Victoria and the Rogue (5 page)

nearly a married woman.”

She slid her gaze toward her cousin to see how she took this news. She was gratified to see an

astonished Rebecca suck in her breath.

“What?” Rebecca cried. “You’re engaged?”

“Indeed I am,” Victoria said, delighted that she was able to share her news at last. She’d been feeling as

if she might burst from keeping it to herself. It was a relief to tell someone, even if that someone had the ill

judgment to think of Jacob Carstairs as marriageable.

“See, here is his signet ring.” Victoria held out her hand so that Rebecca could examine the gold ring that

Victoria was forced to wear on her middle finger, and not her third, as it was so large on her. Mariah,

sidling by with her arms full of Victoria’s underthings, also stopped to admire it.

“But this is the crest of the Earl of Malfrey,” Rebecca cried as she bent to examine the ring. “Oh, Vicky!

Don’t say you are engaged to Hugo Rothschild!”

“Indeed I am,” Victoria said importantly, pleased to see that this news seemed to be causing Mariah to

treat her pantaloons with more reverence. “I met him on board the ship, and he asked me to marry him

three nights ago, just before he disembarked for Lisbon, where he has business.” Then she added as an

afterthought, “You must promise not to tell anyone, Becky. You, too, Mariah. Lord Malfrey asked that

we keep our engagement secret until he returns to London and can introduce me properly to his mother.”

“I’ll not say a word, m’lady,” Mariah declared staunchly. Rebecca was not so quick to promise,

however.

“Engaged!” Rebecca looked stunned. “And to Lord Malfrey! He is so very handsome! And stylish, too.

Why, I have seen him at Almack’s many a time, and never once has he worn the same waistcoat. He is a

most pleasing gentleman… all that is amiable and obliging.” Then the pretty face clouded over. “But

Vicky, you’re only sixteen. Will your uncles allow you to marry so young?”

Victoria shrugged. “What can they do about it? They’re back in India, and I’m here.”

“There is quite a lot they could do about it,” Rebecca declared. “They could refuse to allow it. And then

you’d have to elope. But then they might cut you off! And then what would the two of you live on? For I

have heard, Vicky, that the earl’s fortune is not what it once was.”

Victoria said kindly, “Don’t trouble yourself on that account, Becky. My uncles cannot cut me off, for I

came into my fortune last year. The money my father left for me is mine to do with what I like. And I

know all about Lord Malfrey’s lack of wealth. That’s why our engagement is such a joy to me. I’ve

always longed for something worthy to do with my wealth.” Victoria tried to put from her head the

uncomfortable memory of Jacob Carstairs saying earlier that day, Well, you must be feeling very happy

indeed, Miss Bee. Finally a chance to be useful to someone. Such a tiresome young man! “Now I will be

able to put my fortune to good use, helping to restore my husband’s family to its former place as one of

the best of London.”

Rebecca continued to look dubious. “I don’t think Mama will like it, Vicky,” she said. “Nor Papa, for

that matter. In fact, I think it might be my duty as your elder cousin to tell them. You are so young, you

know.”

Victoria prickled. “Only a year younger than you,” she pointed out.

“Still,” Rebecca said gravely. “There’s a great difference between sixteen and seventeen, you know.

After all, I’ve already had a season out, and you haven’t. What could you possibly know about men?

You’ve spent the whole of your life in India!”

Living with three of the most vexing, egotistical men in the world, who were completely incapable of

taking their boot heels off the tabletop, Victoria thought crossly to herself. What I don’t know about men,

Miss Becky, would fit into your thimble with room to spare.

“Are you saying you don’t think Lord Malfrey will make me a good husband?” was what she asked

aloud.

“Oh, no,” Rebecca said. “Not at all. Only that… well, can you really be so sure you love him, Vicky, at

only sixteen?”

Victoria, annoyed, asked, “Can you really be so sure you love Captain Carstairs at only seventeen?”

Rebecca blushed prettily. “I did not say I loved him.”

“Well, you do an excellent imitation of it. ‘He is so handsome and charming and droll,’ were your words,

I believe.”

Rebecca tossed her head until her golden curls bounced. “What if I do love him? At least Jacob

Carstairs made his own fortune, and won’t need to depend on his wife to pay his tailor’s bills.”

