Once and Always

by Judith McNaught

  Until then he had managed to support himself well enough at the gaming tables, but capricious luck, which had always been with him, eventually deserted him. By the time he was thirty-two, Charles was compelled to face the fact that he could no longer maintain a reasonably genteel standard of living, as befitted a man of his birth, with the proceeds of his gambling alone. His problem was common to the impecunious younger sons of great noble houses, and Charles solved it in the time-honored way: he decided to exchange his illustrious family name for a fat dowry. With careless indifference, he proposed marriage to the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a young lady of great wealth, some beauty, and little intelligence.

  The young lady and her father eagerly accepted his suit, and Charles’s older brother, the duke, even agreed to give a party to celebrate the forthcoming nuptials.

  It was on that auspicious occasion that Charles again encountered his very distant cousin, Katherine Langston, the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the Duchess of Claremont. When last he had seen her, he had been paying a rare visit to his brother at Wakefield and Katherine had been a child of ten, staying for the holidays at a neighboring estate. For an entire fortnight she had followed him nearly everywhere he went, gazing at him with open adoration in her big blue eyes. He had thought her an uncommonly pretty little moppet then, with an enchanting smile and more spirit than females twice her age, as she took fences beside him astride her mare and charmed him into flying kites with her.

  Now she had grown into a young woman of breathtaking beauty, and Charles could scarcely tear his eyes from her.

  With an outward appearance of bored impassivity, he studied her stunning figure, her flawless features, and her glorious red-gold hair as she stood off to the side of the crowded room, looking serene and ethereal. Then he strolled over to her with a glass of Madeira in one hand and casually draped his other arm across the mantel, boldly and openly admiring her beauty. He expected her to voice a token objection to his forwardness, but Katherine did not voice any objection at all. She did not blush beneath his frank appraisal, nor did she turn away from it. She simply tipped her head to the side as if she was waiting for him to finish. “Hello, Katherine,” he said finally.

  “Hello, Charles,” she answered, her soft voice calm, unruffled.

  “Are you finding the party as insufferably dull as I am, my dear?” he asked, surprised at her composure.

  Instead of stammering some inanity about it being a delightful party, Katherine had raised her disconcertingly direct blue gaze to his and quietly replied, “It is a fitting prelude to a marriage that is to be undertaken for cold, monetary reasons, and no other.”

  Her blunt candor amazed him, but not nearly as much as the strange, accusing look that darkened her blue eyes before she turned and started to walk away. Without thinking, Charles reached out to stop her from leaving. The touch of her bare arm beneath his hand sent a tingling jolt through his entire nervous system, a jolt that Katherine must also have felt because her whole body stiffened. Instead of drawing her toward him, Charles guided her forward, out onto the balcony. In the moonlight he turned to her and, because her accusation had stung, his voice was hard. “It’s presumptuous of you to assume money is my only reason for marrying Amelia. People have other reasons for marrying.”

  Again those disconcerting blue eyes of hers gazed into his. “Not people like us,” she contradicted calmly. “We marry to increase our family’s wealth, power, or social position. In your case, you are marrying to increase your wealth.”

  Charles was, of course, trading his aristocratic lineage to gain money, and although it was a commonly accepted practice, she made him feel less of a man for doing so. “And what about you?” he taunted. “Will you not marry for one of those reasons?”

  “No,” she replied softly. “I will not. I will marry because I love someone, and am loved in return. I will not settle for a marriage like my parents had. I want more from life than that and I have more to give.”

  The softly spoken words had been filled with such quiet conviction that Charles had simply stared at her before he finally said, “Your lady grandmother will not be pleased if you marry for love and not position, my dear. Gossip has it that she wants an alliance with the Winstons and she means for you to secure it for her.”

  Katherine smiled for the first time, a slow, enchanting smile that illuminated her face and turned Charles’s bones to water. “My grandmother and I,” she said lightly, “have long been at outs over this matter, but I am as determined as she to have my way.”

