by Meggin Cabot
Good Lord! Could it be? It certainly seemed so! Was Jacob Carstairs going to confess his undying devotion to her, right here on his terrace, under the moonlight—well, what little there was of it—with his mother and her uncle and aunt just inside? Was he going to sweep her into his strong arms and rain impassioned kisses down upon her upturned face?
Victoria, much to her chagrin, found that the thought of Jacob Carstairs doing any of these things—confessing his love for her, sweeping her into his arms, and raining kisses down upon her face—was rather thrilling. In fact, just the thought that he might do any one of these things sent her heart beating a good deal more quickly than she knew it ought, considering the fact that she was engaged to someone else. What kind of girl was she, anyway, that she could find the idea of Jacob Carstairs kissing her so appealing? She was practically married! And to someone else!
And yet there was no denying that when the captain looked at her with those rain-cloud gray eyes and said her name, her pulse fluttered. And when he’d commanded her to sit, she’d felt quite a little jolt up and down her spine. There was nothing like a handsome man bossing one about… even if one hadn’t the slightest intention of doing what he said.
La! she thought now. He’s going to admit, finally, that the reason he has this absurd prejudice against Lord Malfrey—and has been so nasty to me all these weeks—is because he is madly and passionately in love with me, and can’t stand the thought of me in another man’s arms! How very, very jolly! I shall be gentle with him, of course. I wouldn’t want him to fling himself over the side of the balcony from a broken heart, or anything like that. He could crack his skull open on those garden boxes down there, and that would be so untidy. I shan’t utter a peep about the collar points, either.
“Victoria,” Jacob said, and Victoria could not help thinking again that it was very presumptuous of him to call her by her given name when she had not given him permission to do so. But she supposed he was too maddened by love for her to be completely sensible of what he was doing.
“I’ve tried everything I can think of to convince you how foolhardy this scheme of yours is—of marrying Hugo Rothschild, I mean. But your aunt and uncle cannot—or will not—attempt to control you, and you will not seem to hear reason. And so you leave me with no choice but to reveal something to you—something that I swore to myself I would never tell another living soul— that I am afraid will only cause you pain… and myself grievous injury as well.”
Victoria thought this a very noble and dignified speech. She knew, of course, what was to follow. He would reveal his unrequited passion for her, and she, of course, would act surprised, as if the idea of his being in love with her had never, ever occurred to her. Then she would politely tell him she did not return his affections, and hoped he would not do anything rash.
“But the truth is, Victoria…” Here Jacob bent his dark head, and seemed unable to go on.
Victoria, rather vexed that he wasn’t coming right out with it—surely her aunt would notice, sooner rather than later, how long she’d been alone with him out on the terrace, and wonder what they were doing, and try the door—decided to hurry things up a little. She laid a gentle hand upon his arm and said in the most comforting voice she could summon, “Captain Carstairs, you needn’t say another word. You see, I already know.”
Jacob looked up, and at that very moment the clouds slid from the moon, sending an arc of bluish light onto the balcony, and bringing into high relief the pain and sad resignation etched upon his face.
“You do?” he asked in an astonished voice. “But how did you… how could you have found out?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Victoria said gravely. “All that matters is… well, what we’re going to do about it.”
“Do about it?” Jacob reached up to run a hand through his thick dark hair, causing Victoria’s fingers to slip from his arm. But he seemed hardly to notice this. “What in God’s name are you talking about? Isn’t it obvious what you’re going to have to do about it?”
Victoria saw that he was standing very close to the balcony railing. She would, she knew, have to handle this carefully indeed. While the idea of Jacob Carstairs doing himself an injury due to his great love for her was, of course, delightful, it had to be admitted that, much as he annoyed her, she would miss him if he expired. No one else ever looked at her with eyes that seemed to see right into her heart—even if Captain Carstairs had never given any indication that he liked what he saw there.
Besides, Victoria was certain Jacob’s death would hurt his mother a good deal, and Mrs. Carstairs was a very nice woman whom Victoria would not have liked to see unhappy.
