Once and Always (29 page)

Charles’s eyes fluttered open and focused on her face. “My dear child,” he whispered. “I didn’t intend to die so soon. I wanted so much to see you happily settled first. Who will care for you when I am gone? Have you anyone else who can take you in and provide for you?”

Tears raced down Victoria’s cheeks. She loved him so, and now she was going to lose him. She tried to speak, but the lump of anguish and fear in her throat strangled her voice and she could only squeeze Charles’s frail hand even tighter.

Charles turned his head on the pillow and looked at Jason. “You are so like me,” he whispered, “so stubborn. And now you will be as alone as I have always been.”

“Don’t talk,” Jason warned him, his voice harsh with sorrow. “Rest.”

“I
can’t
rest,” Charles argued weakly. “I can’t die in peace, knowing that Victoria will be alone. You will both be alone in different ways. She cannot remain under your protection, Jason. Society would never forgive . . .” His voice trailed off. Visibly fighting for enough strength to continue, he turned his head to Victoria.

“Victoria, you’re named after me. Your mother and I loved each other. I—I was going to tell you about all that someday. Now there is no more time.”

Victoria could no longer restrain her tears, and she bent her head, her shoulders shaking with wrenching sobs.

Charles dragged his gaze from her weeping form and looked at Jason. “It was my dream that you and Victoria would wed. I wanted you to have each other when I was gone. .. .”

Jason’s face was a taut mask of controlled grief. He nodded, the muscles working in his throat. “I’ll take care of Victoria—I’ll marry her,” he clarified quickly as Charles started to argue.

Victoria’s shocked, teary gaze flew to Jason’s face; then she realized that he was merely trying to ease Charles’s dying hour.

Wearily, Charles closed his eyes. “I don’t believe you, Jason,” he whispered.

Stricken with terror and desperation, Victoria dropped to her knees beside the bed, clutching Charles’s hand. “You mustn’t worry about us, Uncle Charles,” she wept.

Feebly turning his head on the pillow, Charles opened his eyes and stared at Jason. “Do you swear it?” he whispered.

“Swear to me that you will wed Victoria, that you will care for her always.”

“I swear it,” Jason said, and the fierce look in his eyes convinced Victoria that this was no charade on his part, after all. He was giving his oath to a dying man.

“And you, my child?” he said to Victoria. “Do you solemnly swear you will have him?”

Victoria tensed. This was no time to argue over former grievances and petty technicalities. The brutal fact was that without Jason, without Charles, she had no one else in the world, and she knew it. She remembered the heady delight of Jason’s kisses, and although she feared his surface coldness, she knew he was strong and he would keep her safe. What little was left of her half-formed plans to someday return on her own to America gave way to the more pressing need to survive and to ease Charles’s worry in his dying hours.

“Victoria?” Charles prodded feebly.

“I will have him,” she whispered brokenly.

“Thank you,” Charles murmured with a pathetic attempt at a smile. He pulled his left hand out from beneath the blanket, and grasped Jason’s hand. “Now I can die in peace.”

Suddenly Jason’s entire body tensed. His eyes jerked to Charles’s and his face became a cynical mask. With biting sarcasm, he agreed, “Now you can die in peace, Charles.”

“No!” Victoria burst out, weeping. “Don’t die, Uncle Charles. Please don’t!” Trying desperately to give him a reason to fight for his life, she sobbed, “If you die, you won’t be able to give me away at our wedding. . . .”

Dr. Worthing stepped forward from the shadows and gently helped Victoria to her feet. Nodding to Jason to follow him, he led her out into the hall. “That’s enough for now, my dear,” he said soothingly. “You’ll make yourself ill.”

Victoria raised her tear-streaked face to the physician. “Do you think he will live, Dr. Worthing?”

The kindly middle-aged physician soothingly patted her arm. “I’ll stay with him and let you know the moment there is any change.” And without a word of any real reassurance, he retreated back into the bedchamber, closing the door behind him.

Victoria and Jason went downstairs to the salon. Jason sat down beside her and, in a gesture of comfort, he put his arm around her, easing her head onto his shoulder. Victoria turned her face into his hard chest and sobbed out her grief and terror until there were no more tears left in her to shed. She spent the rest of the night in Jason’s arms, keeping a silent, prayerful vigil.

