Charles took her for a carriage ride to the neighboring village the next day, and although the outing filled her with nostalgic homesickness for her former home, she enjoyed herself immensely. Flowers bloomed everywhere—in flower boxes and gardens where loving care was lavished upon them, and wild on the hills and in the meadows, tended only by mother nature. The village with its neat cottages and cobbled streets was utterly charming and Victoria fell in love with it.

Each time they emerged from one of the little shops along the street, the villagers who saw them stopped and stared and doffed their hats. They called Charles “your grace,” and although Victoria could tell that he was usually at a loss for their names, he treated them with unaffected pleasantness, regardless of their station in life.

By the time they returned to Wakefield Park that afternoon, Victoria felt much more optimistic about her new life and was hoping for the opportunity to know the villagers better.

To avoid causing any more trouble for herself, she limited the rest of her day’s activities to reading in her own room and two more forays to the compost pile, where she tried unsuccessfully to coax Willie to come closer to her for his food.

She lay down before supper and fell asleep, lulled by the notion that further dissension between herself and Jason Fielding could be avoided if she simply stayed out of his way, as she had thus far today.

She was wrong. When she awakened, Ruth was placing an armful of pastel frocks in the armoire. “Those aren’t mine, Ruth,” Victoria said sleepily, frowning in the candlelight as she climbed out of bed.

“Yes, miss, they are!” Ruth said enthusiastically. “His lordship sent to London for them.”

“Please inform him that I won’t wear them,” Victoria said with firm politeness.

Ruth’s hand flew to her throat. “Oh, no, miss, I couldn’t do that. Really I couldn’t!”

“Well, I can!” Victoria said, already heading to the other armoire in search of her own clothes.

“They’re gone,” Ruth said miserably. “I—I carried them out. His lordship’s orders—”

“I understand,” Victoria said gently, but within her she felt a temper she didn’t know she possessed come to a simmering boil.

The little maid wrung her hands, her pale eyes hopeful. “Miss, his lordship said I may have the position of your personal maid, if I’m able to do it properly.”

“I don’t need a maid, Ruth.”

The girl’s shoulders sagged. “It would be so much nicer than what I do now....”

Victoria wasn’t proof against that pleading expression on her face. “Very well, then,” she sighed, trying to force a smile to her lips. “What does a ‘personal maid’ do?”

“Well, I help you dress and make certain-sure your gowns are always clean and pressed. And I fix your hair, too. May I? Fix your hair, I mean? You have such beautiful hair, and my ma always said I have a way with hair—makin‘ it look pretty, I mean.”

Victoria agreed, not because she cared for having her hair styled, but because she needed time to calm herself before she confronted Jason Fielding. An hour later, dressed in a flowing peach silk gown with wide, full sleeves that were trimmed with horizontal strips of peach satin ribbon, Victoria silently surveyed herself in the mirror. Her heavy copper hair had been twisted into burnished curls at the crown and entwined with peach satin ribbons, her high cheekbones were tinted with rich, angry color, and her brilliant sapphire eyes were sparkling with resentment and shame.

She had never seen, never imagined, a gown as glorious as the one she wore, with its low-cut, tightly fitted bodice that forced her breasts high and exposed a daring expanse of flesh. And she had never taken less pleasure in her appearance than she did now, when she was being forced to display a frivolous disregard for her dead parents.

“Oh, miss,” Ruth said, clasping her hands in satisfied delight, “you’re so beautiful, his lordship won’t believe his eyes when he sees you.”

Ruth’s prediction was true, but Victoria was too furious to derive the slightest gratification from Jason’s stunned expression when she walked into the dining room.

“Good evening, Uncle Charles,” she said; pressing her cheek to his as Jason came to his feet. Rebelliously she turned and faced him, standing in resentful silence while his gaze slid boldly over her, from the top of her shining red-gold curls to the swelling flesh exposed above her bodice and right down to the toes of the dainty satin slippers he had provided. Victoria was somewhat accustomed to the admiring glances of gentlemen, but there was nothing gentlemanly about Jason’s insolent, lazy perusal of her body. “Are you quite finished?” she asked tersely.

His unhurried gaze lifted to her eyes and a wry smile quirked his stern lips when he heard the antagonism in her voice. He reached forward and Victoria took a quick, automatic step backward, before she realized he simply intended to pull out her chair.

“Have I made another social blunder—like failing to knock?” he inquired in a low, amused voice, his lips offensively close to her cheek as she took her seat. “Is it not the custom in America for a gentleman to seat a lady?”

Victoria jerked her head away. “Are you seating me, or trying to eat my ear?”

His lips twitched. “I may do that,” he replied, “if the new cook provides us with a poor meal.” He glanced at Charles as he returned to his own seat. “I dismissed the fat Frenchman,” he explained.

Victoria felt a momentary pang of guilt for her part in the affair, but she was so angry at Jason’s peremptory disposal of her gowns that not even guilt could take the edge off her anger. Intending to have the matter out with him in private, after dinner, she directed all her conversation to Charles; but as the meal continued, she became uncomfortably aware that Jason Fielding was studying her across the brace of candles in the center of the table.

Jason lifted his wineglass to his lips, watching her. She was furious with him, he knew, for having those shabby black gowns taken away, and she was dying to loose a tirade at his head—he could see it in those flashing eyes of hers.

What a proud, spirited beauty she was, he thought impartially. She had seemed a pretty little thing before, but he hadn’t expected her to blossom into a full-fledged beauty tonight, simply by shedding those unflattering black gowns. Perhaps he hated the dismal mourning color so much that it had tainted his view of her. Either way, he had no doubt Victoria Seaton had led the boys back home a merry chase. No doubt she would dazzle the boys in England, too. Dazzle the boys and men, he corrected himself.

And therein lay his problem: despite her lush, alluring curves and that intoxicating face, he was rapidly becoming convinced she was an inexperienced innocent, exactly as Charles had claimed. An inexperienced innocent who had landed on his doorstep, and for whom he was now unwillingly responsible. The image of himself as her protector— the fierce guardian of a young maiden’s virtue—was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed aloud, yet that was the role he was going to be forced to play. Everyone who knew him would surely find it as preposterous as he did, considering his notorious reputation with women.

