Once and Always (46 page)

It was as if he wanted, needed to hear those words of love; yet never, not even at the peak of his own fulfillment, did Jason ever say them to her. Her body and heart were enslaved by Jason; he was chaining her to him—deliberately, cleverly, successfully, holding her in a bondage of fierce, hot pleasure—yet he was emotionally detached from her.

After a week of this, Victoria was determined to somehow force him to share what she felt and admit it. She would not, could not, believe he didn’t love her—she could feel it in the tenderness of his hands on her and the fierce hunger of his lips. Besides, if he didn’t want her love, why would he deliberately force her to say it?

Based on what Captain Farrell had told her, she could almost understand the fact that Jason didn’t want to trust her with his heart. She could understand it, but she was resolved to change matters. Captain Farrell had said Jason would love only once.... Once and always. She wanted desperately to be loved that way by him. Perhaps if she wasn’t so readily available to him, he would realize that he missed her, and would even admit that much to her. At least, that was her hope when she sent a polite note to him explaining that she would not be home for supper.

Victoria was on tenterhooks during the puppet show and later, during supper at the vicar’s house, as she waited for the hour when she could return to Wakefield and see for herself how Jason had reacted to her absence. Despite her protest that it wasn’t necessary, the vicar insisted on escorting her home that night, warning her during the entire distance about the perils that lay in wait for a woman foolish enough to venture out alone after dark.

With wonderful, if admittedly unlikely, visions of Jason going down on one knee the instant she arrived and professing his love for her because he had missed her so much at their evening meal, Victoria practically ran into the house.

Northrup informed her that Lord Fielding, upon learning of her intention to dine elsewhere, had decided to dine with neighbors and had not yet returned.

Utterly frustrated, Victoria went up to her rooms, took a leisurely bath, and washed her hair. He still hadn’t returned when she was finished, so she got into bed and disinterestedly leafed through a periodical. If Jason had meant to turn the tables on her, Victoria thought disgustedly, he couldn’t have found a better way—not that she believed he’d actually gone to that much trouble merely to teach her a lesson.

It was after eleven when she finally heard him enter his room and she instantly snatched up the periodical, staring at it as if it were the most absorbing material in the world. A few minutes later, he strolled into her room, his neckcloth removed, his white shirt unbuttoned nearly to his waist, revealing the crisp mat of dark hair that covered the bronzed muscles of his chest. He looked so breathtakingly virile and handsome that Victoria’s mouth went dry, but Jason’s ruggedly chiseled face was perfectly composed. “You didn’t come home for supper,” he remarked, standing beside her bed.

“No,” Victoria agreed, trying to match his casual tone.

“Why not?”

She gave him an innocent look and repeated his own explanation for ignoring her. “I enjoy the company of other people, just as you enjoy working.” Unfortunately, her composure slipped a notch, and she added a little nervously, “I didn’t think you’d mind if I wasn’t here.”

“I didn’t mind at all,” he said, to her chagrined disappointment, and after placing a chaste kiss upon her forehead, he returned to his own rooms.

Bleakly, Victoria looked at the empty pillows beside her. Her heart refused to believe that he didn’t care whether she was here or not for supper. She didn’t want to believe he intended to sleep alone tonight either, and she lay awake waiting for him, but he never came.

She felt awful when she awoke the next morning—and that was before Jason walked into her room, freshly shaven and positively exuding vitality—to casually suggest, “If you’re lonely for company, Victoria, perhaps you should go to the city for a day or two.”

Despair shot through her and her hairbrush slid from her limp fingers, but stubborn pride came to her rescue and she pinned a bright smile on her face. Either he was calling her bluff or he wished to be rid of her, but whatever his reason, she was going to do as he recommended. “What a lovely idea, Jason. I think I’ll do that. Thank you for suggesting it.”

