Once and Always (38 page)

Victoria’s head came up defensively. “I am not at all concerned with what Jason might think,” she said, unable to keep the rebellious note out of her voice. “I have no intention of freezing to death to suit him. Or anyone,” she amended quickly, realizing how much she was giving away in her beleaguered discomfort.

Captain Farrell shot her an odd, narrow look, but he only nodded. “Good. That’s very sensible thinking.”

“If I were sensible, I would have stayed home today.” Victoria smiled wanly, trying to hide her misery over her abortive effort to brighten her life.

When she emerged from the bedroom, Captain Farrell had already put her horse in the small barn beyond the house, stoked up the fire, and made her a cup of tea. He handed her a big cloth. “Use this to dry your hair,” he commanded kindly, indicating that she should sit in the chair he’d drawn up close to the fire.

“Do you mind if I smoke this?” he asked, holding up a pipe as he sat down across from her.

“Not at all,” Victoria said politely.

He filled the bowl with tobacco and lit it, puffing idly, his disconcertingly direct gaze focused on Victoria’s face. “Why didn’t you do that?” he asked finally.

“Why didn’t I do what?”

“Stay at home today.”

Wondering if she looked as guilty and unhappy as she felt at the moment, Victoria gave a light, evasive shrug. “I wanted to bring food to the orphanage. There was so much of it left after our party last night.”

“Yet it was obviously going to rain, and you could have sent a servant to the orphanage—which, by the way, is another mile past here. Instead, you decided to brave the weather and try to find the place yourself.”

“I needed—wanted, I mean—to get away, to get out of the house for a while, that is,” Victoria said, paying unnecessary attention to the act of stirring her tea.

“I’m surprised Jason didn’t insist you stay home,” he persisted pointedly.

“I didn’t think it was necessary to ask his permission,” Victoria replied, uneasily conscious of Captain Farrell’s searching questions and intent gaze.

“He must be worried sick about you by now.”

“I very much doubt if he’ll discover I’ve been gone.” Or that he’d care, even if he knew, she thought miserably.

“Lady Fielding?”

There was something about the bluntness beneath his polite tone that made Victoria certain she did not want to continue this conversation. On the other hand, she had little choice. “Yes, Captain?” she said warily.

“I saw Jason this morning.”

Victoria’s unease grew. “Oh, yes?” She had the worst feeling that for some reason Jason might have come here to discuss her with his old friend, and she felt as if all the world was turning against her.

Apparently Captain Farrell sensed her suspicion, because he explained, “Jason owns a large fleet of ships. I have command of one of them, and he wanted to discuss the success of this last voyage with me.”

Victoria seized on that remark to try to shift the conversation away from herself. “I didn’t know Lord Fielding knew anything about ships, or that he was involved with them,” she said in a bright, inquiring voice.

“That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“Perhaps I am simple and old-fashioned, but I find it rather odd that a woman wouldn’t know that her husband spent years of his life aboard a ship.”

Victoria gaped at him. As far as she knew, Jason was an English lord—an arrogant, wealthy, world-weary, spoiled aristocrat. The only thing that distinguished him from the rest of the noblemen she’d met was that Jason spent a great deal of time in his study working, while the other wealthy gentlemen she’d met in England seemed to spend all their time in the pursuit of pleasure and diversion.

“Perhaps you simply aren’t interested in his accomplishments?” Captain Farrell prodded, his manner chilling. He puffed on his pipe for a moment, then said bluntly, “Why did you marry him?”

Victoria’s eyes flew wide open. She felt like a trapped rabbit—a feeling she was beginning to experience very often and which was beginning to grate terribly on her pride. She raised her head and regarded her inquisitor with ill-concealed resentment. With as much dignity as she could muster, she replied evasively, “I married Lord Fielding for the usual reasons.”

“Money, influence, and social position,” Captain Farrell summarized with scathing disgust. “Well, you have all three now. Congratulations.”

This unprovoked attack was too much for Victoria to bear. Tears of fury sprang to her eyes as she stood up, clutching the blanket to herself. “Captain Farrell, I am not wet enough or miserable enough or desperate enough to sit here and feel obliged to listen to you accuse me of being mercenary and— and selfish and—a social parasite—”

“Why not?” he bit out. “Evidently, you’re all those things.”

