Victoria and the Rogue

by Meggin Cabot

  This time Lord Malfrey asked if they could make an exchange of letters—hers for his. As this was standard form in any failed romantic relationship, Victoria agreed, and was piqued when Lord Malfrey then insisted that they make the exchange in person. But Hugo argued that the things he’d written to Victoria during the course of their courtship—the letters and poems he had, she was now fairly certain, plagiarized from other, more talented authors than he—were so highly personal that he did not dare trust them to a servant, much less the post, to deliver. No, an exchange must be made, and must be made personally by the correspondents.

  Victoria found this very vexing indeed. She had no time to be making clandestine assignations to exchange letters with former fiancés. For from the dust of her own failed engagement had risen a new one… her cousin Rebecca’s to the wonderful Mr. Abbott. Mrs. Gardiner was beside herself with joy, and even Uncle Walter hadn’t harumphed about it once, and said instead that it was jolly good news. Rebecca was completely incapable of discussing anything but wedding clothes and babies, though Clara was not nearly so enthusiastic, frequently reminding her sister not to count her chickens before they’d hatched, for look how poor cousin Vicky’s engagement had turned out!

  To drag herself in the midst of all this to some appointment with her former fiancé to make an exchange of what, to Victoria’s mind, were nothing but a silly pile of letters was most trying. But Victoria supposed it had to be done, and so at five o’clock a week to the day that she had broken things off with the earl, she met him in Hyde Park— at the very spot, in fact, of their ill-fated picnic. It had seemed to Victoria sensible to pick a public place to meet, but a place where they were not likely to draw attention to themselves—for Victoria knew, even after only having been living there a month, how London’s gossips’ tongues wagged.

  Unfortunately, she had not been able to borrow the Gardiners’ carriage to take her on her outing, as Rebecca and her mother had needed it for a trip to Madame Dessanges’s, who was to make the bridal trousseau. Victoria had instead engaged a hack. Only after sending it away once she reached the appointed meeting place did Victoria begin to have any reservations about her mission, and that was because the sky overhead had begun to look even more threateningly gray than usual. It would be just her luck to be caught out in the open during a thunderstorm.

  On the bright side, however, all of the ink on the letters she and Hugo carried might be washed away, and then Victoria would never have to fear seeing some of the more foolish things she’d written in hers in the Times or some other shameful place.

  Lord Malfrey was not on time. But then, he had never been on time back when they’d been engaged, eight days earlier. Victoria stood beneath a large chestnut tree, watching the other parkgoers scurry for shelter, as very large drops of rain began to fall around her and the sky rumbled ominously.

  She was about to give up the effort entirely and go look for a hack to take her home—if, indeed, any were still available, which she thought unlikely, given the weather—when Lord Malfrey finally appeared on a dapple gray mount.

  By that time, however, the heavens had opened, and the downpour become even more than Victoria’s very sturdy umbrella could withstand. Lord Malfrey, coming to stand beneath it while his poor horse was pelted with rain, shouted, “We oughtn’t stand beneath this tree. There’s lightning—”

  Even as he spoke, a large bolt of it lit the sky, and thunder cracked. Victoria, who knew the weather was one thing she could not control—yet—ran with him out from beneath the tree and stood in the downpour, the hem of her skirt already smeared with mud, and her curls completely limp.

  “My letters, please,” she nevertheless shouted at Lord Malfrey, who looked down at her as if she were mad.

  “I must get you out of this storm,” Lord Malfrey said, glancing about as if, Victoria thought disparagingly, Noah and his ark were going to appear and rescue them. “Where is your carriage?”

  “I couldn’t get the carriage,” Victoria said. The rain was falling sideways now, and the umbrella afforded little protection against its slanting assault. Victoria’s skirts were as molded to her legs as the young woman’s who’d been at the dowager’s picnic… though not on purpose. The rain was cold and the wind high. Victoria’s teeth began to chatter. “I took a hack. Give me my letters, please.”

