Once and Always

by Judith McNaught

  Dusk faded into twilight and finally into chilly, starlit darkness as she waited in the salon, listening for the sound of Jason’s coach in the drive. “He’s back, Uncle Charles!” she said delightedly, peering out the window at the coach lamps moving along the drive toward the house.

  “That must be Mike Farrell. Jason won’t be here for at least another hour or two,” he said, smiling fondly at her as she began smoothing her skirts. “I know how long it takes to make his journey, and he’s already shaved off a day in order to get back tonight, rather than tomorrow.”

  “I suppose you’re right, but it’s only half past seven, and I asked Captain Farrell to join us for supper at eight.” Her smile faded as the carriage drew up before the house, and she realized it wasn’t Jason’s luxurious traveling coach. “I think I’ll ask Mrs. Craddock to delay supper,” she was saying when Northrup appeared in the doorway of the salon, an odd, strained look upon his austere face.

  “There is a gentleman here to see you, my lady,” he announced.

  “A gentleman?” Victoria echoed blankly.

  “A Mr. Andrew Bainbridge from America.”

  Victoria reached weakly for the back of the nearest chair, her knuckles turning white as her grip tightened.

  “Shall I show him in?”

  She nodded jerkily, trying to get control over the violent surge of resentment quaking through her at the memory of his heartless rejection, praying she could face him without showing how she felt. So distracted with her own rampaging emotions was she that she never noticed the sudden pallor of Charles’s complexion or the way he slowly stood up and faced the door as if he were bracing to meet a firing squad.

  An instant later, Andrew strode through the doorway, his steps long and brisk, his smiling, handsome face so endearingly familiar that Victoria’s heart cried out in protest against his betrayal.

  He stopped in front of her, looking at the elegant young beauty standing before him in a seductive silk gown that clung to her ripened curves, her glorious hair tumbling riotously over her shoulders and trim back. “Tory,” he breathed, gazing into her deep blue eyes. Without warning, he reached out, pulling her almost roughly into his arms and burying his face in her fragrant hair. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he whispered raggedly, holding her more tightly to him.

  “Obviously!” Victoria retorted, recovering from her stunned paralysis and flinging his arms away. She glared at him, amazed at his gall in daring to come here, let alone embrace her with a passion he’d never shown her before. “Apparently you forget people very easily,” she added tartly.

  To her utter disbelief, Andrew chuckled. “You’re angry because it’s taken me two weeks longer to come for you than I wrote you in my letter it would take, is that it?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “My ship was blown off course a week after we sailed and we had to put in for repairs at one of the islands.” Placing his arm affectionately around Victoria’s stiff shoulders, he turned to Charles and put out his hand, grinning. “You must be Charles Fielding,” he said with unaffected friendliness. “I can’t thank you enough for looking after Victoria until I could come for her. Naturally, I’ll want to repay you for any expenses you have incurred on her behalf—including this delightful gown she’s wearing.”

  He turned to Victoria. “I hate to rush you, Tory, but I’ve booked passage on a ship leaving in two days. The captain of the ship has already agreed to marry—”

  “Letter?” Victoria interrupted, feeling violently dizzy. “What letter? You haven’t written me a single word since I left home.”

  “I wrote you several letters,” he said, frowning. “As I explained to you in my last one, I kept writing to you in America because my meddling mother never sent your letters on to me, so I didn’t know you were here in England. Tory, I told you all this in my last letter—the one I sent you here in England by special messenger.”

  “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—”

  “You’re lying!” Victoria burst out, her voice shaking.

  “No, I swear it!”

  Victoria’s head snapped up, her eyes glittering with outrage at this last insult to her intelligence. “If you think I’d believe another word either of you ever say—” She broke off, afraid of the deathly gray pallor of Charles’s haunted face, and ran from the room. She ran up the stairs, stumbling in her tear-blinded haste, and raced down the hall to her rooms. Once inside, she leaned against the closed door, her head thrown back, her teeth clamped together so tightly her jaws ached as she fought for control of her rioting emotions.

  Andrew’s face, contorted with pain, appeared again before her tightly closed eyes and she moaned aloud with sick remorse. “I’ve loved you since the day I saw you racing across our fields on that Indian pony. . . . Tory, please! Come home with me. . . .”

  She was nothing but a pawn in a game played by two selfish, heartless men, she realized hysterically. Jason had known all along that Andrew was coming, just as he had known all along that Charles had been playing cards the night of his false “attack.”

  Victoria pushed away from the door, ripped off her gown, and changed into a riding habit. If she stayed in this house another hour, she would go insane. She couldn’t scream at Charles and risk having his death on her conscience. And Jason—He was due back tonight. She would surely plunge a knife into his heart if she saw him now, she thought hysterically. She snatched a white woolen cloak from the wardrobe and ran down the stairs.

  “Victoria, wait!” Charles shouted as she raced down the hall toward the back of the house.

  Victoria spun around, her whole body trembling. “Stay away from me!” she cried, backing away. “I’m going to Claremont. You’ve done enough!”

  “O’Malley!” Charles barked desperately as she ran out the back door.

  “Yes, your grace?”

  “I’ve no doubt you ‘overheard’ what happened in the drawing room—”

  O’Malley the eavesdropper nodded grimly, not bothering to deny it.

