Victoria and the Rogue (16 page)

least a little. But I can see now that I was mistaken in that hope. Please consider our engagement at an

end, and do not attempt to contact me ever again. I hope you will understand if I see myself out, and do

not wait for your servant. Good morning.”

Victoria turned to go, but was unfortunately not quick enough to escape Lord Malfrey’s impassioned

plea that she give him another chance—that of course he loved her, only he was so stunned by the news

she’d imparted that he hadn’t expressed himself the way he’d meant to. Nor did she manage to slip out in

time to miss the dowager Lady Malfrey’s fainting fit.

And Victoria being Victoria, she was perfectly incapable of simply walking away when there was a

creature in need. And so instead of exiting icily, as she’d intended, Victoria rang for the dowager’s maid

and stayed at the unfortunate lady’s side, chafing her wrists and pressing hartshorn upon her, until aid in

the form of a rather slatternly-looking abigail arrived. Sadly, this also meant that Victoria was forced to

listen to Lord Malfrey’s apologies that much longer.

They were, so far as apologies went, eloquent and impassioned. But they did nothing to dissuade

Victoria from, once the young man’s mother regained consciousness, repeating her good-byes and

departing with as much haste as she could.

It was only when she was seated at last in the Gardiners’ chaise-and-four and on her way home again

that Victoria gave herself permission to cry….

But of course when she was finally willing to allow herself to weep, she found that she could not. Though

her throat ached mightily, her eyes were perfectly dry. She rode home in a state of shock, unbetrothed

and unwanted, unable to cry and yet seething inside. It was bad luck for Captain Carstairs that he

happened to be the first person Victoria encountered upon setting foot back inside the Gardiners’ door.

“What?” she demanded rudely, seeing him coming down the hallway with Jeremiah and Judith riding

upon his back, peacock feathers in their hands to serve as switches. “You’re still here?”

“I thought I made myself clear,” Captain Carstairs said, with a smile she supposed other girls might find

charming, but which she found only insufferably roguish. “We simply have got to talk, Miss Bee.”

That was the final straw. Victoria could take many things—the foul weather, her hair’s refusal to curl,

even betrayal by the man to whom she’d pledged her heart. But she couldn’t, simply couldn’t take being

called Miss Bee on today, of all days.

And so, uttering a prolonged and heartfelt scream, she barreled past Captain Carstairs and two of her

very surprised cousins, and ran up the stairs to her room, where she astonished Rebecca by diving

beneath the covers of her bed and refusing to come out from under them for the rest of the day, despite

continued entreaties by Rebecca, Mrs. Gardiner, Mariah, and even Clara, who brought the unwelcome

news that Lord Malfrey was below, and wished a word.

It was only then that Victoria, still in her bonnet, lifted her head and conveyed the unhappy truth: that her

wedding to the earl was off, and that she would appreciate it if everyone were to leave her alone for the

rest of the day.

The Gardiners, stunned but sympathetic, did as Victoria bade. She was left alone, with only Mariah to

hover about and ask if she could bring her ladyship anything, such as ices or back copies of the Ladies’

Journal, which were, Mariah confided to Cook, the sorts of things she herself would want, if her man had

up and left her.

Lord Malfrey was sent away with looks of great suspicion and mistrust, since the Gardiners did not

know it was their niece, and not the earl, who’d broken off their engagement.

Only Captain Carstairs, hearing the news from a very agitated and happy Clara (who dearly loved tales

of gloom and heartbreak, particularly any that involved her female relations), seemed unsurprised, and

said only that he hoped Lady Victoria felt better upon the morrow, when he would return to call upon

her. Then he went home whistling, to Clara’s great disapproval, in spite of the rain, the solemnity of the

occasion, and the fact that gentlemen simply did not whistle.

In fact, Clara later informed her sister, it was a very good thing she had transferred her affections from

Captain Carstairs to Mr. Abbott, because Uncle Jacob, Clara confided, seemed rather insensitive… a

sentiment with which Rebecca, in light of the whistling, was forced to agree.

