by Meggin Cabot
Jacob did so, but if she’d expected any compliments from him—such as, “That color looks lovely on you,” or even, “That’s better”—she was destined for disappointment, since he said only, “Dash it, Victoria, can we go now? This place… well, it’s”—a glance at Peter caused him to modify whatever it was he’d been about to say—“a little depressing.”
“Oh.” Victoria looked at her small host and hostesses. “I suppose so. Did Captain Carstairs pay you for your efforts on my behalf, Peter?”
“Five whole pounds,” Peter replied in a proud voice that indicated those five pounds were the most money he had ever had altogether in his entire life… and judging by the looks on the faces of his sisters, when they heard the vastness of the sum, it would not last long.
“It was all I had on me,” Jacob said uncomfortably, misinterpreting the looks.
Victoria extended her hand to the head of the family, who took it in his and shook it energetically, and assured Victoria that if there was ever anything else she needed, she was to look him up. Victoria assured him that she would, and with a last concerned look about the room in which she’d been so graciously received, she allowed Captain Carstairs to escort her to the enclosed carriage he had waiting outside.
“Jacob,” she said as he handed her up into the seat, “I feel terrible leaving those poor children there all by themselves. I feel as if we should do something for them. Don’t you have any openings in your offices for anything? Messenger boys, or something? Couldn’t you give Peter an apprenticeship or something?”
“Victoria,” Jacob said in a manner that gave her the distinct impression that he was gritting his teeth, “I am not about to start taking footpads into my employ. Before we go about saving all the orphans of London, supposing you tell me just what, precisely, happened to you this evening? Where are your clothes? You do know that your aunt and uncle have been sick with worry, don’t you? And what is all this talk about abduction?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Victoria said as Jacob sank down in the seat beside her, then rapped on the ceiling of the carriage to let the driver know he could move on. “But you’ve got to swear you won’t start shouting at me. I’ve had a perfectly horrid night, and I won’t stand being shouted at.”
“I thought you said,” Jacob Carstairs reminded her dryly, “that it isn’t polite to swear.”
Victoria flicked an irritated glance in his direction. It was difficult to see him, given the darkness of the carriage, but she could make out his profile well enough in the moonlight spilling through the windows.
“Very well,” she said. “You’ve got to promise me, then.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Jacob Carstairs said. “If you’ve done something worthy of being shouted at, I have every intention of shouting at you until I am hoarse. I may shout at you even if you haven’t done anything worthy of it. Have you any idea, Victoria, what a scare you gave everyone? Your aunt and uncle contacted my mother frantically at nine o’clock this evening, wondering if we’d heard from you. They seemed to think you’d been struck by lightning and killed during that thunderstorm this afternoon….”
“Well, I wasn’t,” Victoria said. “But that isn’t a bad idea. We can tell them that I was, and that my clothes caught on fire, and that some kind citizens found me and took me in and that I only just regained consciousness….”
“Victoria.” Now she was certain Jacob was gritting his teeth. “I am a patient man, but—”
Victoria could not help letting out a snort at that. “You? Patient? That’s rich.”
“Victoria. Just tell me what happened.”
And so Victoria, keeping her shame-reddened cheeks turned resolutely away from him—though it was doubtful that he’d even have been able to see them in the darkness— told him everything. She told him about having gone to meet Lord Malfrey, and about the storm, and about being consequently conveyed by the earl to his rooms.
This last caused the captain to utter a curse that fairly burned her ears.
“Lady Malfrey was there!” Victoria hastened to assure him. “Only… well…”
And then Victoria had no choice but to relay the shameful truth about the dowager’s part in her betrayal. When she came to the part about Lady Malfrey’s refusal to give back her clothes, Jacob burst out with, “Victoria! How could you be so stupid?”
Victoria did not think this at all fair. How was she to know the dowager, who had been so kind to her in the past, had no heart to speak of, and was willing to stoop to such duplicitousness in order to see her son advantageously married?
“Because I told you so!” Jacob burst out when she voiced the thought.
