Once and Always (7 page)

Charles’s head snapped around and he stared at her, his face draining of color. “Almighty God!” he breathed, and slowly came to his feet, his gaze clinging to the exotic young beauty standing before him. He saw Katherine, exactly as she had looked so many years ago. How well, and how lovingly, he remembered that incredibly beautiful, fine-boned face with its gracefully winged eyebrows and long, thick lashes framing eyes the color of huge iridescent sapphires. He recognized that soft, smiling mouth, the elegant little nose, that tiny, enchanting dimple in her stubborn chin, and the glorious mass of red-gold hair that tumbled over her shoulders in riotous abandon.

Putting his left hand on the back of the chair to steady himself, he extended his shaking right hand to her. “Katherine—” he whispered.

Uncertainly, Victoria put her hand in his outstretched palm, and his long fingers closed tightly around hers. “Katherine,” he whispered again hoarsely, and Victoria saw the sparkle of tears in his eyes.

“My mother’s name was Katherine,” she said gently.

His grip on her hand tightened almost painfully. “Yes,” he whispered. He cleared his throat and his voice became more normal. “Yes, of course,” he said, and shook his head as if to clear it. He was surprisingly tall, Victoria noticed, and very thin, with hazel eyes that studied her features in minute detail. “So,” he said briskly, “you are Katherine’s daughter.”

Victoria nodded, not quite certain how to take him. “My name is Victoria.”

An odd tenderness glowed in his eyes. “Mine is Charles
Victor
Fielding.”

“I—I see,” she mumbled.

“No,” he said. “You don’t see.” He smiled, a gentle smile that took decades off his age. “You don’t see at all.” And then, without warning, he enfolded her in a tight embrace. “Welcome home, child,” he said in an emotion-choked voice as he patted her back and hugged her close. “Welcome.” And Victoria felt oddly as if she might truly be home.

He let her go with a sheepish smile and pulled out a chair for her. “You must be starved. O’Malley!” he said to the footman who was stationed at a sideboard laden with covered silver dishes. “We’re both famished.”

“Yes, your grace,” the footman said, turning aside and beginning to nil two plates.

“I apologize most sincerely for not having a coach waiting for you when you arrived,” Charles said. “I never dreamed you would arrive early—the packets from America are routinely late, I was told. Now, then, did you have a pleasant voyage?” he asked her as the footman placed a plate filled with eggs, potatoes, kidneys, ham, and crusty French rolls before her.

Victoria glanced at the array of ornate gold flatware on either side of her plate and breathed a prayer of gratitude to her mother for teaching Dorothy and her the proper uses for each piece. “Yes, a very pleasant voyage,” she answered with a smile, then added with awkward shyness,“—your grace.”

“Good heavens,” Charles said, chuckling, “I hardly think we need stand on such ceremony. If we do, then I shall have to call you Countess Langston or Lady Victoria. I shan’t like that a bit, you know—I’d much prefer ‘Uncle Charles’ for myself and ’Victoria‘ for you. What do you say?”

Victoria found herself responding to his warmth with an affection that was already taking root deep in her heart. “I’d like that very much. I’m sure I’d never remember to answer to Countess Langston—whoever that is—and Lady Victoria doesn’t sound at all like me either.”

Charles gave her an odd look as he placed his napkin on his lap. “But you are both of those people. Your mother was the only child of the Earl and Countess of Langston. They died when she was a young girl, but their title was of Scottish origin and it passed to her. You are her eldest child; therefore the title is now yours.”

Victoria’s blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “And what am
I
to do with it?”

“Do what we all do,” he said, and chuckled. “Flaunt it.” He paused while O’Malley deftly slid a plate in front of him. “Actually, I think there’s a small estate in Scotland that might go with the title. Perhaps not. What did your mother tell you?”

“Nothing. Mama never spoke of England or her life here. Dorothy and I always assumed she was... well, an ordinary person.”

“There was nothing ‘ordinary’ about your mama,” he said softly. Victoria heard the thread of emotion in his voice and wondered about it, but when she started to question him about her mother’s life in England, he shook his head and said lightly, “Someday I shall tell you all about. . . everything. But not yet. For now, let’s get to know each other.”