“Really, Jacob,” she said, unconsciously using his given name for the first time in their acquaintance. “I think you’re making far too much of this. I’m sure it’s only… only a passing fancy.”
“A passing fancy?” Jacob stared at her as if she’d just grown a second head. “That Hugo Rothschild is marrying you for your money? I rather think not.”
CHAPTER NINE
Victoria, a good deal taken aback by this statement, blinked several times before managing to stammer, “Wh— what?”
Jacob stared down at her, his eyes in pools of shadow, as the moon had slipped behind the clouds once again.
“That is what you meant?” he asked. “When you said you already knew. Isn’t it?”
“I…”Victoria was glad that the moon was gone. This way, though she could not read his expression, he, at least, could not see her blush.
Because Victoria was blushing, and deeply. Oh, what a fool she’d been, to think he was in love with her! Of course he meant only to harp on at her about the same old subject. Jacob Carstairs, in love with her? Perish the thought!
But it had to be admitted that Victoria felt more than a little disappointed that it was not so… which of course made no sense whatsoever, since she was in love with Hugo. What did she care how Jacob Carstairs felt about her?
“Of course that’s what I thought you meant,” Victoria said with a haughty toss of her head. “What else could you have meant?”
It was Jacob’s turn to blink.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But you certainly seem cool enough about it.”
“Well, it isn’t exactly anything very new,” Victoria said, pleased that he’d noted none of her discomfort. “You’ve been saying much the same thing—or something similar, anyway—since the moment I said yes to the earl’s proposal.”
“Yes, well”—he looked as serious as Victoria had ever seen him look—“now I intend to tell you the truth about your precious earl—the truth that I and only a few other people know. And I would ask that, because of the nature of what I’m about to reveal, you swear that you will never mention it to anyone, ever.”
“It isn’t ladylike to swear,” Victoria reminded him primly.
“It isn’t ladylike to tackle street urchins, either,” Jacob pointed out. “But that didn’t seem to stop you the other day.”
Victoria lifted her gaze toward the heavens. “Very well,” she said with a sigh. “I swear.” And then, perhaps because she was a little disappointed that the captain wasn’t, in fact, going to profess his undying devotion to her, she added with a good deal of asperity, “And now I suppose you’re going to tell me a tawdry tale about some girl Lord Malfrey proposed to, then cast aside when he learned she hadn’t as much money as he’d hoped.”
“Pathetic is the word I’d use, not tawdry,” Jacob said brusquely. “And it wasn’t some girl. It was my sister.”
Victoria brought her gaze very quickly to his face.
“Your… your sister?” she echoed. “But…”
And again she was grateful for the rain clouds, since they hid her suddenly flaming cheeks from sight. His sister? The one Mrs. Carstairs had spoken of, the one who was married and had a baby? Jacob Carstairs’s sister and… Hugo?
He must have read the astonishment on her face, despite the absence of moonlight, since he said
in a heavy voice, “Yes, my sister, Margaret. She married a Scot and lives in Edinburgh, or you’d have met her already. She’s a great beauty, and was quite sought after when she came out a few years ago.”
“I…”Victoria was so astonished she hardly knew what to say. All she could think was, Stuff and bother! Now there’d be nothing but endless trouble and tears for everyone involved.
But Jacob had paused, and she supposed he expected a response of some kind. So she murmured, “I didn’t know.”
“No,” Jacob said, looking impatient. Evidently this was not the response he’d been anticipating. “How would you? You weren’t even in England yet. In any case, Margaret could have had her pick of suitors, but the one she liked best was the man to whom you are now engaged—Hugo Rothschild. He wasn’t Lord Malfrey then… his father was still alive, as was my own. The two of them were friends— Malfrey’s father and mine. Margaret and Rothschild were often thrown together as a result, and I suppose an engagement was inevitable. Three weeks before the wedding, however, disaster struck. Several of my father’s ships were lost at sea due to a series of storms. His fortune seemed lost. The strain was too much for him and he fell ill, and never did completely recover. He died just six months later.”