O’Malley poured more wine into his glass, and Jason drank it while trying to decide the most expedient way to get her safely off his hands. The more he considered it, the more convinced he became that he ought to provide her with the London season that Charles was so anxious that she have.

With Victoria’s lush beauty, it would be easy enough to launch her successfully into society. And with the added attraction of a small dowry, provided by himself, it would be equally easy to get her safely wed to some suitable London fop. On the other hand, if she really believed her Andrew would come for her, she might insist upon waiting for months, even years, before accepting another man, and that possibility did not suit Jason at all.

In line with his half-formed plan, he waited until there was a break in the talk and said to her in a deceptively casual tone, “Charles tells me that you are practically betrothed to... er... Anson? Albert?”

Victoria’s head snapped around. “Andrew,” she said.

“What is he like?” Jason prodded.

A fond smile drifted across Victoria’s features as she thought about that. “He is gentle, handsome, intelligent, kind, considerate—”

“I think I have the general idea,” Jason interrupted dryly. “Take my advice and forget about him.”

Suppressing the urge to throw something at him, Victoria said, “Why?”

“He isn’t the man for you. In four days, you’ve turned my household upside down. What possible sport could you have with a staid country bumpkin who will want to lead a peaceful, organized life? You’d be wise to forget him and make the most of your opportunities here.”

“In the first place—” Victoria burst out, but Jason interrupted her, deliberately sowing seeds of discontent. “Of course, there’s every chance that if you don’t forget about Albert, Albert will probably forget about you. Isn’t the saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’?”

Holding onto her temper with a superhuman effort, Victoria clamped her teeth together and said nothing.

“What, no argument?” Jason prodded, admiring the way anger turned her eyes to a smoky midnight blue.

Victoria lifted her chin. “In my country, Mr. Fielding, it is considered ill-bred to argue at the table.”

Her veiled reprimand filled him with amusement. “How very inconvenient for you,” he remarked softly.

Charles leaned back in his chair, a tender smile curving his lips as he watched his son spar with the young beauty who reminded him so much of her mother. They were perfect for each other, he decided. Victoria wasn’t in awe of Jason. Her spirit and warmth would gentle him, and once gentled, he would become the sort of husband young girls dream of having. They would make each other happy, she would give Jason a son.

Filled with contentment and joy, Charles imagined the grandson they would give him once they were married. After all these years of emptiness and despair, he and Katherine were actually going to have grandchildren together. True, Jason and Victoria were not getting along so well right now, but that was to be expected. Jason was a hard, experienced, embittered man, with good reason. But Victoria had Katherine’s courage, her gentleness, her fire. And Katherine had changed his own life. She had taught him the meaning of love. And loss. His mind drifted back over the events of the past that had led up to this momentous evening....

By the time he was twenty-two, Charles already had a well-deserved reputation as a libertine, gambler, and rake-hell. He had no responsibilities, no restrictions, and absolutely no prospects, for his older brother had already inherited the ducal title and everything that went with it—everything excluding money, that is. Money was ever in short supply, because for 400 years, the Fielding men had all exhibited a strong proclivity toward all manner of expensive vices. In fact, Charles was no worse than his father, or his father’s father before him. Charles’s younger brother was the only Fielding ever to show a desire to fight the devil’s temptations, but he did it with typical Fielding excess by deciding to become a missionary and go off to India.

At approximately that same time, Charles’s French mistress announced she was pregnant. When Charles offered her money, not matrimony, she wept and ranted at him, but to no avail. Finally she left him in a rage. A week after Jason was born, she returned to Charles’s lodgings, unceremoniously dumped their child into his arms, and disappeared. Charles had no desire to be saddled with a baby, yet he could not bring himself to simply abandon the boy to an orphans’ home. In a moment of sheer inspiration, he hit upon the idea of giving Jason to his younger brother and his ugly wife, who were about to leave for India “to convert the heathens.”

Without any hesitation, he gave the baby to these two God-fearing, childless, religious zealots—along with nearly every cent he had, to be used for Jason’s care—and washed his hands of the whole problem.

Until then he had managed to support himself well enough at the gaming tables, but capricious luck, which had always been with him, eventually deserted him. By the time he was thirty-two, Charles was compelled to face the fact that he could no longer maintain a reasonably genteel standard of living, as befitted a man of his birth, with the proceeds of his gambling alone. His problem was common to the impecunious younger sons of great noble houses, and Charles solved it in the time-honored way: he decided to exchange his illustrious family name for a fat dowry. With careless indifference, he proposed marriage to the daughter of a wealthy merchant, a young lady of great wealth, some beauty, and little intelligence.

The young lady and her father eagerly accepted his suit, and Charles’s older brother, the duke, even agreed to give a party to celebrate the forthcoming nuptials.

It was on that auspicious occasion that Charles again encountered his very distant cousin, Katherine Langston, the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the Duchess of Claremont. When last he had seen her, he had been paying a rare visit to his brother at Wakefield and Katherine had been a child of ten, staying for the holidays at a neighboring estate. For an entire fortnight she had followed him nearly everywhere he went, gazing at him with open adoration in her big blue eyes. He had thought her an uncommonly pretty little moppet then, with an enchanting smile and more spirit than females twice her age, as she took fences beside him astride her mare and charmed him into flying kites with her.

Now she had grown into a young woman of breathtaking beauty, and Charles could scarcely tear his eyes from her.

With an outward appearance of bored impassivity, he studied her stunning figure, her flawless features, and her glorious red-gold hair as she stood off to the side of the crowded room, looking serene and ethereal. Then he strolled over to her with a glass of Madeira in one hand and casually draped his other arm across the mantel, boldly and openly admiring her beauty. He expected her to voice a token objection to his forwardness, but Katherine did not voice any objection at all. She did not blush beneath his frank appraisal, nor did she turn away from it. She simply tipped her head to the side as if she was waiting for him to finish. “Hello, Katherine,” he said finally.

