Chapter Twenty-six

Victoria left for London very early the next morning and started back to Wakefield at dusk. Cradled lovingly in her hands was the object she’d seen in a shop when she first came to the city weeks ago. It had reminded her of Jason then, but it had looked terribly expensive, and besides, it wouldn’t have been proper to buy him a gift at that time. The memory of it had lingered in her mind all these weeks, nagging at her, until she was afraid to wait any longer and risk having it sold to someone else.

She had no idea when she would give it to him; certainly not now, when things were so hostile between them—but soon. She shuddered at the recollection of its price. Jason had given her an outrageously huge allowance, which she had scarcely touched, but the gift had cost every shilling of it, plus a good deal more, which the proprietor of the exclusive little shop was more than happy to put on the account that he eagerly opened in the name of the Marchioness of Wakefield.

“His lordship is in his study,” Northrup advised Victoria, as he opened the front door.

“Does he want to see me?” Victoria asked, puzzled by Northrup’s quick, unsolicited information on Jason’s whereabouts.

“I don’t know, my lady,” Northrup replied uncomfortably. “But he has ... er ... been inquiring whether you were home yet.”

Victoria looked at Northrup’s harassed expression and remembered Jason’s anxiety when she had disappeared for an afternoon to Captain Farrell’s. Since her trip to London had taken twice as long as it would have had she remembered the exact location of the shop, she assumed that Northrup had been called up on the firing line again by Jason.

“How many times has he inquired?” she asked.

“Three,” Northrup replied. “In the last hour.”

“I see,” Victoria said with an understanding smile, but she felt absurdly pleased to know Jason had thought about her.

After allowing Northrup to divest her of her pelisse, she went to Jason’s study. Unable to knock with the gift in her hands, she turned the handle and put her shoulder gently to the door. Instead of working at his desk where she expected him to be, Jason was standing at the window, his shoulder propped against the frame, his expression bleak as he gazed out across the terraced lawns at the side of the house. He glanced around at the first sound of her approach and instantly straightened.

“You’re back,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Didn’t you think I would be?” Victoria asked, scanning his features.

He shrugged wearily. “Frankly, I have no idea what you’re going to do from one moment to the next.”

Considering her actions of late, Victoria could understand why he must think her the most impulsive, unpredictable female alive. Yesterday alone she had treated him flirtatiously, tenderly, and then furiously walked out on him in the drawing room. And now she had an insane urge to put her arms around him and ask him to forgive her. Rather than do that and risk another cutting rejection like the last, she quelled the urge and instead reversed her earlier decision and decided to give him the gift now. “There was something I had to buy in London,” she said brightly, showing him the wrapped package in her hands. “I saw it weeks ago, only I didn’t have enough money.”

“You should have asked me for it,” he said, already heading toward his desk with the obvious intention of burying himself in work again.

Victoria shook her head. “I couldn’t very well ask you for money when the thing I wished to buy was for you. Here,” she said, holding out her hands. “It’s for you.”

Jason stopped in his tracks and looked at the oblong object wrapped in silver paper. “What?” he said blankly, as if she had spoken words he didn’t understand.

“The reason I went to London was to buy this for you,” Victoria explained, her smile quizzical as she held the heavy package closer to him.

He stared at the gift in confusion, his hands still in his pockets. With a sudden wrench of her heart, Victoria wondered if he had ever been given a gift before. Neither his first wife nor his mistresses were likely to have done so. And it was a foregone conclusion that the cruel woman who raised him hadn’t.

The compulsion to wrap her arms around him was almost uncontrollable as Jason finally pulled his hands from his pockets. He took the gift and turned it in his hands, looking at it as if uncertain what to do with it next. Hiding her throbbing tenderness behind a bright smile, Victoria perched on the edge of the desk and said, “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“What?” he said blankly. Recovering his composure, he said, “Do you want me to open it now?”

“What better time could there be?” Victoria asked gaily, and patted the spot on his desk beside her hip. “You can set it here while you open it, but be careful—it’s fragile.”

“It’s heavy,” he agreed, shooting her a quick, uncertain smile as he carefully untied the slender cord and removed the silver paper. He took the cover off the large leather box and reached into the velvet-lined interior.

“It reminded me of you,” Victoria said, smiling as he gingerly removed an exquisitely carved panther made of solid onyx, its eyes a pair of glittering emeralds. As if a living cat had been captured by magic while running, and then magically transformed into onyx, there was vibrant motion in every sleek line of its smooth body, power and grace in its flanks, danger and intelligence in its fathomless green eyes.

Jason, whose collection of paintings and rare artifacts was said to be one of the finest in Europe, examined the panther with a reverence that nearly brought tears to Victoria’s eyes as she watched him. It was a lovely piece, she knew, but he was treating it as if it were a priceless treasure.

“He’s very fine,” Jason said softly, running his thumb along the panther’s back. With infinite care, he put the animal down on his desk and turned to Victoria. “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted with a lopsided grin.

Victoria looked up at his ruggedly chiseled face with its boyish smile and she thought he had never looked so endearingly handsome. Feeling incredibly lighthearted herself, she said, “You don’t have to say a thing—except ‘thank you,’ if you want to say that.”

“Thank you,” he said in an odd, hoarse voice.

Thank me with a kiss. The thought leapt from nowhere into Victoria’s mind and the words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Thank me with a kiss,” she reminded him with a gay smile.