easily,” she added tartly.

To her utter disbelief, Andrew chuckled. “You’re angry because it’s taken me two weeks longer to come for you than I wrote you in my letter it would take, is that it?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “My ship was blown off course a week after we sailed and we had to put in for repairs at one of the islands.” Placing his arm affectionately around Victoria’s stiff shoulders, he turned to Charles and put out his hand, grinning. “You must be Charles Fielding,” he said with unaffected friendliness. “I can’t thank you enough for looking after Victoria until I could come for her. Naturally, I’ll want to repay you for any expenses you have incurred on her behalf—including this delightful gown she’s wearing.”

He turned to Victoria. “I hate to rush you, Tory, but I’ve booked passage on a ship leaving in two days. The captain of the ship has already agreed to marry—”

“Letter?” Victoria interrupted, feeling violently dizzy. “What letter? You haven’t written me a single word since I left home.”

“I wrote you several letters,” he said, frowning. “As I explained to you in my last one, I kept writing to you in America because my meddling mother never sent your letters on to me, so I didn’t know you were here in England. Tory, I told you all this in my last letter—the one I sent you here in England by special messenger.”