  She looked so beautiful, so fresh and unspoiled, that the armor of cynicism that had surrounded Charles for thirty years began to melt, leaving him suddenly lonely and empty. Without realizing what he was doing, he lifted his hand and reverently traced her smooth cheek with his fingertips. “I hope the man you love is worthy of you,” he said tenderly.

  For an endless moment, Katherine had searched his features as if she could see beyond his face, into his tired, disillusioned soul. “I think,” she whispered softly, “that it will be more a question of whether I can be worthy of him. You see, he needs me rather badly, although he is only just now coming to realize it.”

  After a moment her meaning slammed into him, and Charles heard himself groan her name with the sudden feverish longing of a man who has just found what he has unconsciously been searching for his entire life—a woman who could love him for himself, for the men he could be, the man he wanted to be. And Katherine had no other reason to want him or love him; her bloodline was as aristocratic as his own, her connections far better, her wealth vastly superior.

  Charles gazed at her, trying to deny the feelings that were coursing through him. This was insane, he told himself. He scarcely knew her. He was no young fool who believed that grown men and women tumbled into love with one another at first glance. He had not even believed in love at all until that moment. But he believed in it now, for he wanted this beautiful, intelligent, idealistic girl to love him and only him. For once in his life, he had found something rare and fine and unspoiled, and he was determined to keep this girl that way—to marry her and cherish her, to protect her from the cynicism that seemed to erode everyone in their social class.

  The prospect of eventually breaking his betrothal to Amelia did not trouble his conscience, for he harbored no illusions as to her reasons for agreeing to marry him. She was attracted to him, he knew, but she was marrying him because her father wanted to be allied with the nobility.

  For two blissful, magnificent weeks, Katherine and he had managed to keep their growing love a secret; two weeks of stolen moments alone, of quiet walks through the countryside, of shared laughter and dreams of the future.

  At the end of that time, Charles could no longer put off the required meeting with the Dowager Duchess of Claremont. He wanted to marry Katherine.

  He was prepared for the duchess to object, for although his family was an old and noble one, he was an untitled younger son. Still, such marriages took place often enough, and he had expected her to put up a token argument and then capitulate because Katherine wanted this union as badly as he. He had not expected her to be almost demented with wrath, or to call him a “dissolute opportunist” and a “corrupt, lecherous degenerate.” He hadn’t expected her to rail about his ancestors’ and his own promiscuous behavior, or to call his forebears “irresponsible madmen, one and all.”

  But most of all, he had not expected her to swear that if Katherine married him, she would disown her and cut her off without a cent. Such things simply weren’t done. But when he left the house that day, Charles knew the woman would do exactly as she threatened. He returned to his lodgings and spent the night in alternate states of rage and despair. By morning, he knew that he could not—would not—marry Katherine, for although he was willing to try to earn an honest living, with his own two hands if need be, he could not bear to see his proud, beautiful Katherine brought low because of him. He would not cause her to be cut off from her family and pu
blicly shunned by society.

  Even if he thought he could make up to her for the disgrace she would endure, he knew he could never let her become a common house-drudge. She was young and idealistic and in love with him, but she was also accustomed to beautiful gowns and servants to do her every bidding. If he had to work for a living he could not possibly give her those things. Katherine had never washed a dish, or scrubbed a floor, or pressed a shirt, and he would not see her reduced to doing these things because she had been foolish enough to love him.

  When he was finally able to arrange a brief, clandestine meeting with her the following day, Charles told her of his decision. Katherine argued that the luxuries of life meant nothing to her; she pleaded with him to take her to America, where it was said any man could make a decent living if he was only willing to work for it.

  Unable to endure her tears or his own anguish, Charles had gruffly told her that her ideas were foolish, that she could never survive a life in America. She had looked at him as if he was afraid to work for a living, and then she had brokenly accused him of wanting her dowry, not her—exactly as her grandmother had told her he did.

