Once and Always (Sequels 1)

Caroline nodded instantly. “My brothers were cross as crabs if they felt even slightly unwell.”

“That’s what I mean: your brothers aren’t mean people, but when they don’t feel well, they become bad-tempered.”

“Do you think, then, that Lord Fielding is ill?”

“I don’t think he’s very happy, which is the same thing as not feeling well. Regardless of that, my father also taught me to place more importance on the things a person does than on what he says. If you view Lord Fielding in that way, he has been very kind to me. He’s given me a home and more beautiful clothes than I could use in a lifetime, and he’s even let me bring Wolf into the house.”

“You must have a superior understanding of people,” Caroline said quietly.

“No, I don’t,” Victoria contradicted ruefully. “I lose my temper and am hurt just as easily as anyone else. Not until afterward do I remember to try to understand why the person might have treated me in such a way.”

“And you aren’t afraid of Lord Fielding, not even when he’s angry?”

“Only a little,” Victoria admitted ruefully. “But then, I haven’t seen him since we came to London, so perhaps I’m only feeling brave because there’s a distance between us.”

“Not anymore,” Caroline remarked, nodding meaningfully toward the elegant black-lacquered coach with a gold seal emblazoned on the door that was waiting in front of #6 Upper Brook Street. “That is Lord Fielding’s crest on the black coach,” she explained when Victoria looked blank. “And the coach drawn up behind that one is ours—which means my husband must have finished his business early and decided to fetch me himself.”

Victoria felt a funny little leap of her heart at the knowledge that Jason was here—a reaction she immediately put down to nervous guilt for having discussed him with Caroline.

Both gentlemen were in the drawing room, listening politely as Miss Flossie tortured them with a lengthy, disjointed monologue on Victoria’s progress during the last two weeks, liberally interspersed with rapturous comments about her own debut almost fifty years ago. Victoria took one glance at Jason’s strained features and concluded he was mentally strangling the lady.

“Victoria!” Miss Flossie said, gleefully clapping her little hands. “At last you are back! I’ve been telling these gentlemen of your talent at the piano, and they are anxious beyond anything to hear you play.” Cheerfully oblivious to Jason’s sardonic expression when he heard himself described as “anxious beyond anything,” Miss Flossie marched Victoria over to the piano and insisted that she play something at once.

Helplessly, Victoria sat down on the bench and glanced at Jason, who was concentrating on picking a piece of lint from the leg of his beautifully tailored dark blue trousers. He could not have looked more bored unless he yawned. He also looked incredibly handsome, Victoria realized, and she felt another tremor of nervousness, which was amplified a dozen times by his lazy, mocking smile when he looked up at her. “I’ve never known a female who could swim, shoot, tame wild animals, and,” he concluded, “play the piano. Let’s hear you do it.”

Victoria could tell from his tone that he expected her to play poorly, and she longed to avoid giving a recital now, when she was so inexplicably nervous. “Mr. Wilheim gave Dorothy and me lessons as a way of repaying my father for treating his ailment of the lungs, but Dorothy is a much better musician than I. Until two weeks ago, I hadn’t played in months, and I’m still out of practice,” she said, hastily trying to excuse herself. “My Beethoven is barely mediocre and—”

Her lame hope for a reprieve was dashed when Jason lifted a challenging eyebrow and nodded meaningfully at the keyboard.

Victoria sighed and capitulated. “Is there anything in particular you would like to hear?”

“Beethoven,” he said dryly.

Victoria sent him an exasperated look, which only made his grin widen, but she bent her head and prepared to do as he asked. Tentatively, she ran her fingers over the keyboard, then stopped, her hands poised over the keys. When she brought them down again, the room resounded with the vibrant, sweeping melody and triumphant crescendos of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor, exploding with all the power and might and lilting sweetness of the passage.

In the hall beyond the drawing room, Northrup stopped polishing a silver bowl and blissfully closed his eyes, listening enraptured. In the foyer, O’Malley stopped scolding a subordinate and tilted his head toward the drawing room, smiling at the uplifting sound of music being played in Lord Fielding’s house.

When Victoria finished, everyone in the drawing room burst into spontaneous applause—except Jason, who leaned back in his chair, a wry smile on his lips. “Do you possess any other ‘mediocre’ skills?” he teased, but there was a sincere compliment in his eyes, and when Victoria saw it, it filled her with an absurd amount of pleasure.

Caroline and her husband left soon thereafter, promising to see Victoria at her ball tomorrow night, and Miss Flossie escorted them to the door. Left alone with Jason, Victoria felt unaccountably self-conscious, and she promptly burst into speech to hide it. “I—I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Surely you didn’t think I’d stay away from your debut?” he teased, with a dazzling smile. “I’m not entirely lost to the proprieties, you know. We’re supposed to be betrothed. How would it look if I didn’t appear here?”

“My lord—” she began.

“That has a nice ring to it,” he remarked, chuckling. “Very respectful. You’ve never called me that before.”

Victoria gave him a look of laughing severity. “And I wouldn’t have done so now, except that Miss Flossie has been drilling titles and forms of address into my head for days on end. However, what I started to say was that I’m not very good at deceit, and the idea of telling people we’re betrothed makes me monstrously uneasy. Uncle Charles won’t listen to my objections, but I don’t think this pretense is a good idea at all.”

“It isn’t,” Jason agreed flatly. “The reason for giving you this season is to introduce you to prospective husbands—”

Victoria opened her mouth to insist that Andrew was going to be her husband, but Jason held up a hand and amended his last statement. “The purpose is to introduce you to prospective husbands, in the event Ambrose doesn’t rush to your rescue.”