“You told me only that Hugo Rothschild was a rogue,” Victoria pointed out to him. “You told me he hadn’t any honor. You didn’t mention that he was a foul kidnapper and a blackguard.”
“Next time,” Jacob said, sounding very much affronted, “I’ll make myself more clear. Well, go on. Tell me the rest of it. But I’m warning you, Victoria, if he laid a finger on you…”
Victoria felt a curious thrill upon hearing Jacob threaten bodily harm to the earl, but told herself it was only because Lord Malfrey so justly deserved a thrashing. She was forced to assure him, however, that the earl hadn’t so much as touched her—she left out the part about him lifting her bodily and throwing her across the bed— because she didn’t want Jacob to fly into a passion. Though personally it would not have troubled her a bit if he did so—it actually would have been quite entertaining—she did not want her aunt and uncle to see it, since she wanted to keep from them the awful truth about what had happened to her. And they were, as she spoke, getting closer and closer to the Gardiners’ town house.
“And then I simply climbed out the window,” Victoria finished, drawing her story to a rapid close, as she had begun to recognize the street upon which they’d turned as the one belonging to her aunt and uncle. “And ran about trying to get someone to help me, which was no joke, let me tell you. Londoners seem a very suspicious lot, I must say. The only people who believed I really was Lady Victoria Arbuthnot and not a madwoman escaped from an asylum somewhere were Peter and his sisters, and they only believed me because Peter recognized me….”
Victoria’s voice trailed off as the carriage pulled to a halt in front of her aunt and uncle’s home, and she realized that Jacob Carstairs was staring at her with a somewhat indescribable look upon his face. She could not tell whether he was horrified or admiring. In case it was the former, she reached up quickly and began to pat down her hair.
“What is it?” she asked. “Do I really look such a fright? Why didn’t you tell me before? I don’t want to scare them, particularly if the little ones are still up. You wouldn’t happen to have a pocket comb about you, would you? Or would your driver, perhaps? Though I suppose if I were struck by lightning, my hair would be sticking up a bit, wouldn’t it?”
Jacob Carstairs, however, surprised the life out of her—not by handing her a comb, which really would have been incredible—but by doing something even more shocking. Instead he laid a hand on either of her shoulders and pulled her rather roughly toward him, then kissed her squarely on the mouth.
Victoria had time to think, Oh, no, not again, before giving herself over to the kiss. Because, much as he annoyed her, being kissed by Jacob Carstairs really was one of the most wonderful things in the world, quite equal to, in Victoria’s opinion, champagne and even ices.
She wasn’t at all certain why Jacob Carstairs was kissing her—certainly it wasn’t because she was looking so very irresistible. Victoria was fairly certain she had dirty smudges on her face—until he thrust her roughly away from him and said, giving her a shake, “Climbed out the window! Victoria, you might have been killed!”
“Well, yes,” she said, a little disappointed that the kissing had stopped. “But it was quite easy, because I didn’t look down, the way you said—”
And then, happily, the kissing continued, and Victoria could n
ot help thinking that really, for so aggravating a person, Jacob Carstairs could be quite comforting when he chose to. It was a pity, in fact, that he didn’t choose to be so more often. She was feeling supremely comforted by the time Jacob lifted his head and said, “Damn,” beneath his breath, adding, “I suppose we’d better go in.”
Victoria was so comforted by that point that she supposed she’d have followed Jacob Carstairs into the mouth of a volcano if he’d asked her to. But he only pulled her out of his carriage and up the steps to her aunt and uncle’s house.
There, despite the lateness of the hour, everyone in the household was up, waiting frantically for news of her, from her uncle Walter to Cook to the ferret. There were a great many cries of, “Where have you been, Vicky?” and “We were worried sick!” from Mrs. Gardiner, and a good deal of harumphing from Mr. Gardiner. The younger children leaped about with joy, while Rebecca joined Cook in weeping tears of happy relief, and Clara looked dejected upon learning that nothing worse had happened to her cousin than a dunking in the river. For it had been decided by Victoria and Jacob on the doorstep that her story was to be that she’d taken a fall into the Thames, losing her reticule and ruining her clothes and shoes, and that a kindly but non-English-speaking fishing family had scooped her out, and not been able to understand Victoria’s pleas that a message be taken to her family.
