Victoria and the Rogue

by Meggin Cabot

  But now… How very different she felt! If Jacob were to propose to her on the morrow—even a flippant proposal—even if he called her Miss Bee and made buzzing noises, as he did sometimes—Lord help her, but she might… she would… say yes.

  Only he wasn’t going to propose to her on the morrow. Why should he? He had already warned her once that he wasn’t going to ask her to marry him again. Badly as she’d treated him—and except for the kisses, she had treated him very badly indeed—she didn’t exactly blame him. What kind of man went about constantly proposing to a girl who kept turning those proposals down? Worse, who accepted the proposal of his worst enemy?

  Oh, no. Jacob Carstairs would not propose again.

  And that was why Victoria lay awake half the night, wondering how on earth she was going to get herself out of this particular mess. Because Jacob had been quite right when he’d said there was one person whose life was a perfect shambles, and who dreadfully needed the management skills of Miss Bee: and that person was herself.

  Only it was so different when it came to one’s own affairs! Victoria was perfectly comfortable telling other people—her uncles; her aunt; her aunt’s cook; her aunt’s children; the hostesses at Almack’s; everyone, really—what to do. But when it came to herself—at least insofar as concerned Jacob Carstairs—she seemed completely incapable of making the correct decisions. If she had simply been honest with herself from the beginning, none of this would even be happening. She, like Rebecca, would happily be planning her wedding… and this time, to the right man.

  But instead she found herself tossing and turning half the night away, wondering how on earth she was ever going to get Jacob Carstairs to propose to her again.

  Morning found Victoria, instead of well rested and calm, irritable and short-tempered. She snapped at poor Mariah—who really was making remarkable progress, for a maid who’d started out as such an incompetent—half a dozen times as she was arranging Victoria’s hair. And then she shouted at Jeremiah, who’d thoughtlessly left a toy wagon on the stairs that Victoria had nearly tripped over. Was this, she could not help wondering, what love—true love—did to people, then? Turn them into nasty-tempered shrews?

  She supposed so. Unrequited love, anyway. Because that was what hers was, until she could see Jacob again and explain herself. For though Victoria would never have advised anyone else—Rebecca or Clara or any girl, for that matter—to be truthful with the object of her affection in regards to her feelings, all the rules went right out the window when it came to herself. She was going to tell Jacob Carstairs everything the first moment she saw him. So what if he held the information like a whip over her head for the rest of her life? Victoria, so used to telling others what to do, was beginning to think she might enjoy being bossed about a bit for a change.

  But as the morning wore on, and there was not a single call or note from Captain Carstairs, Victoria began to worry. Surely he ought to have written, if not stopped by in person. Where on earth was he?

  The more Victoria wondered, the more she remembered the unpleasant way they’d parted the night before. Jacob had been most put-out with her for her lack of concern over his personal safety. You might show some concern for my life, he’d complained.

  And what had she done to soothe his wounded feelings? Why, poured salt into them, of course!

  I might, indeed, if I cared about you. That’s what she’d said! What a wit! What a fool! Now he might never come calling again, and he would be perfectly justified. Why, he might very well choose simply to ignore Victoria altogether from now on! He might never call her Miss Bee or laugh at her—or kiss her—again! How would she bear it? How on earth would she bear it?

  When they had received no word from him by eleven o’clock the morning after her escapade in the back alleyways of London, Victoria—though no one else in the household, of course—began to grow truly alarmed. This simply wasn’t like Jacob. He seemed always to be hanging about, saying disparaging things about her needlepoint and hauling the younger Gardiners about on his back. Where was he? Was he really that angry with her?

  Flummoxed, Victoria did the only thing she could think of: she bundled up the gown and slippers Jacob had lent her the night before, and sent them, along with a note, to the Carstairses’ residence. The note, over which she agonized for an hour, said:

  Dear Jacob,

  Enclosed you’ll find the things you so generously loaned me last night. I cannot thank you enough for your kindness in coming to my aid in my hour of need. You were a true knight-errant, and I will be forever in your debt. Please forgive any impertinence on my part, as I was overtired after my ordeal.

