by Meggin Cabot
Except, of course, that she doubted being kissed by someone one detested was supposed to trigger anything but feelings of revulsion. And she, oddly enough, felt far from revolted by Jacob Carstairs’s kisses.
Oh, dear! For the first time since leaving India, Victoria found herself longing for her wise old ayah, who would surely have been able to clear up this very disturbing mystery for her—would have been able satisfactorily to explain why it was that, even though she hated Jacob Carstairs, the feel of his lips on hers made her heart beat so quickly inside her chest, she thought it might explode. Her heart had never beaten this quickly when Lord Malfrey kissed her… and he was her own fiancé! Something, Victoria felt sure, was very, very wrong….
Especially considering the fact that, when Jacob lifted his lips from hers and started to say her name in a voice that sounded quite unlike his own, it was so ragged, Victoria only pulled his head down and started kissing him even more passionately than before….
What might have happened if they’d remained undisturbed, Victoria later shuddered to think. He might possibly have proposed, and she might—la! What a joke!—possibly have accepted.
Fortunately, however, someone tried the terrace doors, and, hearing the latch rattle, the two of them sprang apart, Victoria with cheeks she was sure were scarlet, and Jacob with a dark curl of hair falling rakishly over one eye.
“Vicky?” Rebecca called, tugging on the latch. “Are you two still out there? Why won’t the doors open? Are they stuck?”
Jacob, with a composure of mind Victoria quite envied, reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew the key.
“Yes,” he said, in a voice that was a good deal steadier than any Victoria could have summoned. “They stick sometimes when it rains.” Then, with one last penetrating—and, to Victoria, anyway, inscrutable—glance in her direction, he turned the key and opened the doors.
“Ah,” he said, grinning in the rectangle of light that spilled out from the drawing room, and looking far handsomer than any man Victoria had ever seen. “There. That’s better. Lady Victoria, will you come in?”
Victoria, perfectly incapable of meeting anyone’s gaze—but most of all the one belonging to the man she’d just been kissing—hurried inside, where she was immediately accused by her aunt, because of her high color, of having caught a chill while out-of-doors, and was summarily sent to bed with a hot brick as soon as she returned home… a turn of events that did not dismay her at all, as it happened, since her bed now seemed the only place in London where she was safe from the vagaries of her own heart.
CHAPTER TEN
Victoria stood before the mirror in the bedroom she and Rebecca shared, carefully twirling one strand of brown hair around each of her index fingers, then examining the results. It was not ideal, she supposed, but it would have to do. She didn’t have time to wait for Mariah and her curling iron.
“Oh!” Rebecca—still in her dressing gown, her own hair tied up in many brightly colored strips of rag—rolled over on the bed and exclaimed, “Oh, Vicky, you must hear this part; it is too romantic.”
And before Victoria could protest that she had had her fill of romance, thank you very much, Rebecca read aloud from the letter she had received earlier that morning from the extremely prolific Mr. Abbott:
“‘Your lips,’” Rebecca read, “‘are like sun-kissed cherries. Your skin, the purest cream. Your hair is gold as honey, and your voice an orchestral dream…. ’”
Victoria said politely, “Isn’t that lovely?” and refrained from asking what an orchestral dream might be.
“He’s really a very talented poet, isn’t he?” Rebecca rolled over again, this time onto her back, and, holding Mr. Abbott’s letter at arm’s length, admired the way his manly handwriting looked from afar. “I told him he ought to write a book. A book of poems. He could dedicate it to me. Haven’t you always longed to have a book of poems dedicated to you, Vicky?”
Victoria, giving up on her curls, reached instead for her second-best bonnet. It was, a glance out the windows showed her, pouring outside (what else was new?), and she was not about to risk her favorite hat in such a deluge.
“Yes,” she replied, without having really heard the question.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of that happening to you, is there, Vicky?” Rebecca glanced slyly in Victoria’s direction. “I’m sure Lord Malfrey doesn’t write poetry. He’s not nearly as cerebral as Charles, is he?”