As there was nothing Victoria could say in response to the first part of her cousin’s remark, she

responded only to the second half: “Captain Carstairs might think about switching tailors,” Victoria

snapped, “as his own is allowing him to gad about town in scandalously low collar points.”

Rebecca sucked in her breath. “There is nothing wrong with Mr. Carstairs’s collar points!”

It was on the tip of Victoria’s tongue to assert that Jacob Carstairs’s collar points were as low as her

opinion of his character, when it occurred to her that it would not do to alienate her cousin. Victoria had

plans for Rebecca. For no sooner had she seen her cousin standing on the dock making eyes at Jacob

Carstairs than Victoria had decided that he was the last man in the world with whom she could allow her

cousin to become involved. Victoria intended to find a friend of Lord Malfrey’s for Rebecca, so that the

four of them could summer together at the earl’s estate in the lake district. It was Victoria’s duty, she

knew, to rescue Rebecca not only from the obnoxious company of her entirely too large family, but from

Jacob Carstairs, as well.

And so Victoria swallowed down her ire and said in the sweetest voice imaginable, “Of course there’s

nothing wrong with Captain Carstairs’s collar points. I was only teasing. Let’s not quarrel, Becky.”

Rebecca did not look inclined to stop quarreling. Nor, it turned out, did she seem inclined to keep her

mouth shut on the subject of Victoria’s engagement.

“It just feels wrong,” she said, “hiding something like this from Mama.”

Victoria glanced at the gown Mariah happened to be unfolding from the last of her trunks.

“You know,” Victoria said slyly, “I probably won’t be staying long beneath your father’s roof, Becky.

Soon Lord Malfrey and I will marry, and I’ll go away to live with him. Which is too bad, because I was

just thinking what fun it was going to be, living with another woman. I’ve never done it, you know… not

since my mother died. I was thinking what a jolly time we’ll have, staying up late gossiping, and trying on

each other’s clothes. If you like something of mine, you know, you need only ask to borrow it, and it’s

yours for as long as you like. That gown you were admiring in the mirror, for instance. Wouldn’t you like

to wear it to dinner tonight?”

In half a second, Rebecca’s expression turned from mulish to wistful.

“That gown?” she said. “I really might wear it? You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all,” Victoria said. “But you’ll need to take the fan that goes with it. It’s the blue feathered one,

Mariah, the one you just put in the top drawer.”

Mariah pulled out the aforementioned fan and presented it to Rebecca with a curtsy. “’Twill go with your

eyes, miss,” she said obsequiously. And Victoria began to sense that there might be some hope for

Mariah after all.

And hope for Rebecca as well, Victoria decided later, when, garbed in borrowed finery, her cousin

made quite a splash as she entered the dining room. Mrs. Gardiner, fearing—wrongly, of course—that

Victoria would be too fatigued from her long sea voyage to wish to go out her first night in London, had

arranged for a quiet family dinner—though Mrs. Gardiner’s idea of quiet and Victoria’s contrasted

sharply. Quiet, to Victoria, meant shutting all the little Gardiners up in their nursery so that the adults might

eat in relative peace.

Quiet to Mrs. Gardiner, however, appeared simply to mean that no outside guests had been invited to

dine with the family.

And so when Victoria and Rebecca, summoned by Perkins, the butler, appeared in the dining room, it

was to observe young Annabelle and Judith leading their younger brothers in a mad dash around the

table, Elizabeth swinging from the portieres, and Jeremiah dragging an unfortunate kitten about by the

scruff of its neck with his teeth, in an apparent imitation of “Kitty.” It was a testament to Rebecca’s

beauty—or perhaps to Victoria’s dressmaker back in Jaipur—that the sight of their sister in the

borrowed blue gown caused all such activity to cease. Jeremiah even dropped the kitten, who

scampered, with much foresight for so young a creature, up the portieres, and thus out of reach of her

pint-sized tormentor.

“Becky!” cried Clara, who was closest to Rebecca in age, being fourteen and very aware of the fact that

she was well on her way to being as pretty as her elder sister. “You look like a princess!”

