Once and Always (21 page)

“You won’t,” Caroline predicted emphatically. “In the first place, you are a young, unmarried female, so no one will tell you anything even slightly scandalous for fear of offending your sensibilities or sending you into a swoon. Secondly, people gossip about others, but they rarely tell their tales to the people involved. It is the nature of gossip to be carried on behind the backs of those most intimately concerned in the story.”

“Where it does the most damage and provides the most titillation,” Victoria agreed. “Gossip was not unknown in Portage, New York, you know, and it was mostly flummery there, too.”

“Perhaps, but there’s more I wish to warn you about,” Caroline continued, looking guilty but determined to protect her friend. “Because of his rank and his fortune, Lord Fielding is still considered a splendid catch, and there are a great many ladies who also find him extremely handsome. For those three reasons, they’ve hung out for him. However,
he
hasn’t been at all nice in his treatment of
them.
In fact, there’ve been times he’s been positively rude! Victoria,” she concluded in a tone of the direst condemnation, “Lord Fielding is
not
a gentleman.”

She waited for some reaction from her friend, but when Victoria merely looked at her as if that defect in Lord Fielding’s character was no more significant than a wrinkled neckcloth, Caroline sighed and plunged ahead. “The men are nearly as afraid of him as many of the ladies are, not only because he’s so very cold and aloof, but because there’ve been rumors about his duels in India. They say he’s fought dozens of them and killed his opponents in cold blood, without a flicker of emotion or regret—they say he’ll challenge a man to a duel for the most minor offense—”

“I don’t believe that,” Victoria put in with unconscious loyalty to Jason.

“You may not, but others do, and people are afraid of him.”

“Do they ostracize him, then?”

“Just the opposite,” Caroline said. “They positively
pander
to him. No one would dare give him the cut direct.”

Victoria looked at her incredulously. “Surely
everyone
who knows him isn’t afraid of him?”

“Almost everyone. Robert genuinely likes him and he laughs when I say there is something sinister about Lord Fielding. However, I once heard Robert’s mother tell a group of her friends that Lord Fielding is wicked, that he uses women and then discards them.”

“He can’t be as bad as all that. You said yourself he is considered a splendid catch—”

“Actually, he’s rated the best catch in England.”

“There, you see! If people thought he was as terrible as you think they do, no young lady, nor her mama, would ever seek marriage to him.”

Caroline snorted indelicately. “For a dukedom and a magnificent fortune, there are those who would marry Bluebeard!”

When Victoria merely chuckled, Caroline’s face clouded with confusion. “Victoria, doesn’t he seem strange and frightening to you?”

Victoria carefully considered the answer to that as the driver turned their carriage back toward Jason’s townhouse. She remembered the biting lash of Jason’s tongue when she first arrived at Wakefield and his awesome anger when he caught her swimming in the creek. She also remembered the way he had smoothly outcheated her at cards, consoled her the night she cried, and laughed at her attempt to milk the cow. She also remembered the way he had held her close against his body and kissed her with fierce, demanding tenderness, but she immediately cast that recollection out of her mind.

“Lord Fielding’s temper is quick,” she began slowly, “but I have noticed that he is soon over his anger and willing to let bygones be bygones. I am much like him in that respect, although I don’t become angry as easily as he does. And he didn’t challenge
me
to a duel when I threatened to shoot him,” she added humorously, “so I cannot believe he is so very eager to shoot people. If you asked me to describe him,” Victoria concluded, “I would probably say that he is an exceedingly generous man who might even be gentle underneath his—”

“You’re joking!”

Victoria shook her head, trying to explain. “I see him differently than you do. I try to see people as my father taught me I should.”

“Did he teach you to be blind to their faults?” Caroline asked desperately.

“Not at all. But he was a physician who taught me to look for causes of things, not merely symptoms. Because of that, whenever someone behaves oddly, I start wondering
why
they are doing so, and there is always a reason. For example, have you ever noticed that when people don’t feel well, they are frequently ill-tempered?”

Caroline nodded instantly. “My brothers were cross as crabs if they felt even slightly unwell.”

“That’s what I mean: your brothers aren’t mean people, but when they don’t feel well, they become bad-tempered.”