“Yes,” Victoria said absently. “Have you seen my umbrella, Becky? Or did I leave it downstairs?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “Should you really be going out, Vicky? After all, you looked to be at death’s door just last night. Wherever can you be going, anyway, on such a dreary morning?”
“I’ve an appointment,” Victoria said tersely. “With Lord Malfrey.”
“With Lord Malfrey? Well, surely you can change it.” Rebecca glanced meaningfully at the windows. “It can’t be worth going out in all this.”
“It is,” Victoria replied, slipping on a pair of gloves. “Believe me.”
“I think you’re being ridiculous. He’d surely understand if you sent a note to say you’ll see him later, when the rain stops. The last thing you want, Vicky, is a red nose on your wedding day, and if you keep up with this, that’s surely what you’ll get. Come in,” Rebecca called, in response to a tap at the door.
Mariah opened the door, then bobbed a curtsy, exactly the way Victoria had taught her.
“Begging your pardon, miss,” she said, very respectfully, to Rebecca. “But Captain Carstairs is downstairs, and wishes a word with Lady Victoria.”
Victoria did not pause as she stuffed a handkerchief and several spare hairpins into her reticule.
“Tell the captain I am not at home,” she said without looking up.
Rebecca laid down her letter and regarded her cousin curiously. “Captain Carstairs? Here so early in the day? And in such weather as this? Vicky, surely it must be something quite important to have brought him out in the rain. You can’t not see him.”
“Tell Captain Carstairs I’m out,” Victoria told Mariah. “And you don’t know when I shall return.”
Mariah bobbed another curtsy and was about to withdraw when Rebecca stopped her.
“Stay, Mariah,” she said, and sat up, her gaze on Victoria. “Vicky, use your head. You can’t say you’re not here. You’re about to go out. Supposing he sees you leave the house?”
“I don’t care,” Victoria said darkly. “Mariah, tell him I’m in bed with a headache.”
This time Rebecca did not attempt to stop the maid, who closed the door quietly behind her instead of banging, as had been her custom until Victoria cured her of it.
“Vicky,” Rebecca exclaimed. “You are being very rude about poor Captain Carstairs! Ruder, even, than usual. Did he say something to anger you last night?”
“No,” Victoria said, reaching for her pelisse.
“Well, did he… did he insult you, then?”
“No,” Victoria said, throwing the cape about her shoulders and fastening it.
“Then why won’t you see him?” Rebecca wanted to know.
Victoria could not, of course, tell her cousin the truth—that she knew precisely why Captain Carstairs was downstairs so early in the morning on such a rainy day. He had already sent, by first post, a note that had contained only three words… but three words that had thrilled along Victoria’s every vein, even as she’d quickly crumpled the note and hidden it out of sight beneath the bacon platter:
We must talk.
Yours, J. Carstairs
Victoria had not been surprised to see that the captain’s handwriting was exactly like him, bold and commanding.
Well, the captain was in for a very unpleasant surprise if he thought that Victoria was like one of his crewmen, and would meekly do as she was bidden. She didn’t know why she’d kissed him the way she had the night before— she had been up virtually all night trying to s
uss it out— but as far as she was concerned, it was a mystery that could remain unsolved forever. Under no circumstances did she ever plan to “talk” to the captain about it… or to anyone else, for that matter.
“Because I’m late enough as it is,” Victoria said airily in response to Rebecca’s question. “Good-bye.”
And then, before her cousin could say another word, Victoria hurried from the room they shared, and tripped down the hall to the servants’ staircase, since there was no point in claiming to Captain Carstairs she was in bed with a headache if she was only going to run into him on the front steps.
But it wasn’t Jacob Carstairs Victoria very nearly fell over as she was hurrying down the staircase, but her second-eldest cousin, Clara, who was seated on the landing sobbing her eyes out in a fashion that would have put many a Shakespearean actress to shame.
Oh, Lord, Victoria thought, lifting her eyes to the ceiling. Was her work in this family never to be done? Was she forever to go from one to the other of the Gardiners, rescuing them from whatever personal crisis befell them next?