“I don’t care what you think of me. I—” Her voice cracked and Victoria started toward the bedroom, intending to get her clothes, but he rolled to his feet and blocked her way, angrily searching her face as if he were trying to look into her soul.

“Why do you want a divorce?” he demanded sharply, but his expression gentled slightly as he stared down at her beautiful, fragile features. Even wrapped in a plain woolen blanket, Victoria Seaton was an incredibly lovely sight, with the firelight glinting in her red-gold hair and her magnificent blue eyes flashing with helpless resentment. She had spirit, but it was evident from the tears glistening in her eyes that her spirit was nearly broken. In fact, she looked as if she were about to splinter apart.

“This morning,” he persisted, “I jokingly asked Jason if you’d left him yet. He said you hadn’t left him, but you’d asked for a divorce. I assumed he meant that to be humorous, but when you walked in here just now, you certainly didn’t look like a happy new bride.”

Teetering on the brink of utter despair, Victoria gazed into her tormentor’s implacable, sun-bronzed face, fighting back her tears and trying to hold onto her dignity. “Will you please step out of my way,” she said hoarsely. .

Instead of moving aside, he caught her by the shoulders. “Now that you have everything you married him for—the money, the influence, the social position—why do you want a divorce?” he demanded.

“I have nothing!” Victoria burst out, perilously close to tears. “Now, let go of me!”

“Not until I understand how I could have misjudged you so much. Yesterday, when you spoke to me, I thought you were wonderful. I saw the laughter in your eyes when you talked, and I saw the way you treated the villagers. I thought to myself that you were a real woman—one with heart and spirit, not some mercenary, spoiled little coward!”

Hot tears filled Victoria’s eyes at this unfair condemnation from a perfect stranger, and a friend of Jason’s to boot. “Leave me alone, damn you!” she demanded brokenly, and tried to shove him out of her way.

Amazingly, his arms wrapped around her, hauling her against his broad chest. “Cry, Victoria!” he ordered gruffly. “For God’s sake, cry.”

Victoria shuddered as he whispered, “Let the tears come, child.” He stroked her back with his broad hand. “If you try to hold all this inside you, you’ll shatter.”

Victoria had learned to deal with tragedy and adversity; she could not, however, cope with kindness and understanding. The tears rushed to her eyes and poured out of her in wrenching sobs that shook her body and tore themselves from her in painful torrents. She had no idea when Captain Farrell coaxed her to sit beside him on the plain sofa across from the fire, or when she began to tell him about her parents’ deaths and the events leading up to Jason’s coldblooded offer of marriage. With her face buried against his shoulder, she answered his questions about Jason and why she had married him. And when she was finished, she felt better than she had in weeks.

“So,” he said with a slight, admiring smile. “Despite Jason’s unemotional proposal, despite the fact that you actually know nothing about him, you still thought he truly needed you?”

Victoria self-consciously wiped her eyes and nodded sheepishly. “Obviously, I was foolish and fanciful to think that, but there were times he seemed so alone—times when I would look at him in a crowded ballroom, surrounded by people—usually women—and I would have this queer feeling that he felt as lonely as I did. And Uncle Charles said Jason needed me, too. But we were both wrong. Jason wants a son, it’s as simple as that. He doesn’t need me or want me.”

“You’re wrong,” Captain Farrell said with gentle finality. “Jason has needed a women like you since the day he was born. He needs you to heal wounds that are deep, to teach him how to let himself love and be loved in return. If you knew more about him, you’d understand why I say that.” Getting up, Captain Farrell walked over to a small table and picked up a bottle. He poured some of its contents into two glasses, then handed one to her.

“Will you tell me about him?” Victoria asked as he went to the fireplace and stood looking down at her.

“Yes.”

Victoria glanced at the potent-smelling whiskey he’d handed her and started to put it down on the table.

“If you want to hear about Jason, I suggest you drink that first,” Captain Farrell said grimly. “You’re going to need it.”

Victoria took a sip of the burning stuff, but the burly Irishman lifted his glass and gulped down half the liquid in it as if he, too, needed it.

“I’m going to tell you things about Jason that only I know, things he obviously doesn’t want you to know or he would have told you. By telling you these things, I’m betraying Jason’s trust, and until this moment, I was one of the few people close to him who had never betrayed him in some way or another. He is like a son to me, Victoria, so it hurts me to do this; yet I feel it is imperative that you understand him.”