Victoria, who barely remembered her own father, said, “I’m so sorry,” because it seemed the thing to say. But again Jacob brushed her response aside.
“It was while all this was happening—my father’s illness, and the loss of his ships—that Hugo Rothschild told my sister he couldn’t see his way toward marrying her after all. They would have nothing to live on, you see, since Hugo’s father hadn’t a penny to his name, either. Margaret suggested to Hugo that he might find work… an occupation. But Rothschilds, you see”—here the captain’s voice took a derisive dip—“are above actually earning a living. They’d rather live, like parasites, off the earnings of others. And so Hugo left London, and my sister, never to be heard of again—until, that is, he showed up on the Harmony—which I found the height of cheek, that he should have returned to London on one of my ships. For upon my father’s death, I took over the business, you see, and built it up again.”
Victoria, who’d already heard this part of Jacob’s story from Rebecca, could not help but admire Captain Carstairs’s narrative restraint. For he had not, as he’d so simply described, built his father’s business up again, but rather started a new business, practically from scratch, which had gone on to flourish in a dramatically short period of time… the same amount of time that Lord Malfrey, if Jacob’s story was to be believed, had been hiding in shame thousands of miles away.
It was, if it was true, a very serious charge indeed that Jacob Carstairs laid at the feet of Victoria’s fiancé. For a broken engagement—and broken for such a reason!—was not soon to be forgiven. It was no small wonder that Hugo had not shown his face in England for so many years afterward.
But even though Victoria felt very sorry indeed for the former Miss Carstairs, who had doubtless had her heart broken and been slighted beyond imagining, she could not be insensible to the fact that the situation had not been an easy one for her fiancé, either. Was he to be blamed if, upon finding himself incapable of attaining it any other way, he attempted to marry money?
Still, if what Jacob was saying was true—and Victoria saw no reason why he might lie about it, when such a thing could so easily be checked—Lord Malfrey had behaved very badly indeed. For while Victoria had learned most of what she knew of romance from her ayah, from her uncles she had learned something even more important: sportsmanship. And a good sport accepted his losses gracefully, and took his lumps like a man. Running off to India and abandoning his bride might have been the most sensible thing for Lord Malfrey to have done—otherwise, without money or love (for it was clear from his behavior that the earl could not have loved Jacob’s sister), what were the chances of the match succeeding? Still, it was hardly good sportsmanship. A game player took risks, and if those risks did not prove fruitful, then he took his lumps.
But Lord Malfrey had not taken his lumps. He had taken himself off instead. And that, to Victoria, was far more offensive than his attempt to marry for money.
But of course she couldn’t admit as much out loud. She had, she could see now, made a terrible mistake in agreeing to marry Lord Malfrey. But it would be bad sportsmanship to admit as much to anyone else before she’d given the earl a chance to defend himself against the charges.
And she would never admit as much to the likes of Jacob Carstairs!
And so, masking her own feelings of wounded pride and, it must be admitted, some mortification—for what girl likes to hear that a man she thought was in love with her was marrying her only for money? Even a girl who’d suspected something of the kind all along, but had thought herself perfectly all right with the idea?—Victoria said gravely to Captain Carstairs, “I thank you for telling me. I am glad to hear that your sister’s pain was not of long duration, and that she is happy now.” Then, straightening herself up, Victoria gestured toward the terrace doors. “Now would you kindly unlock these? For I’d like to go inside again, if I may.”
Captain Carstairs, who had, during his impassioned speech about his sister, come to stand very close to Victoria, now looked down at her with an expression every bit as astonished as if Victoria had suggested he walk barefoot across a bed of hot coals.
“Lady Victoria,” he said in a voice that sounded a bit strangled. “I would never presume to tell you what to do—”
Victoria could not restrain an incredulous laugh at that. The captain ignored her.