  To Charles, who was unselfishly sacrificing his own happiness for her, her accusation had cut like a knife. “Believe that if you wish,” he had snapped, forcing himself to turn away from her before he lost his resolve and eloped with her that very day. He started for the door, but he could not bear to have her think he had only wanted her money. “Katherine,” he said, pausing without turning. “I beg you not to believe that of me.”

  “I don’t,” she whispered brokenly. Neither did she believe he would put an end to their hopeless, tormented longing for each other by marrying Amelia the following week. But that was exactly what Charles did. It was the first entirely unselfish act of his life.

  Katherine attended his wedding with her grandmother, and for as long as he lived, Charles would never forget the look of betrayal in Katherine’s eyes when he finished pledging his life to another woman.

  Two months later, she married an Irish physician and left with him for America. She did it, Charles knew, because she was furious with her grandmother and because she could not bear to remain in England near Charles and his new wife. And she did it to prove to him, in the only way she knew how, that her love for him could have survived anything—including a life in America.

  That same year, Charles’s older brother was killed in a stupid drunken duel and Charles inherited the dukedom. He did not inherit a great deal of money with the title, but it would have been enough to keep Katherine in modest luxury. But Katherine was gone; he had not believed that her love was strong enough to withstand a few discomforts. Charles didn’t care about the money he inherited; Charles didn’t care about anything anymore.

  Not long afterward, Charles’s missionary brother died in India, and sixteen years later, Charles’s wife Amelia died.

  The night of Amelia’s funeral, Charles got thoroughly blindly inebriated, as he often did in those days, but on that particular night, as he sat in the gloomy solitude of his house, a new thought occurred to him: someday soon he, too, was going to die. And when he did, the ducal holdings would pass out of the hands of the Fieldings forever. Because Charles had no heir.

  For sixteen years, Charles had lived in an odd, empty limbo, but on that fateful night as he contemplated his meaningless life, something began to grow within him. At first it was only a vague restlessness, then it became disgust; it grew into resentment, and then slowly, very slowly, it built into fury. He had lost Katherine; he had lost sixteen years of his life. He had endured a vapid wife, a loveless marriage, and now he was going to die without an heir. For the first time in 400 years, the ducal title was in danger of passing entirely out of the Fielding family, and Charles was suddenly determined not to throw it away, as he had thrown away the rest of his life.

  True, the Fieldings had not been a particularly honorable or worthy family, but, by God, the title belonged to them and Charles was determined to keep it there.

  In order to do that he needed an heir, which meant he would have to marry again. After all his youthful sexual exploits, the thought of climbing atop a woman now and fathering an heir seemed more tiresome than exciting. He thought wryly of all the pretty wenches he had bedded long ago—of the beautiful French ballerina who had been his mistress and had presented him with a bastard. . . .

  Joy brought him surging to his feet. He didn’t need to marry again, because he already had an heir! He had Jason. Charles wasn’t certain if the laws of succession would allow the ducal title to pass to a bastard son, but it made no difference to him. Jason was a Fielding, and those very few people who had known of Jason’s existence in India believed he was the very legitimate son of Charles’s younger brother. Besides, old King Charles had bestowed a dukedom on three of his bastards, and now he, Charles Fielding, Duke of Atherton, was about to follow suit.

  The next day, Charles hired investigators to make inquiries, but it was two long years before one of the investigators finally sent a report to Charles with specific information. No trace could be found of Charles’s sister-in-law, but Jason had been discovered in Delhi, where he had apparently amassed a fortune in the shipping and trading business. The report began with Jason’s current direction; it ended with all the information the investigator had discovered about Jason’s past.

  Charles’s proud exultation at Jason’s financial successes promptly dissolved into horror and then sick fury as he read of his sister-in-law’s depraved abuse of the innocent child he had handed into her care. When he was finished, he vomited.