Charles spent the rest of the night playing cards with Dr. Worthing.

Early the following afternoon, Dr. Worthing was able to report that Uncle Charles was “still holding his own.” The next day, he came downstairs to the dining room where Jason and Victoria were having dinner and informed them that Charles “appeared to be much improved.”

Victoria could scarcely contain her joy, but Jason merely quirked a brow at the physician and invited him to join them for dinner.

“Er—thank you,” Dr. Worthing said, shooting a sharp look at Jason’s inscrutable features. “I believe I can leave my patient unattended for a short time.”

“I’m certain you can,” Jason replied blandly.

“Do you think he’ll recover, Dr. Worthing?” Victoria burst out, wondering how Jason could appear so utterly unemotional.

Carefully avoiding Jason’s assessing stare, Dr. Worthing directed his uneasy gaze at Victoria and cleared his throat. “It’s difficult to say. You see, he says he wants to live to see you two married. He’s most determined to do so. You might say that he’s clinging to that as a reason to live.”

Victoria bit her lip and glanced uneasily at Jason before asking the doctor, “What will happen if he starts to recover and we—we tell him we’ve changed our minds?”

Jason answered her in a bland drawl. “In that case, he’ll undoubtedly have a relapse.” Turning to the physician, he said coolly, “Won’t he?”

Dr. Worthing’s gaze skittered away from Jason’s steely eyes. “I’m sure you know him better than I, Jason. What do you think he’ll do?”

Jason shrugged. “I think he’ll have a relapse.”

Victoria felt as if life were deliberately tormenting her, taking away her home and the people she loved, forcing her to come to a strange foreign land, and now propelling her into a loveless marriage with a man who didn’t want her.

Long after both men left, she remained at the table, listlessly toying with the food on her plate, trying to find a way out of this dilemma for Jason’s sake and her own. Her dreams of a happy home, with a loving husband at her side and a baby gurgling in her arms, came back to mock her, and she allowed herself a bout of self-pity. After all, she hadn’t asked very much of life; she hadn’t yearned for furs and jewels, for seasons in London or palatial homes where she could play reigning queen. She had wanted no more than what she’d had in America—except that she had wanted a husband and children to go with it.

A wave of dizzying homesickness washed over her and she bent her head. How she longed to set time back a year and keep it there, to have her parents’ smiling faces before her, to listen to her father speak of the hospital he wanted to build, and to be surrounded by the villagers who had been her second family. She would do anything, anything to go back home again. An image of Andrew’s handsome, laughing face appeared to taunt her, and Victoria thrust it away, refusing to shed any more tears for the faithless man she had adored.

She pushed her chair back and went looking for Jason. Andrew had abandoned her to her own fate, but Jason was here and he was obliged to help her think of some way out of a marriage neither of them wanted.

She found him alone in his study—a solitary, brooding man standing with his arm draped on the mantel, staring into the empty fireplace. Compassion swelled in her heart as she realized that, although he had pretended to be cold and unemotional in front of Dr. Worthing, Jason had come in here to worry in lonely privacy.

Suppressing the urge to go to him and offer sympathy, which she knew he would only reject, she said quietly, “Jason?”

He lifted his head and looked at her, his face impassive.

“What are we going to do?”

“About what?”

“About this outrageous idea Uncle Charles has of seeing us married.”

“Why is it outrageous?”

Victoria was amazed by his answer, but determined to discuss the matter, calmly and frankly. “It’s outrageous because I don’t want to marry you.”

His eyes hardened. “I’m well aware of that, Victoria.”

“You don’t want to be married either,” she answered reasonably, lifting her hands in a gesture of appeal.

“You’re right.” Shifting his gaze back to the fireplace, he lapsed into silence. Victoria waited for him to say something more; when he didn’t, she sighed and started to leave. His next words made her turn back and stare. “However, our marriage could give each of us something we
do
want.”

