Once and Always (Sequels 1)

Once when she was fourteen, her father had been summoned to a farmer’s house to look after the farmer’s wife who was in labor. While Victoria was waiting for the baby to be born, she had wandered out to the small pasture where the horses were kept. There she had witnessed the frightening spectacle of a stallion mounting a mare. He had clamped his huge teeth viciously into the mare’s neck, holding her helpless while he did his worst to her, and the poor mare screamed in pain.

Visions of flapping wings, squawking hens, and terrified mares paraded across her mind, and Victoria shuddered.

“My dear girl, you look quite pale, and I don’t blame you,” Miss Flossie put in not at all helpfully. “However, I have been given to understand that once a wife has done her duty and produced an heir, a thoughtful husband may be depended upon to get himself a paramour and do you-know to her, leaving his wife in peace to enjoy the rest of her life.”

Victoria’s gaze skittered nervously to the window. “A paramour,” she breathed, knowing Jason already had one, and that he’d had a great many others in the past—all beautiful, according to what gossip she’d heard. As Victoria sat there, she began to rethink her earlier feelings toward the gentlemen of the ton and their mistresses. She had thought it perfidious of them to be married and still keep paramours, but perhaps it wasn’t that at all. It seemed more likely that, as Miss Flossie suggested, the gentlemen of the ton were more civilized, refined, and considerate of their wives.

Rather than using their wives to fulfill their baser desires, they simply found another woman to do so, set her up in a nice house with servants and beautiful gowns, and left their poor wives in peace. Yes, she decided sensibly, this was probably an ideal way of handling the matter. Certainly the ladies of the ton seemed to think so, and they would know far better than she herself.

“Thank you, Miss Flossie,” she said sincerely. “You’ve been very helpful and very kind.”

Miss Flossie beamed, her yellow curls bouncing beneath her little white lace cap. “Thank you, my dear girl. You’ve made Charles happier than I’ve ever seen him. And Jason, too, of course,” she added politely.

Victoria smiled, but she couldn’t quite accept the notion that she had made Jason truly happy.

Wandering back to her room, she sat down before the empty fireplace and forced herself to try to untangle her emotions and stop hiding from the facts. Tomorrow morning she was going to marry Jason. She wanted to make him happy—she wanted it so much she hardly knew how to deal with her own feelings. The fact that he had been married to a faithless woman evoked sympathy and compassion in her heart, not resentment—and an even greater desire to make up for all the unhappiness in his life.

Restlessly, Victoria got up and walked about the room, picking up the porcelain music box on her dressing table, then laying it down and walking over to the bed. She tried to tell herself she was marrying Jason because she had no choice, but as she sat down upon the bed, she admitted that wasn’t entirely true. Part of her wanted to marry him. She loved his looks and his smile and his dry sense of humor. She loved the brisk authority in his deep voice and the confidence in his long, athletic strides. She loved the way his eyes gleamed when he laughed at her and the way they smoldered when he kissed her. She loved the lazy elegance with which he wore his clothes and the way his lips felt—

Victoria tore her thoughts from Jason’s lips and stared bleakly at the gold silk bed hangings. She loved many things about him—too many things. She was not a good judge of men; her experience with Andrew was proof of that. She had deceived herself into believing Andrew loved her, but she had no illusions about what Jason felt for her. He was attracted to her and he wanted a son from her. He liked her, too, Victoria knew, but beyond that, he felt nothing for her. She, on the other hand, was already in serious danger of falling in love with him. But he didn’t want her love. He’d told her that in the plainest possible terms.

For weeks she’d been trying to convince herself that what she felt for Jason was gratitude and friendship, but she knew now it had already gone much deeper than that. Why else would she feel this burning need to make him happy and make him love her? Why else would she have experienced such rage when Miss Flossie spoke of his wife’s public infidelities?

Fear raced through Victoria and she rubbed her damp palms against her lime-colored muslin gown. Tomorrow morning she was going to commit her entire life into the keeping of a man who didn’t want her love, a man who could use the tenderness she felt for him as a weapon to hurt her. Every instinct for self-preservation that Victoria possessed warned her not to marry him. Her father’s own words tolled through her mind, as they had been doing for days, warning her not to walk down that aisle tomorrow: “Loving someone who doesn’t love you is hell! . . . Don’t ever let anyone convince you that you can be happy with someone who doesn’t love you. . . . Don’t ever love anyone more than they love you, Tory. ...”

Victoria bent her head, her hair falling forward in a curtain around her tense face, her hands clenched into fists. Her mind warned her not to marry him, that he would make her miserable—but her heart begged her to gamble everything on him, to reach for the happiness just beyond her grasp.

Her mind told her to run, but her heart begged her not to be a coward.

Northrup tapped upon her door, his voice vibrating with disapproval. “Excuse me, Lady Victoria,” he said from the other side of her closed door. “There is a distraught, disheveled young lady downstairs, without escort or bonnet, who arrived in a hired carriage, but who claims to be ... ahem . . . your sister? I am not aware of any young female relations of yours here in London, so naturally I suggested she leave, however—”

“Dorothy?” Victoria burst out, pulling open the door and raking her hair off her forehead. “Where is she?” Victoria said, her face radiant.

“I put her in the small salon at the front,” Northrup said with visible dismay. “But if she is your sister, of course, I shall show her into the more comfortable yellow salon and . . .”

His voice trailed off as Victoria raced around the corner and down the stairs.

“Tory!” Dorothy burst out, wrapping Victoria in a fierce, protective hug, her words tumbling over themselves, her voice shaking with laughter and tears. “You should have seen the look your butler gave my hired carriage—it was nearly as bad as the look he gave me.”