  “Can you ride?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Go after her,” Charles said in frantic haste. “I don’t know whether she’ll take a carriage or ride, but go after her. She likes you, she’ll listen to you.”

  “Her ladyship won’t be in a mood to listen to no one, and I can’t say as I blame her fer it.”

  “Never mind that, dammit! If she won’t come back, at least follow her to Claremont and make certain she gets there in safety. Claremont is fifteen miles south of here, by the river road.”

  “Suppose she heads for London and tries to go away with the American gentleman?”

  Charles raked his hand through his gray hair, then shook his head emphatically. “She won’t. If she meant to leave with him, she’d have done it when he asked her to go with him.”

  “But I ain’t all that handy with a horse—not like Lady Victoria is.”

  “She won’t be able to ride her fastest in the dark. Now, get down to the stables and go after her!”

  Victoria was already galloping away on Matador, with Wolf running beside her, when O’Malley dashed toward the stables. “Wait, please!” he yelled, but she didn’t seem to hear him, and she bent low over the horse’s neck, sending the mighty gelding racing away as if the devil were after her.

  “Saddle the fastest horse we’ve got, and be quick!” O’Malley ordered a groom, his gaze riveted on Victoria’s flashing white cloak as it disappeared down Wakefield’s long winding drive toward the main road.

  Three miles flew by beneath Matador’s thundering hooves before Victoria had to slow him down for Wolf’s sake. The gallant dog was racing beside her, his head bent low, willing to follow her until he dropped dead from exhaustion. She waited for him to catch his breath and was about to continue her headlong flight when she heard the clatter of hooves behind her and a man's unintelligible shout.

  Not certain whether she was being pursued by one of the brigands who preyed on solitary travelers at night or by Jason, who might have returned and decided to track her down, Victoria turned Matador into the woods beside the road and sent him racing through the trees on a zigzagging course meant to lose whoever was following her. Her pursuer crashed through the underbrush behind her, following her despite her every effort to lose him.

  Panic and fury rose apace in her breast as she broke from the cover of the trees that should have concealed her and spurred her horse down the road. If it was Jason behind her, she would die before she’d let him run her to ground like a rabbit. He’d made a fool of her once too often. No, it couldn’t be Jason! She hadn’t passed his coach on the drive when she rode away from Wakefield, nor had she seen any sign of it before she turned off onto the river road.

  Victoria’s anger dissolved into chilling terror. She was coming to the same river where another girl had mysteriously drowned. She remembered the vicar’s stories about bloodthirsty bandits who preyed on travelers at night, and she threw a petrified glance over her shoulder as she raced toward one of the bridges that traversed the winding river. She saw that her pursuer had temporarily dropped back out of sight around a bend in the road, but she could hear him coming, following her as surely as if he had a light to guide him—Her cloak! Her white cloak was billowing out behind her like a waving beacon in the night.

  “Oh, dear God!” she burst out as Matador clattered across the bridge. On her right there was a path that ran along the riverbank, while the road continued straight ahead. She jerked the horse to a bone-jarring stop, scrambled out of the saddle, and unfastened her cloak. Praying wildly that her ploy would work, Victoria flung her cloak over the saddle, turned the horse down the path along the riverbank, and whacked Matador hard on the flank with her crop, sending the horse galloping dow
n the river path. With Wolf at her side, she raced into the woods above the path and crouched down in the underbrush, her heart thundering in her chest. A minute later, she heard her pursuer clatter across the bridge. She peeked between the branches of the bush concealing her and saw him veer off on the path that ran beside the river, but she couldn’t see his face.

  She didn’t see that Matador eventually slowed from a run to a walk, then ambled down to the river for a drink. Nor did she see the river tug her cloak free from the saddle while the horse drank, carrying it a few yards downstream, where it tangled among the branches of a partially submerged fallen tree.

  Victoria didn’t see any of that, because she was already running through the woods, parallel with the main road, smiling to herself because the bandit had fallen for the best trick Rushing River had ever taught her. To mislead one’s pursuer, one merely sent one’s horse in one direction and took off on foot in another. Tossing her cloak over the saddle had been an ingenious improvisation of Victoria’s own.

  O’Malley jerked his horse to a jolting stop beside Victoria’s riderless gelding. Frantically, he twisted his head around to scan the steep bank behind and above him, searching for some sign of her up there, thinking her horse must have thrown her at some point between there and here. “Lady Victoria?” he shouted, his gaze sweeping in a wide arc over the bank behind him, the woods on his left, and finally the river on his right . . . where a white cloak floated eerily atop the water, hooked on a partially submerged fallen tree. “Lady Victoria!” he screamed in terror, vaulting from his horse. “The damned horse!” he panted, frantically stripping off his jacket and pulling off his boots. “The damned horse threw her off the ridge into the river . . .” He raced into the murky, rushing water, swimming toward the cloak. “Lady Victoria!” he cried and dove under. He came up, shouting her name and gasping for breath, then he dove under again.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  THE HOUSE WAS ABLAZE WITH lights when Jason’s coach pulled to a stop in the drive. Eager to see Victoria, he bounded up the shallow terraced front steps. “Good evening, Northrup!” he grinned, slapping the stalwart butler on the back and handing over his cape. “Where is my wife? Has everyone already eaten? I was delayed by a damnable broken wheel.”