“Hello, Charles,” she answered, her soft voice calm, unruffled.

“Are you finding the party as insufferably dull as I am, my dear?” he asked, surprised at her composure.

Instead of stammering some inanity about it being a delightful party, Katherine had raised her disconcertingly direct blue gaze to his and quietly replied, “It is a fitting prelude to a marriage that is to be undertaken for cold, monetary reasons, and no other.”

Her blunt candor amazed him, but not nearly as much as the strange, accusing look that darkened her blue eyes before she turned and started to walk away. Without thinking, Charles reached out to stop her from leaving. The touch of her bare arm beneath his hand sent a tingling jolt through his entire nervous system, a jolt that Katherine must also have felt because her whole body stiffened. Instead of drawing her toward him, Charles guided her forward, out onto the balcony. In the moonlight he turned to her and, because her accusation had stung, his voice was hard. “It’s presumptuous of you to assume money is my only reason for marrying Amelia. People have other reasons for marrying.”

Again those disconcerting blue eyes of hers gazed into his. “Not people like us,” she contradicted calmly. “We marry to increase our family’s wealth, power, or social position. In your case, you are marrying to increase your wealth.”

Charles was, of course, trading his aristocratic lineage to gain money, and although it was a commonly accepted practice, she made him feel less of a man for doing so. “And what about you?” he taunted. “Will you not marry for one of those reasons?”

“No,” she replied softly. “I will not. I will marry because I love someone, and am loved in return. I will not settle for a marriage like my parents had. I want more from life than that and I have more to give.”

The softly spoken words had been filled with such quiet conviction that Charles had simply stared at her before he finally said, “Your lady grandmother will not be pleased if you marry for love and not position, my dear. Gossip has it that she wants an alliance with the Winstons and she means for you to secure it for her.”

Katherine smiled for the first time, a slow, enchanting smile that illuminated her face and turned Charles’s bones to water. “My grandmother and I,” she said lightly, “have long been at outs over this matter, but I am as determined as she to have my way.”

She looked so beautiful, so fresh and unspoiled, that the armor of cynicism that had surrounded Charles for thirty years began to melt, leaving him suddenly lonely and empty. Without realizing what he was doing, he lifted his hand and reverently traced her smooth cheek with his fingertips. “I hope the man you love is worthy of you,” he said tenderly.

For an endless moment, Katherine had searched his features as if she could see beyond his face, into his tired, disillusioned soul. “I think,” she whispered softly, “that it will be more a question of whether I can be worthy of him. You see, he needs me rather badly, although he is only just now coming to realize it.”

After a moment her meaning slammed into him, and Charles heard himself groan her name with the sudden feverish longing of a man who has just found what he has unconsciously been searching for his entire life—a woman who could love him for himself, for the man he could be, the man he wanted to be. And Katherine had no other reason to want him or love him; her bloodline was as aristocratic as his own, her connections far better, her wealth vastly superior.

Charles gazed at her, trying to deny the feelings that were coursing through him. This was insane, he told himself. He scarcely knew her. He was no young fool who believed that grown men and women tumbled into love with one another at first glance. He had not even believed in love at all until that moment. But he believed in it now, for he wanted this beautiful, intelligent, idealistic girl to love him and only him. For once in his life, he had found something rare and fine and unspoiled, and he was determined to keep this girl that way—to marry her and cherish her, to protect her from the cynicism that seemed to erode everyone in their social class.

The prospect of eventually breaking his betrothal to Amelia did not trouble his conscience, for he harbored no illusions as to her reasons for agreeing to marry him. She was attracted to him, he knew, but she was marrying him because her father wanted to be allied with the nobility.

For two blissful, magnificent weeks, Katherine and he had managed to keep their growing love a secret; two weeks of stolen moments alone, of quiet walks through the countryside, of shared laughter and dreams of the future.

At the end of that time, Charles could no longer put off the required meeting with the Dowager Duchess of Claremont. He wanted to marry Katherine.

He was prepared for the duchess to object, for although his family was an old and noble one, he was an untitled younger son. Still, such marriages took place often enough, and he had expected her to put up a token argument and then capitulate because Katherine wanted this union as badly as he. He had not expected her to be almost demented with wrath, or to call him a “dissolute opportunist” and a “corrupt, lecherous degenerate.” He hadn’t expected her to rail about his ancestors’ and his own promiscuous behavior, or to call his forebears “irresponsible madmen, one and all.”

But most of all, he had not expected her to swear that if Katherine married him, she would disown her and cut her off without a cent. Such things simply weren’t done. But when he left the house that day, Charles knew the woman would do exactly as she threatened. He returned to his lodgings and spent the night in alternate states of rage and despair. By morning, he knew that he could not—would not—marry Katherine, for although he was willing to try to earn an honest living, with his own two hands if need be, he could not bear to see his proud, beautiful Katherine brought low because of him. He would not cause her to be cut off from her family and publicly shunned by society.

Even if he thought he could make up to her for the disgrace she would endure, he knew he could never let her become a common house-drudge. She was young and idealistic and in love with him, but she was also accustomed to beautiful gowns and servants to do her every bidding. If he had to work for a living he could not possibly give her those things. Katherine had never washed a dish, or scrubbed a floor, or pressed a shirt, and he would not see her reduced to doing these things because she had been foolish enough to love him.

When he was finally able to arrange a brief, clandestine meeting with her the following day, Charles told her of his decision. Katherine argued that the luxuries of life meant nothing to her; she pleaded with him to take her to America, where it was said any man could make a decent living if he was only willing to work for it.

Unable to endure her tears or his own anguish, Charles had gruffly told her that her ideas were foolish, that she could never survive a life in America. She had looked at him as if hewas afraid to work for a living, and then she had brokenly accused him of wanting her dowry, not her— exactly as her grandmother had told her he did.

