“I agree,” Jeff said coolly, his level gaze on his sister. “The scandals continue, don’t they, Victoria? One right after the other. Now you’ve left your husband while still in your honeymoon year.”
“I have done no such thing.” Spencer had left her first, actually; but this was no time to clear the air on that murky issue, either. Victoria placed her napkin on the table, beside her plate, and stood up, looking from one to the other of her parents. “If you will excuse me?”
“So you can do what? Run away again? I think not,” her mother said. Two spots of high color rode her cheeks. “This is the last straw, Victoria Sofia. The very last straw. We have made enough excuses already for you. What you will not do is leave us to face that man alone.” Victoria opened her mouth to protest, but her mother cut her off with: “Tut-tut. You came back home to River’s End with no explanation, daughter. You just showed up on the doorstep with your English maid and your traveling trunks. And we did not press you for reasons because we have missed you so very much and felt so sorrowful for … for—”
“Selling me to the highest bidder, like you would a slave?” Victoria supplied cruelly.
Her mother—and father—gasped, but it was her mother who recovered first. “We never sold a slave—and we most certainly did not sell you. What we bought you, though, was respectability. And what we saved you from was the lonely life of a spinster. And this is how you thank us? By throwing it in our faces and running away from your husband?” She sat back, glaring at Victoria. “I am completely at my wit’s end with you, Victoria. I’ve a good mind to simply leave you sitting here alone to greet that poor man by yourself. It’s what you deserve.”
“I’m not afraid to face my husband on my own, Mama.” She was, in fact, terrified. “But allow me to remind you that it was not my idea to marry him. And I vow I would have been much happier as a spinster than I was locked away as my husband’s prisoner in England.”
“Prisoner?” This word was echoed by all three Redmonds.
Victoria looked from one to the other of them. “Yes. Prisoner. I did not run away. I escaped.” It wasn’t completely a lie.
“Escaped? He had you locked up?” Catherine Redmond had a shaking hand clasped over her mouth as she turned to her husband. “Oh, dear God, what have we done to our child? Isaac, I thought you knew this man.”
“I did, Catherine. And I still do. Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s trying to muddy the water and take our attention away from her misdeeds. Why, His Grace the Duke of Moreland would never lock a woman up.” Victoria’s father snapped his attention to her. “Unless he had a very good reason.”
Victoria’s face stung with burning shame, but she said nothing, not one word. The duke did have a very good reason for locking her up, had he actually chosen to, only she wasn’t about to supply it to her parents.
“Do you see, Catherine? She has nothing to say for herself.” Her father’s expression suddenly crumpled, making him look older, sadder. When he spoke, he sounded defeated. “I swear to you, Victoria, I don’t know what to do with you or what even to think anymore. I cannot explain your behavior.”
Hurt and shame coursed through Victoria, but she held her head erect. Dignity was all she had at this moment. “You don’t have to, Daddy. I am no longer your responsibility.”
“No, you are not. And it pains me to say this, but I feel sorry for the man who does bear that burden now. John Spencer Whitfield is a fine, upstanding man with an unblemished reputation.”
“Which is more than we can say about you, Sister.”
Victoria arrowed her attention her brother’s way. “Are you certain, big brother, you wish to enter into this fray with me? Because I would wager you are not so sterling of character as you would have us believe.”
Jeff’s expression hardened, but he looked away first.
“Victoria!” her mother cried. “That is uncalled for. Jefferson has done nothing.”
Her gaze still resting on her brother’s profile, Victoria said: “Yes, Mama, that is exactly what I fear. Jefferson has done nothing.”
She could see, in her mind, the accusations against him contained in the letter she had received, the one that had set her on this precipitous course for home— No, River’s End was no longer her home. Jefferson had been right about that. She had no home. No place she could run to and feel safe. Could anything in life be worse than knowing that?
“Well, Victoria, what do you propose we do? Just sit here eating our eggs?”
“I don’t see why not, Mama.”
