by Meggin Cabot
She refused, however, to worry about this seeming coldness on her part. The loss of Lord Malfrey, she told herself, was so profoundly distressing that she couldn’t even weep over it. No, it was clear that inside her chest, her heart was weeping blood….
But she kept this picturesque image to herself, lest Clara overhear it and attempt to employ it during her next impassioned speech about her having not yet discovered her one true love.
Victoria had other things to deal with besides the Gardiners and the cancellation of her wedding plans. No, there was a certain pesky ship captain who kept appearing on her aunt and uncle’s doorstep, demanding to see her. Victoria had, upon waking the morning after her sad parting of ways from Lord Malfrey, penned a quick note to Captain Carstairs in response to the one she’d received from him the day before. Her note was almost as brief as his had been. It said:
Nothing to talk about. Kindly leave me alone.
Yours, V. Arbuthnot
Victoria could not, for the life of her, make out which part of Kindly leave me alone Jacob Carstairs did not understand, but these four words were apparently as foreign to him as Hindustanee, since he showed up at the house shortly after receiving her missive, and would not leave, according to a distraught Mrs. Gardiner, until he’d seen the Lady Victoria.
“I know you’re hardly in the mood for company, Vicky,” her aunt Beatrice said, as Victoria sat at that good lady’s secretary in the morning room, dashing off letters to her bank—for though she felt sorely used by Lord Malfrey, she had been stupid enough to agree to marry him at one point, and so she thought it only fair to pay for such expenditures as the picnic (it was not, after all, the dowager’s fault her son was a cad), and was directing her agents to send checks to cover whatever bills the Rothschilds might have accrued in her name. The only thing for which she swore she would not pay was that ring. That, she felt, had been Hugo’s folly, for which he alone must pay… just as she would, from now until the end of time, have to pay for ever having entertained the idea of marrying him in the first place.
“But,” Mrs. Gardiner went on, “Captain Carstairs is… well, like part of the family. And he does look rather…”
Here the good woman sent a piercing look in her eldest daughter’s direction, but seeing Rebecca gnawing on the tip of her own pen—for she was absorbed in responding to a letter from Mr. Abbott, and was trying to think of a word besides deplorable that rhymed with adorable—decided that it was safe to continue.
“Well, he seems eager to see you,” Mrs. Gardiner went on. “Don’t you think you could just poke your head in and tell him you’re all right? Because he says he won’t leave until he’s had a word, and yesterday, you know, he was here for seven hours—”
Victoria threw down her pen and rose with a sigh.
“Very well, Aunt,” she said, feeling very irritable indeed. She had no idea what game the captain was playing, but she supposed it had something to do with that kiss—that horrid, wretched, wonderful kiss—that she had been trying ever since to put out of her head, without much success. If Lord Malfrey had ever kissed her like that, she supposed she would not have minded in the least that he was only marrying her for her money, so long as he kept on kissing her that way, and on a regular basis.
But as it had been the odious Jacob Carstairs, and not the earl, who’d kissed her with so much passion and abandon, she could only feel agitated over the entire situation.
Victoria left the morning room and went down to the drawing room, where the captain had installed himself to wait for her. She walked in to find him swinging his arms like a gorilla in front of some of the smaller Gardiners, and uttering what she supposed he figured were apelike sounds. His audience sat in rapt and wide-eyed silence before him, until one of them noticed Victoria in the doorway and said, “Look, Cousin Vicky! Uncle Jacob is a monkey!”
“He most certainly is,” Victoria said, as Jacob straightened and, not even looking sheepish, shooed his audience—bitter in their disappointment that the show was over—away.
When they were finally alone, Jacob Carstairs pulled on his waistcoat—not that it did any good: his collar points stayed exactly where they were, still at least two inches lower than any other man’s in England—and, without bothering with social niceties such as “good morning” or “Lady Victoria, you look a vision of loveliness”—said, “Well. Is it true? Have you chucked him?”
