Once and Always Read online

  “It’s my fault,” Charles lied, shooting Victoria a sly wink as he stood up. “Victoria wishes to play a serious game of piquet and I’ve been distracting her with jokes. I can’t seem to be serious tonight. Would you sit in for a game with her?”

  Victoria expected Jason to refuse but, after glancing curiously at Charles, he sat down across from her, and Charles positioned himself behind Jason’s chair. Charles stood there until Victoria glanced at him, then he gave her a laughing, eager look that clearly said, “Beat him soundly—cheat!”

  Victoria was so giddy from their outrageous card tricks, including the new ones Charles had taught her, that she fell into the plan without further urging. “Would you prefer to deal or shall I?” she asked Jason innocently.

  “You, by all means,” he said courteously.

  Taking care to lull him into a false sense of security, Victoria shuffled the cards without any show of deftness, then began dealing them out. Jason glanced over his shoulder at Charles and asked for a glass of brandy, then he lounged back in his chair, indifferent. He lit one of the thin cheroots he occasionally enjoyed and accepted the glass Charles handed him.

  “Aren’t you going to look at your cards?” Victoria asked.

  Jason shoved his hands into his pockets, the cheroot clamped between his even white teeth, and leveled a speculative glance at her. “Normally, I prefer mine dealt from the top of the deck,” he drawled.

  Impaled on his gaze, Victoria stifled a horrified giggle and tried to bluff. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  One dark brow lifted, challenging her. “Do you know what happens to card-cheats?”

  Victoria gave up all pretense of innocence. Propping her elbows on the table, she put her chin in her hands and regarded him with laughing blue eyes. “No, what?”

  “The party who has been cheated issues a challenge to the party who has done the cheating, and frequently a duel is fought to settle the matter.”

  “Would you like to challenge me to a duel?” Victoria ventured daringly, enjoying herself immensely.

  Jason lazed in his chair, studying her laughing face and sparkling eyes while he appeared to consider the matter. “Are you as good a shot as you said you were when you threatened my life this afternoon?”

  “Better,” she declared baldly.

  “How are you with sabers?”

  “I’ve never held one, but perhaps Lady Caroline would stand in for me. She is excellent at that sort of thing.”

  The dazzling charm of Jason’s lazy white smile did odd things to Victoria’s pulse as he remarked, “I wonder what possessed me to think you and Caroline Collingwood would be safe companions.” Then he added what sounded to Victoria like a lovely compliment. “God help the London beaux this season. There isn’t going to be a heart left intact when you’re through with them.”

  Victoria was still trying to recover from her astonishment at his high opinion of her effect on gentlemen when Jason straightened in his chair and became brisk. “Now, shall we have that game you were so eager for?”

  When she nodded, he took the cards from her hand. “I’ll deal, if you don’t mind,” he joked. He had won three hands before Victoria saw him deftly stealing a card he needed from those he’d already discarded and shouldn’t have touched.

  “You wretch!” she burst out with indignant laughter. “I’ve fallen in with a pair of bandits! I saw what you just did—you’ve been cheating while we played this hand.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jason said, grinning as he rose to his feet with that pantherish grace of his. “I’ve been cheating during all three hands.” Without warning, he leaned down and pressed a kiss on the top of her head, affectionately rumpled her long hair, and strolled out of the library.

  Victoria was so stunned by his actions that she didn’t notice the expression of pure joy on Charles’s face as he watched Jason leave.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE GAZETTE AND THE TIMES reported two days later that Lady Victoria Seaton, Countess Langston—whose betrothal to Jason Fielding, Marquess of Wakefield, had been previously announced—would be making her formal bow to society at a ball to be given in a fortnight by her cousin, the Duke of Atherton.

  No sooner had London’s ton digested that exciting news than they witnessed a sudden burst of activity at the Marquess of Wakefield’s palatial London home at #6 Upper Brook Street.

  First came two coaches accommodating, in addition to lesser servants, Northrup, the butler; O’Malley, the head footman; and Mrs. Craddock, the cook. These vehicles were soon followed by a large fourgon, which contained the housekeeper, several housemaids, three kitchen porters, four subordinate footmen, and a mountain of trunks.

  Shortly thereafter another coach arrived bearing Miss Flossie Wilson, the duke’s maiden aunt, a plump elderly lady with a cherubic, pink-cheeked face framed by blond curls. Perched upon her head was a delightful little mulberry-colored bonnet that would have been more appropriate for a much younger lady and that made Miss Flossie look very much like a cuddly, elderly doll. Miss Flossie, who was a well-known figure among the Quality, climbed down from the coach, waved gaily to two of her friends who were passing by, and rushed up the front steps of her great-nephew’s Brook Street mansion.

  All of this activity was duly noted by the elegant ladies and gentlemen who paraded leisurely along Upper Brook Street in their gorgeous finery, but none of it created the wild stir of attention that was generated the next day when witnesses observed Jason Fielding’s sleek burgundy coach, drawn by four prancing grays, pulling up smartly before the house at #6.

  From the sumptuous interior of the crested coach emerged Charles Fielding, Duke of Atherton, followed by a young lady who could only be Jason Fielding’s promised wife. The young lady stepped gracefully down the coach steps, tucked her hand in the crook of the duke’s arm, and paused, gazing in smiling disbelief at the lavish four-story mansion with its wide bow windows.

  “Good God, that’s her!” young Lord Wiltshire exclaimed from his vantage point across the street. “That’s Countess Langston,” he added, enthusiastically digging his elbow into his companion’s chest for emphasis.

  “How d’you know?” Lord Crowley demanded, smoothing a nonexistent wrinkle from his injured jacket.

  “It’s plain to the humblest intelligence who she is—look at her, she’s a beauty. An Incomparable.”

  “You can’t see her face,” his friend pointed out reasonably.

  “I don’t have to, nodcock. If she weren’t beautiful, she’d never have wrung an offer out of Wakefield. Have you ever seen him with a woman who wasn’t a raving beauty?”

  “No,” Lord Crowley admitted. Raising his quizzing glass, he squinted through it and emitted a low, surprised whistle. “She has red hair. Wouldn’t have expected that in a million years.”

  “It ain’t red, it’s more to the gold than the red.”

  “No, it’s titian,” Lord Crowley argued. After a moment’s additional consideration, he declared, “Titian is an enchanting color. Always preferred it, myself.”

  “Rubbish! You’ve never gone in for titian hair. It’s not at all the rage.”

  “It is now,” Lord Crowley predicted, grinning. Lowering his glass he sent a smug look at his friend. “I believe my Aunt Mersley is acquainted with Atherton—she’ll get an invitation to Countess Langston’s come-out ball. Think I’ll tag along with her to it and—” He stopped speaking and gaped as the young lady under discussion turned back to the coach and called out something. An instant later, a huge silver and gray beast hurtled out and bounded to her heel, whereupon the trio proceeded up the front steps. “Damn my eyes if that wasn’t a wolf!” Lord Crowley breathed in awe.

  “She’s stylish,” the other young man decreed when he recovered his voice. “Never heard of a woman with a wolf for a pet. Very stylish, is the countess. An Original, to be sure.” Eager to spread the word that they had been the first to glimpse the mysterious Lady Victoria Seaton, the two young men separated an