“Oh, you don’t? Let me remind you that I did not raise you to—”
A fist being banged on the table—Isaac Redmond’s, to be exact—caused the china dishes and silverware to clatter. His quarreling family quickly turned to him at the head of the table. He pointed an accusing finger at Victoria. “Let me remind you, daughter, that your”—his mouth worked as he evidently struggled for an appropriate word—“situation was of your own making, not mine or your mother’s.”
“Believe me, sir, I am aware of that, and I live with the knowledge daily—”
“It is only right that you do.” Her father surged to his feet, pressing his palms against the tabletop. Red-faced with anger, he leaned toward Victoria. “What is not right is you have again brought your tangled web of lies to this house. How could you—and after your mother and I went to great expense and discomfort to do the best we could by you under very trying circumstances this past summer? Have you no respect? Now, out with it—the truth. We deserve that much before your husband arrives at our doorstep.”
Though she glared at them, Victoria realized she wasn’t so sure they did deserve the truth, or that she owed it to them. She tried to convince herself that they said the things they did because they cared and because they were scared for her. But she didn’t really believe that. They were embarrassed by her presence here. And their only concern, it seemed to her, was that she would bring more scandal their way. It was horrible, this feeling. She felt certain she could hear the unraveling of the ties that had bound her to her family. The hurt. Dear God, the hurt. Victoria wanted to do nothing more than to run and hide. She wanted to curl up in a secret corner somewhere and not think or do or say. And yet, at this moment, she must do all three.
Stealing over her was a calm and a strength she had never before felt. It washed her in its warmth and helped her compose her expression and her speech. “Forgive me, please, for upsetting you all like this. It truly was not my intention. And I am sorry if my presence here has been a further embarrassment for you. I should have known it would be. But I had thought that River’s End would always welcome me. Now I see that I was naïve to think so, after what I did. I won’t make this mistake again.”
“Victoria, honey—”
“No, Mama, you’re going to listen. Not once when I was going through … what I was going through did even one of you at this table ever ask me how I was doing or if I was all right. You couldn’t see past your own embarrassment to think of me. Not once. Well, let me tell you, it was awful. And it still is.” Victoria felt dangerously close to tears. She had to get out of this room and away from these people. “If you will excuse me, I would like merely to be allowed to go make myself presentable for my husband. I do not believe that is so much to ask.”
Though her family could not have looked more shocked or miserable, they were nowhere near as surprised as Victoria was to realize she had such dignity inside her. “If you will please simply greet him,” she continued, not wanting to give them time to recover their equilibrium and renew their protests, “and show him into the parlor, and entertain him there, I will make every endeavor not to keep you all waiting long.”
CHAPTER 6
Followed closely by a heavy dray heaped with traveling trunks, the hired carriage—a fancy landau with matching bays driven by the owner himself, an elderly, cordial man of color who had introduced himself as Mr. Hepplewhite—proceeded along the winding, oak-lined drive up to
the impressive house at River’s End.
Still at a distance, and like a seductive woman, the white-columned mansion coyly teased the observer with fluttering glimpses of itself around curves in the roadway and through breaks in the seemingly braided branches of the moss-draped oaks. As if encouraged by a soft breeze, the dappled sunlight, like so much bright yellow paint spattered about by a willful child, dotted the lush landscape and danced ahead of the conveyances.
Spencer knew himself well enough to admit that under normal circumstances, he would have been entranced by the exotic beauty of coastal Georgia. The almost painfully green and lush environment fairly spoke to him of languid nights spent with a sultry woman. Indeed, the very warmth of the place encouraged one to slow one’s step and lie back and forget one’s problems.
