They were drinking their third mug of ale when Rafael said honestly, “I think I just might need your assistance, Hawk. I have the proof that my brother is a damned bounder. And Victoria must be protected somehow.”
“What do you think of the girl?”
Rafael looked into the mug of ale, swirling the gold-brown liquid about. He said thoughtfully, more to himself than to Hawk, “She’s lovely and quite intelligent. She’s got courage and strength, although at the moment she’s every reason to be afraid. She is, in short, an admirable girl and well, a darling.”
“Ah.”
“Ah what, curse you, Hawk?”
“Marry her.”
Rafael met the earl’s eyes. He wouldn’t have been overly surprised to see the word “Fate” written across Hawk’s forehead. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that it is the only thing to do. Actually, I had already decided it best, not five minutes before you shouted at me.”
“At least you’ve had the chance to get to know her,” said Hawk. “Much different from my experience. Lord, I shall never remember without a profound shudder Frances’s disguise. You will like Frances. She’s a real trooper.”
“Did you bring your children?”
“No, little Alexandra is too young, and as for Charles, he gets vilely ill in a traveling coach. One of the realities of married life, old man. Incidentally, you must meet my father, the marquess. No doubt about it, Rafael, once he learns of your dilemma, he will stick his oar in. He’s a great plotter, curse him.”
“As subtle as a battering ram, like Lucia?”
“The two of them with their heads together would be enough to send Napoleon scurrying back to Russia.”
“Lucia just happened to mention last evening about Frances and your former mistress saving the day. Needless to say, Victoria was all ears.”
“They attacked me, the both of them. Frances slammed her fist in my belly. Ah, what a time that was.”
More time passed with reminiscences. “Good Lord,” Rafael said suddenly. “I promised to take Victoria riding in the park.”
“Well, Frances and I will see both of you this evening. Rafael?”
“Yes?”
“Take care of the little one.”
“Oh, indeed I shall.” But Damien was in London. And it worried him, even though there was no way Damien could know where she was or whom she was with. Damien didn’t even know that his errant twin had come home.
Rafael was abstracted, a completely unacceptable companion, Victoria thought, looking at him from beneath her lashes. There were more ladies and gentlemen in the park than Victoria ever could have imagined. Since Rafael knew no one, their perambulations were uninterrupted.
“Careful of that landau, Victoria.”
She automatically brought her mare closer to his stallion. He merely nodded and fell again into his own thoughts.
“Do you like my new riding habit?”
“Yes.”
“And the hat? They dyed the feather to match the blue velvet. It’s royal blue, you know.”
“Charming.”
“My boots are the finest Spanish leather.”
“Nice.”
“And my chemise is covered with lace.”
“Yes, very good . . . What?”
“There, at least I’ve finally gained your attention. Now, Rafael, I have had quite enough of your secrecy. I’m not a nit-witted child. Tell me about Mr. Westover and your interview with him. Am I an heiress?”
“Not if Damien continues with his machinations.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, Victoria, that you’re better off not knowing, and—”
“Rafael, I am the key to all of this. If you don’t tell me everything, I shall go visit Mr. Westover myself.”
She watched a muscle jump in his jaw. He wasn’t, she realized, a man who took orders easily, or ultimatums. She watched, fascinated, as his beautiful gray eyes, almost silver in the afternoon sunlight, narrowed on her face. “You, my girl, will do exactly what you’re told. Do you understand me?”
She grinned at him. “No, I’m so silly and stupid, I don’t understand anything.”
“Victoria, I’ll . . . damn you, stop laughing at me. I am but trying to protect you and—”
“I see. Protection to a gentleman means keeping me in blinders. I’m not a block of ice to melt in the sun, Rafael.”
But he had no intention of telling her that Damien was here in London. He didn’t want to see the fear in her eyes again.
“No,” he said finally, “but you’re a pushing sort of female who wants manners. Suffice it to say that I have everything under control now. Have you now had enough of the beau monde?” He swatted her mare’s rump with his gloved hand, not even giving her a chance to answer.