Sighing, Victoria sank onto the landing beside the fitfully sobbing Clara, and said, “Now, Clara, dry your eyes and tell me all about it. I haven’t long—there’s a carriage waiting—so do try to make it short.”
Clara hiccupped, wiped her nose on the back of her hand (prompting Victoria to reach into her reticule and offer her clean handkerchief), and said, “Oh, Cousin Vicky. I… I am so afraid I sh-shall never find my one true love.”
Victoria nodded. “Well, you are only fourteen, after all,” she said crisply. “It isn’t as if you haven’t time.”
“But supposing I n-never meet him?” Clara demanded, her blue eyes very wide and tearfilled. “Or supposing I already met him, and let him get away? Supposing my one true love is Robert Dunleavy? Last week I told Robert Dunleavy that his teeth reminded me of… of a cemetery!”
Victoria raised her eyebrows at this. “That was unkind. But how…?”
“Oh, you know,” Clara said exasperatedly. “His teeth stick out every which way, like headstones, only inside his mouth.”
Victoria nodded. “Well, yes. I think it highly unlikely Mr. Dunleavy is going to think kindly of you after pointing out something like that to him. However, it is equally unlikely that Mr. Dunleavy is your one true love. Or at least, if he is, you still have several years before you can be qualified as on the shelf, and things get absolutely desperate. It’s possible that in the interim, Mr. Dunleavy will have forgotten about your unfortunate remark.”
Clara, sniffling, asked, “Cousin Vicky, if I do get to be seventeen or eighteen—you know, Becky’s age—and I haven’t found my one true love, will you find him for me? The way you did for Becky? Will you, please? It would be such a weight off my mind.”
Victoria promised solemnly that she would, and Clara, brightening, dried her eyes and scampered away. Victoria straightened her skirts and started to continue down the stairs, only to find her way blocked just beyond the landing where she’d sat with her cousin by none other than Jacob Carstairs himself!
A Jacob Carstairs who had, evidently, been standing there some time, anticipating her escape. And who’d also evidently overheard the entirety of her conversation with her cousin Clara.
“Robert Dunleavy,” he observed dryly, blocking Victoria’s way along the narrow staircase with his broad shoulders, “will have five thousand a year and an estate in Devonshire one day. For all that, I would think Clara could learn to overlook his teeth.”
It was all Victoria could do to remain upright, she was so startled to find him there. Her heart seemed to have swooped up into her throat, and she had to clutch at the walls on either side of the narrow staircase in order to keep from falling over.
“You!” she exclaimed, beside herself with anger—or so she told herself, anyway. For surely it was only rage— white-hot rage—that was making her knees shake and her cheeks burn. “What are you… How dare you… Why aren’t you in the sitting room, where Mariah left you?”
“Wait in the sitting room like a fool, while you creep out the back door?” Jacob Carstairs grinned at her in a manner she found most insolent. “Not likely. I’m not an ass. I knew you’d mutiny. You’re the type. Now, why won’t you talk to me? And where do you think you’re going in all this rain?”
Victoria, furious that now she was going to have to have a confrontation with him before she’d had a chance mentally to prepare for one—she’d spent all night preparing mentally for a confrontation with quite a different fellow—spat, “None of your business! I don’t have to tell you anything. You don’t own me. Now get out of my way.”
Jacob seemed to find her ire highly amusing—which only served, of course, to increase it.
“Far be it from me,” he said with a chuckle, “to stand in the path of a busy bee like yourself. I’m certain you are off on some new errand of mercy. Some other innocent maid, perhaps, who needs help finding her… how did Clara put it? Her one true love?”
Victoria stood on the step above his, inwardly seething. She was so angry she couldn’t think of a word to say.
“Poor Miss Bee,” Jacob said. “First Rebecca, now Clara. How are you ever going to find your own true love, when you are so busy helping others find theirs?”
Victoria was not, by nature, a violent creature. But she had really taken all that she felt she could, and his snide remark sent her right over the edge. How could he—how could he be so cavalier about it, after what he’d told her about Lord Malfrey the night before?