“Do you think, then, that Lord Fielding is ill?”

“I don’t think he’s very happy, which is the same thing as not feeling well. Regardless of that, my father also taught me to place more importance on the things a person does than on what he says. If you view Lord Fielding in that way, he has been very kind to me. He’s given me a home and more beautiful clothes than I could use in a lifetime, and he’s even let me bring Wolf into the house.”

“You must have a superior understanding of people,” Caroline said quietly.

“No, I don’t,” Victoria contradicted ruefully. “I lose my temper and am hurt just as easily as anyone else. Not until
afterward
do I remember to try to understand why the person might have treated me in such a way.”

“And you aren’t afraid of Lord Fielding, not even when he’s angry?”

“Only a little,” Victoria admitted ruefully. “But then, I haven’t seen him since we came to London, so perhaps I’m only feeling brave because there’s a distance between us.”

“Not anymore,” Caroline remarked, nodding meaningfully toward the elegant black-lacquered coach with a gold seal emblazoned on the door that was waiting in front of #6 Upper Brook Street. “That is Lord Fielding’s crest on the black coach,” she explained when Victoria looked blank. “And the coach drawn up behind that one is ours—which means my husband must have finished his business early and decided to fetch me himself.”

Victoria felt a funny little leap of her heart at the knowledge that Jason was here—a reaction she immediately put down to nervous guilt for having discussed him with Caroline.

Both gentlemen were in the drawing room, listening politely as Miss Flossie tortured them with a lengthy, disjointed monologue on Victoria’s progress during the last two weeks, liberally interspersed with rapturous comments about her own debut almost fifty years ago. Victoria took one glance at Jason’s strained features and concluded he was mentally strangling the lady.

“Victoria!” Miss Flossie said, gleefully clapping her little hands. “At last you are back! I’ve been telling these gentlemen of your talent at the piano, and they are anxious beyond anything to hear you play.” Cheerfully oblivious to Jason’s sardonic expression when he heard himself described as “anxious beyond anything,” Miss Flossie marched Victoria over to the piano and insisted that she play something at once.

Helplessly, Victoria sat down on the bench and glanced at Jason, who was concentrating on picking a piece of lint from the leg of his beautifully tailored dark blue trousers. He could not have looked more bored unless he yawned. He also looked incredibly handsome, Victoria realized, and she felt another tremor of nervousness, which was amplified a dozen times by his lazy, mocking smile when he looked up at her. “I’ve never known a female who could swim, shoot, tame wild animals,
and,”
he concluded, “play the piano. Let’s hear you do it.”

Victoria could tell from his tone that he expected her to play poorly, and she longed to avoid giving a recital now, when she was so inexplicably nervous. “Mr. Wilheim gave Dorothy and me lessons as a way of repaying my father for treating his ailment of the lungs, but Dorothy is a much better musician than I. Until two weeks ago, I hadn’t played in months, and I’m still out of practice,” she said, hastily trying to excuse herself. “My Beethoven is barely mediocre and—”

Her lame hope for a reprieve was dashed when Jason lifted a challenging eyebrow and nodded meaningfully at the keyboard.

Victoria sighed and capitulated. “Is there anything in particular you would like to hear?”

“Beethoven,” he said dryly.

Victoria sent him an exasperated look, which only made his grin widen, but she bent her head and prepared to do as he asked. Tentatively, she ran her fingers over the keyboard, then stopped, her hands poised over the keys. When she brought them down again, the room resounded with the vibrant, sweeping melody and triumphant crescendos of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor, exploding with all the power and might and lilting sweetness of the passage.

In the hall beyond the drawing room, Northrup stopped polishing a silver bowl and blissfully closed his eyes, listening enraptured. In the foyer, O’Malley stopped scolding a subordinate and tilted his head toward the drawing room, smiling at the uplifting sound of music being played in Lord Fielding’s house.

When Victoria finished, everyone in the drawing room burst into spontaneous applause—except Jason, who leaned back in his chair, a wry smile on his lips. “Do you possess any other ‘mediocre’ skills?” he teased, but there was a sincere compliment in his eyes, and when Victoria saw it, it filled her with an absurd amount of pleasure.