“What is that?” she asked, peering at his ruggedly chiseled profile, trying to fathom his mood. He straightened and turned, shoving his hands deep in his pockets, his eyes meeting hers. “You want to go back to America, to be independent, to live among your friends and perhaps build the hospital your father dreamed of building. You’ve told me all that. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit you’d also like to go back there to show Andrew, and everyone else, that his desertion meant nothing to you—that you forgot about him as easily as he forgot about you, and you went on with your life.”

Victoria was so humiliated by his reference to her plight that it took a moment before his next words registered on her. “And,” he finished matter-of-factly, “I want a son.”

Her mouth fell open as he continued calmly, “We could give each other what we both want. Marry me and give me a son. In return, I’ll send you back to America with enough money to live like a queen and build a dozen hospitals.”

Victoria stared at him in stricken disbelief. “Give you a son?” she echoed. “Give you a son, and then you’ll send me back to America? Give you a son and
leave
him here?”

“I’m not completely selfish—you could keep him with you until he is ... say, four years old. A child needs his mother until he is that age. After that, I would expect to have him with me. Perhaps you will choose to stay here with us when you bring him back. Actually, I’d prefer that you stay here permanently, but I will leave that up to you. There is one thing, however—a condition to all this—that I would insist upon.”

“What condition?” Victoria asked dazedly.

He hesitated as if framing his answer with care, and when he finally spoke, he looked away, studying the landscape above the fireplace as if he wished to avoid meeting her eyes. “Because of the way you leapt to my defense the other night, people have assumed you do not despise or fear me. If you agree to this marriage, I will expect you to reinforce that opinion and not do or say anything to make them think differently. In other words, no matter what may transpire between us in private, when we are in public I would expect you to behave as if you married me for more than my money and title. Or to put it simply—as if you care for me.”

For no reason at all, Victoria recalled his caustic remarks at the Mortrams’ ball:
“You’re mistaken if you think I give a damn what people think. . . .”
He had been lying, she realized with a pang of tenderness. He obviously cared what they thought or he wouldn’t ask her to do this.

She gazed at the cool, dispassionate man standing before her. He looked powerful, aloof, and completely self-assured. It was impossible to believe he wanted a son, or her, or anyone—as impossible as it was to believe that it bothered him that people feared and mistrusted him. Impossible, but true. She remembered how boyish he had seemed the night of his duel, when he had teased her and coaxed her to kiss him. She remembered the hungry yearning in his kiss and the lonely desperation of his words:
“I’ve tried a hundred times to let you go. But I can’t.”

Perhaps beneath his cool, unemotional facade, Jason felt as lonely and empty as she did. Perhaps he needed her, and couldn’t make himself say so. Then again, perhaps she was only trying to fool herself into believing it. “Jason,” she said, voicing part of her thoughts aloud. “You can’t expect me to have a child and then hand him over to you and go my own way. You can’t be as cold and heartless as your proposition makes you sound. I—I can’t believe you are.”

“You won’t find me a cruel husband, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is
not
what I mean,” Victoria burst out a little hysterically. “How can you speak of marrying me as if you’re discussing a—a common business arrangement— without any feeling, without any emotion, without even a pretense of love or—”

“Surely you have no illusions left about love,” he scoffed with stinging impatience. “Your experience with Bainbridge should have taught you that love is only an emotion used to manipulate fools. I neither expect nor want your love, Victoria.”

Victoria grasped the back of the chair beside her, reeling under his words. She opened her mouth to refuse his offer, but he shook his head to forestall her. “Don’t answer me before you consider what I’ve said. If you marry me, you’ll have the freedom to do whatever you like with your life. You could build one hospital in America and another near Wakefield, and stay in England. I have six estates and a thousand tenants and servants. My servants alone could provide you with enough sick people to fill up your hospital. If not, I’ll pay them to get sick.” A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips, but Victoria was too heartsore to see any humor in the situation.

When he saw that his quip had won no response, he added lightly, “You can cover the walls of Wakefield with your sketches, and if you run out of room, I’ll add on to the house.” Victoria was still trying to absorb the startling information that he knew she sketched when he reached out and ran his fingertips across her taut cheek and said matter-of-factly, “You’ll find me a very generous husband, I promise you.”