“—however,” he went on, “I would urge you to consider very carefully whether or not you ought to marry the earl. He isn’t… well, he isn’t a very good man. And though I know we have had our differences in the past, my lady”—and here the captain’s gaze bored very hard into her own—“I do think that, for the most part, your extremely impertinent interference in the affairs of others stems from a genuine desire to do good.”
Victoria parted her lips to protest that interference was hardly the correct term for her very kind efforts to improve the lots of her friends and relatives…
…but forgot everything she’d been about to say when she found one of her hands caught up in Captain Carstairs’s. Looking down at her slim fingers in his own much larger ones, Victoria felt, for some reason, her breath catch in her throat.
Which was, of course, perfectly ridiculous, because she didn’t admire, much less care for, Captain Jacob Carstairs. Indeed, she considered him exactly what he’d just confessed to thinking her—a rude interferer. Only he, rather than interfering in the affairs of those less fortunate, seemed intent on constantly interfering in hers.
That fact, and that alone, was undoubtedly why, the moment Captain Carstairs’s fingers closed over hers, Victoria’s pulse seemed to grow erratic. And why her breath grew short. And her cheeks hotter than ever. Why, the impudence of the man! And the fact that that grayeyed gaze seemed to be raking her face, taking in every little moonlit detail—for, of course, the moon would have come out again just then, when it was most inconvenient. Why, just who did Jacob Carstairs think he was?
“It would be a shame,” the captain went on, keeping a firm grip on the hand that Victoria was attempting, albeit ineffectually, to slip from his grasp. He did not, however, seem to notice… or care, anyway. “A burning shame,” he added forcefully, “were you to align yourself with a man who has never once considered doing anything for the good of anyone but himself.”
Victoria found herself—beyond all reasoning, and much to her horror—being pulled hypnotically toward Jacob Carstairs, as if his eyes were, of all things, the moon, and she the tide. It was completely illogical, but there it was, and there didn’t seem to be a blessed thing she could do about it. Even as they stared at each other, their faces just inches apart, Victoria’s body seemed to sway to fill the gap between them, in a manner of which she knew her ayah would have greatly disapproved.
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself, though of course it defied all logic. She didn’t even like Jacob Carstairs. Oh, certainly he was handsome enough, she supposed, in a darkly brooding sort of way. But those collar points! And that mouth—not to mention the things that seemed constantly to come out of it! How could she possibly feel attracted to such a person?
But what of him? For Jacob Carstairs had made it amply clear that she was not one of his favorite people. But he hadn’t exactly dropped her hand and turned away in revulsion when she’d begun swaying toward him. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. He was swaying toward her as if as unable to stop himself as she was—
And then the worst thing possible occurred. Jacob Carstairs swayed so far forward that his mouth actually collided with hers.
The next thing Victoria knew, they were kissing. She and Jacob Carstairs, the last man on earth whose lips she’d ever want to touch with her own. Kissing! And quite passionately, too. Jacob had dropped her hand and reached out instead to seize her by both arms, as if fearful she’d sway so far forward the two of them would topple over the balcony railing, if he didn’t attempt to stop her.
And she was no better! For her fingers had curled, as if of their own accord, around the back of the captain’s neck, though Victoria could in no way determine how they’d gotten there, unless Jacob Carstairs had put them there… something she would not have put past him.
But, oh! It was strange how delightful it felt to have them there. Stranger still how delightful it felt to have Jacob Carstairs’s mouth on hers! Which was, of course, perfectly ridiculous, because Victoria hated Jacob Carstairs—hated him with a passion, and, besides, was engaged to someone else… though, thanks to this evening’s discoveries, she was not at all certain for how much longer.
Perhaps it was because she hated Jacob Carstairs so passionately that kissing him felt so terribly exciting. For love and hate were both very strong emotions, so naturally both would incite very strong reactions. She loved—or at least was very fond of—Lord Malfrey, and so being kissed by him was quite pleasurable. Why wouldn’t being kissed by someone about whom she felt just as strongly—if not even more strongly—elicit a similar sensation?