  Yours very truly,

  V. Arbuthnot

  Victoria had hesitated over the address. Should she call him Captain Carstairs? Weren’t they, by now, on a first-name basis with each other? The man had, after all, seen her in her undergarments.

  And the part where she’d apologized for her flippant remark about not caring for him… was that not specific enough? Perhaps she ought to have mentioned the exact impertinence for which she was asking forgiveness.

  She hoped that the Yours very truly would make it clear to him that she had had a significant change of feeling toward him… or rather, not a change of feeling, because she felt she’d always loved him. She just hadn’t admitted as much to herself until now.

  Then she told herself she was being ridiculous. It was only a note, after all, not the Magna Carta. She needed to calm down. She needed simply to send the package and wait for his reply.

  She sent the package.

  When, by four o’clock, no response had come—no note; no letter; and certainly not Jacob Carstairs himself— Victoria began to wonder if something hadn’t happened to him. Supposing, on the way home from the Gardiners’ house the night before, his carriage had met with an accident and turned over, and Jacob was even now lying crushed beneath the wheel spokes!

  But no, she supposed if there’d been an accident like that, she’d have heard. Jeremiah and his brothers were very keen on carriage accidents, and scoured the neighborhood daily in search of them.

  Then, at five o’clock, an even worse thought occurred to Victoria: supposing Jacob had, in spite of her warnings, gone ahead and challenged the earl! Supposing he was lying dead in Hyde Park even now, with a bullet to the heart!

  Oh, no! Surely not! Surely if Jacob and Lord Malfrey had dueled, she’d have heard about it by now. Mrs. Carstairs would have written to tell them the unhappy news….

  Besides, if Jacob and the earl were to duel, Jacob would surely win! Why, Lord Malfrey was a coward who tried to trap innocent heiresses into marrying him! Surely a man like that would never win a duel, not against a man who had single-handedly built up his father’s shipping business into a company worth forty thousand pounds, if not more….

  “Heavens, Vicky,” Rebecca said as the two of them were changing into their ball gowns—for it was Wednesday, and Wednesday meant Almack’s, rain or shine, dead lovers or not. “You’re skittish as a cat.” For Victoria, hearing a bell ring downstairs, had rushed to the window to see if Captain Carstairs’s carriage was below. But it was only the iceman. “Are you certain you’re all right? You didn’t catch a cold from your fall in the river, did you?”

  Victoria, woefully eyeing her reflection, thought to herself that if Jacob Carstairs really had been killed by Lord Malfrey, she would have to purchase all new gowns. For even though she wasn’t married to him, she would feel like a widow.

  “I’m all right,” Victoria murmured in response to her cousin’s question.

  “Well, you don’t look it,” Rebecca generously assured her. “Pinch your cheeks a bit. There, that’s better.”

  “Becky.” Victoria stared at her cousin’s reflection in the mirror. “Remember when you said that you thought Jacob Carstairs was in love with me?”

  “Mmm-hmmm,” Rebecca said, donning one of Victoria’s sapphire ear bobs, and admiring the way the gems glittered.

>   “And that you thought perhaps I was in love with him?”

  “Yes.” Rebecca pinched her own cheeks. “What about it?”

  “Oh,” Victoria said, then sighed. “Nothing.”

  Rebecca turned to look at her, her fair eyebrows raised.

  “Victoria!” she cried, her eyes glittering as brightly as the sapphires in her ears. “You do love him, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Victoria said quickly. “I don’t, really.” Then, realizing what she was saying, she buried her face in her hands. “Oh, all right. I do. I do, and it’s too late, because I’ve been so horrid to him! Oh, Becky!”

  And suddenly all of the tears that had been absent during Victoria’s breakup with Lord Malfrey came spilling out in torrents reminiscent of the Ganges during monsoon season.

