by Meggin Cabot
“The dowager,” Rebecca observed as they ambled along the edge of one of the picnic sheets, “seems a very jolly sort.”
“Doesn’t she?” Victoria was thinking that the dowager had every reason to feel jolly… her financial concerns were soon to evaporate entirely.
“I only hope that Charles’s mother will be as welcoming of me,” Rebecca said with a nervous giggle—for as she and Mr. Abbott were not yet engaged, it was rather daring of her to call him by his first name. “When the occasion arises, I mean.”
“I’m certain she will,” Victoria said warmly. “For what mother would not welcome a daughter-in-law like you? You embroider so tidily, and I’ve never heard you raise your voice to the servants.”
Rebecca looked pleased. “I hope you’re right! But Mr. Abbott and I are not even engaged yet, so it’s wrong of me even to think of such things. You, however… oh, Vicky, it’s like a dream, isn’t it? I mean, the way Lord Malfrey worships you.”
Victoria had to admit that it was. For all her irritation with the Rothschilds’ friends, and the way Hugo and his mother mismanaged their limited income—for the dowager was not alone in her profligate spending habits; her son, too, bore some of the blame—it was difficult to stay angry with either of them. Hugo was, of course, all that was romantic and tender, constantly reminding Victoria of how precious she was to him, and stealing kisses whenever he was able. He’d even gone so far as to spend part of the money he’d taken to Lisbon to retrieve his familial portraits on an engagement ring, which Victoria now wore instead of his signet on her wedding finger. Never mind that the emerald—which Hugo had insisted matched Victoria’s hazel eyes, a mistake for which she readily forgave him—was larger than Victoria thought strictly tasteful. It had been a lovely gesture. And as soon as they were married, Victoria would have the stone recut to a more modest size. And she’d have a pair of ear bobs to match!
Hugo had even managed to soothe the Gardiners’ fears concerning his impending wedding to their headstrong niece. By becoming a familiar guest in the Gardiner household and getting to know each of the little Gardiners by name, he had charmed Victoria’s aunt. And with his frequent gifts of cigars to Victoria’s uncle, he had managed to win that man’s favor as well. Her aunt and uncle had given them their blessing, and now that Hugo’s mother seemed pleased with the match as well, Victoria supposed the only thing left to do was settle upon a date. She rather fancied getting married on a Tuesday. She had always been fond of Tuesdays.
Victoria was planning her honeymoon in Venice—she had heard Venice was lovely—when, beside her, Rebecca suddenly stiffened and sucked in her breath.
“I say,” Rebecca exclaimed as they reached the edge of the farthest picnic sheet. “Isn’t that… Why, Vicky, I think… Yes, it is; it is him! What is he doing here?”
Victoria looked in the direction Rebecca was pointing. There, coming toward them from the riding path, on a handsome bay with a nicely arched neck, was Captain Jacob Carstairs… whose name, Victoria knew for certain, was not on the dowager Lady Malfrey’s guest list. Victoria was the one, in fact, who’d insisted on its not being there.
“Stuff and bother,” Victoria muttered, lowering the brim of her parasol so it covered her face. It was probably a hopeless gesture, but there was always a chance the captain hadn’t yet recognized her. Besides, the parasol hid the blush that unaccountably—and very annoyingly—showed up on Victoria’s cheeks every time she encountered Jacob Carstairs of late.
Which was ridiculous, because of course she was in love—deeply and irrevocably in love—with the ninth Earl of Malfrey. Surely the only reason she happened to blush when Jacob Carstairs looked her way had to do with the fact that the captain was so very forward. He did, after all, seem to think he knew what was best for her—and had no compunction about telling her so.
Though she tried standing quite still—the way a rabbit, caught in the path of a cobra, often did—Jacob Carstairs seemed to notice her just the same, since soon a pair of horse’s hooves appeared in the grass before her, and Victoria heard Captain Carstairs say, in that infuriatingly teasing tone of his, “Good afternoon, Lady Victoria, Miss Gardiner.”
Victoria had no choice then but to raise her parasol and smile sunnily into his insufferably smug face.