To Charles, who was unselfishly sacrificing his own happiness for her, her accusation had cut like a knife. “Believe that if you wish,” he had snapped, forcing himself to turn away from her before he lost his resolve and eloped with her that very day. He started for the door, but he could not bear to have her think he had only wanted her money. “Katherine,” he said, pausing without turning. “I beg you not to believe that of me.”

“I don’t,” she whispered brokenly. Neither did she believe he would put an end to their hopeless, tormented longing for each other by marrying Amelia the following week. But that was exactly what Charles did. It was the first entirely unselfish act of his life.

Katherine attended his wedding with her grandmother, and for as long as he lived, Charles would never forget the look of betrayal in Katherine’s eyes when he finished pledging his life to another woman.

Two months later, she married an Irish physician and left with him for America. She did it, Charles knew, because she was furious with her grandmother and because she could not bear to remain in England near Charles and his new wife. And she did it to prove to him, in the only way she knew how, that her love for him could have survived anything— including a life in America.

That same year, Charles’s older brother was killed in a stupid drunken duel and Charles inherited the dukedom. He did not inherit a great deal of money with the title, but it would have been enough to keep Katherine in modest luxury. But Katherine was gone; he had not believed that her love was strong enough to withstand a few discomforts. Charles didn’t care about the money he inherited; Charles didn’t care about anything anymore.

Not long afterward, Charles’s missionary brother died in India, and sixteen years later, Charles’s wife Amelia died.

The night of Amelia’s funeral, Charles got thoroughly blindly inebriated, as he often did in those days, but on that particular night, as he sat in the gloomy solitude of his house, a new thought occurred to him: someday soon he, too, was going to die. And when he did, the ducal holdings would pass out of the hands of the Fieldings forever. Because Charles had no heir.

For sixteen years, Charles had lived in an odd, empty limbo, but on that fateful night as he contemplated his meaningless life, something began to grow within him. At first it was only a vague restlessness, then it became disgust; it grew into resentment, and then slowly, very slowly, it built into fury. He had lost Katherine; he had lost sixteen years of his life. He had endured a vapid wife, a loveless marriage, and now he was going to die without an heir. For the first time in 400 years, the ducal title was in danger of passing entirely out of the Fielding family, and Charles was suddenly determined not to throw it away, as he had thrown away the rest of his life.

True, the Fieldings had not been a particularly honorable or worthy family, but, by God, the title belonged to them and Charles was determined to keep it there.

In order to do that he needed an heir, which meant he would have to marry again. After all his youthful sexual exploits, the thought of climbing atop a woman now and fathering an heir seemed more tiresome than exciting. He thought wryly of all the pretty wenches he had bedded long ago—of the beautiful French ballerina who had been his mistress and had presented him with a bastard....

Joy brought him surging to his feet. He didn’t need to marry again, because he already had an heir! He had Jason. Charles wasn’t certain if the laws of succession would allow the ducal title to pass to a bastard son, but it made no difference to him. Jason was a Fielding, and those very few people who had known of Jason’s existence in India believed he was the very legitimate son of Charles’s younger brother. Besides, old King Charles had bestowed a dukedom on three of his bastards, and now he, Charles Fielding, Duke of Atherton. was about to follow suit.

The next day, Charles hired investigators to make inquiries, but it was two long years before one of the investigators finally sent a report to Charles with specific information. No trace could be found of Charles’s sister-in-law, but Jason had been discovered in Delhi, where he had apparently amassed a fortune in the shipping and trading business. The report began with Jason’s current direction; it ended with all the information the investigator had discovered about Jason’s past.

Charles’s proud exultation at Jason’s financial successes promptly dissolved into horror and then sick fury as he read of his sister-in-law’s depraved abuse of the innocent child he had handed into her care. When he was finished, he vomited.

More determined now than ever to make Jason his rightful heir, Charles sent him a letter, asking him to return to England so that he could formally acknowledge him as such.

When Jason didn’t reply, Charles, with a determination that had long been dormant in his character, set off for Delhi himself. Filled with inexpressible remorse and absolute resolve, he went to Jason’s magnificent home. In their first meeting, he saw firsthand what the investigator’s report had already told him: Jason had married and fathered a son and was living like a king. He also made it very clear that he wanted nothing to do with Charles, or with the legacy Charles was trying to offer him. In the ensuing months, while Charles stubbornly remained in India, he slowly succeeded in convincing his cold, reticent son that he had never condoned or imagined the unspeakable abuses Jason had suffered as a child. But he could not convince him to return to England as his heir.

Jason’s beautiful wife, Melissa, was enthralled with the idea of going to London as the Marchioness of Wakefield, but neither her tantrums nor Charles’s pleadings had the slightest effect on Jason. Jason didn’t give a damn for titles, nor did he possess an ounce of sympathy for the Fieldings’ impending loss of a duchy.

Charles had nearly given up when he hit upon the perfect argument. One night, while he was watching Jason play with his little son, it dawned on him there was one person Jason would do anything for: Jamie. Jason positively doted on the little boy. And so Charles immediately changed his tack. Instead of trying to convince Jason of the benefits to be had for himself by returning to England, he pointed out that by refusing to permit Charles to make him his heir, Jason was denying little Jamie his birthright. The title, and all that went with it, would eventually be Jamie’s.

It worked.

Jason appointed a competent man to handle his business in Delhi and moved his family to England. With every intention of building a “kingdom” for his little boy, Jason voluntarily spent enormous sums of money restoring the rundown Atherton estates to a splendor far beyond any they had ever possessed.

While Jason was busily supervising the restoration work, Melissa rushed off to London to take her rightful place in society as the new Marchioness of Wakefield. Within a year, gossip about her amorous affairs was raging through London like wildfire. A few months later, she and the child were dead....

Charles shook himself from his sad reverie and glanced up as the covers were being removed from the table. “Shall we depart from custom tonight?” he suggested to Victoria. “Instead of the men remaining at the table for port and cigars, would you object if we had them with you in the drawing room? I’m loathe to give up your company.”