Victoria raised her gaze to the ceiling. Really, she did not know why she constantly had to be stuck with such incompetent suitors. Either they were only interested in her for her money, or they seemed simply to have no idea how rational human beings conducted themselves. She said tiredly, “If you mean by that very rude question has my engagement to Lord Malfrey been called off, the answer is yes, it has.”
And then, seeing with horror that an extremely self-satisfied smile was creeping across the captain’s face, Victoria added hastily, “And kindly do not think that anything you said—or did—to me the other night had anything whatsoever to do with my decision to end my relationship with him. I merely had occasion to observe that he was not quite as… honorable as I might have hoped.”
“Occasion to observe.” Sadly, Jacob Carstairs was still smiling. “And precisely how did this occasion arise?”
“Never you mind,” Victoria said severely, her heart beginning to thump in a most unsatisfactory manner. Jacob Carstairs was the very last person on earth whom she wanted to know the truth about how she’d tricked her former fiancé into revealing his true colors. Why was it that she could never seem to maintain an air of ladylike refinement around this man, of all men?
“Suffice it to say,” Victoria went on, “that it did. And now that Lord Malfrey is gone from my life, you haven’t any reason to bother with me. I hope you will… well, go and bother the next poor heiress he gets himself engaged to.” She turned around and went to the door to the drawing room, pointedly holding it open for him. “Good day, Captain.”
But Captain Carstairs didn’t budge from where he stood before the drawing room windows—through which sunlight, a rather strange sight after so much rain, filtered shyly, bringing out light brown highlights in his otherwise dark hair. Instead of leaving, however, he merely grinned at Victoria.
“I don’t have any reason to bother with you, do I?” he asked, with one rakishly raised eyebrow. “Is that what you really think, Miss Bee?”
Furious—because one of the parlor maids, polishing the newel post at the bottom of the staircase to the second floor, overheard the captain calling Victoria Miss Bee, and looked extremely surprised by the impertinence—Victoria slammed the door closed again, shutting out the maid, and whirled upon the captain with blazing eyes and even hotter cheeks.
“Now see here,” she said in a hiss. “I did what you said! I got rid of him—the man I loved!—because you told me he was a rogue, and, as it happened, this one time you were right. But that does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that I am about to welcome romantic attentions from the likes of you.”
Jacob looked unimpressed by this speech. In fact, he did not even appear to have heard the latter part of it. He said merely, and with supreme confidence, “You didn’t love him.”
“I most certainly did, too!” Victoria cried, stamping her foot the way Jeremiah did when he wanted more dessert and Victoria wouldn’t allow him any.
“No, you didn’t.” Jacob Carstairs shook his head. “You were drawn to him because he needed you, and you can’t resist anyone in need. But that isn’t love.”
Victoria, blinking as if he’d slapped her, thought of the way she’d lain awake in the middle of the night, perfectly unable to weep over losing the earl. Was it possible Captain Carstairs was right? Was it possible she had never loved Lord Malfrey after all, and that was why she hadn’t shed a tear over him?
Before she had a chance to think this over, the captain strode across the room until he stood just a foot away from her. Then, looking down into her upturned face, he sai
d, “What you’ve got to do now is find someone who doesn’t need you, and marry him.”
Victoria, entirely more conscious than she cared to be of Jacob Carstairs’s mouth, which was just inches from hers, tore her gaze from it, and tried to think of nothing but her dudgeon over the captain’s impertinence.
“And what,” she inquired, looking at the picture frame just behind Jacob Carstairs’s head, “would be the point of my doing that, pray?”
“Everyone around you,” Jacob Carstairs said, “needs something or other from you. Your aunt needs your help managing her unruly brood and her incompetent cook, your cousin Rebecca needs your help in navigating the tricky waters of her romantic life, your uncle needs your help in keeping him from turning into a harumphing automaton, the footpads of London need your help in avoiding the gallows. Wouldn’t it be restful, Miss Bee, if, after a long day of flitting about and helping people, you could come home to someone who needed nothing whatsoever from you?”