“Captain,” she said, her calm tone at odds with the high color in her cheeks.
Beside her, Rebecca, whom she’d thought sufficiently recovered from her infatuation with the ship captain, was proving that this was not the case. She had turned as pink in the face as Victoria, and seemed not to know where to place her gaze. Victoria glanced frantically around for Mr. Abbott, but he was, the selfish thing, engaged in a game of mumblety-peg and not even looking in their direction.
“Not a very promising day for a picnic,” Captain Carstairs said with a glance at the leaden sky above.
“At least it’s warm,” Victoria replied. Inside, of course, her response was not nearly so sanguine. Weather? You stand there discussing the weather with him, with this obnoxious man who seems to think he knows what’s best for you, and who has, probably for good, broken the heart of your most beloved cousin? What is wrong with you? Tell him to take his horse and go to—
“Is that the dowager Lady Malfrey I see?” Captain Carstairs asked, squinting in Victoria’s future mother-inlaw’s direction.
“Indeed,”Victoria replied tonelessly.
“Well.” The captain, from high atop his saddle, scanned the assorted guests seated upon the white sheets and the footmen who moved about them with their bowls of sugared strawberries and trays of champagne. She prayed that Jacob Carstairs was not farsighted enough to see the damp-skirted young lady from his perch. “How nice.”
Nice? Nice? That was all he had to say? If that was all he had to say, why didn’t he ride on? Why did he just sit there, looking out over the picnic blankets like a maharaja surveying his troops…?
It was at this point that Rebecca suddenly let out a startled cry. “My reticule!”
Victoria turned her head and saw, of all things, a ragged little miscreant—male, apparently, though it was hard to tell beneath the dirt—dart by, clutching her cousin’s bag.
Rebecca’s shriek had startled the captain’s horse—as, Victoria supposed, the thief knew it would; otherwise he would not have dared so bold a move, and in broad daylight… well, what passed for daylight in this damp place. Still, Jacob Carstairs handled the steed admirably, crying, “Stop, thief!” while still managing to keep his place in the saddle.
But the captain’s aid—though appreciated—was not strictly needed. Not when Victoria had merely to stick out a foot and trip the recalcitrant young man, then rest her knee in the middle of his spine.
Nothing, of course, could have been simpler. But here came the earl and Mr. Abbott, along with the rest of the picnickers, as if there were something they could do, as well.
Really, Victoria thought with disgust, but Londoners made such a fuss about things!
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Oh, Lady Victoria!” the dowager Lady Malfrey cried. “Don’t touch him! The dirty thing might… might bite you or something!”
Victoria regarded her future mother-in-law calmly from where she knelt, with one knee pressed firmly in the small of the little thief’s back. The boy was kicking a great deal, and wailing quite lamentably as well, but wasn’t otherwise causing Victoria the least bit of concern.
“Here you are, Becky,” she said, plucking her cousin’s reticule from the boy’s hand, and passing it back to the older girl. “I’m sure he’s very sorry for what he did. Aren’t you?” She leaned more heavily on the boy’s spine. “Aren’t you?”
“Aye,” the lad cried. “Aye! Let me up! Please let me up, miss!”
Captain Carstairs, who by this time had gotten his horse under control and dismounted, leaned down and laid rough hands upon the boy’s shoulder.
“It’s all right, my lady,” he said to Victoria. “I’ve got him now.”
Victoria, noticing how close Jacob Carstairs’s face was to hers, and how, though he wasn’t anywhere near as handsome as the earl—not with those collar points!—very amiable he looked, nonetheless rose quickly, so as to be as far from him as possible.
“Well, let’s get a look at you, then,” the captain said, hauling the boy to his feet.
The thief was not, Victoria soon saw, a very prepossessing creature. Although he was covered in dirt, from his scuffed boots to his mop of lank hair, there was a fist-sized clean spot in the center of his face—but this was only because the frightened boy was weeping.
“Please, sir,” he begged between sobs. “Don’t call the Runners on me, sir.”
Runners, the dowager Lady Malfrey explained sotto voce to a perplexed Victoria, were the Bow Street Runners, who kept the peace in the streets of London.
