Victoria and the Rogue
Victoria Growing up in far-off India, wealthy young heiress Lady Victoria Arbuthnot was accustomed to handling her own affairs -- not to mention everyone else's. But in her sixteenth year, Vicky is unceremoniously shipped off to London to find a husband. With her usual aplomb, however, Lady Victoria gets herself engaged to the perfect English gentleman, even before setting foot on British soil. The Rogue Hugo Rothschild, ninth earl of Malfrey, is everything a girl could want in a future husband: he is handsome and worldly, if not rich. Lady Victoria has everything just as she'd like it. That is, if raffish young ship captain Jacob Carstairs would leave well enough alone. Jacob's meddling is nothing short of exasperating, and Victoria is mystified by his persistence. But when it becomes clear that young Lord Malfrey just might not be all that he's professed to be, Victoria is forced to admit, for the first time in her life, that she is wrong. Not only about her fiance, but about the reason behind the handsome ship captain's interference.
MEG CABOTVictoria and the Rogue
For Benjamin
Contents
"How lovely it must be to be rich,"...
"You did it on purpose," Victoria...
Victoria let out a merry laugh...
"Well?" Victoria spun in a circle before...
"Oh, Lady Victoria!" the dowager...
"But are you certain you
want
to go,...
Victoria, a good deal taken aback...
Victoria stood before the mirror...
Oh, well.
She oughtn’t have been...
After such an ignominious end to...
Victoria refused to admit that...
Victoria thought that perhaps Hugo’s...
It was not as steep a climb...
There were, of course, any number...
Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned...
"Captain Carstairs," Victoria said,...
READ MEG CABOT’S OTHER HISTORICAL NOVEL…
The Atlantic Ocean, Gibraltar, 1810
“Lady Victoria?”
Victoria turned her head at the sound of her name being called so softly from across the ship deck. The
moon was full. She could see the person calling to her quite clearly by its silver light… but she doubted
that he, in turn, would be able to perceive the blush that suffused her cheeks at the sight of him.
Yet how could she help but blush? The sight of the tall, flaxen-haired lord nearly always brought color to
her cheeks—not to mention a curious flutter to her pulse. He was so handsome. What woman would not
blush when such a good-looking man happened to glance her way?
And tonight Lord Malfrey was doing a good deal more than glancing. Indeed, he was crossing the deck
to come and stand beside her at the ship railing, where she’d leaned for the past half hour staring at the
hypnotic band of light that the moon was casting upon the water, and listening to the gentle lap of waves
upon the sides of the Harmony, the ship that had carried them all from India.
“Good evening, my lord,” Victoria murmured demurely, when the earl reached her side.
“You are well, Lady Victoria?” Lord Malfrey asked with just a hint of anxiety in his deep voice.
“Forgive me for asking, but you hardly touched your dinner. And then you left the table before dessert
was served.”
Victoria did not think it would be at all romantic, standing as they were beneath that lush silver moon, to
inform the earl that she’d left the table because the roast had been so scandalously underdone that she’d
felt it her duty to go to the galley and have words about it with the cook.
It was not her place, of course, to have done so. Mrs. White, the captain’s wife, was the one who ought
properly to have taken the ship’s cook to task.
But Mrs. White, in Victoria’s opinion, would not know a roux from a bearnaise, and quite probably
liked her meat undercooked. Victoria had never been able to abide slovenly cooking. And it was so
simple to do a roast properly!
But this was hardly the kind of thing one brought up before a young man like Lord Malfrey. Not under a
night sky like the one above them. Besides, one simply did not speak of underdone meat in front of an
earl.
And so instead Victoria said, stretching a hand eloquently toward the moon, “Why, I only wanted a
breath of fresh air and happened upon this view. It was so lovely, how could I return below and miss
such a breathtaking sight?”
This was, Victoria thought to herself, a bit of a high-flown speech. There were those on board, she
knew, who might well make retching noises had they happened to have overheard it.
Fortunately, Hugo Rothschild, the ninth Earl of Malfrey, was not one of those people. His blue-eyed
gaze followed the graceful arc of her arm, and he said reverently, “Indeed. I have never seen such a
beautiful moon. But”— and here his gaze returned to Victoria—“it is not the only breathtaking sight to be
seen here on deck.”
Victoria knew she was blushing quite hard now—but from pleasure, not embarrassment. Why, the earl
was flirting with her! How perfectly delightful. Her ayah back in Jaipur had warned her that men might try
to flirt with her, but Victoria had hardly expected someone as handsome as Lord Malfrey to pay her such
civilities. It was beginning to seem as if the evening, which had looked rather dismal in light of the
disastrous roast, was shaping up very nicely indeed.
“Why, Lord Malfrey,” Victoria said, lowering her sooty eyelashes—though they were not really sooty,
of course, as Victoria was a scrupulous bather. But they were, or so her ayah had informed her, as black
as soot, anyway. “I can’t think what you mean.”
“Can’t you?” Lord Malfrey reached out and suddenly took the hand that she’d purposefully left lying
upon the ship’s railing, temptingly close to his. “Victoria—may I call you Victoria?”
He could have called her Bertha and Victoria would not have minded in the least. Not when he was
pressing her hand so tightly, as if it were the most precious thing in the world, against his chest. She could
feel his heart drumming, strong and vibrant, beneath the cream-colored satin of his waistcoat. Goodness,
she thought with some astonishment. I believe he is about to propose!
Which he promptly did.
“Victoria,” Lord Malfrey said, the moonlight bringing into high relief the planes of his regularly featured
face. He was such a handsome man, with his square jaw and broad shoulders. He would, Victoria
decided with some satisfaction, make a very dashing husband indeed. “I know we have not been
acquainted long—just under three months—but these past few weeks… well, they’ve been the happiest
I’ve ever known. It breaks my heart that tomorrow I shall have to leave you to travel on to England
alone, for I have business to attend to in Lisbon….”
Dreadful Lisbon! How Victoria hated the sound of that foul city, stealing away this excessively charming
young man! Lucky Lisbon, that it should get to bask in the glow of the delightful Lord Malfrey.
“Oh, well,” she said, trying to sound airily unconcerned. “Perhaps we shall meet again in London by and