Once and Always (Sequels 1)

He grinned at her with unabashed devotion. “It ain’t bothered me a bit since you fixed me the last one, my lady.”

“Very well, but you won’t try to suffer with it if it starts up again, will you?”

“No, my lady.”

He waited until Victoria had rounded the corner, then turned to the footman beside him. “She’s a grand one, ain’t she?”

“A lady through and through,” the other footman agreed. “Just like you said she was from the start.”

“She’ll brighten up things for the lot of us,” O’Malley predicted, “and for the master too, once she’s warmin‘ his bed. She’ll give him an heir—that’ll make him happy.”

Northrup stood on the balcony overlooking the ballroom, his back ramrod straight, ready to announce the names of any late-arriving guests who passed beneath the marble portal beside him. Victoria approached him on legs that felt like jelly. “Give me a moment to catch my breath,” she pleaded with him. “Then you can announce our names. I’m dreadfully nervous,” she confided to him.

A smile almost, but not quite, cracked his stern countenance as his expert eye flicked over the breathtaking young woman before him. “While you are catching your breath, my lady, may I say how very much I enjoyed hearing you play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor yesterday afternoon? It is a particular favorite of mine.”

Victoria was so pleased, and so startled, by this unexpected cordiality from the austere servant that she nearly forgot the noisy, laughing crowd in the ballroom below. “Thank you,” she said, smiling gently. “And what is your very favorite piece?”

He looked shocked by her interest, but he told her.

“I shall play it for you tomorrow,” she promised sweetly.

“That is kind of you, indeed, my lady!” he replied with a stiff face and a formal bow. But when he turned to announce her name, Northrup’s voice rang with pride. “Lady Victoria Seaton, Countess Langston,” he called out, “and Miss Florence Wilson.”

A lightning bolt of anticipation seemed to shoot through the crowd, breaking off conversations and choking off laughter as some 500 guests turned in near-unison for their first real look at the American-born girl who now bore her mother’s title and who was soon to receive an even more coveted one from Jason, Lord Fielding.

They saw an exotic, titian-haired goddess draped in a shimmering Grecian-style gown of sapphire silk that matched her lustrous eyes and clung to every curve of her slender, voluptuous body. Long gloves encased her arms, and her shining hair was caught up at the crown in a mass of thick, glossy curls entwined with ropes of sapphires and diamonds. They saw a sculpted face of unforgettable beauty with high, delicately molded cheekbones, a perfect nose, generous lips, and a tiny, intriguing cleft at the center of her chin.

No one looking at her would have believed that the regal young beauty’s knees were nearly knocking together with panic.

The sea of nameless faces staring up at her seemed to part as Victoria descended the steps, and Jason suddenly strode forward from among the crowd. He held his hand out to her and Victoria automatically placed her hand in his, but the eyes she turned up to his were wide with fright.

Bending low as if to murmur some intimate compliment, Jason said, “You’re scared to death, aren’t you? Do you want me to begin the hundreds of introductions now, or would you rather dance with me and let them finish giving you a thorough look-over that way?”

“What a choice!” Victoria whispered on a choked laugh.

“I’ll start the music,” Jason decided wisely, and signaled the musicians with a nod of his head. He led her onto the dance floor and took her in his arms as the musicians struck up a dramatic waltz. “Can you waltz?” he said suddenly.

“What a time to ask!” she said, laughing, on the verge of nervous hysteria.

“Victoria!” Jason said severely, but with a dazzling smile for the benefit of their watchful audience, “you are the selfsame young woman who coolly threatened to blow my brains out with a gun. Do not dare turn cowardly now.”

“No, my lord,” she replied, desperately trying to follow him as he began to guide her through the first steps of the waltz. He waltzed, she thought, with the same relaxed elegance with which he wore his superbly tailored black evening clothes.

Suddenly his arm tightened around her waist, forcing her into nerve-racking proximity with his powerful body, and he warned in a low voice, “It is customary for a couple to engage in some form of conversation or harmless flirtation when they are dancing, otherwise onlookers perceive that the two dislike one another.”

Victoria stared at him, her mouth as dry as sawdust.

“Say something to me, dammit.”

The curse, uttered with such a brilliant, attentive smile, wrung an involuntary laugh from her, and she temporarily forgot about their audience. Trying to do as he bade her, she said the first thing that came to mind. “You waltz very well, my lord.”

Jason relaxed and smiled down at her. “Thafis what I am supposed to say to you.”

“You English have rules to govern absolutely everything,” Victoria countered in mock admiration.

“You happen to be English too, ma’am,” he reminded her, then added, “Miss Flossie has taught you to waltz very well. What else have you learned?”

A little stung by his assumption that she hadn’t known how to waltz before, Victoria gave him a jaunty smile and said, “You may rest assured that I now possess all the skills which the English deem necessary for a young lady of birth and refinement.”

“And those are?” Jason inquired, grinning at her tone.

“Besides playing the piano, I can carry a tune, waltz without falling, and embroider a fine stitch. In addition, I can read French and execute a throne-room curtsy with great aplomb. It seems to me,” she observed with an impertinent smile, “that in England it is quite desirable for a female to be utterly useless.”

Jason threw back his head and laughed at her observation.

She was, he thought, an amazing combination of intriguing contrasts—of sophistication and innocence, femininity and courage, lush beauty and irrepressible humor. She had a body that was created for a man’s hands, a pair of eyes that could drive a man to lust, a smile that could be sunny or sensual, and a mouths—a mouth that positively invited a man to kiss it.

“It’s impolite to stare,” Victoria said, her mind more on keeping up the appearance of enjoying herself than on the direction of his gaze.