“They’ll hang me, sir.” The boy sobbed. “They already hung me dad.”
Victoria raised her eyebrows when she heard this. She was not opposed to punishing criminals, but hanging thieves seemed to her to be a bit extreme. In India such a crime would have earned so young a boy a mere whipping. Really, but the justice system in England seemed a bit harsh, sending tax evaders halfway across the world to live amongst the kangaroos, and hanging poor little purse snatchers! Victoria had had no idea things were so very strict here.
“Got him, then, Carstairs?” Lord Malfrey came striding up. “Little ruffian! Victoria, are you quite all right?”
“Of course I am,” she said. Imagine, making such a fuss over a simple footpad! “Rebecca’s the one whose purse was stolen, not me.”
All eyes turned toward Rebecca, who was crying almost as fitfully as the boy—although from fear, not because she’d been physically harmed. Victoria was certain the thief hadn’t so much as bumped her.
“Are you all right, Miss Gardiner?” Charles Abbott asked with a look of genuine—and tender—concern.
“Oh!” was all Rebecca seemed able to say. The next thing Victoria knew her cousin had thrown herself, weeping stormily, into Mr. Abbott’s strong arms. He looked surprised but delighted by this turn of events, and was soon guiding Rebecca away from the scene, with one arm curled protectively around her slender shoulders. Seeing this, Victoria shot a triumphant look in Captain Carstairs’s direction, eager to see how he would take the abandonment of a girl Victoria was certain he’d once numbered amongst his conquests.
To her disappointment, however, Jacob Carstairs wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to Rebecca Gardiner. All of his powers of concentration seemed focused on the footpad he was now holding by the collar of the boy’s shirt.
“Someone must go for the Runners at once,” Lord Malfrey was saying. “I’ll hold the boy, Carstairs. Take your horse and go for the magistrates.”
But Jacob Carstairs dismissed this with a curt, “You take my horse. I’ll stay here and hold him.”
“It’s your horse,” Hugo pointed out, not very nicely.
Jacob Carstairs grinned in a manner Victoria could only call wicked. “Afraid you won’t be able to manage him, Malfrey?”
The earl looked affronted. “Certainly not! Only that… well, it’s my fiancée who’s been insulted. I’m the one who ought to stay and comfort her.”
Everyone turned to look at Victoria, who, to her own certain knowledge, was far from needing any comfort. She was quick to admit as much, saying, “I haven’t been insulted. And I certainly don’t need comforting. I’m perfectly all right.”
Seeing Lord Malfrey’s slightly disappointed look—not to mention the way his mother shook her head until her black (surely a woman of that age should have some gray in her hair) curls swayed—Victoria bit her lip. Clearly she ought to have feigned light-headedness or something. Catching footpads with her bare hands, like descending ladders from boats, was obviously not something proper English ladies were supposed to do. When was she going to learn? She would never make a very good earl’s wife at this rate.
“Please, sirs,” the boy the captain held so tightly wailed. “I swear I’ll never do it again, if you’ll only let me go!”
He sounded, to Victoria’s ears, perfectly truthful. The boy looked terrified out of his mind.
The dowager Lady Malfrey apparently did not think so, however, since she said, “Stop standing about arguing with the man, Hugo, and go and fetch a Runner so we might all get back to our picnic!”
Hugo, glaring darkly, turned to seize the reins of Captain Carstairs’s mount. It was at that point that Victoria decided she had had quite enough of the entire situation. Whether or not it was proper for young English ladies to go about catching footpads, she didn’t know. But one thing she did know: it wasn’t proper to hang little boys.
And so, accordingly, she thrust a finger at a point in the air just above the captain’s right shoulder and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
As Victoria had hoped, Jacob was so startled he loosened his hold on the boy momentarily. “What?” he cried, turning his head toward the direction in which she pointed. “What is it?”
The footpad, who was clearly no one’s fool, took off at a pace so incredibly fast, it was doubtful even Captain Carstairs’s horse would have been able to overtake him— providing the captain had mounted him in time. Which he did not, in fact, do. Instead Jacob Carstairs, realizing at once what Victoria had done—and why—turned to look at her with an expression that could only have been called cynical.