Victoria was unaware of the custom, but in any case she was perfectly happy to break it and said so. When she was about to enter the rose and gold drawing room, however, Charles drew her back and said in a low voice, “I notice you’ve put off mourning early, my dear. If that was your decision, I applaud it—your mother hated black; she told me that when she was a little girl and was forced to wear it for her own parents.” Charles’s penetrating gaze held hers. “Was it your decision, Victoria?”

“No,” Victoria admitted. “Mr. Fielding had my clothes removed and replaced with these today.”

He nodded sagely. “Jason has an aversion to symbols of mourning, and judging from the dagger-glances you threw his way at supper, you aren’t happy about what he’s done. You should tell him so,” he said. “Don’t let him intimidate you, child; he can’t abide cowards.”

“But I don’t want to upset you,” Victoria said worriedly. “You said your heart isn’t strong.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said, chuckling. “My heart is a little weak, but not so weak it can’t take some excitement. In fact, it would probably do me a world of good. Life was incredibly dull before you arrived.”

When Jason was seated and enjoying his port and cigar, Victoria tried several times to do as Charles had bidden her, but each time she looked at Jason and tried to bring up the matter of her clothing, her courage deserted her. He had dressed for dinner tonight in beautifully tailored charcoal gray trousers and matching coat, with a dark blue waistcoat and a pearl gray silk shirt. Despite his elegant attire and the casual way he had stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles, he seemed to radiate barely leashed, ruthless power. There was something primitive and dangerous about him, and she had the uneasy feeling that his elegant clothing and indolent stance were nothing but disguises meant to lull the unwary into believing he was civilized, when he wasn’t civilized at all.

He shifted slightly and Victoria stole another glance at him. His dark head was tilted back, his thin cigar clamped between his even white teeth, his hands resting on the arms of his wing chair, his tanned features cast into shadow. A chill crept up her spine as she wondered what dark secrets lay hidden in his past. Surely there must be many to have made him so cynical and unapproachable. He looked like the sort of man who had seen and done all sorts of terrible, forbidden things—things that had hardened him and made him cold. Yet he was handsome—wickedly, dangerously handsome with his panther-black hair, green eyes, and superb build. Victoria couldn’t deny that, and if she weren’t half-afraid of him most of the time, she would have liked to talk to him. How tempting it would be to try to befriend him—as tempting as sin, she admitted to herself—as foolish as trying to befriend the devil. And probably just as dangerous.

Victoria drew a careful breath, preparing to politely but firmly insist that her mourning clothes be returned, just as Northrup appeared and announced the arrival of Lady Kirby and Miss Kirby.

Victoria saw Jason stiffen and shoot a sardonic glance at Charles, who responded with a bewildered shrug and turned to Northrup. “Send them away—” he began, but he was too late.

“No need to announce us, Northrup,” said a firm voice, and a stout woman sailed into the salon, trailed by puce satin skirts, heavy perfume, and a lovely brunette about Victoria’s age. “Charles!” Lady Kirby said, beaming at him. “I heard you were in the village today with a young lady named Miss Seaton, and naturally I had to see her for myself.”

Scarcely taking time to draw a breath, she turned to Victoria and said brightly, “You must be Miss Seaton.” She paused, her narrowed eyes scrutinizing every feature on Victoria’s face in a way that gave Victoria the feeling she was looking for flaws. She found one. “What an intriguing dent in your chin, my dear. However did it happen? An accident?”

“Of birth,” Victoria averred, smiling, much too fascinated by the peculiar woman to be offended. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if England was filled with intriguing, ill-mannered, blunt people whose eccentricities were either encouraged or overlooked because of their titles and excessive wealth.

“How sad,” said Lady Kirby. “Does it bother you—or hurt?”

Victoria’s lips trembled with laughter. “Only when I look in the mirror, ma’am,” she replied.

Dissatisfied, Lady Kirby swung away and confronted Jason, who had arisen and was standing at the fireplace, his elbow propped on the mantel. “So, Wakefield,” she said, “from the looks of things here, the announcement in the paper would seem to be correct. I’ll tell you the truth—I never believed it. Well, was it?”

Jason lifted his brows. “Was it what?”

Charles’s voice boomed out, drowning Lady Kirby’s words. “Northrup, bring the ladies some refreshment!” Everyone sat down, Miss Kirby taking the chair beside Jason, while Charles swiftly embarked on an animated discussion of the weather. Lady Kirby listened impatiently until Charles ran out of monologue; then she turned abruptly to Jason and said pointedly, “Wakefield, is your engagement on or off?”

Jason raised his glass to his lips, his eyes cold. “Off.”

Victoria saw the varying reactions to that one word on the faces around her. Lady Kirby looked satisfied, her daughter looked delighted, Charles looked miserable, and Jason’s face was inscrutable. Victoria’s sympathetic heart instantly went out to him. No wonder Jason seemed so grim and callous—the woman he loved must have broken their engagement. It struck her as odd, however, when the Kirby ladies turned to her as if they expected her to say something.

Victoria smiled blankly, and Lady Kirby took up the conversational gauntlet. “Well, Charles, in that case, I gather you mean to bring out poor Miss Seaton during the season?”

“I intend to see that Countess Langston takes her rightful place in society,” he corrected coolly.

“Countess Langst—” Lady Kirby gasped.

Charles inclined his head. “Victoria is Katherine Langston’s oldest child. Unless I mistake the rules of succession, she is now heir to her mother’s Scottish title.”

“Even so,” Lady Kirby said stiffly, “you’ll not have an easy time making a suitable match for her.” She turned to Victoria, oozing feigned sympathy. “Your mama created quite a scandalbroth when she ran off with that Irish laborer.”

Indignation on her mother’s behalf shot white-hot sparks through Victoria’s entire body. “My mother married an Irish physician,” she corrected.

“Without her grandmother’s permission,” Lady Kirby countered. “Gently bred girls do not marry against their families’ wishes in this country.” The obvious implication that Katherine was not gently bred made Victoria so angry she dug her fingernails into her palms.