And so she laid firm hands on Jacob Carstairs’s coat front and pushed him against the wall as hard as she could. Then, as he was struggling to find his balance, she brushed quickly past him and ran the rest of the way down the steps, ignoring his cries of, “Lady Victoria!” She was out of the house and safely inside the confines of the Gardiners’ carriage before he burst from the house, looking very penitent indeed… and, she noted with satisfaction, very wet.
Victoria leaned back against the leather seat, but she could not relax. How could she, knowing the odious task that lay before her? She was deeply unhappy with Jacob Carstairs, because he had managed to completely destroy what little equanimity she had possessed before running into him like that in the stairwell. What was it about that man that managed to discompose her so? She had never met anyone who was as capable as he seemed to be of arousing the worst in her.
Well, she would not think about Jacob Carstairs anymore. She had far more pressing problems at the moment… and the primary one was that they were pulling up in front of the house in which Lord Malfrey and his mother were renting rooms for the season.
Victoria took a deep, steadying breath, and reached up to give her curls a last twirl with her gloved fingers. She was not at all happy about what she knew she had to do now. But there was a chance—there was always a chance—that Captain Carstairs had underestimated the earl… or even that Hugo had learned his lesson, and had grown as a person during the time he’d spent abroad. Maybe he simply hadn’t loved Margaret Carstairs. Maybe he—
The coach jerked to a halt, and the Gardiners’ footman opened the carriage door for Victoria, and held her umbrella over her as she climbed down from the vehicle, then up the steps to the door.
Lord Malfrey was—as he’d promised to be when Victoria sent her message to him, early that morning—at home. He was even waiting for Victoria in the rented sitting room he and his mother shared. His mother, however, was not there—much to Victoria’s relief. She was, his lordship informed Victoria, still asleep. The rain, he said, gave her megrims.
Victoria said she was very sorry to hear it, declined Lord Malfrey’s offer of something hot to drink in order to ward off the morning chill, and sat still for a moment on the tuffeted seat he had offered, trying to collect her thoughts. Outside, the rain poured down. Inside the sitting room, with its slightly ostentatious decor, Lord Malfrey seemed attentive as ever, praising her curls, which were, Victoria knew, limp at best,
thanks to the weather.
Finally, after gazing at the earl for some time, and wondering how on earth she could ever—ever!—have thought Jacob Carstairs handsome, when Hugo Rothschild was so clearly a superior physical specimen, Victoria summoned her courage, and said, “I’m afraid I’ve received some very bad news, my lord.”
Lord Malfrey, who was picking out a tune on the room’s pianoforte, looked unconcerned. “Really, my love? Don’t tell me your wedding gown won’t be ready on time. I told you to go to Madame Dessange’s. Brown’s is scandalously overpriced, and never has anything ready in time.”
“It isn’t my wedding gown,” Victoria replied from her chair. She kept her gaze on her gloved hands, folded tightly in her lap. “It’s my uncles. I’ve received a letter from their solicitors, and it contains… it contains what I fear might be bad news.”
Lord Malfrey looked up sharply from the keyboard, his blue-eyed gaze very penetrating indeed.
“They’re well, aren’t they?” he asked. “Your uncles?” Then, with slightly less urgency, “Oh, they’re your mother’s brothers, aren’t they? I’d forgotten.”
Victoria winced. This eagerness on Lord Malfrey’s part to learn whether one of her uncles was likely to die soon— and possibly leave her yet another inheritance—was not a good sign. Her father, of course, had been the one with the title and fortune. Her uncles had nothing but their military pensions to live upon.
Lord Malfrey, realizing this, looked unconcerned again, and began plunking out another tune, not very well.
“My uncles are fine,” Victoria continued with some irritation. Really, this was not going at all as she’d planned. Perhaps she was not acting disturbed enough. Oh, what she’d give for her cousin Clara’s ability to produce dramatic tears on demand! “It’s just that… there’s been a terrible mistake.”
