Victoria and the Rogue (4 page)
one Jacob Carstairs. For Captain Carstairs, Victoria knew—though she dared not glance his way—was
somewhere about, and was undoubtedly watching the scene with his customary smirk. To hear her aunt’s
voice shrieking out her physical flaws like that— and Victoria was very aware that she did have flaws,
though she did not consider them quite so serious as her aunt evidently did; she was well aware of her
lack of stature, and while she did not think of herself as too thin, she knew she was wanting in certain
areas where it was in vogue for young ladies to be well padded—was quite mortifying enough. But to
know that Jacob Carstairs could hear her…Well, if Victoria could have chosen to expire on the spot, she
would have.
Her cheeks, she knew, were glowing beneath her tan, and she no longer had the brim of her bonnet nor
her parasol to hide them beneath: her bonnet was hanging by its ribbons around her neck, and her
parasol had been knocked from her hand by her aunt’s enthusiastic embrace. She could not, even if
she’d wanted to, have raised her gaze to meet Captain Carstairs’s, because she would not have been
able to see him, so much were her enthusiastic relations crowding her. Her gown and pelisse were being
tugged at by a dozen eager hands, as her young cousins vied with one another for her attention. Only one
of those cousins did she recognize… indeed, the vast majority of them had not yet been born when last
Victoria had seen their parents, and that was her cousin Rebecca, who was closest to her own age. It
was Rebecca with whom a four-year-old Victoria, along with their parents, had traveled to India, in
order that their mothers, who were sisters, might visit their four brothers, stationed in Jaipur with the
British military.
Sadly, it was during that visit that a malarial outbreak had taken the lives of both of Victoria’s parents,
causing Rebecca’s parents to flee with their daughter back to England, leaving behind a sickly and
contagious Victoria, who was not expected to survive.
Survive Victoria had, however, and no amount of across-the-sea cajoling had been successful in
inducing her uncles to send her back to England to live with their sister, who thought it quite unsuitable for
a young lady—particularly the only daughter of the Duke of Harrow—to be raised by three young
bachelors. It was only now that Victoria had reached marriageable age that her mother’s brothers had
decided to relinquish their guardianship… a decision Victoria could not help noting coincided with her
growing disgust for and complaints about their sometimes scandalous behavior. For example, she had
never been able to get a single one of her uncles to refrain from putting his feet upon the table after a
heavy meal.
Victoria could only dimly remember her own parents, and recalled the Gardiners just as vaguely. She
had a distant memory of Rebecca joining her in a mud-pie-building contest. Now a golden-haired beauty
of seventeen, Rebecca, Victoria could not help noticing, looked perfectly unlikely to take part in any such
activity. She had not even deigned to join her family’s undignified greeting of their cousin from India.
Instead she’d stood a little apart, spinning a parasol in one hand and smiling rather coquettishly. It took a
moment or two for Victoria to realize whom Rebecca was directing that smile toward, and when she did,
she felt stunned. Why, it was none other than Captain Carstairs at whom Rebecca was smiling! And that
gentleman, Victoria noticed with disgust, was smiling back! It was clear that the two of them had met
before, because Victoria heard Rebecca call, over the din her younger brothers and sisters were making,
“Good afternoon, Captain Carstairs!”
But though Captain Carstairs acknowledged the greeting with a deeper smile and a bow, he was not
given a chance to reply, since Mrs. White began tugging rather forcefully on his sleeve. He bent down to
hear what that good lady had to say, and Rebecca, looking a bit put out, finally glanced in Victoria’s
direction. It was then that Victoria saw her cousin smile again, revealing twin dimples on either side of her
rosebud mouth.
“Welcome, Cousin Vicky,” Rebecca said kindly.
Victoria found herself seized by a sudden wave of guilt. Just seconds before she had been struck by an
inexplicable urge to box her pretty cousin’s ears. And not because Becky had grown up to be so very
beautiful. Victoria never envied other girls’ looks, because while her own certainly might be lacking, she
knew she had other qualities that made up for any want of dimples or curves.
No, Victoria had felt like slapping Rebecca because she’d caught her making eyes at Jacob Carstairs.
