Once and Always Read online

  Victoria thought of the times she had seen Jason angry, of the leashed fury in his eyes and the awesome, predatory power she sometimes glimpsed beneath his urbane exterior. A picture flashed across her terrified mind—an image of a woman screaming as he beat her for some trivial infraction of his personal rules. “What,” she whispered hoarsely, “what sort of things did Melissa do?”

  “Well, there is no nice way to say it. The truth is that she was seen in the company of other men.”

  Victoria shuddered. Nearly every fashionable lady in London was seen in the company of other men. It was a way of life for fashionable married ladies to have their cicisbeos. “And he beat her for that?” she whispered sickly.

  “We don’t know that he beat her,” Miss Flossie pointed out with careful precision. “In fact, I rather doubt it. I once heard a gentleman criticize Jason—behind his back, of course, for no one would ever have the courage to criticize him to his face—for the way he ignored Melissa’s behavior.”

  A sudden idea was born in Victoria’s reeling mind. “Exactly what did the gentleman say?” she asked carefully. “Exactly,” she emphasized.

  “Exactly? Well, since you insist, he said—if I remember correctly—‘Wakefield is being cuckolded in front of all London and he damned well knows it, yet he ignores it and wears the horns. He’s setting a bad example for the rest of our wives to see. If you ask me, he ought to lock the harlot up in his place in Scotland and throw away the key.’ ”

  Victoria’s head fell back weakly against her chair, and she closed her eyes with a mixture of relief and sorrow. “Cuckolded,” she whispered. “So that’s it. . . .” She thought of how proud Jason was, and how much his pride must have been mangled by his wife's public infidelities.

  “Now, then, is there anything else you want to know?” Miss Flossie said.

  “Yes,” Victoria said with visible unease.

  The tension in her voice gave Miss Flossie a nervous start. “Well, I hope it isn’t anything about you-know," she twittered nervously, “because as your nearest female relative I realize it is my responsibility to explain that to you, but the truth is I’m abysmally ignorant about it. I’ve cherished the hope your mother might have already explained it.”

  Victoria curiously opened her eyes, but she was too exhausted by all that had happened to do more than say mildly, “I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about, ma’am.”

  “I’m speaking of ‘you-know’—that is what my dearest friend, Prudence, always called it—which was very silly for I didn’t know at all. However, I can repeat to you the information given my friend Prudence by her mother on the day before her marriage.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Victoria repeated, feeling stupid.

  “Well, you needn’t beg my pardon; I should ask yours for not having the information to give you. But ladies do not discuss you-know. Do you wish to hear what Prudence’s mother said about it?”

  Victoria’s lips twitched. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, without having the vaguest idea what they were discussing.

  “Very well. On your wedding night, your husband will join you in your bed—or perhaps he takes you to his, I can’t recall. In any event, you must not, under any circumstances, demonstrate your revulsion, nor scream, nor have vapors. You must close your eyes and permit him to do you-know. Whatever that may be. It will hurt and be repugnant, and there will be blood the first time, but you must close your eyes and persevere. I believe Prudence’s mama suggested that while you-know is happening, Prudence should try to think of something else—like the new fur or gown she will soon be able to buy if her husband is pleased with her. Nasty business, is it not?”

  Tears of mirth and anxiety gathered in Victoria’s eyes and her shoulders shook with helpless laughter. “Thank you, Miss Flossie,” she giggled. “You’ve been very reassuring.” Until now, Victoria hadn’t let herself worry about the intimacies of marriage to which Jason would be entitled and of which he would undoubtedly avail himself, since he wanted a son from her. Although she was the daughter of a physician, her father had meticulously ensured that her eyes were never exposed to the sight of a male patient’s anatomy below the waist. Still, Victoria was not completely ignorant of the mating process. Her family had kept a few chickens and she had witnessed the flapping of wings and squawking that accompanied the act, although exactly what was happening was impossible to tell. Moreover, she had always averted her eyes out of some peculiar need to allow them their privacy while they went about creating new chicks.

  Once when she was fourteen, her father had been summoned to a farmer’s house to look after the farmer’s wife who was in labor. While Victoria was waiting for the baby to be born, she had wandered out to the small pasture where the horses were kept. There she had witnessed the frightening spectacle of a stallion mounting a mare. He had clamped his huge teeth viciously into the mare’s neck, holding her helpless while he did his worst to her, and the poor mare screamed in pain.

  Visions of flapping wings, squawking hens, and terrified mares paraded across her mind, and Victoria shuddered.

  “My dear girl, you look quite pale, and I don’t blame you,” Miss Flossie put in not at all helpfully. “However, I have been given to understand that once a wife has done her duty and produced an heir, a thoughtful husband may be depended upon to get himself a paramour and do you-know to her, leaving his wife in peace to enjoy the rest of her life.”

  Victoria’s gaze skittered nervously to the window. “A paramour,” she breathed, knowing Jason already had one, and that he’d had a great many others in the past—all beautiful, according to what gossip she’d heard. As Victoria sat there, she began to rethink her earlier feelings toward the gentlemen of the ton and their mistresses. She had thought it perfidious of them to be married and still keep paramours, but perhaps it wasn’t that at all. It seemed more likely that, as Miss Flossie suggested, the gentlemen of the ton were more civilized, refined, and considerate of their wives. Rather than using their wives to fulfill their baser desires, they simply found another woman to do so, set her up in a nice house with servants and beautiful gowns, and left their poor wives in peace. Yes, she decided sensibly, this was probably an ideal way of handling the matter. Certainly the ladies of the ton seemed to think so, and they would know far better than she herself.

  “Thank you, Miss Flossie,” she said sincerely. “You’ve been very helpful and very kind.”

  Miss Flossie beamed, her yellow curls bouncing beneath her little white lace cap. “Thank you, my dear girl. You’ve made Charles happier than I’ve ever seen him. And Jason, too, of course,” she added politely.

  Victoria smiled, but she couldn’t quite accept the notion that she had made Jason truly happy.

  Wandering back to her room, she sat down before the empty fireplace and forced herself to try to untangle her emotions and stop hiding from the facts. Tomorrow morning she was going to marry Jason. She wanted to make him happy—she wanted it so much she hardly knew how to deal with her own feelings. The fact that he had been married to a faithless woman evoked sympathy and compassion in her heart, not resentment—and an even greater desire to make up for all the unhappiness in his life.

  Restlessly, Victoria got up and walked about the room, picking up the porcelain music box on her dressing table, then laying it down and walking over to the bed. She tried to tell herself she was marrying Jason because she had no choice, but as she sat down upon the bed, she admitted that wasn’t entirely true. Part of her wanted to marry him. She loved his looks and his smile and his dry sense of humor. She loved the brisk authority in his deep voice and the confidence in his long, athletic strides. She loved the way his eyes gleamed when he laughed at her and the way they smoldered when he kissed her. She loved the lazy elegance with which he wore his clothes and the way his lips felt—

  Victoria tore her thoughts from Jason’s lips and stared bleakly at the gold silk bed hangings. She loved many things about him—too many things. She was not a good j