It was not a very good story—Victoria felt that the lightning one was far better—but it was the only one Jacob would agree to stick to. And so she told it with great gusto, embroidering on it for Clara’s benefit by saying that the fisherman had had a dark and surly son who’d tried to make her eat a bowl of macaroni. Clara was very impressed by this, as she was suspicious of foreigners and quite despised macaroni.
“But however did Captain Carstairs find you?” Mrs. Gardiner wanted to know, and Jacob replied that he’d ridden out to look for Lady Victoria, and happened upon her near Hayter Street. The gown and shoes she wore, Victoria informed them, had been donated by a vicarage near there. She’d been trying to find a hack when Captain Carstairs had miraculously appeared in the moonlight.
It was the most ridiculous story ever told in the history of time. If Victoria had tried to feed it, or anything like it, to her ayah, she would have received an icy stare and a “Try again. The truth, this time.”
But the Gardiners, who were for the most part an easygoing lot, took it in stride, and, satisfied that a happy ending had been achieved, began to drift sleepily off to bed. Victoria herself would gladly have followed them, had she not noticed a determined look in Jacob Carstairs’s eyes as he took his hat and gloves back from Perkins. She had no choice but to linger in the foyer and hiss, as Jacob started for the door, “Where do you think you’re going now? And you had better say home.”
Jacob shot a wary look at Victoria’s uncle, who was harumphing his way up the stairs to his bedroom. “Then I suppose I had better not say at all.”
Furious, Victoria reached out and pinched the captain’s arm, hard enough for him to jerk it away with an irritated expression. “Victoria! What is wrong with you? That hurt!”
“You had better not be going to Lord Malfrey’s,” Victoria whispered angrily.
“What if I am?”
“Jacob!” Victoria glared at him. “Don’t you dare. Not a breath of this must get out, do you understand? And if you go over to Lord Malfrey’s and start a fight, or challenge him to a duel, or anything stupid like that—”
“Stupid!” Jacob interjected. “I’ll tell you what’s stupid. Stupid is—”
“Vicky?” Rebecca called sleepily from the stairs. “Are you coming to bed?”
“Yes, Vicky,” Mrs. Gardiner said with a yawn. “Come along. You can finish thanking the captain tomorrow.”
“Stupid,” Victoria said in a hiss to Jacob, ignoring her relatives, “is you doing anything that might cause even a hint of what happened tonight to get out.”
“Victoria,” Jacob said in tones of great weariness, “you said it yourself. The man is a blackguard. He’s got to be stopped. And if I’d done it the first time, when he broke things off with my sister, none of this—which is ten times worse than anything he did to Margaret— would have happened.”
“And if you do it now,” Victoria whispered urgently, “Becky’s life will be ruined.”
“Becky?” Jacob Carstairs looked down at her as if she were mad. “What are you talking about?”
“Her wedding,” Victoria reminded him. “To Mr. Abbott! Jacob, you can’t challenge Lord Malfrey to a duel. If it were to get out, people would know it was over me, and what happened to me tonight will become public knowledge, and I’ll be ruined, and then Mr. Abbott might call off the wedding.”
“Blast Charles Abbott!” Jacob said, with feeling. “If he calls off the wedding, that’s his own idiocy. I can’t do anything about that. And how could you be ruined? You were an innocent victim!”
“Vicky!” Mrs. Gardiner called from the second floor. “Say good-night to Captain Carstairs and come to bed.”
“Promise me,” Victoria said, reaching out and laying a hand upon one of his. “Please, Jacob. Promise me you won’t do anything rash.”
Jacob looked down at her fingers resting so lightly over his, and said, with enough heat that Perkins, busy dousing the flames in the chandelier above their heads, glanced over, “You seem a good deal concerned about Mr. Abbott. What about me?”
Victoria blinked up at him. “What about you?” she asked, really not having the faintest notion what he was talking about.
