Once and Always Read online

  Dusk faded into twilight and finally into chilly, starlit darkness as she waited in the salon, listening for the sound of Jason’s coach in the drive. “He’s back, Uncle Charles!” she said delightedly, peering out the window at the coach lamps moving along the drive toward the house.

  “That must be Mike Farrell. Jason won’t be here for at least another hour or two,” he said, smiling fondly at her as she began smoothing her skirts. “I know how long it takes to make his journey, and he’s already shaved off a day in order to get back tonight, rather than tomorrow.”

  “I suppose you’re right, but it’s only half past seven, and I asked Captain Farrell to join us for supper at eight.” Her smile faded as the carriage drew up before the house, and she realized it wasn’t Jason’s luxurious traveling coach. “I think I’ll ask Mrs. Craddock to delay supper,” she was saying when Northrup appeared in the doorway of the salon, an odd, strained look upon his austere face.

  “There is a gentleman here to see you, my lady,” he announced.

  “A gentleman?” Victoria echoed blankly.

  “A Mr. Andrew Bainbridge from America.”

  Victoria reached weakly for the back of the nearest chair, her knuckles turning white as her grip tightened.

  “Shall I show him in?”

  She nodded jerkily, trying to get control over the violent surge of resentment quaking through her at the memory of his heartless rejection, praying she could face him without showing how she felt. So distracted with her own rampaging emotions was she that she never noticed the sudden pallor of Charles’s complexion or the way he slowly stood up and faced the door as if he were bracing to meet a firing squad.

  An instant later, Andrew strode through the doorway, his steps long and brisk, his smiling, handsome face so endearingly familiar that Victoria’s heart cried out in protest against his betrayal.

  He stopped in front of her, looking at the elegant young beauty standing before him in a seductive silk gown that clung to her ripened curves, her glorious hair tumbling riotously over her shoulders and trim back. “Tory,” he breathed, gazing into her deep blue eyes. Without warning, he reached out, pulling her almost roughly into his arms and burying his face in her fragrant hair. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he whispered raggedly, holding her more tightly to him.

  “Obviously!” Victoria retorted, recovering from her stunned paralysis and flinging his arms away. She glared at him, amazed at his gall in daring to come here, let alone embrace her with a passion he’d never shown her before. “Apparently you forget people very easily,” she added tartly.

  To her utter disbelief, Andrew chuckled. “You’re angry because it’s taken me two weeks longer to come for you than I wrote you in my letter it would take, is that it?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “My ship was blown off course a week after we sailed and we had to put in for repairs at one of the islands.” Placing his arm affectionately around Victoria’s stiff shoulders, he turned to Charles and put out his hand, grinning. “You must be Charles Fielding,” he said with unaffected friendliness. “I can’t thank you enough for looking after Victoria until I could come for her. Naturally, I’ll want to repay you for any expenses you have incurred on her behalf—including this delightful gown she’s wearing.”

  He turned to Victoria. “I hate to rush you, Tory, but I’ve booked passage on a ship leaving in two days. The captain of the ship has already agreed to marry—”

  “Letter?” Victoria interrupted, feeling violently dizzy. “What letter? You haven’t written me a single word since I left home.”

  “I wrote you several letters,” he said, frowning. “As I explained to you in my last one, I kept writing to you in America because my meddling mother never sent your letters on to me, so I didn’t know you were here in England. Tory, I told you all this in my last letter—the one I sent you here in England by special messenger.”

  “I did not receive any letter!” she persisted in rising tones of hysteria.

  Anger thinned Andrew’s lips. “Before we leave, I intend to call upon a firm in London that was paid a small fortune to make certain my letters were delivered personally to you and your cousin the duke. I want to hear what they have to say for themselves!”

  “They’ll say they delivered them to me,” Charles said flatly.

  Wildly, Victoria shook her head, her mind already realizing what her heart couldn’t bear to believe. “No, you didn’t receive any letter, Uncle Charles. You’re mistaken. You’re thinking of the one I received from Andrew’s mother—the one telling me he was married.”

  Andrew’s eyes blazed with anger when he saw the guilt on the older man’s face. He seized Victoria by the shoulders. “Tory, listen to me! I wrote you a dozen letters while I was in Europe, but I sent them to you in America. I did not learn of your parents’ death until I returned home two months ago. From the day your parents died, my mother stopped sending me your letters. When I came home, she told me your parents had died and that you had been whisked off to England by some wealthy cousin of yours who had offered you marriage. She said she had no idea where or how to find you here. I knew you better than to believe you would toss me over merely for some wealthy old cousin with a title. It took a while, but I finally located Dr. Morrison, and he told me the truth about your coming here and gave me your direction.

  “When I told my mother I was coming here after you, she admitted the rest of her duplicity. She told me about the letter she wrote you saying I had married Madeline in Switzerland. Then she promptly had one of her ‘attacks.’ Except this one turned out to be real. I couldn’t leave her while she was teetering at death’s door, so I wrote you and your cousin, here—” He shot a murderous look at Charles. “—who for some reason did not tell you of my letters. In them, I explained what had happened, and I told each of you that I would come for you as soon as I possibly could.”

  His voice softened as he cradled Victoria’s stricken face between his palms. “Tory,” he said with a tender smile, “you’ve been the love of my life since the day I saw you racing across our fields on that Indian pony of Rushing River’s. I’m not married, sweetheart.”

  Victoria swallowed, trying to drag her voice past the aching lump in her throat. “I am.”

  Andrew snatched his hands away from her face as if her skin burned him. “What did you say?” he demanded tightly.

  “I said,” Victoria repeated in an agonized whisper as she stared at his beloved face, “I am. Married.”

  Andrew’s body stiffened as if he were trying to withstand a physical blow. He glanced contemptuously at Charles. “To him? To this old man? You sold yourself for a few jewels and gowns, is that it?” he bit out furiously.

  “No!” Victoria almost screamed, shaking with rage and pain and sorrow.

  Charles spoke finally, his voice expressionless, his face blank. “Victoria is married to my nephew.”

  “To your son!” Victoria hurled the words at him. She whirled around, hating Charles for his deceit, and hating Jason for collaborating with him.

  Andrew’s hands clamped on her arms and she felt his anguish as if it were her own. “Why?” he said, giving her a shake. “Why!”

  “The fault is mine,” Charles said tersely. He straightened to his full height, his eyes on Victoria, silently pleading for her understanding. “I have dreaded this moment of reckoning ever since Mr. Bainbridge’s letters arrived. Now that the time is here, it is worse than I ever imagined.”

  “When did you receive those letters?” Victoria demanded, but in her heart she already knew the answer, and it was tearing her to pieces.

  “The night of my attack.”

  “Your pretended attack!” Victoria corrected, her voice shaking with bitterness and rage.

  “Exactly so,” Charles confessed tightly, then turned to Andrew. “When I read that you were coming to take Victoria from us, I did the only thing I could think of—I feigned a heart attack, and I pleaded with her to marry my son so that she would