Was the girl simple in the head? Did she not realize what a thoroughly despicable young man Jacob
Carstairs was? And what was Victoria’s aunt doing, allowing her daughter to be on friendly terms with
such a reprobate?
Rebecca’s “Welcome, Cousin Vicky,” however, was all that was civil and friendly. Victoria supposed
she could forgive her. Besides, Victoria knew she would not have to put up with any of the Gardiners for
very long. As soon as the earl returned from Lisbon, Victoria would demand that he procure a special
license so that they could be married at once. A fortnight was all she thought she’d be able to bear of her
aunt and uncle’s hospitality.
Victoria smiled at her cousin, then turned her attention to thanking her aunt, whose long monologue
concerning Victoria’s defects had been interrupted by the sight of one of her younger children hauling a
small dog about by the neck.
“Aunt Beatrice,” Victoria began, “it’s so lovely to see you again. Thank you so much for having me—”
“Jeremiah!” Mrs. Gardiner snapped. “Put that dog down! How many times have I told you not to hold
him by the head? You might kill him!”
Not to be defeated in her attempt to thank her hosts, Victoria turned toward her uncle. “And it’s very
nice to see you again, too, Uncle Walter.”
Her uncle, Mr. Gardiner, had terrified Victoria when she’d been little, due to his gruff
uncommunicativeness. He had changed very little in the twelve years since she’d last seen him, she soon
saw. “Harumph,” was all he said to her, though he did manage a bow of acknowledgment. Then he
turned toward Captain Carstairs, who stood a few feet away, and growled, “Welcome back, Carstairs.
And how did you find Africa?”
Victoria was not able to hear Mr. Carstairs’s reply, because her aunt had started up again.
“Let’s get poor Vicky home, darlings,” she was braying for all the dockhands in London to hear. “She
isn’t used to English weather, and could easily come down with quinsy if the heavens break, which they
seem threatening to do at any moment. And we wouldn’t want Cousin Vicky with a red, sniffling nose,
now, would we?” Mrs. Gardiner let out a laugh that Victoria was certain could be heard all the way back
to Bombay. “’Twould frighten away all her suitors!”
Just as Victoria was certain she could not possibly feel more humiliated, she heard Jacob Carstairs quip,
“Oh, I can think of one or two who wouldn’t mind.”
Victoria shot him an aggrieved look, but saw at once that it didn’t do a bit of good. Captain Carstairs
grinned at her above the heads of her cousins, and continued to do so as she was carried away by them
toward the barouche. The last thing she saw, as they pulled away from the Harmony, was Mrs. White
fluttering a lace handkerchief in her direction, crying, “Oh, good-bye, good-bye, Lady Victoria! I shall
call upon you next week!” and beside her, Jacob Carstairs, smiling like a Hindi statue of Ginesh.
Insufferable man!
“How lovely it must be to be rich,” Rebecca Gardiner said with a sigh, as she held one of Victoria’s
many ball gowns to her shoulders and admired her reflection in the full-length looking glass of the dressing
room they were to share during the course of Victoria’s stay.
A stay that Victoria had already decided was going to be very short indeed. The Gardiners’ London
town house was quite nice, but with nine children—nine!—four dogs, three cats, assorted rabbits, ferrets,
and budgies, two parents, a butler, cook, housekeeper, two maids, a nanny, a driver and a stableboy, the
place was entirely too crowded for Victoria’s taste. Already she was longing for the airy villa she and her
uncles had shared, with a staff that lived out and only well-mannered dogs or the occasional
mongoose—to kill the cobras that invariably coiled in the bath—as pets.
How very different things were in the Gardiner household! It seemed that Victoria could not turn around
without stepping on a small child or cat’s paw. As if that were not bad enough, the help left a good deal
to be desired. Victoria could see that she was going to have to take her aunt’s staff firmly in hand. She
had already resolved that Mariah, the undermaid, was going to have to go. In fact, Victoria was too
concerned over Mariah’s less than careful unpacking of her belongings to pay much attention to what her
cousin was saying.
“Yes,” was how Victoria replied to her cousin’s statement. To the hapless Mariah, however, who was
crushing a very expensive crepe de chine wrapper, Victoria said, “That is to be hung, Mariah, not
folded.”
