Once and Always (Sequels 1)

“Show her in, Northrup,” Uncle Charles said jovially.

Caroline Collingwood walked into the salon, noted the open etiquette books and the volume of Debrett’s Peerage, and cast a conspiratorial smile at Victoria. “I was hoping you might accompany me for a drive in the park,” she told Victoria.

“I’d love it above everything!” Victoria exclaimed. “Would you mind terribly, Miss Flossie? Uncle Charles?” Both gave their permission and Victoria rushed upstairs to tidy her hair and fetch her bonnet.

Waiting for her, Caroline turned politely to the two older occupants of the salon. “I imagine you must be very eager for tomorrow night.”

“Oh, yes, very,” Miss Flossie averred, nodding her blond curls energetically. “Victoria is a delightful young lady, which I don’t have to tell you, who are already acquainted with her. Such charming manners she has, so easy and conversable. And what eyes! Such a lovely figure, too. I have every confidence she’ll be a great success. I can’t help wishing she was blond, however.” Miss Flossie sighed and bobbed her head dejectedly, oblivious to Lady Collingwood’s mahogany tresses. “Blond is all the rage, you know.” Her birdlike gaze darted to Charles. “Do you recall Lord Hornby as a youth? I used to think he was the handsomest man alive. He had red hair and such nice address. His brother was so very short . . .” And so she continued, leaping from topic to topic as though from branch to branch.

Victoria looked around at the park and leaned back in the open carriage, closing her eyes in sheer bliss. “How peaceful it is here,” she said to Caroline, “and how kind you’ve been to come to my rescue so many afternoons with these drives in the park.”

“What were you studying when I arrived?”

“The correct forms of address for members of the peerage and their wives.”

“And have you mastered it?” Caroline asked.

“Absolutely,” Victoria said, suppressing a tired, irreverent giggle. “All I have to do is call the men ‘my lord,’ as if they are God, and their wives ‘my lady,’ as if I am their maid.”

Caroline’s laughter brought an answering chuckle from Victoria. “The thing I find hardest is French,” she admitted. “My mother taught Dorothy and me to read it, and I do that well enough, but I cannot call the right words to mind when I try to speak it.”

Caroline, who spoke fluent French, tried to help. “Sometimes it is best to learn a language in useful phrases, rather than single words; then you needn’t think how to put them together, and the rest can come later. For example, how would you ask me for writing materials in French?”

“Mon pot d’encre veut vous emprunter votre stylo?” Victoria ventured.

Caroline’s lips trembled with mirth. “You have just said, ‘My inkpot wishes to borrow your pen.’ ”

“At least I was close,” Victoria said, and they both burst into gales of mirth.

The occupants of the other carriages in the park turned at the musical sound of their gaiety and it was again noted that the dashing Countess Collingwood was showing particular partiality for Lady Victoria Seaton—a fact that had already added considerably to Victoria’s growing prestige amongst the ton who had yet to meet her.

Victoria reached over to Wolf, who regularly accompanied them on their outings, and stroked his head. “Amazing, is it not, that I learned mathematics and chemistry from my father easily enough, but French defies me? Perhaps I can’t grasp it because learning it seems so pointless.”

“Why is it pointless?”

“Because Andrew will arrive soon and take me home.”

“I shall miss you,” Caroline said wistfully. “Most friendships take years before they feel as comfortable and easy as ours is now. When, exactly, do you think your Andrew is likely to arrive?”

“I wrote him within a week of my parents’ death,” Victoria replied, absently tucking a strand of hair into place beneath the pleated brim of her lemon yellow bonnet. “The letter would take about six weeks to reach him, and it would take him six weeks to come home. It will take him another four to six weeks to sail from America back here. That totals somewhere between sixteen and eighteen weeks. Tomorrow will be exactly eighteen weeks since I wrote him.”

“You’re assuming that he received that first letter in Switzerland, but mail to Europe is not always reliable. Besides, suppose he had already left for France, where you said he was going next?”

“I gave Mrs. Bainbridge—Andrew’s mother—a second letter to mail to France, just in case that happened.” Victoria sighed. “If I had known when I wrote to him then that I was going to be in England now, he could have stayed here in Europe, which would have been much more convenient. Unfortunately, I didn’t know it, so all I told him in the first letters was that my parents had died in an accident. I’m certain he started for America as soon as he discovered that.”

“Then why didn’t he arrive in America before you left for England?”

“There probably wasn’t quite enough time. I would guess he arrived within a week or two of my departure.”

Caroline slanted Victoria a thoughtful, hesitant look. “Victoria, have you told the Duke of Atherton you are certain Andrew is coming for you?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t believe me. And because he doesn’t, he’s determined I must have this season.”

“But doesn’t it seem odd that he wants you and Lord Fielding to pretend to be betrothed? I don’t mean to pry,” Caroline apologized quickly. “If you’d rather not discuss this with me, I’ll understand.”

Victoria shook her head emphatically. “I’ve been longing to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to take advantage of our friendship by unburdening myself to you.”

“I’ve unburdened myself to you,” Caroline said simply. “And that is what friends are for—to talk things out. You can’t imagine how wonderful and how unusual I find it to have a friend in the ton who I know will not breathe a word I say to anyone else.”

Victoria smiled. “In that case . . . Uncle Charles says the reason he wants everyone to believe I’m betrothed is because it will make it possible for me to remain free of other ‘entanglements’ and ’complications.‘ As an engaged woman, he says, I’ll be able to enjoy all the excitement of my come-out without feeling the slightest pressure from suitors, or from society, to make an eligible match.”