Not bloody likely today. Scowling, foul-tempered, and seated across the landau from his secretary and valet, Spencer couldn’t help but compare this scene to the one that fateful day a few weeks back when he’d come home to find his wife gone. On that day, too, he’d been burdened with the carriages, the traveling trunks, Hornsby and Mr. Milton—
And Edward Sparrow, the Right Honorable the Earl of Roxley. Even now, that brigand sat cheerfully mashed up next to Spencer on the carriage’s padded leather seat. So far, his blasted cousin had professed a love for every stick, rock, and frog he’d seen in Georgia, but especially he loved her women. Proving this, he’d created a minor stir in Savannah proper by standing in the open carriage, doffing his hat and loudly greeting every comely lady they’d passed as they’d traveled around the many resplendent squares. Spencer counted himself lucky they’d escaped the city without being shot or lynched by a mob of outraged husbands and fathers.
Dismissing that scene from his mind, he concentrated on River’s End, the approach to which they now rode through. He found he was able to appreciate the pleasing juxtaposition of the wild beauty that the tame orderliness of the well-manicured grounds seemed only to keep at bay. He noted especially the trailing Spanish moss that draped the oaks with gray beards—but then recalled what, or who, awaited him not too many minutes ahead. With renewed irritation eating at him, he rubbed a finger inside his collar, suddenly detesting this hothouse humidity designed to make breathing damned near impossible unless one were a fish and had gills.
“You’re awfully restless, Spence, old man.”
Spence, old man, shot his cousin a look. “It’s this damned wet and heavy air here. Much like breathing through a damp bath towel, I would suspect.”
Edward nodded sagely. “I’ve had to do that before, and very much against my will. It’s not pleasant. But a very good comparison you make.”
Spencer cut his gaze his cousin’s way but said nothing, lest Edward feel it necessary to enlighten Spencer on the whys and wherefores of his having been forced to breathe through a damp towel. Or not breathe was more like it. No doubt, some lady’s husband had come home sooner than expected and found his wife in the bath with Edward. At any rate, Spencer did not wish to be regaled with a tale that was certain to scorch even his far-from-innocent ears.
Though his cousin’s shoulder was already pressed against Spencer’s, Edward suddenly leaned hard against him and spoke softly. “Do you suppose she’ll actually be here, under the circumstances? I mean really. I know we’re hoping she is. But do you really suppose she is?”
“If I did not, Edward, do you suppose I would be here myself?” Mindful of his secretary and valet only mere feet away, Spencer smiled at his cousin … through gritted teeth. “Do not start this line of questioning with me again, Edward, I warn you.”
A shared cabin on the Atlantic crossing, as well as many shared bottles of whisky, had provided time and opportunity for Edward to slowly drag out of Spencer every wretched component of his predicament. Spencer now regretted that intimacy because Edward bothered the very devil out of him with his questions and conjectures.
“You see, I was thinking,” Edward said, apparently intending to ignore Spencer’s warning, “how amusing it would be to find she’d outfoxed us and had never left England. But had only said she meant to travel to Liverpool to throw us off the scent.”
“Yes. Very amusing. Only the booking agent very graciously—”
“After you pulled him across the counter by his lapels and shook him.”
Spencer ignored this. “At any rate, the booking agent showed me the entry where she bought her ticket for passage on a steamship traveling to Savannah.”
“That does not mean she actually boarded the ship.” Edward had trouble giving up his pet theories. “If she’s not here, and I mean at River’s End—a name which hardly evokes the grandeur of this place, I must say; look at these magnificent oaks with the wonderfully scary moss—where shall we start our search?”
With each passing second and more intrusive question, Spencer felt less and less inclined to be forthcoming, for all the good it did him. “There is no ‘we’ in this, Edward. This is my life you are dissecting. Besides, that is the fourteenth time, I’ll wager, in the past week or more that you have asked me that very question.”
Edward appeared appalled. “Really? I say. Then one would think you’d have an answer by now, wouldn’t one?”
Spencer caught Mr. Milton and Hornsby staring wide-eyed at him. No doubt, they expected him to pick up and toss his elegantly thin cousin out of the open carriage. Not a bad idea, all in all. Except, upon his return to England, he would have to explain to Edward’s dear mother that he had murdered her son. Not a pleasant prospect. She was a kind, gentle woman.