Rebecca, rather like Mariah, paid not the slightest bit of attention to Victoria.
“Mama says you’ve simply thousands of pounds.” Rebecca pointed one of her toes, and admired the
way it peeped out from the ruffled hem of the dress she held. “I wish I had thousands of pounds. If I did,
I wouldn’t stay here when I came to visit London. I would stay in a hotel, and order ices to be brought to
me all day long.”
“If you ate ices all day, you would become ill. Besides, my uncles wouldn’t let me stay in a hotel,”
Victoria said. “They said it wasn’t considered proper in England for a young lady to stay in a hotel
without a suitable chaperon. Although in India no one would think twice about it.”
“It must be divine,” Rebecca said, clearly not in the least interested in hearing about India, “to have all
the money in the world to buy pretty things. Tell me, how many fans do you own?”
“Oh, dozens,” Victoria said. “It was so hot most of the year in Jaipur. Oh, Mariah, do be careful with
that gown. Can’t you see it’s silk?”
“I only have two fans,” Rebecca said glumly. “And Jeremiah ripped one of them. Oh, it isn’t fair! You
have all the luck—a fortune, dozens of fans, and delicious Captain Carstairs all to yourself for weeks and
weeks.”
That got Victoria’s full attention, as nothing else her cousin had said had. Mariah and her slipshod
unpacking skills were forgotten as Victoria spun around to stare at Rebecca.
“Captain Carstairs?” she cried in astonishment.
Rebecca nodded dreamily to her reflection in the long mirror. “Isn’t he wonderful? I wish Papa had left
me behind in India with you back in ’ninety-eight. Then you and I might have sailed back to England
together, and had the company of delicious Mr. Carstairs morning, noon, and night.”
Victoria made a retching noise. It wasn’t ladylike, but she couldn’t help it.
Rebecca noticed, and raised both her eyebrows in surprise.
“You didn’t enjoy Captain Carstairs’s company during the voyage?” she asked in incredulous tones.
“Hardly!” Victoria declared. “Jacob Carstairs is the most contrary gentleman I have ever had the
displeasure of meeting!”
Rebecca looked shocked. “But he is so exceedingly amiable,” she said.
Victoria snorted. “Exceedingly rude, impertinent, and offensive, you mean. And if you dare to tell me
that he is considered by the ton to be anything like a catch, I shall scream.”
“Well, he is,” Rebecca said bluntly, and Victoria obliged her by screaming, shrilly enough to cause the
hamhanded Mariah nearly to drop the bottle of rose attar she’d been lifting from one of Victoria’s many
trunks.
“But Captain Carstairs is all that is gentlemanly,” Rebecca went on very seriously. “He has business
dealings with Papa and frequently stays to dinner—and often invites us, in return, to dine with him and his
mother—so we are fortunate enough to see him quite often. He has never been anything but charming.
And he is so excessively handsome and droll. And quite wealthy, besides.”
“Wealthy?” Victoria, rescuing the rose attar, looked doubtful. “He’s only a naval officer.”
“Not at all,” Rebecca said. “Do you know that ship you sailed, the Harmony? Well, Jacob Carstairs
owns it. He owns the entire Harmony line. It was his father’s company, but when he died it all went to
Captain Carstairs. And he, in a few short years, turned it from what was at the time of his father’s
death—a bit of a disappointment, I think—into the quite profitable company it is today. Jacob Carstairs,
thanks to his hard work, is quite fantastically rich.”
Victoria digested this. Jacob Carstairs, fantastically rich? Well, that certainly explained why he’d seemed
to feel no compunction about teasing a duke’s daughter.
Still, what about those collar points?
“I don’t believe it,” Victoria said finally.
“Believe it,” Rebecca said. “He has forty or fifty thousand pounds, at least. He is every bit as wealthy as
you are, Vicky.”
Victoria sent her cousin a pained look. “Must you call me that?” she asked.
“Vicky?” Rebecca looked mildly startled. “But we’ve always called you Vicky.”
“It’s Victoria,” Victoria said. “Vicky is a child’s name. And I am no longer a child. I am, in fact, very