“What?” Lord Malfrey was still searching for whatever had caused Victoria to scream so loudly. “What is it, my love? Gypsies? Never say Gypsies have dared showed their faces in Hyde Park!” Then, noticing that the footpad had escaped, he cried, “Carstairs, you great ass! You let him get away!”
Jacob Carstairs turned his cynical expression toward the earl. “So did you,” he observed.
“Are you mad?” Lord Malfrey wanted to know. “He’ll only steal some other poor young lady’s bag.”
“Tell that,” Jacob said dryly, “to your fiancée.”
Lord Malfrey swung toward Victoria with a stunned expression on his handsome face. “Vicky,” he cried. “Did you… did you scream apurpose? So the boy could get away?”
Victoria looked heavenward. “Oh, dear,” she said, her gaze on the clouds. “Do you think it’s going to rain? It doesn’t look very promising, does it, my lord?”
“Victoria!” Lord Malfrey was shocked. “You can’t allow scamps like that to run free! Why, he might murder the next person he robs!”
“He looked eager to reform his ways to me, my lord,” Victoria said mildly.
“What can you even know of it?” Lord Malfrey wanted to know. “You’re far too innocent to be acquainted with people of his sort—for which all I can say is, thank God. But I assure you, my lady, rogues like that can never be reformed!”
Victoria could not help darting a glance in Jacob Carstairs’s direction upon hearing the word rogue from her fiancé’s lips. She looked just in time to see the captain smother a laugh. Insufferable young man! By rights he really ought to have been horsewhipped by someone.
“I think you’re wrong, my lord,” Victoria said evenly, speaking to Hugo though her gaze was on Captain Carstairs. “I believe no rogue is beyond reforming.”
Captain Carstairs, to Victoria’s surprise, abruptly stopped laughing. His expression was very serious indeed as he swung back into his mount’s saddle.
Victoria could not resist inquiring acidly, “Going so soon, Captain?”
“I’m late to an appointment as it is,” Jacob Carstairs replied from his seat so high above her, with a smile completely devoid of warmth. “And I wouldn’t want to keep you any longer from your little party.”
“Kind of you, Carstairs,” Lord Malfrey said, taking Victoria’s hand and pressing it against the crook of his arm…
…an action Jacob Carstairs observed with a distinct tightening of his lips before curtly saying, “If I see a Runner, I’ll give him the boy’s description. We aren’t compl
ete barbarians here in England, Lady Victoria, whatever you might think. The child would not have been hanged. He only said that to play upon your heartstrings. It worked quite handily, I see. Well.” He lifted his hat briefly. “Good day.” Then he rode off.
He was, Victoria could not help noticing, an excellent horseman, who kept a very nice seat on his fractious steed. She oughtn’t to have been surprised, she supposed, that Jacob Carstairs was as graceful on a horse as he was upon a ship. The wretched man seemed at ease wherever he happened to turn up.
Something that Lord Malfrey evidently noticed as well, if his next words were any indication.
“I say,” Lord Malfrey declared. “That fellow does tend to appear at your side with alarming regularity, Victoria. I believe he might be a little in love with you.”
Victoria, flicking a wary glance in Rebecca’s direction—she was not fully convinced her cousin was completely over the dashing young captain—said, in a tone she hoped sounded quite unconcerned, “La, my lord, you could not be more mistaken! Jacob Carstairs has made it very clear indeed that I am his least favorite person in England.”
“Well, he’s a liar, then,” the dowager Lady Malfrey declared from where she’d stood, along with everyone else, watching the excitement… for it wasn’t every day a mother got to watch her son catch a footpad, even if, sadly, the heinous criminal had gotten away. “Because no one who met Lady Victoria could help but count her as one of their favorite people.”
Victoria smiled, though her future mother-in-law’s words made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. The dowager had not known her long enough, really, to make a judgment of this kind. She was, Victoria supposed, only being kind.
As, she was certain, her cousin was being as well, when she insisted to Victoria that she was not—no, not in the least!—upset over Lord Malfrey’s remark about Jacob Carstairs being in love with Victoria.