Victoria went to London and stayed for four days, hoping against hope that Jason might come after her, growing lonelier and more frustrated by the hour when he didn’t. She went to three musicales and to the opera, and visited with her friends. At night she lay awake, trying to understand how a man could be so warm at night and so cold during the day. She couldn’t believe he saw her only as a convenient receptacle for his desire. That couldn’t be true— not when he seemed to enjoy her company at the evening meal so much. He always lingered over each course, joking with her and urging her to converse with him on all manner of subjects. Once he had even complimented her on her intelligence and perception. Several other times he had asked her opinions on subjects as diverse as the arrangement of furniture in the drawing room and whether or not he ought to pension off the estate manager and hire a younger man.

On the fourth night, Charles escorted her to a play, and afterward she returned to Jason’s townhouse in Upper Brook Street to change her clothes for the ball she’d promised to attend that night. She was going to go home tomorrow morning, she decided with a mixture of exasperation and resignation; she was ready to cede this contest of wills to Jason and to resume the battle for his affection on the home front.

Wrapped in a spectacular ball gown of swirling silver-spangled gauze, she walked into the ballroom with the Marquis de Salle on one side and Baron Arnoff on the other.

Heads turned when she entered, and Victoria noticed again the rather peculiar way people were looking at her. Last night she’d had the same uncomfortable sensation. She could scarcely believe the
ton
would find any reason to criticize her simply because she was in London without her husband. Besides, the glances she was receiving from the elegant ladies and gentlemen were not censorious. They watched her with something that resembled understanding, or perhaps it was pity.

Caroline Collingwood arrived toward the end of the evening, and Victoria pulled her aside, intending to ask Caroline if she knew why people were behaving oddly. Before she had the opportunity, Caroline provided the answer. “Victoria,” she said anxiously, “is everything all right—between Lord Fielding and you, I mean? You aren’t estranged already, are you?”

“Estranged?” Victoria echoed blankly. “Is that what people think? Is that why they’re watching me so strangely?”

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” Caroline assured her hastily, casting an apprehensive glance about to make certain that Victoria’s devoted escorts were out of hearing. “It’s just that, under the circumstances, people are jumping to certain conclusions—the conclusion that you and Lord Fielding are not in accord, and that you’ve, well, you’ve left him.”

“I’ve what!” Victoria burst out in a disgusted whisper. “Whyever would they think such a thing? Why, Lady Calliper isn’t with her husband, and Countess Graverton isn’t with hers, and—”

“I’m not with my husband either,” Caroline interrupted desperately. “But you see, none of our husbands were married before. Yours was.”

“And that makes a difference?” Victoria said, wondering what outrageous, unknown convention she’d broken this time. The
ton
had rules governing behavior in every category, with a long list of exceptions that made everything impossibly confusing. Still, she could not believe that first wives were permitted to go their own way in society, while second wives were not.

“It makes a difference,” Caroline sighed, “because the first Lady Fielding said some dreadful things about Lord Fielding’s cruelties to her, and there were people who believed her. You’ve been married for less than two weeks, and now you’re here, and you don’t look very happy, Victoria, truly you don’t. The people who believed the things the first Lady Fielding said have remembered them, and now they’re repeating what she said and pointing to you as confirmation.”

Victoria looked at her, feeling absolutely harassed. “I never thought, never imagined, they’d do so. I was planning to go back home tomorrow anyway. If it weren’t so late, I’d leave tonight.”

Caroline laid her hand on Victoria’s arm. “If there’s something bothering you, something you don’t wish to discuss, you know you can stay with us. I won’t press you.”

Shaking her head, Victoria hastily assured her, “I want to go home tomorrow. For tonight, there’s nothing I can do.”

“Except try to look happy,” her friend said wryly.

Victoria thought
that
was excellent advice, and she set out to follow it with a slight modification of her own. For the next two hours, she endeavored to speak to as many people as possible, managing skillfully to bring Jason’s name into her conversation each time and to speak of him in the most glowing terms. When Lord Armstrong remarked to a group of friends that it was becoming impossible to satisfy his tenants, Victoria quickly remarked that her husband was on the best of terms with his. “My Lord Fielding is so wise in the management of estates,” she finished in the breathless voice of a besotted bride, “that his tenants adore him and his servants positively worship him!”

“Is that right?” said Lord Armstrong, shocked. “I shall have to have a word with him. Didn’t know Wakefield gave a jot for his tenants, but there you are—I was mistaken.”