“If I challenge Malfrey, I might be killed, you know,” Jacob informed her with some bitterness. “You might show some concern for my life.”
Victoria, highly amused by this, said with a laugh, “I might, indeed, if I cared about you.”
At which point, much to her surprise, Jacob settled his hat upon his head, dropped her hand, and said in a cold voice, “Well, I’m certainly glad we’ve got that straight,” and stormed out the door.
Victoria watched him go with raised eyebrows and a bemused expression. What a strange and abrupt young man he was! She supposed that, judging by what Rebecca had told her, he’d have preferred to have found her swooning and teary-eyed over what Lord Malfrey had done to her. And she supposed if she’d clung to him and begged him not to go after the earl, it might have been more effective than asking him not to kill him for Mr. Abbott’s sake.
She probably could have shown a little more gratitude for his coming out in the middle of the night to fetch her….
But hang it, none of it would have happened in the first place if he hadn’t insisted on her breaking her engagement with the earl!
Really, Victoria thought wearily as she turned around and headed at last for the stairs and for bed. Men were excessively tiresome creatures. Particularly the ones with whom one couldn’t help but fall in love.
She was nearly to the landing before she realized what she’d done, and when she did, she gasped as if she’d been stung by a wasp, and flung a hand to her throat, causing Perkins to ask worriedly if she was feeling well.
“Oh,”Victoria replied. “Perfectly well, thank you.”
Except, of course, that she was lying. She wasn’t perfectly well at all. Not when she’d realized the horrible, glaring truth at last.
She was in love with Jacob Carstairs!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her.
One day, Lady Victoria, he’d told her, you’re going to meet a man whose will can’t be bent to suit your purposes. And when that happens, you’ll fall in love with him.
How infuriating—how perfectly nauseating!—that he had been right. She had met a man whose will she couldn’t bend, no matter how hard she tried—and Lord! How she’d tried. And she had gone and fallen in love with him.
How she could not have realized it until it was, in all likelihood, too late, Victoria could not imagine. Everyone had been telling her she was in love with Jacob Carstairs�
�� or, at least, Rebecca had—but she’d refused even to entertain the thought. Her, Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, in love with a man who called her names, and did not in the least know how to dress? Perish the thought!
But there it was, obvious as the nose on her face. Why else did his kisses make her feel so… well, comforted? And why else had he been the first person she’d thought to contact when it had come time to write a note back in Peter’s little hovel?
But most of all—and this was the thought that rankled hardest, that kept her up, even tired as she was, half the night, when she should have been dead to the world after her ordeal—why else had she agreed to marry the ninth Earl of Malfrey in the first place?
Oh, her cheeks burned even in the darkness of her own bed as she thought of it. But it wasn’t any good pretending it wasn’t true. She had already admitted to herself that she had said yes to Lord Malfrey’s proposal to vex the captain. She’d wanted to make him jealous. Why?
Because, irritating and impossible as he was, she was in love with him… had been in love with him, probably, since the first moment she laid eyes on him.
But how was such a thing even possible? Why would she fall in love with such a man? Jacob Carstairs didn’t need her. His life was perfectly in order, his affairs laid out neat as the pins in Victoria’s workbox.
And he was always very rude to her, teasing her, and making light of her very serious calling, which was, of course, to manage the affairs of others.
But he had been right about one thing, Victoria realized blearily in the wee hours of the morning. And that was that her own affairs were in a perfectly disgraceful state. Particularly if she went about falling in love with men who didn’t need her.
But wanted her. He had said that the other day, the day he’d asked her to marry him. That he didn’t need her, but that he wanted her just the same. He seemed to think wanting was better than needing, but Victoria hadn’t been so sure.
Now, lying in her bed, listening to the steady breathing of Rebecca in the bed beside hers, Victoria began to wonder if perhaps she hadn’t been too hasty when she’d turned down Jacob’s proposal. Oh, it hadn’t been a proper proposal… there’d been no moonlight or flowers, let alone a ring. She hadn’t felt she’d had any choice, of course, but to say no.
