Once and Always (22 page)

“All you have to do,” Jason said, an answering smile tugging at his lips, “is look over the current crop of London fops during the next few weeks, choose the one you want, and bring him to me for my blessing. Nothing could be easier—I’ll be working here in my study nearly every day.”

“Here?” Victoria uttered, choking back a horrified giggle at his description of the way she ought to go about choosing a husband. “I thought you were going to stay at Uncle Charles’s house.”

“I’m going to sleep there, but I’m going to work here. Charles’s house is damned uncomfortable. The furniture is old and the rooms are mostly small and dark. Besides, no one will think anything of it if I’m here during the day, so long as you’re properly chaperoned, which you are. There’s no reason for me to be inconvenienced when I work. Speaking of chaperones, has Flossie Wilson chattered you into a coma yet?”

“She’s very sweet,” Victoria said, trying again not to laugh.

“I’ve never heard a woman talk so much and say so little.”

“She has a kind heart.”

“True,” he agreed absently, his attention shifting to the clock. “I’m engaged for the opera tonight. When Charles returns, tell him I was here and that I’ll be here tomorrow night in time to greet the guests.”

“Very well.” Giving him an impudent, laughing look Victoria added, “But I warn you I shall take the greatest pleasure when Andrew arrives and you’re forced to admit how wrong you’ve been about everything.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Oh, but I am counting on it. I shall ask Mrs. Craddock to fix a crow pie and I shall force you to eat it while I watch.”

In surprised silence, Jason gazed down at her laughing, upturned face. “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?”

“I am not afraid of you,” she announced blithely.

“You ought to be,” he said, and on that enigmatic remark he left.

“Nearly everyone has arrived,” Miss Flossie bubbled excitedly as Ruth finished putting the last touches to Victoria’s coiffure. “It’s time to make your grand entrance, my dear.”

Victoria rose obediently but her knees were trembling. “I would much rather have stood in the receiving line with Uncle Charles and Lord Fielding, so I could meet the guests separately. It would have been much less nerve-racking.”

“But not nearly as effective,” Miss Flossie said airily.

Victoria took a last critical glance at her reflection, accepted the fan that Ruth gave her, and picked up her skirts. “I’m ready,” she said shakily. As they passed across the landing, Victoria paused to look down upon the foyer below, which had been turned into a wondrous flower garden in honor of her ball, with giant pots of airy ferns and huge baskets of white roses. Then she drew a nervous breath and climbed the curving staircase that led upward to the next story, where the ballroom was located. Footmen dressed in formal, green velvet livery trimmed with gold braid stood at attention along the staircase beside tall silver stands of more white roses. Victoria smiled at the footmen she knew and nodded politely to the others. O’Malley, the head footman, was stationed at the top of the staircase and she asked him softly, “Has your tooth been bothering you? Don’t fail to tell me if it pains you again—it’s no trouble at all to fix another poultice.”

He grinned at her with unabashed devotion. “It ain’t bothered me a bit since you fixed me the last one, my lady.”

“Very well, but you won’t try to suffer with it if it starts up again, will you?”

“No, my lady.”

He waited until Victoria had rounded the corner, then turned to the footman beside him. “She’s a grand one, ain’t she?”

“A lady through and through,” the other footman agreed. “Just like you said she was from the start.”

“She’ll brighten up things for the lot of us,” O’Malley predicted, “and for the master too, once she’s warmin‘ his bed. She’ll give him an heir—that’ll make him happy.”

Northrup stood on the balcony overlooking the ballroom, his back ramrod straight, ready to announce the names of any late-arriving guests who passed beneath the marble portal beside him. Victoria approached him on legs that felt like jelly. “Give me a moment to catch my breath,” she pleaded with him. “Then you can announce our names. I’m dreadfully nervous,” she confided to him.

A smile almost, but not quite, cracked his stern countenance as his expert eye flicked over the breathtaking young woman before him. “While you are catching your breath, my lady, may I say how very much I enjoyed hearing you play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in F Minor yesterday afternoon? It is a particular favorite of mine.”

Victoria was so pleased, and so startled, by this unexpected cordiality from the austere servant that she nearly forgot the noisy, laughing crowd in the ballroom below. “Thank you,” she said, smiling gently. “And what is your very favorite piece?”