Mr. Gardiner said nothing except, “What, tureen of beef again?” after a glance into the chafing dish, but

Mrs. Gardiner was full of compliments for her daughter.

“Such a lovely gown!” she cried. “It goes so well with your eyes, my dear. It is very generous of your

cousin to loan it to you. It might look well, if dear Vicky will loan it to you again, at Dame Ashforth’s

cotillion next week. Take care not to spill anything on it tonight and ruin it.”

“I won’t, Mama,” Rebecca murmured demurely, and Victoria knew that her secret—the one concerning

her engagement—was safe. She was feeling very smug— though not at all pleased with the Gardiners’

cook, who seemed to put very little actual beef in her tureen of beef. Victoria saw at once that she and

Cook were going to have to have words—when Perkins appeared in the doorway and announced,

“Captain Carstairs.”

Victoria very nearly dropped her spoon. Captain Carstairs? Captain Carstairs? Hadn’t she just left

him—with hopes that it would be forever—at the docks? What on earth was he doing here, at her aunt

and uncle’s house, just a few hours later?

“Hmmph,” her uncle said, not doing at all a tidy job with his napkin. Bits of tureen clung to his beard.

“Show him in, show him in.”

“Oh, yes, do,” Mrs. Gardiner, from the other end of the table, cried. “And set another place at the table,

Perkins. The captain will want to join us, I’m sure.”

“Hurrah,” cried Jeremiah, upsetting his bowl with a stray elbow. “Uncle Jacob is here!”

Uncle Jacob? Victoria could not imagine that her evening could get any worse. Was she never to be free

of the company of this obnoxious young man?

A few seconds later he appeared in the doorway in a fresh waistcoat and shirt, his boots highly shined as

ever… but his collar points still at least two inches lower than they ought to have been. The children—a

clearly undisciplined brood—leaped from their seats at the sight of him, and surged forward in a wall of

beaming faces and beef-tureeny hands, crying, “Uncle Jacob! Uncle Jacob!”

Captain Carstairs managed quickly to extricate himself, however, by producing a bag and declaring,

“Yes, it’s me. It’s good to see all of you again. And look what I’ve brought you from Africa!”

The children left off clinging to his coat and fell upon the bag instead, like a pack of ravenous little

vultures. Clever of him! Victoria could not help thinking, and wished she had had such a bag back upon

the pier, with which she might have defended herself against the Gardiner horde. Jacob Carstairs, free at

last, turned his bright-eyed gaze upon the four adults left at the table— five if you counted Clara, who

had evidently decided herself too old to leap upon the bag like her younger siblings, but who nevertheless

was eyeing it with undisguised curiosity.

“Good evening,” the young captain said, bowing politely toward Mrs. Gardiner, Rebecca, and Victoria.

“So sorry to interrupt your dinner. It was good of you to invite me in.”

“Nonsense,” Mr. Gardiner said gruffly. “Sit down and eat.”

“Yes, do, Jacob,” Mrs. Gardiner beseeched him. “That is, if your mother can spare you. I don’t want

her to be put out with me, stealing you away your first night back in town after so long a voyage.”

“My mother has gone to the opera,” Captain Carstairs said. “She did not know I was to arrive today,

and did not feel she could give up such fine seats.”

“Then you are orphaned for the night!” Mrs. Gardiner cried. “And so it is my duty to feed you! Sit, sit,

do. There is plenty for everyone.”

“In that case”—Mr. Carstairs dropped into the chair that Perkins had placed at the table for him—“I

shall be happy to. There is nothing I enjoy better, as I’m sure you know, Mrs. Gardiner, than your fine

cook’s excellent tureen of beef.”

Victoria shot the young captain a look of complete incredulity over her own bowl of the watery stuff.

She had always thought there was something a little off about Jacob Carstairs, but now she began to feel

that perhaps he was actually mad. He was either mad or he was dissembling, because there was nothing

in the least bit excellent about the Gardiners’ cook’s tureen of beef.

Then Jacob Carstairs did something that confirmed Victoria’s belief that he was not wholly sound in the

head. He winked at her! Across the dining table!

She was certain he winked only because he knew as well as she did that the tureen of beef was terrible.

Unfortunately, however, Rebecca caught the wink and misinterpreted it, flinging Victoria an accusing