Her grin dropped away and she frowned after him. Protecting her, was he? Well, she would see.
The laughter at the dinner table made Victoria forget all about Damien and her budding anger at Rafael and his cavalier treatment of her.
The Countess of Rothermere, Frances Hawksbury, was engaging and amusing and Victoria thought her the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. As for Hawk, or Philip—she wasn’t yet certain what to call him—he had much the look of Rafael. Tall and strong, dark-haired, but his eyes were a startling green, not a silvery gray.
Lively spirits continued to flow as consistently as the fine wine from Lucia’s cellars.
Suddenly Rafael said to her, “I believe you’ve drunk quite enough, Victoria. Didier, is there any lemonade?”
She’d sipped her way through but one glass, while . . . “You’re the one to begin in the lemonade, Rafael. That is at least your third glass.”
“I am a man and much more used—”
“I do believe I have heard something along those boring, quite obnoxious lines before,” Frances said. “Come, Rafael, Victoria isn’t two-and-ten, you know.”
“Thank you, Frances. However, the good captain is fond of giving orders.”
“Well, old boy, I suggest you succumb gracefully or pack your valise,” said Hawk. “Frances, love, turn your cannon elsewhere. Damn, I wish my father were here.”
“Why?” Rafael asked blankly.
“He has the knack of changing a particularly uncomfortable subject, leaving all the principals with their dignity intact.”
“Look, Victoria, it’s not that I think that you are starting on a career of drunkenness, but you’re not used to wine, are you?”
That was true, but she wasn’t a fool. “No more than a bottle a day,” she said. “On a good day.”
“I see,” said Lucia, at her most stately, “that I must intervene here. It is a case of compromise, I believe. Didier, half wine and half soda water. Is that agreeable to both parties?”
Rafael grumbled. Victoria shot him a look and said, “Since the good captain looks ready for apoplexy, I agree.”
Rafael gave her a crooked smile.
“Excellent,” said Frances. “Now we may continue with our gluttony and our conversation. Wonderful sirloin of beef, Lucia. Victoria, do you enjoy racing?”
“Oh, yes,” Victoria said, sitting forward in her chair, her spoonful of giblet soup hovering between her bowl and her mouth, “but I haven’t ever really been to a real race. Once, when I was a little girl, my parents took me to a cats race in the south of England near Eastbourne. It was marvelous.”
Frances was the only one who had never attended a cat race. She smiled and said, “I will watch the cats race and then you must come to Newmarket in November. Flying Davie will run and win, I have no doubt.”
Horse racing was the topic until the ladies left the gentlemen to their port. To Victoria’s surprise, Lucia seemed willing to forgo her nightly glass of port.
“In company, my dear,” said Lucia, guessing her thoughts, “one must bow to convention. Frances, why don’t you take Victoria upstairs and fix her hair? You are on the verge of losing a braid, Victoria.”
“She
wanted us to have a chance to speak alone,” Frances said as the two ladies mounted the staircase. “It’s said that she’s a regular tartar, but I find her the most interesting and charming lady of my acquaintance. She saved my life, you know.”
“What? When?”
Frances smiled. “I would very likely have died in childbirth. Lucia booted out the idiot doctor and saved me and my daughter. I suppose I would do just about anything for her.”
While Victoria chewed over this bit of information, Frances continued in a laughing voice, “And then she proceeded to give Hawk instructions on the care of pregnant ladies. He later swore to me that he had no intention of ever sharing my bed again.” She shook her head and said fondly, “Silly man.”
“And has he?”
Frances grinned. “I should add that Lucia also gave him a lecture on how not to make me pregnant. That was later, of course, and he was ecstatic.”
“Oh,” Victoria said doubtfully.
“Dear heavens, I shouldn’t be speaking like this to you.”
When Victoria was seated at her dressing table, Frances standing behind her and arranging the errant braid, she said, “I suppose you’re worried that I’m taking advantage of Lucia.”