Besides, this time Spencer did have an answer for the Earl of Roxley. “If she’s not here”—he no longer worried about keeping his voice down; it was quite impossible to carry on even the most innocuous of conversations in the forced proximity of a carriage this size, and it wasn’t as if his two employees weren’t aware, to a certain extent, of the reason for their being here—“I shall prevail upon her father for his assistance. He’ll know the lay of the land, so to speak, who the right people are, where to look, that sort of thing.”
“Oh, jolly good. I’m certain he’ll be most happy to help us. However, it seems logical to me that she would be here. A criminal returning to the scene of the crime, as it were.”
Spencer frowned mightily. “The woman is my wife and a duchess, Edward. She’s hardly a criminal.”
Edward tapped Spencer’s knee. “No, of course not, old man. Simply a turn of phrase. I meant nothing by it.”
After that, Edward was blessedly quiet, which gave Spencer time to wonder if his wife had sought out her former lover once she’d come here. He believed she would have. After all, the letter she’d received had not been from family, according to Fredericks. The son of a bitch. He meant the man who had seduced a young girl and then left her on her own to face the consequences and then had the audacity to lure her away again, once she was married. Spencer wondered what the blackguard would do when Victoria told him she carried a baby that could be his. Spencer was willing to bet the wretched man would flee. Just as I did, he suddenly realized.
“Do you really think her father will be willing to help?”
“Yes, Edward.” After all, Mr. Redmond had been the one, along with his wife, who’d dragged Victoria across the ocean and gone in search of a husband—a very needy but worthy man on foreign soil … meaning far, far away from Savannah and all the rumors here. They’d as much as advertised—in a discreet and flattering way, and in the rarefied air of the many balls and suppers held by the ton, of course—for a good, kind, desperate man among the host of impoverished bachelors of the peerage, who would agree to marry their rebellious and compromised daughter for the very high price to be settled upon her. They’d wanted all that and a man who would not mistreat her, either.
Many had pursued her. Victoria Redmond was, after all, as beautiful as she was rich. But the man … the fool, the imbecile … her parents had chosen—since she’d made it very plain she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with
the decision—had been him, Spencer fumed. He’d fit all their criteria, plus he’d been the highest-ranking eligible bachelor to … apply for the position.
Looking out the other side of the carriage, away from Edward, Spencer quirked his lips in a self-deprecating manner. There was no other way, delicately or otherwise, to state the proposition than to say he’d applied for the position. It was the truth, yet it certainly wasn’t flattering to either one of them. Flattering or not, Spencer didn’t think Mr. Redmond would be amused to have his daughter back so soon after the debacle here.
“I think we should go over the other myriad possibilities, Spencer.”
Spencer stared into Edward’s guileless brown eyes and, very reasonably, said: “And I think I should poke you in the nose for continuing to put it in my business.”
Discreet coughing and harrumphing, no doubt meant as a warning to Edward for caution, came from across the narrow aisle from where Spencer and his cousin sat.
Alas, it was lost on Edward. “I’m entirely serious, Spencer. A delving into the range of possibilities we could face in only a few moments’ time is called for. Say she’s here. What will be your course of action?”
Spencer narrowed his eyes. “I will throw myself into her arms, declare my undying love for her, and beg her to come home with me, whereupon I will throw my duchy and all its wealth at her feet and carry her about on a satin pillow for the rest of her days.”
At long last, Edward was insulted. Wordlessly, he turned away, staring out over the cultivated fields, just beyond the lawn, that seemed to stretch on in endless waves. “One would think one would welcome assistance from one’s family,” he muttered, “even if that family member is of a lesser rank than oneself.”
Spencer covered his eyes with a hand and rubbed tiredly at them. Damn it all to hell. He flopped his hand into his lap. “All right, Edward, suppose she is here at River’s End.”
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