He looked shocked by her interest, but he told her.

“I shall play it for you tomorrow,” she promised sweetly.

“That is kind of you, indeed, my lady!” he replied with a stiff face and a formal bow. But when he turned to announce her name, Northrup’s voice rang with pride. “Lady Victoria Seaton, Countess Langston,” he called out, “and Miss Florence Wilson.”

A lightning bolt of anticipation seemed to shoot through the crowd, breaking off conversations and choking off laughter as some 500 guests turned in near-unison for their first real look at the American-born girl who now bore her mother’s title and who was soon to receive an even more coveted one from Jason, Lord Fielding.

They saw an exotic, titian-haired goddess draped in a shimmering Grecian-style gown of sapphire silk that matched her lustrous eyes and clung to every curve of her slender, voluptuous body. Long gloves encased her arms, and her shining hair was caught up at the crown in a mass of thick, glossy curls entwined with ropes of sapphires and diamonds. They saw a sculpted face of unforgettable beauty with high, delicately molded cheekbones, a perfect nose, generous lips, and a tiny, intriguing cleft at the center of her chin.

No one looking at her would have believed that the regal young beauty’s knees were nearly knocking together with panic.

The sea of nameless faces staring up at her seemed to part as Victoria descended the steps, and Jason suddenly strode forward from among the crowd. He held his hand out to her and Victoria automatically placed her hand in his, but the eyes she turned up to his were wide with fright.

Bending low as if to murmur some intimate compliment, Jason said, “You’re scared to death, aren’t you? Do you want me to begin the hundreds of introductions now, or would you rather dance with me and let them finish giving you a thorough look-over that way?”

“What a choice!” Victoria whispered on a choked laugh.

“I’ll start the music,” Jason decided wisely, and signaled the musicians with a nod of his head. He led her onto the dance floor and took her in his arms as the musicians struck up a dramatic waltz. “Can you waltz?” he said suddenly.

“What a time to ask!” she said, laughing, on the verge of nervous hysteria.

“Victoria!” Jason said severely, but with a dazzling smile for the benefit of their watchful audience, “you are the selfsame young woman who coolly threatened to blow my brains out with a gun. Do not dare turn cowardly now.”

“No, my lord,” she replied, desperately trying to follow him as he began to guide her through the first steps of the waltz. He waltzed, she thought, with the same relaxed elegance with which he wore his superbly tailored black evening clothes.

Suddenly his arm tightened around her waist, forcing her into nerve-racking proximity with his powerful body, and he warned in a low voice, “It is customary for a couple to engage in some form of conversation or harmless flirtation when they are dancing, otherwise onlookers perceive that the two dislike one another.”

Victoria stared at him, her mouth as dry as sawdust.

“Say something to me, dammit.”

The curse, uttered with
such
a brilliant, attentive smile, wrung an involuntary laugh from her, and she temporarily forgot about their audience. Trying to do as he bade her, she said the first thing that came to mind. “You waltz very well, my lord.”

Jason relaxed and smiled down at her. “Thafis what
I
am supposed to say to
you.”

“You English have rules to govern absolutely everything,” Victoria countered in mock admiration.

“You happen to be English too, ma’am,” he reminded her, then added, “Miss Flossie has taught you to waltz very well. What else have you learned?”

A little stung by his assumption that she hadn’t known how to waltz before, Victoria gave him a jaunty smile and said, “You may rest assured that I now possess all the skills which the English deem necessary for a young lady of birth and refinement.”

“And those are?” Jason inquired, grinning at her tone.

“Besides playing the piano, I can carry a tune, waltz without falling, and embroider a fine stitch. In addition, I can read French and execute a throne-room curtsy with great aplomb. It seems to me,” she observed with an impertinent smile, “that in England it is quite desirable for a female to be utterly useless.”

Jason threw back his head and laughed at her observation.

She was, he thought, an amazing combination of intriguing contrasts—of sophistication and innocence, femininity and courage, lush beauty and irrepressible humor. She had a body that was created for a man’s hands, a pair of eyes that could drive a man to lust, a smile that could be sunny or sensual, and a mouths—a mouth that positively invited a man to kiss it.

