Victoria and the Rogue (8 page)
blazed just as it was set to pounce—and said in a very deep and commanding voice, “If your family
won’t do anything to keep you from making this excessively foolish match, Lady Victoria, I can assure
you I will.”
“Oh, Captain Carstairs,” Rebecca said, batting her eyelashes worshipfully at the young captain. Really,
but Victoria was going to have to put an end to this absurd fixation of her cousin’s very soon indeed. “It
is so kind of you to take such an interest in my cousin’s welfare.”
It was at that point that Jacob Carstairs, who’d seemed livid with rage, appeared to remember himself,
and, dropping the furious gaze, looked a bit ashamed… as well he ought, thought Victoria with some
satisfaction.
“Your concern for my future is much appreciated,” she said, a little let down that this, then, were all the
fireworks to which they were to be treated. “But I can assure you, you have nothing to fear. I am quite
capable of making my own decisions, Captain. I have been doing so all my life, you know.”
Captain Carstairs only shook his head. “There are dangers here in England you’ve never dreamed of,
my lady. And I’m not talking about scorpions or quicksand. Or,” he added even more ominously, “tureen
of beef two nights in a row.”
This sounded thrillingly portentous… enough so that Victoria’s pulse quickened, and she leaned toward
Jacob Carstairs eagerly.
“What do you mean?” she asked breathlessly. “Captain Carstairs, do you know something about my
fiancé that I don’t?”
But Jacob crushed her hopes of finding out that Lord Malfrey had a hidden deformity or a mad twin
brother with whom he occasionally traded places by saying curtly, “Only that he is not a man of honor.”
This was such a disappointing response that Victoria rolled her eyes. “Is that all?” she asked.
“Isn’t that enough?” Captain Carstairs demanded, his dark brows furrowed.
Rebecca, who’d been standing nearby the whole time, piped up with, “It is a very serious accusation,
Vicky. I am certain it is not one the captain would make lightly.”
“I’m sure you are right,” Victoria said, so as not to hurt her cousin’s feelings. She was not, however, the
least impressed by the captain’s warning. Why, her uncles had often accused men under their command
of being less than honorable. But these charges almost always turned out to stem from the dullest of
crimes, such as not keeping their mistresses in very high style, or failing to see their horses properly
watered after a long ride. Victoria supposed the captain had some equally boring charge to lay at the feet
of the earl, and in truth, she could not have been less interested in hearing it.
“La,” she said when she felt enough time had passed that Rebecca and Captain Carstairs would think
her suitably chastened. “Shall we go pitch biscuits out the window at the dogs?” For this seemed to
Victoria the most entertaining activity that Almack’s had to offer thus far. She’d noticed some of the
younger boys engaged in it, and quite envied them.
Rebecca and Jacob Carstairs exchanged meaningful glances.
“Vicky,” Rebecca said, “I don’t think you quite understand what the captain is trying to tell you.”
Victoria rolled her eyes again. Lord, what was wrong with the English? They did go on and on about
things— but not the right kinds of things. Really, if it hadn’t been for Victoria, the Gardiners might have
had tureen of beef seven nights a week and not uttered a peep about it. But about something as trivial as
whom she was to marry, no one seemed capable of remaining silent.
It was all Captain Carstairs’s fault, of course. Odious man! Victoria was going to have to find someone
new for Becky to love, and posthaste. She noticed a promising-looking fair-haired young man standing a
little ways away, saw with approval that his mustache was neatly trimmed and his collar points high, and
tossed her fan surreptitiously in his direction, then exclaimed, looking down at her bare wrist in horror,
“My fan! Oh, Becky! I’ve lost my fan!”
Rebecca, always highly sensitive to calamities such as these, immediately lifted her hem and glanced
about the floor.
“You had it a moment ago,” she said reassuringly. “I’m almost certain.”
“Oh, if it’s trodden upon,” Victoria wailed, “I shall be sick! Positively sick!”
She was aware that Captain Carstairs was watching her with a very skeptical expression on his face,
one dark eyebrow lifted with the other furrowed disapprovingly. But she steadfastly ignored him, keeping
her gaze on the floor as she “searched” for her fan.