An hour passed with unbelievable swiftness as Victoria answered Charles’s pleasantly worded questions. By the time breakfast was over, she realized, he had smoothly gleaned from her an exact picture of her life, right up to the time of her arrival at his door with an armful of squealing piglet. She’d told him about the villagers at home, about her father, and about Andrew. For some reason, hearing about the last two seemed to severely dampen his spirits, yet those were the two people he seemed to be most interested in. About her mother, he carefully avoided inquiring.

“I confess I’m confused about the matter of your betrothal to this fellow Andrew Bainbridge,” he said when she was finished, his forehead etched with a deep frown. “The letter I received from your friend Dr. Morrison made no mention of it. Quite the opposite—he said you and your sister were alone in the world. Did your father give his blessing to this betrothal?”

“Yes and no,” Victoria said, wondering why he looked so distressed about it. “You see, Andrew and I have known each other forever, but Papa always insisted that I must be eighteen before I became formally betrothed. He felt it was too serious a commitment for a younger female to make.”

“Very wise of him,” Charles agreed. “However, you became eighteen before your father passed away, and yet you still are not formally betrothed to Bainbridge, is that correct?”

“Well, yes.”

“Because your father still withheld his consent?”

“Not exactly. Shortly before my birthday, Mrs. Bainbridge—Andrew’s widowed mama—proposed to my father that Andrew should take a shortened version of the Grand Tour to test our commitment to each other, and to give him what she called a ‘last fling.’ Andrew thought the idea was nonsensical, but my papa was fully in agreement with Mrs. Bainbridge.”

“It sounds to me as if your father was extremely reluctant to have you marry the young man. After all, you’ve known each other for years, so there was no real need to test your commitment to each other. That sounds very much like an excuse, not a reason. For that matter, it seems to me that Andrew’s mother is also opposed to the match.”

The duke sounded as if he were firmly setting his mind against Andrew, which left Victoria no choice but to explain the whole, embarrassing truth. “Papa had no reservations about Andrew making me an excellent husband. He had serious reservations about my life with my future mother-in-law, however. She is a widow, you see, and very attached to Andrew. Besides that, she is prone to all sorts of illnesses that make her somewhat ill-tempered.”

“Ah,” said the duke in an understanding way. “And how serious are these illnesses of hers?”

Victoria’s cheeks warmed. “According to what my father told her on one occasion when I was present, her illnesses are feigned. When she was very young, she did have a certain weakness of the heart, but Papa said that getting out of bed would help her far more than staying in it and wallowing in self-pity. They—they didn’t like each other very well, you see.”

“Yes, and I can understand why!” The duke chuckled. “Your papa was entirely right to throw obstructions in the way of your marriage, my dear. Your life would have been very unhappy.”

“It won’t be unhappy at all,” Victoria said firmly, determined to marry Andrew with or without the duke’s approval. “Andrew realizes that his mother uses her illnesses to try to manipulate him, and he doesn’t let it stop him from doing what he wishes to do. He only agreed to go on this tour because my father insisted he should.”

“Have you received many letters from him?”

“Only one, but you see, Andrew left for Europe only a fortnight before my parents’ accident three months ago, and it takes almost that long to get letters to and from Europe. I wrote to him, telling him what happened, and I wrote to him again, just before I sailed for England, to give him my direction here. I expect he’s on his way home right now, thinking he is coming to my rescue. I wanted to stay in New York and wait for him to return, which would have been much simpler for everyone, but Dr. Morrison wouldn’t hear of it. He was convinced for some reason that Andrew’s feelings would not withstand the test of time. No doubt Mrs. Bainbridge told him something like that, which is the sort of thing she would do, I suppose.”

Victoria sighed and glanced out the windows. “She would much prefer Andrew to marry someone of more importance than the daughter of a penniless physician.”

“Or better yet, that he marry no one at all and remain tied to her bedside?” the duke ventured, his brows raised. “A widow who feigns illnesses sounds like a very possessive, domineering sort to me.”

Victoria couldn’t deny it, so rather than condemn her future mother-in-law, she remained charitably silent on that subject. “Some of the families in the village offered to let me remain with them until Andrew returned, but that solution wasn’t a very good one. Among other things, if Andrew returned and found me staying with them, well, he would have been furious.”

“With you?” his grace asked, frowning in annoyance at poor Andrew.

“No, with his mother, for not insisting that I stay with her instead.”

“Oh,” he said, but even though her explanation completely vindicated Andrew of any possible blame, Charles seemed somewhat depressed by it. “The man sounds like a countrified paragon of virtue,” he muttered.

