Once and Always (Sequels 1)

Long after both men left, she remained at the table, listlessly toying with the food on her plate, trying to find a way out of this dilemma for Jason’s sake and her own. Her dreams of a happy home, with a loving husband at her side and a baby gurgling in her arms, came back to mock her, and she allowed herself a bout of self-pity. After all, she hadn’t asked very much of life; she hadn’t yearned for furs and jewels, for seasons in London or palatial homes where she could play reigning queen. She had wanted no more than what she’d had in America—except that she had wanted a husband and children to go with it.

A wave of dizzying homesickness washed over her and she bent her head. How she longed to set time back a year and keep it there, to have her parents’ smiling faces before her, to listen to her father speak of the hospital he wanted to build, and to be surrounded by the villagers who had been her second family. She would do anything, anything to go back home again. An image of Andrew’s handsome, laughing face appeared to taunt her, and Victoria thrust it away, refusing to shed any more tears for the faithless man she had adored.

She pushed her chair back and went looking for Jason. Andrew had abandoned her to her own fate, but Jason was here and he was obliged to help her think of some way out of a marriage neither of them wanted.

She found him alone in his study—a solitary, brooding man standing with his arm draped on the mantel, staring into the empty fireplace. Compassion swelled in her heart as she realized that, although he had pretended to be cold and unemotional in front of Dr. Worthing, Jason had come in here to worry in lonely privacy.

Suppressing the urge to go to him and offer sympathy, which she knew he would only reject, she said quietly, “Jason?”

He lifted his head and looked at her, his face impassive.

“What are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“About this outrageous idea Uncle Charles has of seeing us married.”

“Why is it outrageous?”

Victoria was amazed by his answer, but determined to discuss the matter, calmly and frankly. “It’s outrageous because I don’t want to marry you.”

His eyes hardened. “I’m well aware of that, Victoria.”

“You don’t want to be married either,” she answered reasonably, lifting her hands in a gesture of appeal.

“You’re right.” Shifting his gaze back to the fireplace, he lapsed into silence. Victoria waited for him to say something more; when he didn’t, she sighed and started to leave. His next words made her turn back and stare. “However, our marriage could give each of us something we do want.”

“What is that?” she asked, peering at his ruggedly chiseled profile, trying to fathom his mood. He straightened and turned, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes meeting hers. “You want to go back to America, to be independent, to live among your friends and perhaps build the hospital your father dreamed of building. You’ve told me all that. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit you’d also like to go back there to show Andrew, and everyone else, that his desertion meant nothing to you—that you forgot about him as easily as he forgot about you, and you went on with your life.”

Victoria was so humiliated by his reference to her plight that it took a moment before his next words registered on her. “And,” he finished matter-of-factly, “I want a son.”

Her mouth fell open as he continued calmly, “We could give each other what we both want. Marry me and give me a son. In return, I’ll send you back to America with enough money to live like a queen and build a dozen hospitals.”

Victoria stared at him in stricken disbelief. “Give you a son?” she echoed. “Give you a son, and then you’ll send me back to America? Give you a son and leave him here?”

“I’m not completely selfish—you could keep him with you until he is ... say, four years old. A child needs his mother until he is that age. After that, I would expect to have him with me. Perhaps you will choose to stay here with us when you bring him back. Actually, I’d prefer that you stay here permanently, but I will leave that up to you. There is one thing, however—a condition to all this—that I would insist upon.”

“What condition?” Victoria asked dazedly.

He hesitated as if framing his answer with care, and when he finally spoke, he looked away, studying the landscape above the fireplace as if he wished to avoid meeting her eyes. “Because of the way you leapt to my defense the other night, people have assumed you do not despise or fear me. If you agree to this marriage, I will expect you to reinforce that opinion and not do or say anything to make them think differently. In other words, no matter what may transpire between us in private, when we are in public I would expect you to behave as if you married me for more than my money and title. Or to put it simply—as if you care for me.”

For no reason at all, Victoria recalled his caustic remarks at the Mortrams’ ball: “You’re mistaken if you think I give a damn what people think. . . .” He had been lying, she realized with a pang of tenderness. He obviously cared what they thought or he wouldn’t ask her to do this.

She gazed at the cool, dispassionate man standing before her. He looked powerful, aloof, and completely self-assured. It was impossible to believe he wanted a son, or her, or anyone—as impossible as it was to believe that it bothered him that people feared and mistrusted him. Impossible, but true. She remembered how boyish he had seemed the night of his duel, when he had teased her and coaxed her to kiss him. She remembered the hungry yearning in his kiss and the lonely desperation of his words: “I’ve tried a hundred times to let you go. But I can’t.”

Perhaps beneath his cool, unemotional facade, Jason felt as lonely and empty as she did. Perhaps he needed her, and couldn’t make himself say so. Then again, perhaps she was only trying to fool herself into believing it. “Jason,” she said, voicing part of her thoughts aloud. “You can’t expect me to have a child and then hand him over to you and go my own way. You can’t be as cold and heartless as your proposition makes you sound. I—I can’t believe you are.”

“You won’t find me a cruel husband, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is not what I mean,” Victoria burst out a little hysterically. “How can you speak of marrying me as if you’re discussing a—a common business arrangement— without any feeling, without any emotion, without even a pretense of love or—”