The Letter (6 page)

While she talked, William expanded her ideas and added a few of his own.

And more wine was poured.

She lifted the sparkling glass and stole a quick glance at William to find him regarding her carefully. The searing fire blew through her again.

Their food arrived, interrupting the intimate silence.

She had gotten carried away talking about her ideas for the store and had completely banished the important matters at hand from the conversation.

As each moment passed, it was more difficult to live with the lie about her Pap, especially with Worthington so close and his overwhelming presence so difficult to ignore.

But she couldn’t tell him the truth now. Not only was it way too late in the game, he had proven to be far too dangerous. Victoria mentally shuddered to think of what he would do if he knew he had been deceived.

The filet of beef was heavenly and Victoria was certain she had never tasted anything so delicious, except perhaps her mother’s Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners.

“
Why haven’t you ever married?” William put his fork down and regarded her keenly.

Completely unprepared for the question, Victoria gulped down a bite of her meat.

“
I . . I just never met anyone I wanted to marry,” she answered truthfully in the swiftness of the moment.

“
Surely your family should have arranged a match for you before now. Even though your father is a merchant, you are beautiful, and often beautiful women can marry above their station.”

So stunned, a response failed Victoria right before outrage rushed through her. How dare he say such a thing! What an arrogant snob.

“
People of my station don’t have arranged marriages most of the time. Besides, that is a very prudish and old fashioned way of thinking.” She daintily dabbed her mouth with the napkin in contrast to her populace words. “This is America.”

“
I see,” he picked up his fork and resumed his meal with an annoying nonchalance.

“
Why aren’t you married?” Victoria had the overwhelming desire to lash out at him.

His eyes lit up with surprise and he laughed and placed his fork neatly back onto the bone china plate. “As a matter of fact, I am going to be married in the very near future.”

“
Oh.” Disappointment swept over her like a swish from a straw broom. She wished she knew if his marriage was arranged but her boldness did have limitations.

“
Yes, my marriage was arranged,” he answered, accurately reading her mind. Victoria’s fork slipped through her fingers and clattered onto her plate.

He looked at her fork with pointed amusement but did not comment.

“
I picked her out based on bloodlines, family wealth and tolerant face and figure. Then, my family approved of her...does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“
Sounds very romantic,” she said, unable to suppress her sarcasm. “Rather like purchasing a horse.”

Victoria felt a surprising disappointment and hurt somewhere under her ribs. It shouldn’t bother her that he was already engaged, but for some inexplicable reason, it did.

“
Romantic?” One of his dark eyebrows rose and his eyes bore into hers like twin diamonds. “I have no need to be romantic about marriage.”

“
What if you met someone you loved but she didn’t meet the criteria?” Victoria felt the regret of her words and the desire to crawl under the table in the heat that rushed to her face.

William’s eyes roved over her scorching her to the bone.

“
Love isn’t in my dictionary, but lust is. If I met a woman I wanted, I would have her, but I wouldn’t marry her.” Suggestive and husky, his words melted over Victoria, their meaning all too clear.

“
That is a horrible thing to say.” Tearing her gaze from him, Victoria looked away, focusing on a potted plant near the doorway. She couldn’t look at him when she said, “It is a very cold point of view.”

“
Look at me Victoria.” Answering his low command, Victoria looked into his eyes to find them glittering dangerously.

“
I am a cold man. What would you have me say Victoria? Would you want me to tell you I would sweep a woman off her feet and marry her, forgetting all of my responsibilities?”

“
Why would marrying someone you love cause you to forgo your responsibilities?”

“
To marry a woman below my station in life would cause a great many problems. I carry heavy responsibilities, and my wife has to be able to share that life. My wife must have the best breeding, she must know how to survive and thrive in society. I couldn’t have her publically embarrassing me, or my family.”

The earth fell away from Victoria. The humiliation was sharp and quick; her dated dress, her hands and most mortifying of all, that she had come to him asking for money to repair the store.

“
Oh, I see. Well then, I am surprised you are willing to even sit at the table with someone like me.” Victoria picked up her napkin and touched the corners of her mouth, glaring at him. “Because I can assure you Mr. Worthington, I am not up to your station.”

“
I am sorry, Victoria, I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said quietly, his eyes and voice filled with sincerity. Gone was the mockery and arrogance he had displayed only moments before. “I had no idea we were talking about you.”

“
You didn’t insult me,” she responded quickly. “We were not talking about me....I wouldn’t marry anyone like you either....”

“
Indeed.” Again, William’s eyebrow rose, “However, I am quite certain Ms. Riley that I would have many delicious purposes with regard to you that do not include anything as dull as marriage.”

“
What exactly do you mean?” she gasped.

“
I mean nothing, look Victoria, since you obviously didn’t snare anyone for yourself, I think your father should have found someone for you long ago.” His arrogant words were delivered in a silky voice.

“
How very single minded you are. I told you, I don’t particularly want to get married. This may come as a surprise to you, Mr. Worthington, but maybe I don’t want to spend my life being a man’s slave . . . . cleaning up after him, cooking for him, doing everything he says, having his babies and perhaps dying in the process. No, thank you. I want freedom to do what I wish, when I wish and without the interference of a man.” The words tumbled from Victoria’s lips.

“
Are you afraid of having children Victoria?” William asked. “And you do not like the life of a wife?”