CHAPTER TWELVE

After such an ignominious end to her engagement to Lord Malfrey, Victoria by rights could have spent

the rest of the following week in bed, and no one would have thought ill of her. A girl who’d suffered a

broken engagement for whatever reason—whether she had broken it off herself, or her former fiancé had

called it quits—was a piteous girl indeed, and there wasn’t a matron in London who wouldn’t have

understood if Victoria quietly withdrew from society for the rest of the season.

But Victoria simply had too much to do to spend more than twenty-four hours wallowing in her own

grief. After all, she had all of her wedding plans to cancel, not to mention Rebecca’s romance with

Charles Abbott to coordinate. And then there were the younger Gardiners, who, by her catching them at

such a tender age, might be molded by Victoria into respectable citizens of the commonwealth. Clara

needed to be taught that dramatics were all well and good in their place, but that that place was nowhere

outside of the schoolroom. And young Jeremiah still, upon occasion, lifted the household pets, and

oftentimes his little brother, by the head, a habit of which Victoria was determined to cure him.

Mrs. Gardiner—though she might not be aware of it—needed Victoria’s help in keeping the household

running smoothly, and Mr. Gardiner had, through Victoria’s careful tutelage since her arrival, actually

begun saying things other than “Harumph” at the dining table. He was, Victoria felt confident, just days

away from actually uttering a whole sentence about something other than the food. To quit now would

be, in Victoria’s mind, as catastrophic as the floods that sometimes swept through the Indian villages near

which she’d grown up, killing hundreds and leaving just as many homeless.

Victoria simply couldn’t give up on any of these projects at so crucial a stage, and so was up and out of

bed the next morning, with eyes still devoid of redness—for even in the dead of night, when the thought

struck her like a knife that she was unattached again, and would have to start all over if she ever wanted

to get married, she had not been able to shed a tear.

She refused, however, to worry about this seeming coldness on her part. The loss of Lord Malfrey, she

told herself, was so profoundly distressing that she couldn’t even weep over it. No, it was clear that

inside her chest, her heart was weeping blood….

But she kept this picturesque image to herself, lest Clara overhear it and attempt to employ it during her

next impassioned speech about her having not yet discovered her one true love.

Victoria had other things to deal with besides the Gardiners and the cancellation of her wedding plans.

No, there was a certain pesky ship captain who kept appearing on her aunt and uncle’s doorstep,

demanding to see her. Victoria had, upon waking the morning after her sad parting of ways from Lord

Malfrey, penned a quick note to Captain Carstairs in response to the one she’d received from him the

day before. Her note was almost as brief as his had been. It said:

Nothing to talk about. Kindly leave me alone.

Yours, V. Arbuthnot

Victoria could not, for the life of her, make out which part of Kindly leave me alone Jacob Carstairs did

not understand, but these four words were apparently as foreign to him as Hindustanee, since he showed

up at the house shortly after receiving her missive, and would not leave, according to a distraught Mrs.

Gardiner, until he’d seen the Lady Victoria.

“I know you’re hardly in the mood for company, Vicky,” her aunt Beatrice said, as Victoria sat at that

good lady’s secretary in the morning room, dashing off letters to her bank—for though she felt sorely

used by Lord Malfrey, she had been stupid enough to agree to marry him at one point, and so she

thought it only fair to pay for such expenditures as the picnic (it was not, after all, the dowager’s fault her

son was a cad), and was directing her agents to send checks to cover whatever bills the Rothschilds

might have accrued in her name. The only thing for which she swore she would not pay was that ring.

That, she felt, had been Hugo’s folly, for which he alone must pay… just as she would, from now until

the end of time, have to pay for ever having entertained the idea of marrying him in the first place.