“It’s impolite to stare,” Victoria said, her mind more on keeping up the appearance of enjoying herself than on the direction of his gaze.

Jason jerked his gaze from her mouth. “Sorry.”

“You said we’re expected to engage in some sort of flirtation while we dance,” she reminded him teasingly. “I haven’t any experience with that at all—have you?”

“More than enough,” he replied, admiring the glowing color highlighting her cheekbones.

“Very well—go ahead and show me how it’s done.”

Startled at the invitation, Jason gazed down into her dark-lashed, laughing blue eyes and momentarily lost himself in them. Desire surged through his body and his arm automatically pulled her closer. “You don’t need lessons,” he murmured huskily. “You’re doing very well at it right now.”

“At what?”

Her obvious confusion restored Jason’s sanity and he relaxed his hold on her. “At getting yourself into a great deal more trouble than you ever bargained for.”

On the sidelines, young Lord Crowley raised his quizzing glass and inspected Lady Victoria from head to toe. “Exquisite,” he said to his friend. “Told you she was the moment we laid eyes on her, that day she arrived in Brook Street. I’ve never seen the equal to her. She’s divine. Heavenly. An angel.”

“A beauty, a true beauty!” young Lord Wiltshire agreed.

“If it weren’t for Wakefield, I’d court her myself,” said Crowley. “I’d lay siege to her defenses, battle off her other suitors, and then I’d give chase!”

“You could,” Lord Wiltshire stated drolly, “but in order to
catch
her, you’d need to be ten years older and twenty times richer. Although, from what I hear, the marriage thing isn’t entirely settled.”

“In that case, I mean to get an introduction to her tonight.”

“So do I,” Lord Wiltshire retorted challengingly, and they both hastened off in search of their respective mothers so that introductions could be properly procured.

For Victoria, the night was an unqualified success. She had feared that the rest of the
ton
would be much like Lady Kirby, but for the most part they seemed to welcome her into their exclusive ranks. In fact, some of them—particularly the gentlemen—were almost humorously effusive in their compliments and attentions. They surrounded her, requesting introductions and dances with her, then staying by her side, vying for her attention and asking for permission to call upon her. Victoria took none of it seriously, but she treated them all with impartial friendliness.

Occasionally, she caught glimpses of Jason and smiled fondly to herself. He looked breathtakingly handsome tonight in the raven black evening clothes that matched his hair and contrasted sharply with his snowy frilled shirt and flashing white smile. Beside him, other men seemed pale and insignificant.

Many other ladies thought so too, Victoria realized four hours later as she danced with yet another of her partners. Several of those ladies were flirting outrageously with him, despite the fact that he was supposedly betrothed to her. With secret compassion, she watched a beautiful, sultry blonde trying to hold his attention by gazing invitingly into his eyes while Jason stood with his shoulder propped negligently against a pillar, an expression of bored condescension on his tanned face.

Until tonight, Victoria had assumed he treated only her with that infuriating, mocking attitude, but she realized now that Jason seemed to treat all females with cool tolerance. No doubt this attitude was what Caroline meant when she said Jason was rude and ungentlemanly. Even so, the ladies were attracted to him like pretty moths to a dangerous flame. And why not, Victoria decided philosophically, watching him gently disengage his arm from the blonde’s hand and move toward Lord Collingwood. Jason was compellingly, irresistibly, magnetically . . . manly.

Robert Collingwood looked at Jason and nodded his head in the direction of Victoria’s beaux, who were clustered around Flossie Wilson awaiting Victoria’s return from the dance floor. “If you still intend to marry her off to someone else, Jason,” he said, “you won’t have long to wait. She’s just become the new rage.”

“Good,” Jason replied, glancing at the throng of Victoria’s beaux and dismissing them with a shrug.

Robert’s prediction about Victoria’s success turned out to be true. The day following her ball, twelve gentlemen and seven young ladies came to call upon Lady Victoria, pressing invitations on her and begging for a closer look at Wolf. Northrup was in his glory, ushering callers in and out of the salons and snapping Instructions at the footmen who carried tea trays into the various salons.