“
I am afraid of nothing,” she responded, her eyes flashing. He had an uncanny way of piercing through her most vulnerable points. “I am sure it is okay for some, it just isn’t the life I want for myself.”

Picking up his wine, William took a long slow drink, his eyes meeting hers over the rim of his glass like hard beautiful twin diamonds.

Tearing her eyes from him, Victoria picked up her own glass and took a generous swallow. Every time those silver eyes touched her, she felt as if she was being pulled by some unseen force, trapped and burning.

“
What life do you want for yourself then, Victoria?” His voice added intimacy to a seemingly impersonal question. Despite his courteous and gentlemanly comportment he was a dangerous man who was leading her somewhere simmered underneath.

“
I want to be able come and go as I please and to be in charge of my own welfare and life. If I want to stay up all night reading, or if I simply get interested in a new idea I want to pursue, I will. And I don’t want the demands of being a wife.”

William laughed rich, low and vibrant, sending a delicious warm wave through her. “You are a unique young lady Victoria with progressive ideas. But I am curious to know how you intend to support yourself and this independent lifestyle you crave all the way into your old age?”

“
Why, working in my father’s store, of course,” came Victoria’s indignant reply.

“
What happens when your father is . . . gone?” William’s amusement vanished.

Victoria’s heart lurched.

“
Dead? You mean when my father is dead? You think I can’t handle the store myself. Well, I can.” Her heartbeat accelerated and she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her lungs.

“
It isn’t a question of whether you can run the store. It is the simple matter of you being a woman. Women are not taken seriously in the business world and you know it.”

She stiffened under the staggering unfairness in his simple truth. “Well, I don’t have to worry about that at the moment.”

She was more able than any man to run a store and would have argued the point but she desperately needed to change the direction of their conversation.

“
If you could have anything in the world, Victoria, what would it be?” William lured. Victoria’s eyes flew to his and for an instant she submerged herself into their tantalizing silvery depths. His provocative question was tempting but what was he really asking her?

“
Would it be diamonds? Fine clothes? To travel?” He provided the questions in her silence beckoning like the beautiful fallen angel, Lucifer himself.

She could not allow him to put her off balance with his shocking and tempting words. “I have already told you what I want, to live my own life independent.”

William smiled and leaned back in his chair. “You are too easy to please. I thought all women wanted frivolous and expensive things.”

Victoria felt like she had walked out on a thin sheet of ice only to discover it was cracking under her feet.

“
Perhaps that is what the women you know want, and I will not pretend to dislike pretty things, I just do not require them for happiness.”

“
But you want financial independence,” he pressed.

“
Well . . . I guess when you put it that way . . . yes, but I don’t understand what any of this has to do with anything. I didn’t come here to discuss what I desire out of life . . . .” She broke off as the waiter approached the table with their desserts.

The plates were set in front of them and the delicious smell of chocolate cake drifted up to her. It was Mandy’s favorite.

Thankfully, William ceased his questions as they settled into their desserts.

While they ate the cake and drank coffee, William retreated abruptly from his offense to be extremely charming while entertaining her with colorful stories about the city. Apparently, his family had been responsible for building much of the city and it had a fascinating, if controversial, past.

Victoria was immediately riveted to his stories laughing easily and hanging on his words. She was lured into telling him a little of her own childhood and life at the store.

“
Mr. Worthington. I must have completely bored you with my stories” Victoria commented, breaking off from her story about the day Mandy and she got into a batch of hornets when they were distracted from their walk from school.

William smiled warmly, his eyes sparkling into hers. “I can assure you Miss Riley, I find you completely and utterly fascinating.”

Victoria smiled shyly, sliding her gaze from his.

Over a second cup of coffee they became embroiled in one of Victoria’s favorite topics…politics.

After candid and fascinating debates, William leaned closer to her, his eyes twinkling. “Come, Victoria, I wish to talk to you about something other than politics on the way back to your hotel. You are far too beautiful to worry about such things.”

Victoria blushed to her roots of her hair.

As William stood up and came around to Victoria’s chair to hold it out for her, he brushed her arm in a caress that sent a hot shiver up her spine.

Victoria gazed up at William’s profile as he led her from the restaurant, nodding his head at people he knew, suddenly realizing he had distracted her from a discussion or a decision about the store.

“
We didn’t talk about the store,” she said. Outside the restaurant they were caught in the stream of people who flooded the sidewalk.

He stopped and turned to her, his silver eyes burning.

“
Why don’t we continue our conversation over dinner . . . at my home?”

“
Your house?” The pedestrian rivulet moved around them.

“
You are aware that an unmarried woman meeting a man for lunch in public is stretching the limits, even in these modern times. However, going to a man’s home alone in the evening was simply out of the question.”

“
Well, I thought since you wanted to be an independent woman of the world you wouldn’t be concerned with such things.” There was a challenge in his voice that both irritated and excited Victoria.

“
It isn’t that, it’s just that . . .” She hesitated over her words, searching in vain to find an appropriate response.

“
If you can’t have a business meeting in a man’s home, how will you survive in the big world of business?” She longed to knock the devilish grin off of his face.

“
There is no reason why we can’t just finish our business here and now so I can go home.” Involuntarily and inexplicably at that precise moment, her eyes were drawn to his smiling sensual lips.

“
I certainly think we need to have a meeting, and I am not against having dinner, but I will not go to your house.” Victoria said, her voice husky.