With Victoria’s lush beauty, it would be easy enough to launch her successfully into society. And with the added attraction of a small dowry, provided by himself, it would be equally easy to get her safely wed to some suitable London fop. On the other hand, if she really believed her Andrew would come for her, she might insist upon waiting for months, even years, before accepting another man, and that possibility did not suit Jason at all.

In line with his half-formed plan, he waited until there was a break in the talk and said to her in a deceptively casual tone, “Charles tells me that you are practically betrothed to ... er ... Anson? Albert?”

Victoria’s head snapped around. “Andrew,” she said.

“What is he like?” Jason prodded.

A fond smile drifted across Victoria’s features as she thought about that. “He is gentle, handsome, intelligent, kind, considerate—”

“I think I have the general idea,” Jason interrupted dryly. “Take my advice and forget about him.”

Suppressing the urge to throw something at him, Victoria said, “Why?”

“He isn’t the man for you. In four days, you’ve turned my household upside down. What possible sport could you have with a staid country bumpkin who will want to lead a peaceful, organized life? You’d be wise to forget him and make the most of your opportunities here.”

“In the first place—” Victoria burst out, but Jason interrupted her, deliberately sowing seeds of discontent. “Of course, there’s every chance that if you don’t forget about Albert, Albert will probably forget about you. Isn’t the saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’?”

Holding onto her temper with a superhuman effort, Victoria clamped her teeth together and said nothing.

“What, no argument?” Jason prodded, admiring the way anger turned her eyes to a smoky midnight blue.

Victoria lifted her chin. “In my country, Mr. Fielding, it is considered ill-bred to argue at the table.”

Her veiled reprimand filled him with amusement. “How very inconvenient for you,” he remarked softly.

Charles leaned back in his chair, a tender smile curving his lips as he watched his son spar with the young beauty who reminded him so much of her mother. They were perfect for each other, he decided. Victoria wasn’t in awe of Jason. Her spirit and warmth would gentle him, and once gentled, he would become the sort of husband young girls dream of having. They would make each other happy, she would give Jason a son.

Filled with contentment and joy, Charles imagined the grandson they would give him once they were married. After all these years of emptiness and despair, he and Katherine were actually going to have grandchildren together. True, Jason and Victoria were not getting along so well right now, but that was to be expected. Jason was a hard, experienced, embittered man, with good reason. But Victoria had Katherine’s courage, her gentleness, her fire. And Katherine had changed his own life. She had taught him the meaning of love. And loss. His mind drifted back over the events of the past that had led up to this momentous evening. .. .

By the time he was twenty-two, Charles already had a well-deserved reputation as a libertine, gambler, and rake-hell. He had no responsibilities, no restrictions, and absolutely no prospects, for his older brother had already inherited the ducal title and everything that went with it—everything excluding money, that is. Money was ever in short supply, because for 400 years, the Fielding men had all exhibited a strong proclivity toward all manner of expensive vices. In fact, Charles was no worse than his father, or his father’s father before him. Charles’s younger brother was the only Fielding ever to show a desire to fight the devil’s temptations, but he did it with typical Fielding excess by deciding to become a missionary and go off to India.

At approximately that same time, Charles’s French mistress announced she was pregnant. When Charles offered her money, not matrimony, she wept and ranted at him, but to no avail. Finally she left him in a rage. A week after Jason was born, she returned to Charles’s lodgings, unceremoniously dumped their child into his arms, and disappeared. Charles had no desire to be saddled with a baby, yet he could not bring himself to simply abandon the boy to an orphans’ home. In a moment of sheer inspiration, he hit upon the idea of giving Jason to his younger brother and his ugly wife, who were about to leave for India “to convert the heathens.”

Without any hesitation, he gave the baby to these two God-fearing, childless, religious zealots—along with nearly every cent he had, to be used for Jason’s care—and washed his hands of the whole problem.

Until then he had managed to support himself well enough at the gaming tables, but capricious luck, which had always been with him, eventually deserted him. By the time he was thirty-two, Charles was compelled to face the fact that he could no longer maintain a reasonably genteel standard of living, as befitted a man of his birth, with the proceeds of his gambling alone. His problem was common to the impecunious younger sons of great noble houses, and Charles solved it in the time-honored way: he decided to exchange his illustrious family name for a fat dowry. With careless indifference, he proposed marriage to the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a young lady of great wealth, some beauty, and little intelligence.

The young lady and her father eagerly accepted his suit, and Charles’s older brother, the duke, even agreed to give a party to celebrate the forthcoming nuptials.

It was on that auspicious occasion that Charles again encountered his very distant cousin, Katherine Langston, the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the Duchess of Claremont. When last he had seen her, he had been paying a rare visit to his brother at Wakefield and Katherine had been a child of ten, staying for the holidays at a neighboring estate. For an entire fortnight she had followed him nearly everywhere he went, gazing at him with open adoration in her big blue eyes. He had thought her an uncommonly pretty little moppet then, with an enchanting smile and more spirit than females twice her age, as she took fences beside him astride her mare and charmed him into flying kites with her.

Now she had grown into a young woman of breathtaking beauty, and Charles could scarcely tear his eyes from her.

With an outward appearance of bored impassivity, he studied her stunning figure, her flawless features, and her glorious red-gold hair as she stood off to the side of the crowded room, looking serene and ethereal. Then he strolled over to her with a glass of Madeira in one hand and casually draped his other arm across the mantel, boldly and openly admiring her beauty. He expected her to voice a token objection to his forwardness, but Katherine did not voice any objection at all. She did not blush beneath his frank appraisal, nor did she turn away from it. She simply tipped her head to the side as if she was waiting for him to finish. “Hello, Katherine,” he said finally.