  Lord Malfrey’s gaze swept Park Lane—at least, what he could see of it through the deluge. “There are no hacks now,” he said. “And I can’t leave you in this. Here, come.” He ducked out from beneath the umbrella and swung back up onto his mount. “Give me your hand, Lady Victoria, and step onto my boot toe.”

  Victoria, horrified at the very idea of joining Lord Malfrey in the saddle—or anywhere else, for that matter—said, “I shall do no such thing!”

  “Lady Victoria,” Hugo said, as the rain plastered his fair hair to his face, “I won’t leave you alone in this storm. We can be home and dry in a jig if you would just, for once, be sensible.”

  Victoria would not have obeyed him for the world if it hadn’t been for the fact that at that very moment a violent gust of wind ripped her umbrella from her hands and sent it sailing. She watched helplessly as it was tossed by the storm out of sight. It took only a second or two without the meager protection the umbrella had afforded for her to become wet to the bone.

  “Oh,” she said in a defeated voice, as lightning again tore through the sky. “All right.”

  Then, placing her foot on Lord Malfrey’s boot toe and giving him her hand, she allowed herself to be pulled into the saddle before him.

  The ride from the park to safety was not one Victoria would qualify as pleasant or even memorable, with the exception of its extreme discomfort—the way the rain pelted her face; the smell of wet horse; the hideous embarrassment of having Lord Malfrey’s arm around her, keeping her from sliding off his horse’s slick shoulders. By the time he set her down, Victoria’s relief was so great she did not particularly care where she was, so long as it was out of the rain and away from him.

  But alas, as they ran up some steps and toward a door that was thrown open by a maid to receive them, Victoria saw with regret that Lord Malfrey had not, in fact, delivered her to her own home, but to his.

  “But this isn’t the Gardiners’!” she cried, mightily vexed, as she stood dripping in the hallway and the little maid struggled to close the door against the wind behind them.

  “My rooms were closer,” Lord Malfrey said, wringing out his wet coattails.

  Victoria did not know London well enough to judge whether or not Hugo told the truth. But she was, it had to be confessed, too cold and wet to care very much. Still, a second later, when a door opened, and the dowager Lady Malfrey appeared, looking enviously warm and dry, Victoria began to wish she’d paid better attention.

  “Oh, my dears!” the dowager cried, seeing them drenched and dripping in the foyer. “You poor things! I’ll have Ellen put a kettle on at once for you. Lady Victoria, come with me; we must get you changed into something dry before you catch your death of cold!”

  Victoria, who could not imagine a worse or more embarrassing situation—to be forced to take shelter in the very home of the man whose hand she’d accepted, only to spurn a month later!—followed meekly after the dowager, cursing the day she’d ever agreed to come to this foul country. Did it ever stop raining in England? Would she never be able to present the ladylike figure before others that she’d have liked to?

  And why on this day, of all days, had she worn a white skirt, which was now most likely permanently ruined by all the mud she’d encountered?

  Victoria was escorted by Hugo’s mother not to her own room, where there might have been a fire, but instead to a spare room, where she was given a blanket and towels and told to disrobe. Her clothes, the dowager Lady Malfrey explained, would be spread before the kitchen fire until they dried. In the meantime she could stay in the bedroom to wait for hot tea and brandy.

  Victoria did not want hot tea and br
andy. She wanted to go home!

  But since she did not, she suppose, want to go home in soaking wet clothes—nor, even less, dry clothes belonging to the mother of the man to whom she’d once been engaged—she did as she was bidden, stripping down to her camisole and pantaloons—which were wet as well, but which she did not feel comfortable taking off in what was, after all, more or less a stranger’s house.

  Sitting in her damp underclothes, with a blanket around her shoulders, and her hair in wet strands all around her face, Victoria stared miserably out the window. The rain was still coming down in torrents, and the sky had gone dark as if it were night, though it was surely only just six o’clock in the evening. Occasionally lightning sliced through the sky, and thunder rumbled so loudly the sills rattled. Victoria wondered how long it would take for her clothes to dry enough for her to risk putting them on again. Hours, most likely. She would have to send word to her aunt, telling her what had happened, lest Mrs. Gardiner worry.