Victoria stared up at him, perfectly incapable of making out just what, exactly, he was trying to say. It almost sounded—but surely not—as if he were…
Well, proposing.
But that, of course, was impossible, because first of all there was no moonlight; secondly, he was not even touching her; thirdly, she had yet to hear anything like a romantic sentiment from him, such as “Victoria, I can’t live without you,” or “If I don’t have you, I shall go mad”; and lastly, it was Jacob Carstairs. And Jacob Carstairs would never ask Victoria to marry him. Why, he was forever teasing her, calling her Miss Bee, and making light of her deadly serious attempts to improve the lot of others!
Not to mention the fact that she had, up until recently, been engaged to the man who had broken the heart of his elder sister.
“I don’t… ”Victoria, for perhaps the first time in her entire life, could not think how to respond to the captain’s very unorthodox proposal… if proposal it even was! She was still not entirely sure.
Feeling muddled, she said only, “I can’t say I agree with you, Captain. I don’t… I don’t think it would be restful at all.” And thinking of Jacob Carstairs’s well-appointed town house, his competent, intelligent mother, and superior household staff—she doubted tureen of beef had ever once been served at the Carstairses’ dining table—she added with feeling, “In fact, I think it would be dull. Very dull, indeed!”
“Dull?”
And now he was touching her! He’d reached out and lifted one of her hands in his, and she wasn’t wearing any gloves, and neither was he! She could feel the calluses on his fingers—his being a man who worked for a living, even if now he was handling more of the administrative concerns of his business than actually lifting rigging and tying off sails, she supposed Jacob would have calluses. Lord Malfrey, of course, hadn’t had any, because he’d always worn gloves while riding or doing anything else athletic, such as fencing.
Somehow the feel of Jacob Carstairs’s calluses made Victoria’s heart slam harder than ever against the inside of her chest.
“I don’t think it would be a bit dull,” the captain said in a voice she had never heard him use before. She realized, as she watched his fingers entwine themselves with hers, that it was a voice entirely devoid of teasing, or anything at all that might be construed as vexing or snide. Why, she thought with some surprise, he’s being serious!
“In fact,” he said, still in that same deep, serious voice, “I think it would be very exciting to be married to someone who doesn’t need you, but only… wants you.”
On the word wants, Jacob gave her hand a gentle pull, and Victoria found herself, against all reason, in his arms. How on earth this should have happened again, when she had instructed herself very firmly not to let it, she could not imagine.
But there it was, and there came his lips down over hers, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing Victoria could do about it, short of kicking him in the shins and running away, something that, once his mouth was on hers, she was perfectly incapable of doing. Because his lips felt so very nice on hers—or rather, not nice. Not nice at all. The opposite of nice…
Oh, why was this happening to her? She had just escaped a romantic entanglement. She could not throw herself into another so soon….
And yet the captain’s lips felt so very right on hers! His arms, going around her, made her feel so very safe and secure, so warm and—yes, there was no denying it— wanted. Not needed, but wanted, a sensation that was as alien to Victoria as, well, poverty. Jacob Carstairs wanted her! Not needed her—what on earth would a man like him need from a girl, even a girl with such very definite opinions on the height at which one’s collar points ought to be worn, like her?
No, he wanted her, and that was, Victoria was becoming convinced, even better than being needed. Except…
Except that he hadn’t actually proposed. He hadn’t actually said, “Victoria, light of my heart, will you be my bride?” No, all he’d said was something about “someone,” but he had not specified one iota whether or not that “someone” was him. Furthermore… furthermore, how dared he stand and kiss her in her aunt and uncle’s drawing room without even a proper proposal first?!
Victoria, though it took every ounce of self-control she possessed—for being kissed by Jacob Carstairs was quite the most exciting thing that had happened to her since… well, the last time she’d been kissed by Jacob Carstairs—laid both hands upon the captain’s chest, and pushed him with all her might.