“Is this what you’re looking for, my lady?” asked the fair-haired gentleman with a smile as he held out
Victoria’s fan, which he’d bent and retrieved from where it had fallen at his feet.
“Oh, there it is!” Rebecca cried gladly. “And look, Vicky, it isn’t a bit trodden on.”
Victoria accepted her fan with a grateful glance in the blond gentleman’s direction. “You are too kind,
sir,” she said. “It is good to know that there are some gentlemen left in England.” She shot a dark look in
Jacob Carstairs’s direction. “Might I know the name of my chivalrous rescuer?”
The blond gentleman blushed charmingly.
“Abbott, my lady,” he said. “Charles Abbott.”
“How lovely to make your acquaintance, Mr. Abbott,” Victoria said, relieved that Charles Abbott
proved to have neither a lisp nor a stutter. He would, she decided, do very nicely for Rebecca, as
Victoria, who had a quick eye, observed that Mr. Charles Abbott wore a signet ring, but no wedding
band, upon his finger, meaning that he was in possession of some fortune, but not a wife. “I, of course,
am Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, and this is my cousin, Miss Rebecca Gardiner.” Rebecca curtsied prettily in
response to Charles Abbott’s bow. “Oh,” Victoria added with deliberate indifference, “and this is
Captain Jacob Carstairs.”
Charles Abbott clicked his heels together smartly upon his introduction to Jacob Carstairs, but his gaze
was, Victoria saw with approval, on Rebecca, who really did look very beautiful indeed in her borrowed
finery.
“She likes opera and the works of Sir Walter Scott,” Victoria whispered to Mr. Abbott, under pretense
of flicking a piece of lint from the young man’s broad shoulder.
Charles Abbott proved he was as quick as he was handsome, since the next words out of his mouth
were, “You would not happen to be familiar with The Lay of the Minstrel, would you, Miss Gardiner?
For there is a point in it these fellows here and I find sorely perplexing….”
Victoria saw that her cousin looked very pleased indeed, but did not hear how she responded, since
Jacob Carstairs leaned down and said, very distinctly, in her ear, “Witch.”
Victoria had no choice but to take umbrage at this unfair assessment of her character.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” she said with a sniff. “But I don’t know what you mean.”
“You manage your relations the way Napoleon manages his troops,” Jacob Carstairs said, not entirely
without approval.
Victoria flicked opened her fan. “Nonsense,” she said, fanning herself energetically, though still keeping a
careful eye on her cousin and her new admirer.
“Are the Gardiners even aware,” Jacob wanted to know, “of how you’ve twisted their lives about to suit
your own? I understand their cook is terrified to serve anything but lobster turbot—which, if I recall
rightly, was your favorite dish back on the Harmony—and that the younger Gardiners have actually
begun acting like little ladies and gentlemen because you promised if they’d behave themselves to buy
them a live monkey.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re talking about,” Victoria said airily.
“I suppose that’s your plan with Hugo Rothschild,” Jacob said. “You intend to turn him into an
automaton, the way you have the Gardiner children.”
“Automaton?” Victoria echoed with a snort. “Be your age, Captain. What on earth would Lord Malfrey
do with a monkey? What nonsense.”
“It isn’t nonsense,” Jacob said. Something about his gaze, as he stared down at her, began to make
Victoria feel distinctly uncomfortable. Jacob Carstairs’s gray eyes were entirely too knowing—and too
bright—for Victoria’s peace of mind. Why, the way he looked at her, she felt almost as if… well, as if he
could read her mind! Read her mind, or see down her bodice, she didn’t know which. Either way, his
stare was making her feel as if the room were too hot—it was—and her corset stays too tight— they
weren’t. How curious that a man she despised as thoroughly as Victoria despised Captain Carstairs
could make her feel so… well, vulnerable.
A second later she was certain he could read her mind when he warned, “One day, Lady Victoria,
you’re going to meet a man whose will can’t be bent to suit your purposes. And I’m not talking about
Lord Malfrey, either. I mean a real man. And when that happens…”
Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Yes?” she inquired.
