Once and Always (Sequels 1)

“I did not receive any letter!” she persisted in rising tones of hysteria.

Anger thinned Andrew’s lips. “Before we leave, I intend to call upon a firm in London that was paid a small fortune to make certain my letters were delivered personally to you and your cousin the duke. I want to hear what they have to say for themselves!”

“They’ll say they delivered them to me,” Charles said flatly.

Wildly, Victoria shook her head, her mind already realizing what her heart couldn’t bear to believe. “No, you didn’t receive any letter, Uncle Charles. You’re mistaken. You’re thinking of the one I received from Andrew’s mother—the one telling me he was married.”

Andrew’s eyes blazed with anger when he saw the guilt on the older man’s face. He seized Victoria by the shoulders. “Tory, listen to me! I wrote you a dozen letters while I was in Europe, but I sent them to you in America. I did not learn of your parents’ death until I returned home two months ago. From the day your parents died, my mother stopped sending me your letters. When I came home, she told me your parents had died and that you had been whisked off to England by some wealthy cousin of yours who had offered you marriage. She said she had no idea where or how to find you here. I knew you better than to believe you would toss me over merely for some wealthy old cousin with a title. It took a while, but I finally located Dr. Morrison, and he told me the truth about your coming here and gave me your direction.

“When I told my mother I was coming here after you, she admitted the rest of her duplicity. She told me about the letter she wrote you saying I had married Madeline in Switzerland. Then she promptly had one of her ‘attacks.’ Except this one turned out to be real. I couldn’t leave her while she was teetering at death’s door, so I wrote you and your cousin, here—” He shot a murderous look at Charles. “—who for some reason did not tell you of my letters. In them, I explained what had happened, and I told each of you that I would come for you as soon as I possibly could.”

His voice softened as he cradled Victoria’s stricken face between his palms. “Tory,” he said with a tender smile, “you’ve been the love of my life since the day I saw you racing across our fields on that Indian pony of Rushing River’s. I’m not married, sweetheart.”

Victoria swallowed, trying to drag her voice past the aching lump in her throat. “I am.”

Andrew snatched his hands away from her face as if her skin burned him. “What did you say?” he demanded tightly.

“I said,” Victoria repeated in an agonized whisper as she stared at his beloved face, “I am. Married.”

Andrew’s body stiffened as if he were trying to withstand a physical blow. He glanced contemptuously at Charles. “To him? To this old man? You sold yourself for a few jewels and gowns, is that it?” he bit out furiously.

“No!” Victoria almost screamed, shaking with rage and pain and sorrow.

Charles spoke finally, his voice expressionless, his face blank. “Victoria is married to my nephew.”

“To your son!” Victoria hurled the words at him. She whirled around, hating Charles for his deceit, and hating Jason for collaborating with him.

Andrew’s hands clamped on her arms and she felt his anguish as if it were her own. “Why?” he said, giving her a shake. “Why!”

“The fault is mine,” Charles said tersely. He straightened to his full height, his eyes on Victoria, silently pleading for her understanding. “I have dreaded this moment of reckoning ever since Mr. Bainbridge’s letters arrived. Now that the time is here, it is worse than I ever imagined.”

“When did you receive those letters?” Victoria demanded, but in her heart she already knew the answer, and it was tearing her to pieces.

“The night of my attack.”

“Your pretended attack!” Victoria corrected, her voice shaking with bitterness and rage.

“Exactly so,” Charles confessed tightly, then turned to Andrew. “When I read that you were coming to take Victoria from us, I did the only thing I could think of—I feigned a heart attack, and I pleaded with her to marry my son so that she would have someone to look after her.”

“You bastard!” Andrew bit out between clenched teeth.

“I do not expect you to believe this, but I felt very sincerely that Victoria and my son would find great happiness together.”

Andrew tore his savage gaze from his foe and looked at Victoria. “Come home with me,” he implored desperately. “They can’t make you stay married to a man you don’t love. It can’t be legal—they coerced you into it. Tory, please! Come home with me, and I’ll find some way out of this. The ship leaves in two days. We’ll be married anyway. No one will ever know—”

“I can’t!” The words were ripped from her in a tormented whisper.

“Please—” he said.

Her eyes brimming with tears, Victoria shook her head. “I can’t,” she choked.

Andrew drew a long breath and slowly turned away.

The hand Victoria stretched out to him in silent, helpless appeal, fell to her side as he walked out of the room. Out of the house. Out of her life.

A minute ticked by in ominous silence, then another. Clutching the folds of her gown, Victoria twisted it until her knuckles whitened, while the image of Andrew’s anguished face seared itself into her mind. She remembered how she had felt when she first learned he was married, the torment of dragging herself through each day, trying to smile when she was dying inside.

Suddenly the churning pain and rage erupted inside of her and she whirled around on Charles in a frenzy of fury. “How could you!” she cried. “How could you do this to two people who never did a thing to hurt you! Did you see the look on his face? Do you know how much we’ve hurt him? Do you?”

“Yes,” Charles said hoarsely.

“Do you know how I felt all those weeks when I thought he had betrayed me and I had no one? I felt like a beggar in your house! Do you know how I felt, thinking I was marrying a man who didn’t want me, because I had no choice—” Her voice failed and she looked at him through eyes so blinded by the tears she was fighting to hold back that she couldn’t see the anguish in his.

“Victoria,” Charles rasped, “don’t blame Jason for this. He didn’t know I was pretending my attack, he didn’t know about the lett—”