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 Andre 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 ...”