“Oh, well, society eventually forgets these things,” Lady Kirby continued generously. “In the meantime, you will have much to learn before you can be presented. You will have to learn the proper forms of address for each peer, his wife and children, and of course there’s the etiquette involved in paying calls and the more complicated problems of learning seating arrangements. That alone takes months to master—whom you may seat next to whom at table, I mean. Colonials are ignorant of such things, but we English place the greatest importance on these matters of propriety.”

“Perhaps that explains why we always defeat you in war,” Victoria suggested sweetly, goaded into defending her family and her country.

Lady Kirby’s eyes narrowed. “I meant no offense. However, you shall have to curb your tongue if you hope to make a suitable match as well as live down your mother’s reputation.”

Victoria stood up and said with quiet dignity, “I will find it very hard to live up to my mother’s reputation. My mother was the gentlest, kindest woman who ever lived. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some letters to write.”

Victoria shut the door behind her and went down the hall to the library, a gigantic room with Persian carpets scattered across the polished wood floors and bookshelves lining the long walls. Too angry and upset to actually sit down at one of the desks and write a letter to Dorothy or Andrew, she wandered over to the shelves of books, looking for something to soothe her spirits. Bypassing the tomes on history, mythology, and commerce, she came to a poetry section. Her gaze wandered distractedly over the authors, some of whom she had already read—Milton, Shelley, Keats, Byron. Without any real interest in reading, she haphazardly chose a slender volume simply because it was protruding several inches beyond the others on the shelf and carried it over to the nearest grouping of comfortable chairs.

She turned up the oil lamp on the table and settled down in the chair, forcing herself to open the book. A sheet of pink, perfumed notepaper slid out and drifted to the floor. Victoria automatically picked it up and started to put it back, but the first words of the torrid little note, which was written in French, leapt out at her:

Darling Jason,

I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me....

Victoria told herself that reading another person’s letter was ill-bred, unforgivable, and completely beneath her dignity, but the idea of a woman waiting impatiently for Jason Fielding to come to her was so incredible that Victoria couldn’t bridle her amazed curiosity. For her part, she would be more inclined to wait impatiently for him to go away! She was so engrossed in her discovery that she didn’t hear Jason and Miss Kirby coming down the hall as she continued to read:

I am sending you these lovely poems in the hope you will read them and think of me, of the tender nights we have shared in each other’s arms....

“Victoria!” Jason called irritably.

Victoria leapt to her feet in guilty nervousness, dropped the book of poetry, snatched it up, and sat back down. Trying to look absorbed in her reading, she opened the book and stared blindly at it, completely unaware that it was upside down.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” Jason demanded as he strolled into the library with the lovely Miss Kirby clinging to his arm. “Johanna wanted to tell you good-bye and to offer her suggestions if you need to buy anything in the village.”

After Lady Kirby’s unprovoked attack, Victoria couldn’t help wondering if Miss Kirby was now implying that Victoria couldn’t be trusted to choose her own purchases. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you call,” she said, trying to compose her features so she’d look neither angry nor guilty. “As you can see, I’ve been reading, and I was quite engrossed.” She closed the book and laid it on the table, then forced herself to gaze calmly at the pair. The look of revolted disgust on Jason’s face made her step back in alarm. “Is—is something wrong?” she asked, fearfully certain that he somehow remembered that the note was in the book and suspected her of reading it.

“Yes,” he snapped, and turned to Miss Kirby, who was\ staring at Victoria with an expression similar to his. “Johanna, can you recommend a tutor from the village who can teach her to read?”

“Teach me to read?” Victoria gasped, flinching from the scornful pity on the brunette’s beautiful face. “Don’t be silly, I don’t need a tutor—I know perfectly well how to read.”

Ignoring her, Jason looked at Miss Kirby. “Can you name a tutor who would come here and teach her?”

“Yes, I believe so, my lord. Mr. Watkins, the vicar, might do it.”

With the long-suffering look of one who has already been forced to tolerate too many insults and will not endure yet another one, Victoria said very firmly, “Oh, really, this is absurd. I do not need a tutor. I know how to read.”

Jason’s manner turned to ice. “Don’t lie to me ever again,” he warned. “I despise liars—particularly lying women. You can’t read a word and you damned well know it!”

“I do not believe this!” Victoria said, oblivious to Miss Kirby’s horrified gasp. “I can read, I tell you!”

Pushed past endurance by what he perceived as her flagrant attempt to deceive him, Jason took three long strides to the table, grabbed the book, and thrust it into her hands. “Then read it!”

Angry and humiliated at being treated this way, particularly in front of Miss Kirby, who was making no attempt to hide her enjoyment of Victoria’s plight, Victoria snatched open the cover of the little book and saw the perfumed note.

“Go ahead,” he mocked. “Let’s hear you read.”

Deliberating, Victoria slanted a speculative, sideways glance at him. “Are you absolutely certain you want me to read this aloud?”

“Aloud,” Jason said curtly.

“In front of Miss Kirby?” she questioned innocently.

“Either read it or admit you can’t,” he snapped.

“Very well,” Victoria said. Swallowing the laughter bubbling in her throat, she read dramatically: “Darling Jason, I miss you so. I wait impatiently, counting the hours until you will come to me. I am sending you these lovely poems in the hope you will read them and think of me, of the tender nights we have shared in each other’s ar—”

Jason jerked the book out of her hands. Raising her eyebrows, Victoria looked him right in the eye and blandly reminded him, “That note was written in French—I translated it as I read.”

She turned to Miss Kirby and said brightly, “There was more, of course. But I don’t think this is the sort of reading material one ought to leave lying around when there are gently bred young ladies about. Do you?” Before either of them could reply, Victoria turned and walked out of the room, her head high.