“Not at all. If Lucia has accepted you, and she most certainly has, it is quite good enough for me. But tell me, Victoria, what is all this about your inheritance? Hawk told me just a bit of it, curse him.”
Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “Rafael—a more obstinate man I’ll never meet—won’t tell me a blasted thing. It is too bad of him, Frances. He’s acting as though I am a wilting rose who will lose all her petals if hit with the raw truth.”
Frances’s hands stilled. The light was more than dawning. It was fully risen. Her precious husband obviously knew much more than he’d let on to her. She would gave him a piece of her mind.
“Captain Carstairs is a very fine man,” she said mildly, continuing again with her braiding as her mind flew to various possibilities. “Hawk thinks very highly of him, I know.”
Victoria sighed. “It’s true. He is good and honorable. If he hadn’t come upon me, I shudder to think what might have happened. I owe him a great deal.”
Frances slipped in the final fastening. “There, all done.” Victoria stood and Frances hugged her. “Everything will work out all right. You will see.”
“Well, I trust you’re right, Frances, but I fully intend to do something myself. I’m going to see my solicitor tomorrow. He will be in no position to be a dictator like Rafael.”
Frances knew Victoria wasn’t one to sit knitting in a corner whilst events swirled about her. “If you don’t mind,” she said finally, “I shall accompany you to the solicitor.”
“You won’t tell your husband or Rafael?”
“No, neither of them deserves our confidence. Now, my dear, do you sing? Play the pianoforte?”
7
He who would have the fruit must climb the tree.
—THOMAS FULLER
It didn’t matter that the morning was dreary and damp, the air thick and cold. Victoria had made up her mind. She had to see Mr. Westover herself. She had to know about her inheritance, then make her plans. She couldn’t abuse Lady Lucia’s hospitality forever, after all. She frowned as she leaned back against the cracked leather squabs in the ancient hackney. She would not further tolerate Rafael’s whims—treating her as if she were an idiot child or, worse, a young lady of intolerable sensibilities.
If the hackney driver had thought it odd that a young lady, quite alone, wished to go into the City, he gave no sign, just spat on the roadway and made a noise that sounded, at least to Victoria, like affirmation. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but by the time the driver neared Derby Street, she was beginning, if not to regret coming, at least to be concerned about the four pounds she’d placed in a handkerchief inside her reticule. There was so much noise all around her. From the hackney window she saw hawkers everywhere, each of them shouting at the top of his lungs, hoping, she supposed, to gain the custom of the hordes of shiny, black-coated men whose heads were buried from the drizzle and cold inside wide-rimmed black hats. There was another element that made Victoria clutch her reticule firmly to her side. Men slouched in alleyways, eyeing the passing hackney with assessing and utterly cold expressions. Most of all, it was simply a depressing sight. In her new walking dress of lemon bombazine, the spencer of equally bright lemon color, she felt like an exotic specimen, a parrot in bright plumage surrounded by ravens.
Every few moments she heard her driver curse or shout at a recalcitrant who got in his way. There was so much traffic, the street itself full of drays, more hawkers, wagons filled with huge kegs of ale.
Just because you’ve never before been in a city of any size, you needn’t act like a provincial. It’s an adventure, not something to cower about. And that, she told herself firmly, was that. There wasn’t the slightest reason to cower against the smelly squabs. After all, Frances would come shortly, in her own carriage, and they would laugh and talk and Victoria would doubtless feel like a fool for all her alarms.
The hackney pulled to a halt in front of a narrow-fronted building, just like its neighbors, and Victoria, her money in her hand, jumped out and paid the man.
“Ye don’t wis’ me to wait, missy?”
“No, thank you. A friend is coming for me.”
He gave her a long look, then shrugged and clicked his miserable-looking horse forward.
It had stopped drizzling for the moment. Victoria stood there staring around her, wondering at this vastly different world from the one she knew. It was the avidly curious looks from several men that recalled her to her mission. She carefully lifted her skirts from a mud puddle and walked up the shallow steps to the solicitor’s office.
