Once and Always Read online

  The reason for his smile became obvious as soon as their coach neared the great house. She had told Jason that she had always planned to be married in a little village with all the villagers there to help celebrate the occasion, and in a strangely quixotic gesture, the enigmatic man she had just married was trying to fulfill at least part of her dream. He had transformed the lawns of Wakefield into a fairy-tale bower of flowers. Enormous canopies of white orchids, lilies, and roses stretched above huge tables laden with silver plate, china, and food. The pavilion at the far end of the lawns was covered in flowers and strung with gaily colored lamps. Torches burned brightly everywhere she looked, driving off the encroaching dusk and adding a festive, mysterious glow to the scene.

  Instead of being annoyed at leaving most of the wedding guests in London, Jason had obviously spent a fortune turning the estate into a haven of whimsical beauty for her, and then he had invited all the village to come and celebrate their marriage. Even nature had collaborated with Jason’s scheme, for the clouds began to vanish, driven away by the setting sun, which decorated the sky in splashes of vivid pink and purple.

  The coach came to a stop in front of the house, and Victoria looked around at this evidence of Jason’s thoughtfulness—a thoughtfulness that was in direct opposition to his normal facade of callous indifference. She glanced at him, seeing the little smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes despite his best efforts to hide it, and she laid her hand softly on his arm. “Jason,” she whispered, her voice shaky with emotion. “I—I thank you.” Recalling his admonition to thank him with a kiss, she laid her hand against his hard chest and kissed him, with shy tenderness pouring through her veins.

  A man’s laughing Irish voice jerked Victoria back to reality. “Jason, my boy, are you going to get out of that coach and introduce me to your bride, or must I introduce myself?”

  Jason swung around and a look of surprised pleasure broke across his tanned features as he bounded down from the coach. He reached out to shake the brawny Irishman’s hand, but the man enfolded him in a great bear hug. “So,” the stranger said finally, grasping Jason’s shoulders and beaming at him with unhidden affection, “you’ve finally gotten yourself a wife to warm up this big, cold palace of yours. At least you could’ve waited until my ship put into port, so I could’ve attended the wedding,” he teased.

  “I didn’t expect to see you until next month,” Jason said. “When did you get back?”

  “I stayed to see the cargo unloaded, then I came home today. I rode over here an hour ago, but instead of finding you hard at work, I learned you were busy getting yourself married. Well, are you going to introduce me to your wife?” he demanded good-naturedly.

  Jason turned to help Victoria down and then he introduced the seaman to her as Captain Michael Farrell. Captain Farrell was about fifty, Victoria guessed, with thick auburn hair and the merriest hazel eyes she had ever seen. His face was tanned and weathered, with tiny lines feathering out from the corners of his eyes, attesting to a life spent on the deck of a ship. Victoria liked him on sight, but hearing herself referred to for the first time as Jason’s wife shook her composure so badly that she greeted Mike Farrell with the reserved formality she had been required to maintain since coming to England.

  When she did so, Captain Farrell’s expression altered. The warm approval vanished from his eyes, and his manner far surpassed hers in rigidity. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Fielding,” he intoned with a brief, cool bow. “You’ll pardon my lack of proper attire. I had no idea when I came here that a party was soon to commence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been at sea for six months and I’m eager for my own hearth.”

  “Oh, but you can’t leave!” Victoria said, reacting with the unaffected warmth that was far more natural to her than regal formality. She could see that Captain Farrell was an especially good friend of Jason’s, and she wanted desperately to make him feel welcome. “My husband and I are overdressed for this time of day,” she teased. “Besides, when I was at sea for only six weeks, I positively longed to dine on a table that didn’t tilt and sway, and I’m certain our tables will stay just where they are.”

  Captain Farrell scrutinized her as if uncertain what to make of her. “I gather you did not enjoy your voyage, Lady Fielding?” he asked noncommittally.

  Victoria shook her head, her smile infectious. “Not as much as I enjoyed breaking my arm or having measles—at least then I didn’t retch, which I did for an entire week at sea. I am not a good sailor, I fear, for when a storm blew up before I’d recovered from mal de mer, I was shamefully afraid.”

  “Good Lord!” Captain Farrell said, his smile regaining some of its original warmth. “Don’t call yourself a coward on that account. Seasoned seamen have been afraid of dying during an Atlantic storm.”

  “But I,” Victoria contradicted, laughing, “was afraid I was not going to die.”

  Mike Farrell threw back his head and laughed; then he grasped both Victoria’s hands in his huge, calloused paws and grinned at her. “I’ll be delighted to stay and join you and Jason. Forgive me for being so . . . er . . . hesitant before.”

  Victoria nodded happily. Then she helped herself to a glass of wine from the tray being passed by a footman and went off to visit the two farmers who had brought her to Wakefield the day of her arrival.

  When she was gone, Mike Farrell turned to Jason and said quietly, “When I saw her kissing you in the coach, I liked the look of her right off, Jason. But when she greeted me in that prim, proper way—with that blank look in her eyes as if she weren’t really seeing me—I feared for a moment you’d married another haughty bitch like Melissa.”

  Jason watched Victoria putting the awkward farmers at ease. “She’s anything but haughty. Her dog is part wolf and she’s part fish. My servants dote on her, Charles adores her, and every stupid fop in London fancies himself in love with her.”

  “Including you?” Mike Farrell said pointedly.

  Jason watched Victoria finish her wine and reach for another glass. The only way she could make herself marry him this morning was by pretending he was Andrew, and, even so, she’d damned near left him standing at the altar in front of 800 people. Since he had never seen her drink more than a sip of wine before, and she was already on her second glass, Jason assumed she was now trying to dull her revulsion at having to couple with him tonight.

  “You don’t quite look like the happiest of bridegrooms,” Mike Farrell said, observing Jason’s dark frown.

  “I’ve never been happier,” Jason replied bitterly, and went to greet guests whose names he didn’t know so that he could introduce them to the woman he was beginning to regret having married. He performed the function of host and acted the part of bridegroom with an outward appearance of smiling cordiality, all the while remembering that Victoria had nearly fled from him in the church. The memory was searingly painful and belittling, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

  Stars were twinkling in the sky as Jason stood on the sidelines, watching her dance with the local squire and Mike Farrell and then several of the villagers. She was deliberately avoiding him, he knew, and on those rare occasions when their eyes met, Victoria quickly looked away.

  She had long since removed her veil and asked the orchestra to play more lively tunes, then charmed the villagers by asking them to teach her the local dances. By the time the moon was riding high in the sky, everyone was dancing and clapping and thoroughly enjoying themselves, including Victoria, who had now finished five glasses of wine. Evidently she was trying to drink herself into a stupor, Jason thought sarcastically, noting the flush on her cheeks. Disgust knotted his stomach as he thought of his hopes for tonight, for their future. Like a fool, he had believed happiness was finally within his grasp.

  Lounging against a tree, he watched her, wondering why women were so attracted to him until he married them, and then they loathed him. He had done it again, he thought furiously. He had made the same idiotic mistake twice—he had mar