To Lady Brimworthy, who complimented Victoria on her sapphire necklace, Victoria replied, “Lord Fielding showers me with gifts. He is so
very
generous, so kind and thoughtful. And he has such excellent taste, does he not?”

“Indeed,” agreed Lady Brimworthy, admiring the fortune in diamonds and sapphires at Victoria’s slender throat. “Brimworthy flies into the boughs when I buy jewels,” she added morosely. “Next time he rings a peal over my head for being extravagant, I shall mention Wakefield’s generosity!”

When elderly Countess Draymore reminded Victoria to join her tomorrow for a Venetian breakfast the countess was giving, Victoria replied, “I’m afraid I cannot, Countess Draymore. I’ve been away from my husband for four days now, and to tell you the truth, I miss his company. He is the very soul of amiability and kindness!”

Countess Draymore’s mouth dropped open. As Victoria moved away, the old lady turned to her cronies and blinked. “The soul of amiability and kindness?” she repeated in puzzlement. “Where did I conceive the idea she was married to Wakefield?”

In his house on Upper Brook Street, Jason paced back and forth across his suite like a caged beast, silently cursing his aging London butler for giving him incorrect information about Victoria’s whereabouts tonight, and cursing himself for coming to London in pursuit of her like a jealous, lovesick boy. He had gone to the Berfords’ tonight, which was where the butler said Victoria was, but Jason hadn’t seen her among the crush at the Berfords’ ball. Nor was she at any of the other three places the butler thought she might be.

So successful was Victoria in her attempt to appear devoted to her husband that by the end of the evening, the guests were regarding her with more amusement than concern. She was still smiling about that when she entered the house shortly before dawn.

She lit the candle the servants had left for her on the table in the foyer and climbed the carpeted staircase. She was in the process of lighting the candles in her bedchamber when a stealthy sound from the adjoining suite caught her attention. Praying that the person in there was a servant and not a prowler, Victoria moved quietly toward the door. Holding her candle high in her shaking hand, she reached for the handle on the connecting door just as it was flung open, startling a scream from her. “Jason!” she said shakily, her hand on her throat. “Thank God it’s you. I-I thought you were a prowler and I was about to have a look.”

“Very brave,” he said, glancing at the upraised candle in her hand. “What were you going to do if I was a prowler— threaten to set my eyelashes on fire?”

Victoria’s giggle caught in her throat as she noticed the ominous glitter in those green eyes and the muscle leaping in his hard jaw. Behind that sardonic facade of his, there was a terrible burning anger, she realized. Automatically, she began backing away as Jason moved forward, towering over her. Despite the civilized elegance of his superbly tailored evening clothes, he had never looked more dangerous, more overpowering than he did as he came toward her with that deceptively lazy, stalking stride of his.

Victoria started backing around her bed, then stopped moving and quelled her rioting, irrational fear. She had not done anything wrong, and here she was behaving like a cowardly child! She would discuss this whole thing reasonably and rationally, she decided. “Jason,” she said, with only a small quiver in her reasonable voice, “are you angry?”

He stopped a few inches from her. Brushing back the sides of his black velvet jacket, he put his hands on his hips, his booted feet planted apart, his legs spread in a decidedly aggressive stance. “You could say that,” he drawled in an awful voice. “Where the hell have you been?”

“At—at Lady Dunworthy’s ball.”

“Until dawn?” he sneered.

“Yes. There’s nothing unusual in that. You know how late these things go—”

“No, I don’t know,” he said tightly. “Suppose you tell me why the minute you are out of my sight you forget how to count!”

“Count?” Victoria repeated, growing more frightened by the moment. “Count what?”

“Count days,” he clarified acidly. “I gave you permission to be here for two days, not four!”

“I don’t need your permission,” Victoria burst out unwisely. “And don’t pretend you care whether I’m here or at Wakefield!”

“Oh, but I
do
care,” he said in a silky voice, stripping off his jacket with slow deliberation and beginning to unbutton his white lawn shirt. “And you
do
need my permission. You’ve become very forgetful, my sweet—I’m your husband, remember? Take off your clothes.”