Once and Always (Sequels 1)

“You’re lying!” Victoria burst out, her voice shaking.

“No, I swear it!”

Victoria’s head snapped up, her eyes glittering with outrage at this last insult to her intelligence. “If you think I’d believe another word either of you ever say—” She broke off, afraid of the deathly gray pallor of Charles’s haunted face, and ran from the room. She ran up the stairs, stumbling in her tear-blinded haste, and raced down the hall to her rooms. Once inside, she leaned against the closed door, her head thrown back, her teeth clamped together so tightly her jaws ached as she fought for control of her rioting emotions.

Andrew’s face, contorted with pain, appeared again before her tightly closed eyes and she moaned aloud with sick remorse. “I’ve loved you since the day I saw you racing across our fields on that Indian pony. . . . Tory, please! Come home with me. . . .”

She was nothing but a pawn in a game played by two selfish, heartless men, she realized hysterically. Jason had known all along that Andrew was coming, just as he had known all along that Charles had been playing cards the night of his false “attack.”

Victoria pushed away from the door, ripped off her gown, and changed into a riding habit. If she stayed in this house another hour, she would go insane. She couldn’t scream at Charles and risk having his death on her conscience. And Jason— He was due back tonight. She would surely plunge a knife into his heart if she saw him now, she thought hysterically. She snatched a white woolen cloak from the wardrobe and ran down the stairs.

“Victoria, wait!” Charles shouted as she raced down the hall toward the back of the house.

Victoria spun around, her whole body trembling. “Stay away from me!” she cried, backing away. “I’m going to Claremont. You’ve done enough!”

“O’Malley!” Charles barked desperately as she ran out the back door.

“Yes, your grace?”

“I’ve no doubt you ‘overheard’ what happened in the drawing room—”

O’Malley the eavesdropper nodded grimly, not bothering to deny it.

“Can you ride?”

“Yes, but—”

“Go after her,” Charles said in frantic haste. “I don’t know whether she’ll take a carriage or ride, but go after her. She likes you, she’ll listen to you.”

“Her ladyship won’t be in a mood to listen to no one, and I can’t say as I blame her fer it.”

“Never mind that, dammit! If she won’t come back, at least follow her to Claremont and make certain she gets there in safety. Claremont is fifteen miles south of here, by the river road.”

“Suppose she heads for London and tries to go away with the American gentleman?”

Charles raked his hand through his gray hair, then shook his head emphatically. “She won’t. If she meant to leave with him, she’d have done it when he asked her to go with him.”

“But I ain’t all that handy with a horse—not like Lady Victoria is.”

“She won’t be able to ride her fastest in the dark. Now, get down to the stables and go after her!”

Victoria was already galloping away on Matador, with Wolf running beside her, when O’Malley dashed toward the stables. “Wait, please!” he yelled, but she didn’t seem to hear him, and she bent low over the horse’s neck, sending the mighty gelding racing away as if the devil were after her.

“Saddle the fastest horse we’ve got, and be quick!” O’Malley ordered a groom, his gaze riveted on Victoria’s flashing white cloak as it disappeared down Wakefield’s long winding drive toward the main road.

Three miles flew by beneath Matador’s thundering hooves before Victoria had to slow him down for Wolf’s sake. The gallant dog was racing beside her, his head bent low, willing to follow her until he dropped dead from exhaustion. She waited for him to catch his breath and was about to continue her headlong flight when she heard the clatter of hooves behind her and a man’s unintelligible shout.

Not certain whether she was being pursued by one of the brigands who preyed on solitary travelers at night or by Jason, who might have returned and decided to track her down, Victoria turned Matador into the woods beside the road and sent him racing through the trees on a zigzagging course meant to lose whoever was following her. Her pursuer crashed through the underbrush behind her, following her despite her every effort to lose him.

Panic and fury rose apace in her breast as she broke from the cover of the trees that should have concealed her and spurred her horse down the road. If it was Jason behind her, she would die before she’d let him run her to ground like a rabbit. He’d made a fool of her once too often. No, it couldn’t be Jason! She hadn’t passed his coach on the drive when she rode away from Wakefield, nor had she seen any sign of it before she turned off onto the river road.

Victoria’s anger dissolved into chilling terror. She was coming to the same river where another girl had mysteriously drowned. She remembered the vicar’s stories about bloodthirsty bandits who preyed on travelers at night, and she threw a petrified glance over her shoulder as she raced toward one of the bridges that traversed the winding river. She saw that her pursuer had temporarily dropped back out of sight around a bend in the road, but she could hear him coming, following her as surely as if he had a light to guide him— Her cloak! Her white cloak was billowing out behind her like a waving beacon in the night.

“Oh, dear God!” she burst out as Matador clattered across the bridge. On her right there was a path that ran along the riverbank, while the road continued straight ahead. She jerked the horse to a bone-jarring stop, scrambled out of the saddle, and unfastened her cloak. Praying wildly that her ploy would work, Victoria flung her cloak over the saddle, turned the horse down the path along the riverbank, and whacked Matador hard on the flank with her crop, sending the horse galloping down the river path. With Wolf at her side, she raced into the woods above the path and crouched down in the underbrush, her heart thundering in her chest. A minute later, she heard her pursuer clatter across the bridge. She peeked between the branches of the bush concealing her and saw him veer off on the path that ran beside the river, but she couldn’t see his face.

She didn’t see that Matador eventually slowed from a run to a walk, then ambled down to the river for a drink. Nor did she see the river tug her cloak free from the saddle while the horse drank, carrying it a few yards downstream, where it tangled among the branches of a partially submerged fallen tree.