  Accordingly, Victoria tugged upon the bellpull, and when the same sharp-faced little maid who’d met them in the foyer appeared at the door, she said, “Would you please go and ask her ladyship if I might have pen and paper, so that I can send a message to my aunt letting her know I’m all right and shall be delayed?”

  The maid bobbed a curtsy and went away, only to come back five minutes later with the things Victoria had asked for, along with a pot of piping hot tea, some cakes, and the brandy.

  Victoria, holding the blanket about her, sipped the tea appreciatively and began to feel immeasurably better. She composed her note to her aunt, then rang for the maid again, and, giving her a coin from her reticule, asked if she would see that the letter was delivered at once to the Gardiners’.

  The girl said that she would. Victoria, feeling that she’d done all she could for the moment, laid down upon the bed, because there were no books to read in the plain little room, and nothing else to do. Besides, the tea had warmed her, and Victoria had begun to feel pleasantly drowsy after her terrible ordeal. Listening to the pounding rain and thunder, Victoria closed her eyes, meaning only to nap for a moment….

  But when she opened her eyes, she realized at once that something was very wrong. Her room was pitch black, the wick in the lamp she’d lit having guttered and gone out while she’d slept. What was more, the storm had ended, and moonlight streamed brightly through the spare bedroom’s windows. A swift glance at the ormolu clock on the mantel showed Victoria that she’d been asleep for nearly four hours. It was close to ten. Surely her clothes were, by now, completely dry. Why had the dowager let her sleep so long?

  Wrapping the blanket about her now dry underclothes, Grecian toga style, Victoria yanked on the bellpull. She relit the lamp and looked outside. The bedroom in which she’d been placed was on the second floor. Below her she could see the quiet street shining wetly in the moonlight. A few branches had been knocked down during the storm, and lay strewn about. She wondered where her umbrella had ended up.

  A tap at the door brought Victoria to it. She opened it to find, somewhat to her surprise, the dowager Lady Malfrey, and not the maid, in the hallway.

  “Oh, good evening, madam,” Victoria said, slightly embarrassed to be seen wearing only a blanket and her underthings by the woman who was once going to have been her mother-in-law. “I’m afraid I must have fallen asleep. I was wondering, could you have the maid bring up my clothes? For I’m certain they’re dry by now, and I really oughtn’t to impose upon your hospitality for a moment longer. Oh, and if you could send for a hack, I would be greatly in your debt.”

  But the dowager, instead of saying, “Certainly, Lady Victoria, I would be happy to,” only shook her head, as if she could not quite believe what she was hearing.

  Then Victoria saw, rather to her surprise, that the woman was laughing. Except that Victoria, to the best of her knowledge, had not said anything amusing.

  “I beg your pardon, Lady Malfrey,” she said. “Have I missed a joke?” She glanced up and down the hallway. “Did Lord Malfrey set up bowling pins in the corridor?” For this was something the dowager had bragged about her son having done once on a rainy day.

  “Not hardly,” the dowager Lady Malfrey said with a chuckle.

  “Well…”Victoria knitted her brows. “Then may I ask what is so amusing?”

  “You,” the dowager said, a fat tear trickling out from between the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. For the dowager Lady Malfrey was by now laughing so hard, she was crying.

  Victoria, taken aback, wondered if perhaps the dowager Lady Malfrey had been at the brandy.

  “Excuse me?” Victoria asked politely. “But I’m not certain I heard you correctly. Did you say that… I am amusing?”

  “That’s right,” the dowager said, wheezing a bit now, she was laughing so hard.

  Victoria, who still did not see anything particularly funny about the situation, said rather sharply, “Lady Malfrey, I don’t believe you are well. Would you like to come in and have a seat? Or perhaps I could get you a glass of water? For I fear you are not yourself.”

  “Oh, I feel fine,” the dowager said, straightening and dashing away tears of laughter from her eyes. “It’s you who’s not going to feel so well when you realize… when you realize…”

  She was off again, laughing uncontrollably.