“But,” Mrs. Gardiner went on, “Captain Carstairs is… well, like part of the family. And he does look

rather…”

Here the good woman sent a piercing look in her eldest daughter’s direction, but seeing Rebecca

gnawing on the tip of her own pen—for she was absorbed in responding to a letter from Mr. Abbott, and

was trying to think of a word besides deplorable that rhymed with adorable—decided that it was safe to

continue.

“Well, he seems eager to see you,” Mrs. Gardiner went on. “Don’t you think you could just poke your

head in and tell him you’re all right? Because he says he won’t leave until he’s had a word, and

yesterday, you know, he was here for seven hours—”

Victoria threw down her pen and rose with a sigh.

“Very well, Aunt,” she said, feeling very irritable indeed. She had no idea what game the captain was

playing, but she supposed it had something to do with that kiss—that horrid, wretched, wonderful

kiss—that she had been trying ever since to put out of her head, without much success. If Lord Malfrey

had ever kissed her like that, she supposed she would not have minded in the least that he was only

marrying her for her money, so long as he kept on kissing her that way, and on a regular basis.

But as it had been the odious Jacob Carstairs, and not the earl, who’d kissed her with so much passion

and abandon, she could only feel agitated over the entire situation.

Victoria left the morning room and went down to the drawing room, where the captain had installed

himself to wait for her. She walked in to find him swinging his arms like a gorilla in front of some of the

smaller Gardiners, and uttering what she supposed he figured were apelike sounds. His audience sat in

rapt and wide-eyed silence before him, until one of them noticed Victoria in the doorway and said,

“Look, Cousin Vicky! Uncle Jacob is a monkey!”

“He most certainly is,” Victoria said, as Jacob straightened and, not even looking sheepish, shooed his

audience—bitter in their disappointment that the show was over—away.

When they were finally alone, Jacob Carstairs pulled on his waistcoat—not that it did any good: his

collar points stayed exactly where they were, still at least two inches lower than any other man’s in

England—and, without bothering with social niceties such as “good morning” or “Lady Victoria, you look

a vision of loveliness”—said, “Well. Is it true? Have you chucked him?”

Victoria raised her gaze to the ceiling. Really, she did not know why she constantly had to be stuck with

such incompetent suitors. Either they were only interested in her for her money, or they seemed simply to

have no idea how rational human beings conducted themselves. She said tiredly, “If you mean by that

very rude question has my engagement to Lord Malfrey been called off, the answer is yes, it has.”

And then, seeing with horror that an extremely self-satisfied smile was creeping across the captain’s

face, Victoria added hastily, “And kindly do not think that anything you said—or did—to me the other

night had anything whatsoever to do with my decision to end my relationship with him. I merely had

occasion to observe that he was not quite as… honorable as I might have hoped.”

“Occasion to observe.” Sadly, Jacob Carstairs was still smiling. “And precisely how did this occasion

arise?”

“Never you mind,” Victoria said severely, her heart beginning to thump in a most unsatisfactory manner.

Jacob Carstairs was the very last person on earth whom she wanted to know the truth about how she’d

tricked her former fiancé into revealing his true colors. Why was it that she could never seem to maintain

an air of ladylike refinement around this man, of all men?

“Suffice it to say,” Victoria went on, “that it did. And now that Lord Malfrey is gone from my life, you

haven’t any reason to bother with me. I hope you will… well, go and bother the next poor heiress he gets

himself engaged to.” She turned around and went to the door to the drawing room, pointedly holding it

open for him. “Good day, Captain.”

But Captain Carstairs didn’t budge from where he stood before the drawing room windows—through

which sunlight, a rather strange sight after so much rain, filtered shyly, bringing out light brown highlights in

his otherwise dark hair. Instead of leaving, however, he merely grinned at Victoria.

“I don’t have any reason to bother with you, do I?” he asked, with one rakishly raised eyebrow. “Is that

what you really think, Miss Bee?”

Furious—because one of the parlor maids, polishing the newel post at the bottom of the staircase to the

second floor, overheard the captain calling Victoria Miss Bee, and looked extremely surprised by the