Once and Always Read online

  He shifted slightly and Victoria stole another glance at him. His dark head was tilted back, his thin cigar clamped between his even white teeth, his hands resting on the arms of his wing chair, his tanned features cast into shadow. A chill crept up her spine as she wondered what dark secrets lay hidden in his past. Surely there must be many to have made him so cynical and unapproachable. He looked like the sort of man who had seen and done all sorts of terrible, forbidden things—things that had hardened him and made him cold. Yet he was handsome—wickedly, dangerously handsome with his panther-black hair, green eyes, and superb build. Victoria couldn’t deny that, and if she weren’t half-afraid of him most of the time, she would have liked to talk to him. How tempting it would be to try to befriend him—as tempting as sin, she admitted to herself—as foolish as trying to befriend the devil. And probably just as dangerous.

  Victoria drew a careful breath, preparing to politely but firmly insist that her mourning clothes be returned, just as Northrup appeared and announced the arrival of Lady Kirby and Miss Kirby.

  Victoria saw Jason stiffen and shoot a sardonic glance at Charles, who responded with a bewildered shrug and turned to Northrup. “Send them away—” he began, but he was too late.

  “No need to announce us, Northrup,” said a firm voice, and a stout woman sailed into the salon, trailed by puce satin skirts, heavy perfume, and a lovely brunette about Victoria’s age. “Charles!” Lady Kirby said, beaming at him. “I heard you were in the village today with a young lady named Miss Seaton, and naturally I had to see her for myself.”

  Scarcely taking time to draw a breath, she turned to Victoria and said brightly, “You must be Miss Seaton.” She paused, her narrowed eyes scrutinizing every feature on Victoria’s face in a way that gave Victoria the feeling she was looking for flaws. She found one. “What an intriguing dent in your chin, my dear. However did it happen? An accident?”

  “Of birth,” Victoria averred, smiling, much too fascinated by the peculiar woman to be offended. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if England was filled with intriguing, ill-mannered, blunt people whose eccentricities were either encouraged or overlooked because of their titles and excessive wealth.

  “How sad,” said Lady Kirby. “Does it bother you—or hurt?”

  Victoria’s lips trembled with laughter. “Only when I look in the mirror, ma’am,” she replied.

  Dissatisfied, Lady Kirby swung away and confronted Jason, who had arisen and was standing at the fireplace, his elbow propped on the mantel. “So, Wakefield,” she said, “from the looks of things here, the announcement in the paper would seem to be correct. I’ll tell you the truth—I never believed it. Well, was it?”

  Jason lifted his brows. “Was it what?”

  Charles’s voice boomed out, drowning Lady Kirby’s words. “Northrup, bring the ladies some refreshment!” Everyone sat down, Miss Kirby taking the chair beside Jason, while Charles swiftly embarked on an animated discussion of the weather. Lady Kirby listened impatiently until Charles ran out of monologue; then she turned abruptly to Jason and said pointedly, “Wakefield, is your engagement on or off?”

  Jason raised his glass to his lips, his eyes cold. “Off.”

  Victoria saw the varying reactions to that one word on the faces around her. Lady Kirby looked satisfied, her daughter looked delighted, Charles looked miserable, and Jason’s face was inscrutable. Victoria’s sympathetic heart instantly went out to him. No wonder Jason seemed so grim and callous—the woman he loved must have broken their engagement. It struck her as odd, however, when the Kirby ladies turned to her as if they expected her to say something.

  Victoria smiled blankly, and Lady Kirby took up the conversational gauntlet. “Well, Charles, in that case, I gather you mean to bring out poor Miss Seaton during the season?”

  “I intend to see that Countess Langston takes her rightful place in society,” he corrected coolly.

  “Countess Langst—” Lady Kirby gasped.

  Charles inclined his head. “Victoria is Katherine Langston’s oldest child. Unless I mistake the rules of succession, she is now heir to her mother’s Scottish title.”

  “Even so,” Lady Kirby said stiffly, “you’ll not have an easy time making a suitable match for her.” She turned to Victoria, oozing feigned sympathy. “Your mama created quite a scandalbroth when she ran off with that Irish laborer.”

  Indignation on her mother’s behalf shot white-hot sparks through Victoria’s entire body. “My mother married an Irish physician,” she corrected.

  “Without her grandmother’s permission,” Lady Kirby countered. “Gently bred girls do not marry against their families’ wishes in this country.” The obvious implication that Katherine was not gently bred made Victoria so angry she dug her fingernails into her palms.

  “Oh, well, society eventually forgets these things,” Lady Kirby continued generously. “In the meantime, you will have much to learn before you can be presented. You will have to learn the proper forms of address for each peer, his wife and children, and of course there’s the etiquette involved in paying calls and the more complicated problems of learning seating arrangements. That alone takes months to master—whom you may seat next to whom at table, I mean. Colonials are ignorant of such things, but we English place the greatest importance on these matters of propriety.”

  “Perhaps that explains why we always defeat you in war,” Victoria suggested sweetly, goaded into defending her family and her country.

  Lady Kirby’s eyes narrowed. “I meant no offense. However, you shall have to curb your tongue if you hope to make a suitable match as well as live down your mother’s reputation.”

  Victoria stood up and said with quiet dignity, “I will find it very hard to live up to my mother’s reputation. My mother was the gentlest, kindest woman who ever lived. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

  Victoria shut the door behind her and went down the hall to the library, a gigantic room with Persian carpets scattered across the polished wood floors and bookshelves lining the long walls. Too angry and upset to actually sit down at one of the desks and write a letter to Dorothy or Andrew, she wandered over to the shelves of books, looking for something to soothe her spirits. Bypassing the tomes on history, mythology, and commerce, she came to a poetry section. Her gaze wandered distractedly over the authors, some of whom she had already read—Milton, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Without any real interest in reading, she haphazardly chose a slender volume simply because it was protruding several inches beyond the others on the shelf and carried it over to the nearest grouping of comfortable chairs.

  She turned up the oil lamp on the table and settled down in the chair, forcing herself to open the book. A sheet of pink, perfumed notepaper slid out and drifted to the floor. Victoria automatically picked it up and started to put it back, but the first words of the torrid little note, which was written in French, leapt out at her:

  Darling Jason,

  I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me. . . .

  Victoria told herself that reading another person’s letter was ill-bred, unforgivable, and completely beneath her dignity, but the idea of a woman waiting impatiently for Jason Fielding to come to her was so incredible that Victoria couldn’t bridle her amazed curiosity. For her part, she would be more inclined to wait impatiently for him to go away! She was so engrossed in her discovery that she didn’t hear Jason and Miss Kirby coming down the hall as she continued to read:

  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 arms. . . .

  “Victoria!” Jason called irritably.

  Victoria leapt to her feet in guilty nervousness, dropped the book of poetry, snatched it up, and sat back down. Trying to look absorbed in her reading, she opened the book and stared blindly at it, completely unaware that it was upside down.

  “Why didn’t you answer me?” Jason demanded a