Lady Kirby was waiting in the hall, ready to leave. Victoria bid both women a cool good-bye, then started up the stairs, hoping to escape Jason’s inevitable wrath, which she was certain he intended to unleash upon her the moment the ladies left. However, Lady Kirby’s parting remark caused an explosion in Victoria’s mind that obliterated everything else. “Don’t feel badly about Lord Fielding’s defection, my dear,” she called as Northrup helped them into their cloaks. “Few people actually believed the betrothal announcement in the paper. Everyone was certain that once you had actually arrived here, he’d find some way to cry off. The rogue has made it plain to everyone that he won’t marry anyone—”

Charles pushed her out the door under the guise of escorting her to her carriage, and Victoria halted and swung around on the stairway. Like a beautiful, outraged goddess she stood trembling with wrath, staring down at Jason. “Am I to understand,” she enunciated furiously, “that the engagement you said was ‘off’ was our engagement?”

Jason’s only answer was a tightening of his jaw, but his silence was a tacit admission, and she glared at him with blue sparks shooting from her eyes, heedless of the servants who were staring at her in paralyzed horror. “How dare you!” she hissed. “How dare you let anyone think I would consider marrying you. I wouldn’t marry you if you were—”

“I don’t recall asking you to marry me,” Jason interrupted sarcastically. “However, it’s reassuring to know that if I ever took leave of my senses and did ask you, you’d have the consideration to turn me down.”

Perilously close to tears because she was losing her composure but could not shake his, Victoria passed a look of scathing scorn over him. “You are a cold, callous, arrogant, unfeeling monster, without respect or feeling for anyone— even the dead! No woman in her right mind would want you! You’re a—” Her voice broke and she turned and ran up the stairs.

Jason watched her from the foyer, where two footmen and the butler stood riveted to the floor, waiting in frozen dread for the moment when the master would unleash his fury on this chit of a girl who had just done the unforgivable. After a long moment, Jason shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked round at the stricken butler and lifted his brows. “I believe I have just received what is commonly called ‘a crushing setdown,’ Northrup.”

Northrup swallowed audibly but said nothing until Jason had strolled up the stairs; then he rounded on the footmen. “Attend to your duties, and see that you don’t gossip about this with anyone.” He strode away.

O’Malley gaped at the other footman. “She fixed me a poultice and it cured me sore tooth,” he breathed in awe. “Mayhap she fixed his lordship something to cure his temper, while she was at it.” Without waiting for a reply he headed straight to the kitchen to inform Mrs. Craddock and the kitchen staff of the amazing incident he had just witnessed. With Monsieur Andre gone—thanks to the young lady from America—the kitchen had become a pleasant place to pass an occasional moment when Northrup’s eagle eye was focused on someone else.

Within an hour the well-trained, perfectly regimented household staff had all paused just long enough to listen in disbelief to the tale of the drama that had occurred on the staircase. Within another half hour, the story of his lordship’s unprecedented lapse from icy dignity to warm humanity in the face of extreme provocation had spread from the house to the stables and the gamekeepers’ cottages.

Upstairs, Victoria’s hands shook with pent-up anguish as she pulled the pins from her hair and stripped off the peach gown. Still fighting her tears, she hung it in the wardrobe, pulled on a nightdress, and climbed into bed. Homesickness washed over her in drowning waves. She wanted to leave here, to put an ocean between herself and people like Jason Fielding and Lady Kirby. Her mother had probably left England for the same reason. Her mother... Her beautiful, gentle mother, she thought on a choked sob. Lady Kirby wasn’t fit to touch the hem of Katherine Seaton’s skirts!

Memories of her former happy life crowded in around Victoria until the bedroom at Wakefield was filled with them. She remembered the day she had picked a bouquet of wild flowers for her mother and soiled her dress in the process. “Look, Mama, aren’t they the prettiest things you’ve ever seen?” she had said. “I picked them for you—but I soiled my dress.”

“They’re very pretty,” her mother had agreed, hugging her and ignoring the soiled dress.“But you are the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She remembered when she was seven years old and sick from a fever that had brought her near death. Night after night, her mother had sat at her bedside, sponging her face and arms while Victoria drifted between wakefulness and delirium. On the fifth night, she had awakened in her mother’s arms, her own face wet from the tears running down her mother’s cheeks. Katherine was rocking her back and forth, weeping and whispering the same disjointed plea again and again: “Please don’t let my little girl die. She’s so little and she’s afraid of the dark. Please, God...”

In the plush, silken cocoon of her bed at Wakefield, Victoria turned her face into the pillow, her body shaking with wrenching sobs. “Oh, Mama,” she wept brokenly. “Oh, Mama, I miss you so....”

Jason paused outside her bedroom and raised his hand to knock, then checked himself at the sound of her harsh weeping, his forehead furrowed into a frown. She would probably feel better if she cried everything out of her system, he thought. On the other hand, if she continued crying like that, she would surely make herself ill. After a few seconds’ uncertainty he went to his own room, poured some brandy into a glass and returned to hers.

He knocked—as she had arrogantly instructed him to do earlier—but when she didn’t answer, he opened the door and went inside. He stood at her bedside, watching her shoulders shake with the spasms of wrenching grief that tore from her.

He had seen women cry before, but their tears were always dainty and deliberate, intended to bend a man’s will. Victoria had stood on that stairway hurtling verbal spears at him like an enraged warrior, then had retreated to her own room to weep in pathetic secret.

Jason put his hand on her shoulder. “Victoria—”

Victoria rolled over onto her back and jerked up onto her elbows, her eyes the deep blue of wet velvet, her thick sooty lashes sparkling with tears. “Get out of here!” she demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Get out this very minute, before someone sees you!”

Jason looked at the tempestuous, blue-eyed beauty before him, her cheeks flushed with anger, her titian hair tumbling riotously over her shoulders. In her prim, high-collared white nightdress, she had the innocent appeal of a bewildered, heartbroken child; yet there was defiance in the set of her chin and angry pride blazing in her eyes, warning him not to underestimate her. He remembered her daring impertinence in the library when she deliberately read that note aloud and then made no effort to hide her satisfaction at disconcerting him. Melissa had been the only woman who ever dared defy him, but she did it behind his back. Victoria Seaton did it right to his face, and he almost admired her for it.