  More determined now than ever to make Jason his rightful heir, Charles sent him a letter, asking him to return to England so that he could formally acknowledge him as such.

  When Jason didn’t reply, Charles, with a determination that had long been dormant in his character, set off for Delhi himself. Filled with inexpressible remorse and absolute resolve, he went to Jason’s magnificent home. In their first meeting, he saw firsthand what the investigator’s report had already told him: Jason had married and fathered a son and was living like a king. He also made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with Charles, or with the legacy Charles was trying to offer him. In the ensuing months, while Charles stubbornly remained in India, he slowly succeeded in convincing his cold, reticent son that he had never condoned or imagined the unspeakable abuses Jason had suffered as a child. But he could not convince him to return to England as his heir.

  Jason’s beautiful wife, Melissa, was enthralled with the idea of going to London as the Marchioness of Wakefield, but neither her tantrums nor Charles’s pleadings had the slightest effect on Jason. Jason didn’t give a damn for titles, nor did he possess an ounce of sympathy for the Fieldings’ impending loss of a duchy.

  Charles had nearly given up when he hit upon the perfect argument. One night, while he was watching Jason play with his little son, it dawned on him there was one person Jason would do anything for: Jamie. Jason positively doted on the little boy. And so Charles immediately changed his tack. Instead of trying to convince Jason of the benefits to be had for himself by returning to England, he pointed out that by refusing to permit Charles to make him his heir, Jason was denying little Jamie his birthright. The title, and all that went with it, would eventually be Jamie’s.

  It worked.

  Jason appointed a competent man to handle his business in Delhi and moved his family to England. With every intention of building a “kingdom” for his little boy, Jason voluntarily spent enormous sums of money restoring the rundown Atherton estates to a splendor far beyond any they had ever possessed.

  While Jason was busily supervising the restoration work, Melissa rushed off to London to take her rightful place in society as the new Marchioness of Wakefield. Within a year, gossip about her amorous affairs was raging through London like wildfire. A few months later, she and the child were dead. . . .

  Charles shook himself from his sad reverie and glanced up
as the covers were being removed from the table. “Shall we depart from custom tonight?” he suggested to Victoria. “Instead of the men remaining at the table for port and cigars, would you object if we had them with you in the drawing room? I’m loathe to give up your company.”

  Victoria was unaware of the custom, but in any case she was perfectly happy to break it and said so. When she was about to enter the rose and gold drawing room, however, Charles drew her back and said in a low voice, “I notice you’ve put off mourning early, my dear. If that was your decision, I applaud it—your mother hated black; she told me that when she was a little girl and was forced to wear it for her own parents.” Charles’s penetrating gaze held hers. “Was it your decision, Victoria?”

  “No,” Victoria admitted. “Mr. Fielding had my clothes removed and replaced with these today.”

  He nodded sagely. “Jason has an aversion to symbols of mourning, and judging from the dagger-glances you threw his way at supper, you aren’t happy about what he’s done. You should tell him so,” he said. “Don’t let him intimidate you, child; he can’t abide cowards.”

  “But I don’t want to upset you,” Victoria said worriedly. “You said your heart isn’t strong.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, chuckling. “My heart is a little weak, but not so weak it can’t take some excitement. In fact, it would probably do me a world of good. Life was incredibly dull before you arrived.”

  When Jason was seated and enjoying his port and cigar, Victoria tried several times to do as Charles had bidden her, but each time she looked at Jason and tried to bring up the matter of her clothing, her courage deserted her. He had dressed for dinner tonight in beautifully tailored charcoal gray trousers and matching coat, with a dark blue waistcoat and a pearl gray silk shirt. Despite his elegant attire and the casual way he had stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, he seemed to radiate barely leashed, ruthless power. There was something primitive and dangerous about him, and she had the uneasy feeling that his elegant clothing and indolent stance were nothing but disguises meant to lull the unwary into believing he was civilized, when he wasn’t civilized at all.