Once and Always (Sequels 1)

Victoria smiled blankly, and Lady Kirby took up the conversational gauntlet. “Well, Charles, in that case, I gather you mean to bring out poor Miss Seaton during the season?”

“I intend to see that Countess Langston takes her rightful place in society,” he corrected coolly.

“Countess Langst—” Lady Kirby gasped.

Charles inclined his head. “Victoria is Katherine Langston’s oldest child. Unless I mistake the rules of succession, she is now heir to her mother’s Scottish title.”

“Even so,” Lady Kirby said stiffly, “you’ll not have an easy time making a suitable match for her.” She turned to Victoria, oozing feigned sympathy. “Your mama created quite a scandalbroth when she ran off with that Irish laborer.”

Indignation on her mother’s behalf shot white-hot sparks through Victoria’s entire body. “My mother married an Irish physician,” she corrected.

“Without her grandmother’s permission,” Lady Kirby countered. “Gently bred girls do not marry against their families’ wishes in this country.” The obvious implication that Katherine was not gently bred made Victoria so angry she dug her fingernails into her palms.

“Oh, well, society eventually forgets these things,” Lady Kirby continued generously. “In the meantime, you will have much to learn before you can be presented. You will have to learn the proper forms of address for each peer, his wife and children, and of course there’s the etiquette involved in paying calls and the more complicated problems of learning seating arrangements. That alone takes months to master—whom you may seat next to whom at table, I mean. Colonials are ignorant of such things, but we English place the greatest importance on these matters of propriety.”

“Perhaps that explains why we always defeat you in war,” Victoria suggested sweetly, goaded into defending her family and her country.

Lady Kirby’s eyes narrowed. “I meant no offense. However, you shall have to curb your tongue if you hope to make a suitable match as well as live down your mother’s reputation.”

Victoria stood up and said with quiet dignity, “I will find it very hard to live up to my mother’s reputation. My mother was the gentlest, kindest woman who ever lived. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

Victoria shut the door behind her and went down the hall to the library, a gigantic room with Persian carpets scattered across the polished wood floors and bookshelves lining the long walls. Too angry and upset to actually sit down at one of the desks and write a letter to Dorothy or Andrew, she wandered over to the shelves of books, looking for something to soothe her spirits. Bypassing the tomes on history, mythology, and commerce, she came to a poetry section. Her gaze wandered distractedly over the authors, some of whom she had already read—Milton, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Without any real interest in reading, she haphazardly chose a slender volume simply because it was protruding several inches beyond the others on the shelf and carried it over to the nearest grouping of comfortable chairs.

She turned up the oil lamp on the table and settled down in the chair, forcing herself to open the book. A sheet of pink, perfumed notepaper slid out and drifted to the floor. Victoria automatically picked it up and started to put it back, but the first words of the torrid little note, which was written in French, leapt out at her:

Darling Jason,

I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me. .. .

Victoria told herself that reading another person’s letter was ill-bred, unforgivable, and completely beneath her dignity, but the idea of a woman waiting impatiently for Jason Fielding to come to her was so incredible that Victoria couldn’t bridle her amazed curiosity. For her part, she would be more inclined to wait impatiently for him to go away! She was so engrossed in her discovery that she didn’t hear Jason and Miss Kirby coming down the hall as she continued to read:

I am sending you these lovely poems in the hope you will read them and think of me, of the tender nights we have shared in each other’s arms. . . .

“Victoria!” Jason called irritably.

Victoria leapt to her feet in guilty nervousness, dropped the book of poetry, snatched it up, and sat back down. Trying to look absorbed in her reading, she opened the book and stared blindly at it, completely unaware that it was upside down.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” Jason demanded as he strolled into the library with the lovely Miss Kirby clinging to his arm. “Johanna wanted to tell you good-bye and to offer her suggestions if you need to buy anything in the village.”

After Lady Kirby’s unprovoked attack, Victoria couldn’t help wondering if Miss Kirby was now implying that Victoria couldn’t be trusted to choose her own purchases. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you call,” she said, trying to compose her features so she’d look neither angry nor guilty. “As you can see, I’ve been reading, and I was quite engrossed.” She closed the book and laid it on the table, then forced herself to gaze calmly at the pair. The look of revolted disgust on Jason’s face made her step back in alarm. “Is—is something wrong?” she asked, fearfully certain that he somehow remembered that the note was in the book and suspected her of reading it.

“Yes,” he snapped, and turned to Miss Kirby, who was\ staring at Victoria with an expression similar to his. “Johanna, can you recommend a tutor from the village who can teach her to read?”

“Teach me to read?” Victoria gasped, flinching from the scornful pity on the brunette’s beautiful face. “Don’t be silly, I don’t need a tutor—I know perfectly well how to read.”

Ignoring her, Jason looked at Miss Kirby. “Can you name a tutor who would come here and teach her?”

“Yes, I believe so, my lord. Mr. Watkins, the vicar, might do it.”

With the long-suffering look of one who has already been forced to tolerate too many insults and will not endure yet another one, Victoria said very firmly, “Oh, really, this is absurd. I do not need a tutor. I know how to read.”

Jason’s manner turned to ice. “Don’t lie to me ever again,” he warned. “I despise liars—particularly lying women. You can’t read a word and you damned well know it!”

“I do not believe this!” Victoria said, oblivious to Miss Kirby’s horrified gasp. “I can read, I tell you!”

Pushed past endurance by what he perceived as her flagrant attempt to deceive him, Jason took three long strides to the table, grabbed the book, and thrust it into her hands. “Then read it!”