When he made no move to leave, Victoria irritably dashed the tears from her cheeks, tugged the bedcovers up to her chin, and began inching backward until she was sitting up against the pillows. “Do you realize what people would say if they knew you were in here?” she hissed. “Have you no principles?”

“None whatsoever,” he admitted impenitently. “I prefer practicality to principles.” Ignoring Victoria’s glower, he sat down on the bed and said, “Here, drink this.”

He held a glass of amber liquid close enough to her face for Victoria to smell the strong spirits. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Drink it,” he said calmly, “or I’ll pour it down your throat.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Yes, Victoria, I would. Now drink it down like a good girl. It will make you feel better.”

Victoria could see there was no point in arguing and she was too exhausted to put up a physical fight. She took a resentful sip of the vile amber liquid and tried to thrust it back into his hand. “I feel much better,” she lied.

A spark of amusement lit his eyes, but his voice was implacable. “Drink the rest.”

“Then will you go away?” she said, capitulating ungraciously. He nodded. Trying to get it over with as if it were bad-tasting medicine, she took two quick swallows; then she doubled over choking as the liquid seared a fiery path all the way down to the pit of her stomach. “It’s awful,” she gasped, falling back against the pillows.

For several minutes Jason remained silent, giving the brandy time to spread its comforting warmth through her. Then he said calmly, “In the first place, Charles announced our engagement in the newspaper, not I. Secondly, you have no more desire to be betrothed to me than I do to you. Isn’t that correct?”

“Absolutely,” Victoria averred.

“Then why are you crying because we aren’t betrothed?”

Victoria gave him a look of haughty disdain. “I was not doing anything of the sort.”

“You weren’t?” Amused, Jason looked at the tears still clinging to her curly lashes and handed her a snowy white handkerchief. “Then why is your nose red, your cheeks puffy, your face pale, and—”

A self-conscious giggle, induced by the brandy, welled up inside Victoria, and she dabbed at her nose. “It’s very ungentlemanly of you to remark on that.”

A lazy smile transformed his harsh features. “Surely I haven’t done anything to give you the impression that I’m a gentleman!”

It was the exaggerated dismay in his voice that brought a reluctant smile to her lips. “Nothing whatsoever,” she assured him. Taking another sip of the brandy, she leaned back against the pillows. “I wasn’t crying over that ridiculous engagement—that only made me angry.”

“Then why were you crying?”

Rolling the glass between her palms, she studied the swirling liquid. “I was crying for my mother. Lady Kirby said I would have to live down her reputation, and it made me so furious I couldn’t think what to say.” She shot a quick glance at him beneath her lashes, and because he seemed to be genuinely concerned and approachable for once, she continued haltingly, “My mother was kind and gentle and sweet. I began remembering just how wonderful she was, and it made me cry. You see, ever since my parents died, I have these—peculiar spells where I feel perfectly fine one moment and then suddenly, I start to miss them terribly, and it makes me cry.”

“It’s natural to cry for people you love,” he said, so gently that she could hardly believe it was him speaking.

Strangely comforted now by his presence and his deep, resonant voice, Victoria shook her head. “I cry for myself,” she confessed guiltily. “I cry from self-pity because I’ve lost them. I never realized I was so cowardly.”

“I’ve seen brave men cry, Victoria,” he said quietly.

Victoria studied his hard, sculpted features. Even with the softening effect of candleglow on his face, he looked supremely invulnerable. It was impossible to imagine him with tears in his eyes. With her normal reserve greatly diminished by the brandy, Victoria tipped her head to the side and asked softly, “Have you ever cried?”

Before her disappointed gaze, his expression became aloof. “No.”

“Not even when you were a little boy?” she persisted, trying to lighten his mood by teasing him.

“Not even then,” he said shortly.

Abruptly he made a move to stand up, but Victoria impulsively laid her hand on his sleeve. His gaze narrowed on her long fingers resting on his arm, then lifted to her wide, searching eyes. “Mr. Fielding,” she began, awkwardly trying to maintain their short truce and to strengthen it if possible. “I know you don’t like having me here, but I won’t be staying long—only until Andrew comes for me.”

“Stay as long as you like,” he said with a shrug, his expression cool.

“Thank you,” Victoria said, her lovely face mirroring her bewilderment at his abrupt changes of mood. “But what I wanted to say was that I would like it very much if you and I could be on, well, friendlier terms.”

“What sort of ‘friendlier terms’ did you have in mind, my lady?” Mellowed by the brandy, Victoria missed the sarcasm in his voice. “Well, if you don’t put too fine a point on it, we’re distant cousins.” She paused, her eyes searching his enigmatic face for some sign of warmth. “I haven’t any relations left, except Uncle Charles and you. Do you suppose we could treat each other like cousins?”

He looked stunned by her proposal, then amused. “I suppose we could do that.”

“Thank you.”

“Get some sleep now.”

She nodded and snuggled down under the covers. “Oh, I forgot to apologize—for the things I’ve said to you when I’m angry, that is.”

His lips twitched. “Do you regret any of them?”

Victoria lifted her brows, eyeing him with a sleepy, impertinent smile. “You’ve deserved every word.”

“You’re right,” he admitted, grinning. “But don’t press your luck.”

Suppressing the urge to reach out and tousle her heavy hair, Jason went back to his own room and poured a brandy for himself, then sat down and propped his feet up on the table in front of his chair. Wryly, he wondered why Victoria Seaton should bring out this odd streak of protectiveness in him. He had intended to send her straight back to America when she arrived—and that was before she had disrupted his household. Perhaps it was because she was so lost and vulnerable—and so young and dainty—that she made him feel paternal. Or perhaps it was her candor that threw him off balance. Or those eyes of hers that seemed to search his face as if she were looking for his soul. She had no flirtatious wiles; she didn’t need any, he thought wryly—those eyes could seduce a saint.