  “Vicky!” Rebecca had never seen her younger cousin in tears, and did not know what to do about it. “Oh, Vicky! My dear! Don’t cry! Oh, he loves you, I’m quite certain of it. He rescued you from those dreadful fishermen last night, didn’t he?”

  This only served to make Victoria weep even harder. Rebecca, at a loss, ran for her mother, who came away from her dressing table only half-dressed, and did what mothers are supposed to do when they see one of their children in pain: she folded Victoria to her copious bosom and said, “There, there, now. It will be all right. All the excitement has finally caught up to her, I think. You’ll stay home tonight with a hot brick, I think.”

  Victoria, horrified, quickly extricated herself from her aunt’s arms and said, “No, no. I’m all right. I’ve got to go to Almack’s. I’ve got to!”

  Because if she were ever to see Jacob Carstairs again, it would be at only one place, the place where everyone gathered every Wednesday night. And that place was Almack’s.

  “I don’t think you’d better, child,” Mrs. Gardiner said worriedly. “You look worn out. Wouldn’t you rather stay here with Clara and the younger children and—”

  “No!” Victoria nearly choked. “No, no!”

  Mrs. Gardiner regarded her curiously, then shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. But hurry up, girls; we leave in half an hour.”

  Half an hour was not enough time for Victoria to calm her spirits and repair the damage her tears had done to her face. And it was not enough time for Rebecca to come to terms with this new creature—a cousin Vicky who cried, and over, of all people, Jacob Carstairs, who’d once been her sworn enemy. It was therefore a solemn group that arrived that night at Almack’s… though Rebecca’s equanimity was soon restored by Charles Abbott, who stepped forward to claim her at once for a quadrille. Victoria was left to prowl the rooms, searching for one face—one single face—and not finding it.

  “He isn’t here,” she wailed to Rebecca when the latter stepped off the dance floor to retie her shoe. “Captain Carstairs isn’t here!”

  “Well, of course not,” Becky said. “It’s early yet, Vicky. Don’t worry.”

  But her cousin didn’t understand. She hadn’t heard what Victoria had said to Jacob the night before. And she didn’t know about Lord Malfrey, and the possibility that Jacob might be lying dead from a bullet to the brain at that very moment!

  And the fact that Lord Malfrey himself had yet to show up was no comfort to Victoria. What kind of man would dare show his face at Almack’s after the horrible thing he had tried to do to her? No, it was no wonder Lord Malfrey was nowhere to be seen. But Jacob was another story. Victoria had never known him to miss a night. He could only be staying away because he was dead… or because he hated her. Either way Victoria was wretched, and she turned down each and every man who approached her to ask for a dance, until finally Mrs. Gardiner sidled up to her and said, “My dear, I know you are still heartsore over your broken engagement with the earl. But don’t you think you ought to give one of these other nice gentlemen a chance? For you are very young, my dear, and will learn to love again….”

  It was somewhat ironic that at the moment these words were coming from Mrs. Gardiner’s lips, in through the doors came striding a man with collar points that were far too low to be stylish. Victoria did not have to see the face of the owner of those collar points to know to whom they belonged. Only one man in London wore his collar points so unfashionably low.

  And it was toward this man with a glad cry that Victoria rushed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Captain Carstairs,” Victoria said, hurrying to Jacob’s side. “Good evening.”

  He looked down at her. If there was a touch of surprise in those sardonic gray eyes, he did not express it. He acted as if Victoria came rushing across dance floors to greet him every day of the week.

  “Lady Victoria,” he said with icy politeness.

  That politeness, as no unkind word could have, cut Victoria like a knife. Polite! Jacob Carstairs? To her? Oh, the situation was very bad indeed! Worse even than she’d allowed herself to imagine. A bullet was really the only thing that could have been more terrible.

  Fear clutching her heart, Victoria did the only thing, really, that she could have, under the circumstances. And that was grab Jacob by the arm and drag him into the closest alcove, where they could have it out at last.