  “When I realize what, Lady Malfrey?” Victoria demanded very tartly indeed. For she was growing tired of Hugo’s mother’s antics.

  “That you’re not going anywhere!” the dowager cried, slapping her knee.

  Victoria looked down at the woman, who was now doubled up with convulsive laughter.

  “Lady Malfrey,” she said severely. “I most certainly am going somewhere. I am going home, just as soon as someone brings me my clothes.”

  “That’s just it,” Hugo’s mother cried. “That’s just it! No one’s going to!”

  Victoria stared at her. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “No one’s going to bring you your clothes,” the dowager Lady Malfrey said, seeming finally to get some semblance of control over herself. “At least, not until morning.”

  Victoria, very perplexed by all this, said, “Not until morning? Why ever not? Surely they’re dry by now.”

  “Oh, they are,” Hugo’s mother said. “They are. But you’ll not be given them until morning.”

  “But…”Victoria peered curiously at the older woman. “But why not?”

  “Because,” the dowager Lady Malfrey said, slipping a lace handkerchief from the sleeve of her gown and applying it to the corners of her eyes, which were still damp with laughter. “You’re to spend the night. You can have your clothes in the morning, when the damage is already done.”

  Victoria still didn’t understand. “Damage? What damage? And I cannot spend the night, Lady Malfrey, though your invitation is very kind.”

  “Oh, for the love of God!” cried the dowager Lady Malfrey, not laughing at all now. “Are you dense, girl? I’m not inviting you to spend the night! I’m keeping you here overnight so that your reputation’s ruined, and you’ll have no choice but to marry my Hugo!”

  Victoria blinked. “But… I don’t understand. Why on earth should I have to marry your son?”

  “After disappearing all night with him, then being found next morning, without your clothes on, in his rooms?” The dowager let out an unpleasant cackle. “You’ll have to marry him, all right.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Victoria thought that perhaps Hugo’s mother had suffered a fall and struck her head against something. There really was no other explanation for the very odd things she was saying.

  “Lady Malfrey,” Victoria said as slowly and as patiently as she was able. “Are you quite sure you haven’t fallen down? And hit your head on a piece of furniture? Or the stairs, perhaps? I do think I’d better send for a surgeon—”

  “Good Lord.” The dowager Lady Malfrey glared at Victoria. “Can you really be as stupid as that? Don’t you know wha
t’s happening to you, child? You’re alone, in a man’s house, half-naked. And no one knows where you’ve disappeared to.”

  Victoria shook her head. “Lady Malfrey, that simply isn’t true. My aunt and uncle know exactly where I am. They know that Hugo and I got caught in the rain, and that I came to your rooms to dry off.”

  “No, they don’t,” the dowager said.

  “Yes, Lady Malfrey, they do. Because I sent them a…”

  Victoria’s voice trailed off as she noticed the piece of folded parchment Hugo’s mother now shook from her sleeve. It was the note she had written, hours ago, to her aunt.

  “You…”Victoria shook herself. She could not quite believe what her eyes were telling her. “You didn’t send my note to my aunt?”

  “No,” the dowager said with a grin that revealed all of her teeth… which, while even, were rather gray in color. “No, I didn’t send your note to your aunt.”

  Victoria glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. The hands pointed at ten after ten.

  “But,” Victoria said dazedly, “she’ll be terribly worried by now, wondering where I’ve got to. She might think… she might think I’ve suffered an accident or something.”

  “She might,” the dowager said. “And come morning, she’ll probably send someone—your uncle perhaps—to come here looking for you.”

  Slowly—very slowly—Victoria began to realize what was happening.

  “And my uncle will find me,” she said through lips that had begun to felt numb… and, sadly, not because Jacob Carstairs had been kissing them. “He’ll find me here, half naked….”

  “With my son,” the dowager said with another broad grin. “What do you think he will have to say to that, my lady? I can’t imagine it will be anything good. No, nothing good at all. In fact, I’ll wager your uncle’ll demand the two of you wed on the spot. Don’t you?”