Jacob staggered backward and almost fell into Mrs. Gardiner’s stuffed bird collection, which she kept under bell jars by the pianoforte. He regained his balance just in time, however, and demanded, with a look of shock on his face that was so pronounced it was almost comical, “What the— Victoria, what did you do that for?”
“I might well put the same question to you,” Victoria said, trying to ignore her wildly beating heart and a pair of lips that still tingled from the impassioned way his mouth had moved over hers. “You come here, teasing and insulting me—”
“Insulting you?” Jacob cried, looking more shocked than ever. “Victoria, don’t be an idiot. I want to marry you!”
“Well, you have a fine way of showing it,” Victoria retorted. “Calling me an idiot, and Miss Bee—and in front of the maid, no less!”
“You are an idiot,” Jacob said firmly, “if you think my calling you Miss Bee is an insult.”
“Well, it’s hardly a compliment!” Victoria shouted.
Jacob, however, did not shout back at her. Instead he said in a very even, reasonable tone, “Victoria, I’m warning you. You had better stop arguing and accept me now, because I’m not going to ask you to marry me again.”
“You never asked me at all!” Victoria cried. “All you said was that it would be very exciting for me if I married ‘someone’ who wanted me, instead of needing me. You were not, I would like to add, at all specific as to who that someone might be!”
“Well, who do you think?” he demanded. When Victoria said nothing, but only stood with her arms folded across her chest, staring stonily into the corner, he said, “For God’s sake, Victoria. I’m not going to start extolling your virtues and prattling on about how unworthy I am of you, if that’s what you’re waiting for. You already got a proposal like that once, and look how it turned out.”
Victoria, furious now, turned to him and screamed, “Thanks very much for reminding me! Now get out!”
A look of mingled exasperation and disgust passed across Jacob Carstairs’s handsome features. The next thing Victoria knew, he was in the doorway, collecting his hat and gloves from Perkins, the butler, who was pretending he noted nothing amiss between Victoria and her guest.
“You know, Victoria,” the captain said just before he shut the door behind him, “you might be interested in knowing that there is someone who is very much in need of your guidance… someone whose life needs managing far more, I think, than Rebecca’s or your precious earl’s ever did.”
Victoria, thinki
ng he must mean some orphan he’d encountered on the docks, blinked at him with wide eyes, instantly forgetting their quarrel. “Really?” she asked. “Who is it?”
“You,” he said, and slammed the door.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Victoria refused to admit that she was in the least concerned over what had transpired between Captain Carstairs and herself that morning in the drawing room. Jacob Carstairs was nothing but a rude, insolent, conceited rogue, who hadn’t the slightest idea what was good for him and in no way deserved his patient, competent mother. For that poor lady Victoria could only sigh. Mrs. Carstairs was going to be stuck with her obnoxious son for the rest of her days. Because Victoria did not think there was a young lady in London who would ever be compelled to marry him. Certainly she never would. And she was already that season’s worst hard-luck case, due to her shattering breakup with Lord Malfrey.
But fortunately for Victoria, the general consensus amongst the matrons was that the only daughter of the Duke of Harrow still had her choice of suitors, being at once rich and passably attractive, despite her somewhat questionable parting with the Earl of Malfrey, and her tendency to criticize her hostesses’s household staffs.
Still, despite the number of eager mamas who pushed their sons in her direction, Victoria remained, at least for the first few days after her breakup with Lord Malfrey, and her blowup with Jacob Carstairs, stubbornly solo. She had begun, in fact, to entertain fantasies of never marrying at all. Instead, she’d decided, she would open a hospital— solely for the orphaned and indigent—where she could help scads of people with their medical and romantic problems. She would be busy from morning until night, helping people! A lovelier existence Victoria simply could not imagine.
Reality would, however, intrude upon her private dreams, and a week after her unpleasant interview with Jacob Carstairs—who, true to his word, had not mentioned marriage again, nor (more disappointingly) had he tried to kiss her again—she received a note from the wicked Lord Malfrey. This note, unlike the many others he had sent since Victoria had ended their engagement, did not contain any impassioned pleas that she give him another chance or take him back.