The clerk, upon seeing the somewhat wet but nonetheless elegant vision, was palpably taken aback. He gaped at her, dropping the piece of paper he was holding.
“I wish to see Mr. Westover,” Victoria said in an imperious tone that would have pleased Lady Lucia. “Please inform him that Miss Victoria Abermarle is here.”
“I . . . well, I don’t know, miss—you’re a lady, and, well, ah, you know—”
Victoria frowned down her nose at him, drawing on one of Lucia’s intimidating mannerisms. “Tell him that I am waiting, if you please.”
“Er, yes, miss, right away.”
Mr. Westover, hearing of his unexpected visitor, was out of his office in a flash. “Miss Abermarle?”
She nodded and smiled at him, waiting.
“Such a relief that you are again safe, miss. Where is Lord Drago? Isn’t he with you?”
I must tread carefully here, Victoria thought, I must go very carefully. “Lord Drago?” she asked.
“Of course. He was here just yesterday to tell me he had managed to rescue you from your kidnappers. So dreadful for you, my dear Miss Abermarle, but the baron . . . Well, all’s well, eh?”
Rafael pretending to be Damien? Very clever of him. He must have gotten all the information he wanted. But what was this about kidnappers? If that had been Rafael’s tale, she mustn’t make a liar of him.
“I’m perfectly all right now, Mr. Westover. I’m here merely to review with you the terms of my inheritance.”
Mr. Westover stared at her in obvious consternation. “This is unusual, a young lady, here, alone, I’m not certain—”
She interrupted him smoothly. “The baron suggested it was time I met my solicitor, the gentleman who was taking such good care of my inheritance. As the baron told me, it is my money and I should know all the, ah, stipulations. Don’t you agree, sir?”
“The baron said . . . Well, that is pleasant news indeed, I suppose. It’s irregular, very unusual, I say, but I suppose I have little choice now.”
Victoria gave him a brilliant smile. “Thank you.” She walked past him into a high-ceilinged office that smelled comfortingly of leather and ink and decades of closed windows. She waited as he dusted the leather ch
air in front of his desk with his handkerchief, then sat down.
“I will tell you, Miss Abermarle, that I don’t approve of this, any of it. However, since you’re here”—he realized he would have to physically heft her out of the blasted chair—“and the baron approves of your being here, I will give you the general terms of your inheritance.”
He did, spicing his discourse with many pauses and disapproving looks. He wasn’t stupid and was beginning to realize that the baron would have more likely suggested his ward visit a cockfight than her solicitor.
“Twenty-five,” she repeated, feeling her heart sink. Her money wasn’t hers until she was twenty-five. She wouldn’t be nineteen until December. She wasn’t a fool. Although Mr. Westover had been quite careful in his choice of words, it was clear to her that Damien was making free with her money.
“Yes, twenty-five, Miss Abermarle, or upon your marriage, as I said,” said Mr. Westover.
Marriage.
“With my guardian’s permission?” Was that why Damien had told those lies to David Esterbridge? He wanted no husband to take over her money?
“Naturally. I, er, do believe, however, after seeing Lord Drago yesterday, that you need have no concern about the disposition of your funds in the future.”
Certainly she wouldn’t. It had been Rafael to reassure the poor gulled man. Where was Damien?
She rose and extended her hand. Mr. Westover, after regarding that small gloved hand with surprise, finally shook it. He saw her out, ignoring his clerk’s gape-mouthed interest.
It had stopped raining, and there was even a sliver of sun coming from behind the heavy gray clouds. Victoria stood on the top shallow step looking about for Frances’s carriage. She was growing nervous, aware that several rather disreputable men were eyeing her as if she were the Christmas goose. Where was Frances? She saw a curricle approach and heaved a huge sigh of relief. Then she blinked in surprise. She felt her pulse quicken. It was Rafael.
“Rafael.” She waved wildly at him. Let him be angry with her, she thought. She’d found out what she needed to. There was nothing he could do to her, after all. Perhaps rage a bit, but nothing more dire than that.
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