Victoria slowly shook her head. “Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me anything, Captain. Lord Fielding and I are at outs most of the time, but I would not like to see either of you hurt by the things you tell me.”

A smile flickered briefly across Captain Farrell’s grim features. “If I thought you might use what I tell you as a weapon against him, I’d keep my silence. But you won’t do that. There is a gentle strength about you, a compassion and understanding that I witnessed firsthand last night when I saw you mingling with the villagers. I watched you laughing with them and putting them at their ease, and I thought then that you were a wonderful young woman—and the perfect wife for Jason. I still think that.”

He drew a long breath and began. “The first time I saw your husband, I was in Delhi. It was many years ago, and I was working for a wealthy Delhi merchant named Napal who shipped goods back and forth from India all over the world. Napal not only owned the goods he traded, he owned four ships that carried them across the seas. I was first mate on one of those ships.

“I’d been away for six months on an extremely profitable voyage, and when we returned to port, Napal invited the captain and myself to come to his home for a small, private celebration.

“It’s always hot in India, but it seemed even hotter that day, especially because I got lost trying to find Napal’s home. Somehow I ended up in a maze of alleyways and when I finally worked my way out of them, I found myself in a squalid little square filled with filthy, ragged Indians—the poverty there is beyond imagination. At any rate, I looked around, hoping against hope to find someone I could speak to in French or English in order to ask directions.

“I saw a small crowd of people gathered at the end of the square, watching something—I couldn’t see what—and I went over to them. They were standing outside a building, watching what was going on inside it. I started to turn back, to try to retrace my steps, when I saw a crude wooden cross nailed up outside the building. Thinking it was a church and that I might find someone I could speak to in my own language, I pushed through the crowd and went in. I elbowed my way past a hundred ragged Indians toward the front of the place, where I could hear a woman screaming like a fanatic, in English, about lust and the vengeance of the Almighty.

“I finally got to where I could see, and there she was, standing on this wooden scaffold with a little boy beside her. She was pointing to the child and screaming that he was the devil. She shrieked that he was ‘the seed of lust’ and ‘the product of evil,’ and then she jerked the child’s head up and I saw his face.

“I was stunned when I realized the boy was white, not Indian. She shouted at everyone to ‘Look upon the devil and see what vengeance the Lord takes’; then she turned the boy around to show the ‘vengeance of the Lord.’ When I saw his back, I thought I would be sick.”

Captain Farrell swallowed audibly. “Victoria, the little boy’s back was black and blue from his last beating and it was scarred from God knows how many other beatings. From the looks of it, she’d just finished beating him in front of her ‘congregation’—the Indians don’t object to that sort of barbaric cruelty.

His face contorted as he continued. “While I stood there, the demented hag screamed at the child to get down on his knees, to pray for forgiveness from the Lord. He looked her right in the eye, not saying anything, but he didn’t move, and she brought her whip down across his shoulders with enough force to send a grown man to his knees. The child went down to his.
‘Pray, you devil,’
she screamed at the kneeling child, and she hit him again. The child said nothing, he just looked straight ahead; and it was then I saw his eyes . . . His eyes were dry. There wasn’t a single tear in them. But there was pain there—God, they were filled with such pain!”

Victoria shuddered with pity for the unknown child, wondering why Captain Farrell was telling her this hideous story before telling her about Jason.

Captain Farrell’s face twisted. “I’ll never forget the torment in his eyes,” he whispered hoarsely, “or how green they seemed at that moment.”

Victoria’s glass crashed to the floor and shattered. She shook her head wildly, trying to deny what he was telling her. “No,” she cried in anguish. “Oh, please, no—”

Seemingly oblivious to her horror, Captain Farrell continued, staring straight ahead, lost in the memories. “The little boy prayed then, he clasped his hands together and recited, ‘I kneel to the Lord and ask his forgiveness.’ The woman made him say it louder, over and over again, and when she was satisfied, she hauled him to his feet. She pointed at the dirty Indians and told him to beg the righteous for their forgiveness. Then she handed him a little bowl. I stood watching as the little boy went into the crowd to kneel at the feet of her ‘congregation’ and kiss the hems of their dirty robes and ‘beg them for their forgiveness.’ ”