“You will like him very much,” Victoria predicted, smiling. “He will come here to bring me home, you’ll see.”

Charles patted her hand. “Let’s forget about Andrew and be glad you’re here in England. Now, tell me how you like it thus far...”

Victoria told him she liked what she had seen very much, and Charles responded by describing the life he had planned for her here. To begin with, he wanted her to have a new wardrobe and a trained lady’s maid to assist her. Victoria was about to refuse when she caught sight of the dark, forbidding figure striding toward the table with the silent sureness of a dangerous savage, his buckskin breeches molding his muscular legs and thighs, his white shirt open at his tanned throat. This morning, he seemed even taller than she’d thought yesterday, lean and superbly fit. His thick black hair was slightly curly, his nose straight, his stern mouth finely chiseled. In fact, if it weren’t for the arrogant authority stamped in his rugged jawline and the cynicism in his cold green eyes, Victoria would have thought him almost breathtakingly handsome.

“Jason!” Charles said heartily. “Allow me to properly present you to Victoria. Jason is my nephew,” he added to Victoria.

Nephew! She’d hoped he might only be a visitor, but he was a relative who probably lived with Charles, she realized now. The knowledge made Victoria feel slightly ill at the same time that her pride forced her to lift her chin and calmly meet Jason’s ruthless stare. Acknowledging the brief introduction with a curt nod, he seated himself across from her and looked at O’Malley. “Is it too much to hope that there is any food left?”

The footman quailed visibly. “I—no, my lord. There isn’t. That is, there’s enough to eat, but it may not be quite warm enough. I’ll go down to the kitchens at once and have cook fix something fresh and hot.” He rushed out.

“Jason,” Charles said, “I’ve just been suggesting to Victoria that she ought to have a suitable lady’s maid and a wardrobe more appropriate to—”

“No,” Jason said flatly.

Victoria’s urge to flee promptly overpowered every other instinct. “If you’ll excuse me, Uncle Charles,” she said, “I—I have some things to do.”

Charles shot her a grateful, apologetic look and politely stood up as she arose, but his obnoxious nephew merely lounged back in his chair, observing her retreat with bored distaste.

“None of this is Victoria’s fault,” Charles began as the footmen started to close the doors behind Victoria. “You must understand that.”

“Really?” Jason drawled sarcastically. “And does that whining little beggar understand that this is my house and I don’t want her here?”

The doors closed behind her, but Victoria had already heard enough.
A beggar! A whining beggar!
Humiliation washed over her in sickening waves as she fled blindly down the hall. Apparently, Charles had invited her here without his nephew’s consent.

Victoria’s face was pale but set as she walked into her room and opened her trunk.

Back in the dining room, Charles was pleading with the hardened cynic across from him. “Jason, you don’t understand—”

“You brought her to England,” Jason snapped. “Since you want her here so badly, take her to London to live with you.”

“I can’t do that!” Charles argued vehemently. “She’s not ready to face the
ton
yet. There’s much to be done before she can make her debut in London. Among other things, we’ll need an older woman to stay with her as a chaperone for the sake of appearances.”

Jason nodded impatiently at the footman who was hovering at his elbow with the silver coffeepot, waiting for permission to pour, and when he had finished dismissed him from the room. Then he turned to Charles and said harshly, “I want her out of here tomorrow—is that clear? Take her to London or send her home, but get her out! I’m not going to spend a cent on her. If you want to give her a London season, then you’ll have to find some other way to pay for it.”

Charles wearily rubbed his temples. “Jason, I know you aren’t as heartless and unfeeling as you sound right now. At least let me tell you about her.”

Leaning back in his chair, Jason regarded him with icy boredom while Charles plowed doggedly ahead. “Her parents were killed a few months ago in an accident. In one tragic day Victoria lost her mother, her father, her home, her security—everything.” When Jason remained silent and unmoved, Charles ran out of patience. “Dammit! Have you forgotten how you felt when you lost Jamie? Victoria has lost all three of the people she loved, including the young man she was halfway betrothed to. She’s foolish enough to believe the fellow will come running to her rescue in the next few weeks, but his mother’s against the match. You mark my words, he’ll yield to his mama’s wishes now that Victoria is an ocean away. Her sister is now the ward of the Duchess of Claremont, so even her sister’s companionship is denied Victoria now. Think how she feels, Jason! You’re not unacquainted with death and loss—or have you forgotten the pain?”