“You’ll fall in love with him,” Jacob Carstairs said shortly.
Victoria could not help laughing very heartily at that.
“Oh, Captain!” she cried, flinging out a hand to keep him from saying more—for surely if he did, she’d
die laughing. “You are so droll! As if I could ever love anyone but Hugo!”
But Jacob Carstairs wasn’t laughing at all. He regarded her gravely with those sea-gray eyes, looking
almost—she did not think she was imagining this—as if he felt sorry for her.
Sorry! For her! Lady Victoria Arbuthnot, who had forty thousand pounds! Really, it was too excessively
diverting.
“You don’t love him,” Jacob said somberly. “You can’t possibly.”
It was then that, out of the corner of her eye, Victoria caught a glimpse of something. She could not say
what it was, exactly, that caused her to turn her head just when she did. All she knew was that, in spite of
how very, very interesting she found what Jacob Carstairs was saying, she could not seem to keep her
gaze upon his face. Instead she glanced over her shoulder, back toward the doors to the room they were
standing in….
And found herself looking at the handsomest man she had ever seen. A man in evening dress, with
golden hair, a manly jaw, and a smile just for Victoria.
“Oh, can’t I, then?” she asked Jacob with a radiant smile.
And then she turned to fly into her fiancé’s waiting arms.
“Well?” Victoria spun in a circle before Lord Malfrey. “How do I look?”
“Pretty as a picture,” his lordship declared. “Prettier, even.”
Victoria stopped spinning, then ran her hands nervously over her muslin skirt to smooth it. Her fiancé’s
assertion was all well and good, but she felt she might need a less subjective opinion. “Becky?” she
asked, with a nervous glance in her cousin’s direction.
But Rebecca was hardly paying attention. She had one hand up, shading her eyes—though the sun was
putting in a halfhearted appearance, being mostly hidden behind the clouds that seemed perpetually to
cover the English sky— while she scanned the green lawn before them.
“I don’t see him,” she said, sounding dismayed. “Are you sure Mr. Abbott received an invitation, Lord
Malfrey?”
“Of course I’m sure, Miss Gardiner,” Hugo said with a laugh. “I added his name to the guest list myself.
Now tell your cousin how lovely she looks, so we can join the rest of the company.”
Rebecca threw Victoria a glance that could only be called perfunctory. “Vicky, stop fussing,” she said.
“You look fine.”
But this casual remark was hardly enough to satisfy Victoria, who had spent the whole of the morning in
front of her bedroom mirror, castigating Mariah for not getting her hair coiled to perfection and her gown
wrinkle-free. Nothing looked right—not her upswept hair, not the high-waisted white gown, not the blue
silk sash just below her bosom, not the sapphire bobs in her ears, shimmering like stars, nor even the
deceptively simple—but murderously expensive—blue-and-white straw bonnet she wore atop her head.
And Victoria wanted everything to look right, because today was the day every girl dreamed of… while
at the same time fearing it with every fiber of her being. For today was the day Victoria was to meet for
the first time the woman who would be her mother-in-law.
“Mother will love you!” Hugo had exclaimed, when Victoria had expressed her reservations about this
meeting to him. “Are you mad? How could anyone help but love you, Vicky?”
But Victoria did not share her husband-to-be’s confidence in the matter. She knew that every home
could have only one chatelaine, and she was determined that, in Hugo’s home, that would be she. But
supposing the dowager Lady Malfrey was unwilling to allow her to take charge?
Well, the dowager Lady Malfrey would simply have to be gotten rid of.
Oh, not by killing her, of course. Victoria had a profound distaste for violence, and besides thought
murder entirely too easy—unsporting, actually. It would be far more challenging simply to try to convince
Hugo’s mother of the benefits of living elsewhere… Bath, perhaps. Or Portofino. Portofino was said to
be lovely….
Oh, it would be so much nicer if it didn’t come to that! It would be so much nicer if Hugo’s mother
turned out to be rather a dim sort of woman, only too happy to allow Victoria to take over the running of
her household. Or, better still, if she happened to turn out to be a shrewd woman who recognized at
once Victoria’s superior management skills, and stepped dutifully out of the way.