Caroline and her husband left soon thereafter, promising to see Victoria at her ball tomorrow night, and Miss Flossie escorted them to the door. Left alone with Jason, Victoria felt unaccountably self-conscious, and she promptly burst into speech to hide it. “I—I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Surely you didn’t think I’d stay away from your debut?” he teased, with a dazzling smile. “I’m not entirely lost to the proprieties, you know. We’re supposed to be betrothed. How would it look if I didn’t appear here?”

“My lord—” she began.

“That has a nice ring to it,” he remarked, chuckling. “Very respectful. You’ve never called me that before.”

Victoria gave him a look of laughing severity. “And I wouldn’t have done so now, except that Miss Flossie has been drilling titles and forms of address into my head for days on end. However, what I started to say was that I’m not very good at deceit, and the idea of telling people we’re betrothed makes me monstrously uneasy. Uncle Charles won’t listen to my objections, but I don’t think this pretense is a good idea at all.”

“It isn’t,” Jason agreed flatly. “The reason for giving you this season is to introduce you to prospective husbands—”

Victoria opened her mouth to insist that Andrew was going to be her husband, but Jason held up a hand and amended his last statement. “The purpose is to introduce you to prospective husbands,
in the event
Ambrose doesn’t rush to your rescue.”

“Andrew,” Victoria corrected him. “Andrew Bainbridge.”

Jason dismissed him with a shrug. “When the subject of our betrothal comes up, I want you to say what I’ve been saying.”

“What is that?”

“I say that everything is not quite settled, or that you don’t know me well enough to be certain your affections are fixed on me. That will leave the door open for your other suitors, and even Charles can’t object.”

“I’d much rather tell the truth and say we aren’t betrothed.”

Jason ran his hand across the back of his neck, irritably massaging the tense muscles. “You can’t. If either of us cries off now—so soon after your arrival in England—there will be a great deal of unpleasant speculation about which of us cried off, and why.”

Victoria remembered Caroline’s description of the ton's attitude toward Jason and she immediately guessed what people would think if
she
cried off. When she viewed it in that way, she was willing to continue the pretense of their betrothal. Not for the world would she repay Jason’s kindness and generosity to her by letting anyone think she found him repugnant or frightening as a prospective husband. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll say things aren’t quite settled between us yet.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Charles has already had one near-fatal attack and his heart is weak. I don’t want to worry him needlessly, and he is utterly determined to see you well married.”

“But what will happen to him when Andrew comes to take me home?” Her eyes widened as a new problem occurred to her. “And what will people here think when I—I toss you over to marry Andrew?”

Amusement gleamed in Jason’s eyes at her choice of expressions.
“If
that happens, we’ll say you’re honoring a former betrothal arranged by your father. In England, it is a daughter’s duty to marry to suit her family, and everyone will understand. Charles will miss you, but if he believes you’re happy, it will soften the blow. However,” he added, “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Charles has told me about Bainbridge, and I agree that he is probably a weak man who is under his widowed mother’s thumb. Without your presence in America to reinforce his courage and determination, he’s not likely to get up the gumption to defy his mother and come after you.”

“Oh, for heaven’s—” Victoria burst out, exasperated at his misconception of Andrew.

“I’m not finished,” Jason interrupted authoritatively. “It’s also apparent to me that your father wasn’t particularly eager for the two of you to wed—not if he insisted on a trial separation to test your feelings for each other, when you’ve already known each other all your lives. You were not betrothed to Bainbridge at the time of your father’s death, Victoria,” Jason finished implacably. “Therefore, if he does arrive on our doorstep, he will have to gain
my
approval before I will permit you to marry him and return to America.”

Victoria was torn between anger and laughter at his gall. “Of all the nerve!” she sputtered, her thoughts tumbling over themselves. “You’ve never met him and you’ve already decided what sort of man he is. And now you are saying I can’t leave with him unless he passes muster with
you,
you who practically tossed me out on my ear the day I arrived at Wakefield!” It was all so absurd that Victoria started to laugh. “Do you know, I never have the faintest idea what you are going to do or say next to astound me. I don’t know what to do where you’re concerned.”