  “Victoria,” Jacob said, sounding considerably annoyed as she shoved him behind a velvet portiere, where they were shielded from the prying gazes of Almack’s other patrons. “Good Lord, what is the matter?”

  Victoria could not believe he could just stand there and ask what was the matter when all day long she’d felt as if her heart were breaking.

  “What is the matter?” she demanded. “What is the matter? Why didn’t you answer my note?”

  He shrugged, trying to put his coat to rights after the way Victoria had pulled on it in order to get him into the alcove. “Why should I have?” he asked. “I knew I’d see you tonight.”

  Victoria narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, you knew you’d see me tonight, did you?”

  “Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” Jacob wanted to know. “And why do you look like that?”

  Victoria’s hands went instantly to her face. “Like what? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Jacob said. “You look… flushed. It isn’t any wonder after everything you went through last night. You’re probably feverish. Your aunt and uncle oughtn’t to have let you come. I’d better have a word with them—”

  “Jacob!” Victoria cried, furiously stamping her foot.

  He gave her a curious look. “What is it now?”

  “Why are you acting like this?” she demanded.

  “Like what?” He looked genuinely blank.

  “So… so polite?” Victoria pointed her fan at him threateningly. “You’d better stop it. I told you I was sorry in my note for what I said last night.”

  One corner of his mouth went up. But the other one stayed down. “So you did,” he said. “Although you neglected to mention just which of the many unpleasant things you said to me last night you meant.”

  “You know perfectly well which one I meant,” Victoria said haughtily. “Don’t make me say it.”

  “Oh, I think you’d better,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “I think you owe me that much, at least.”

  Knowing that she was blushing furiously, but unable to do anything about it, Victoria said, with her gaze on the floor, “I’m… I’m sorry I said I didn’t care about you.”

  But Jacob wasn’t satisfied. He continued to regard her with his arms folded. “Because…?”

  “Because… I do. Care, I mean. A little.”

  “A little.”

  “Yes.” She looked up and felt a wave of righteous indignation sweep over her as she saw that he was smirking. “Well, I hope you don’t expect me to say that I love you, after the way you’ve treated me!”

  “The way I’ve treated you! Oh, that’s rich. And how have I treated you, except far better than you deserved?”

  Victoria snorted. “Please! Calling me Miss Bee, and telling me what
to do, and then… then leaving me alone all day long without a word! Jacob, I thought you might be dead!”

  “Dead?” He seemed, if she wasn’t mistaken, to be enjoying himself no end. “Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Well, because you didn’t come see me, and you didn’t answer my note, and… well, you know. Lord Malfrey.”

  “Ah, yes.” He did not look so pleased anymore. “Lord Malfrey. Well, Victoria, it might interest you to know that the reason I did not stop by or answer your note is because I was busy. Busy dealing with friends of yours, actually.”

  “Friends of mine?” Victoria looked astonished. “But who on earth…?”

  “Young Master Peter, for one,” Jacob said. “I’ve offered him an apprenticeship in one of my offices, and my offer was, you’ll be happy to hear, accepted.”

  Victoria wasn’t certain she had heard him correctly. “You… you what?”

  “Well, I gave it some thought and decided you were right. We couldn’t leave those children in that cellar. One of my clerks has taken him and his sisters in. They have plenty of room; their own son is commanding a ship of mine headed for the West Indies. Peter and his sisters seemed to be settling in nicely when I left them. Mr. Pettigrew and his wife are terribly fond of children. But I’m afraid I had to draw the line at taking in the cats….”

  Victoria gazed up at Jacob in utter astonishment. She really was not at all certain that she believed what her ears were telling her. “But… but… I thought… I thought you’d gone to shoot Lord Malfrey.”

  “Oh, I thought about it,” Jacob admitted. “But it didn’t seem worth it. Despite the fact that you didn’t seem to put much value on it, I like my life, and was loath to risk giving it up for a blighter like Malfrey.”