Gayle Buck (2 page)

But at least she need not make more than a token visit to the Crossing, her husband’s ancestral home, before truly settling in at Belingham Manor, where she was certain of a cordial reception. Lady Belingham had sent a reply immediately upon receipt of Harry’s letter that assured Victoria that she was welcome to stay as long as she cared to and certainly through Christmas. Remembering the warmth of Lady Belingham’s invitation, Victoria smiled again. She did not notice the look of speculation in Lord Damion’s eyes as he watched her expressive face.

A silence fell while Victoria finished her sandwiches and Lord Damion addressed his wine. Both were absorbed in their own thoughts.

There was a diffident knock on the parlor door. Lord Damion laid an arm over the chair back, half turning in his seat. “Enter.”

The door creaked open and the innkeeper stepped in. His beady eyes shot to each of their faces before he made a low bow. “Begging your pardon, m’lord,” he said, folding his hands over his stomach. “But I ‘ave come to inform m’lady that her chaise is standing ready.”

Lord Damion cocked his brow at her. Victoria placed her napkin beside her plate. “Your company has been most agreeable. Lord Damion. But I fear I must be on my way,” she said.

Lord Damion rose from the table and accompanied Victoria across the room. “I find that a most regrettable circumstance. I should have liked to have deepened our acquaintance.”

At the door Victoria turned to give her gloved hand to him. He held it a moment longer than necessary. His gray eyes glinted down at her and Victoria realized with surprise that he was deliberately trying to disconcert her. “I bid you fair weather, madame,” said Lord Damion softly.

“Thank you, my lord, and good-bye,” said Victoria, disengaging her fingers from his. She turned quickly and caught the innkeeper’s knowing expression before he could smooth it away. She pretended not to notice. “I will wish to depart immediately.”

The innkeeper bowed deeply. “This way, m’lady,” he said respectfully, and led her down the dim narrow hall. Victoria was torn between annoyance and amusement by the man’s changed attitude. Her consequence was obviously much heightened since she had shared a private parlor with Lord Damion St. Claire. She thought whimsically that she might make a practice of dining with rakes if it guaranteed her such exceptional service.

Chapter Two

The innkeeper did not pause in the public taproom but ushered Victoria directly to the heavy plank door to the innyard. Victoria saw that her chaise stood waiting with a restive team of four. The bay leader shook its mane, setting the traces to jingling. She knew immediately that this team was the best that she had yet had hitched to her hired carriage.

With misgivings Victoria opened the corded reticule dangling from her wrist to take out her purse and settle the tab. The innkeeper jingled the coins in his palm. Victoria braced herself, prepared to haggle with the man. She was surprised when he fished out a few coins and gave them back to her with a bow. “It was a pleasure to serve m’lady. I could not accept such a handsome tip,” said the innkeeper.

Victoria did not believe him and she was further convinced when the man threw an upward glance at the window above them. She smiled, realizing that they must have an audience. Again Lord Damion’s consequence was at work on her behalf. She knew the wily innkeeper would not lose a tuppence when it came time to figure his lordship’s bill. A man hunched in a frieze coat pushed past them in the doorway, shouldering Victoria rudely against the plank door. He hurried on, mumbling indistinctively, while the innkeeper helped her to regain her balance. “Pay ‘im no heed, m’lady. A pint too much, he ‘ad,” said the innkeeper dismissively.

“Obviously,” said Victoria dryly. She lifted the long hem of her pelisse before stepping down into the churned mud of the yard. The damp air smelled of horseflesh and hay. She breathed deeply, reminded sharply of Portugal. She promised herself that she would return quickly to Lisbon, to the home which she and Charles had made and which she now managed for herself. The army would naturally march again in the spring and she would lose the company of her English acquaintances. But she would still have her Portuguese friends and the stable that was slowly gaining in reputation for well-blooded stock.

A low rumbling turned her gaze to the late afternoon skies, where sullen clouds rolled ominously across the horizon. It appeared that Lord Damion had been right in his weather prediction. Behind her, the innkeeper unknowingly echoed her thoughts. “This curst rain!” he exclaimed.

The postilion jumped down from his perch beside the coachman and unlatched the chaise door for her. Victoria mounted the iron step and ducked quickly into the chaise. The door was latched behind her as she took the seat facing the horses.

A whip cracked. The chaise lurched forward, axles squealing in protest. The wheels slowly gathered speed and settled into a dull humming complaint. Victoria leaned toward the window. A fine drizzle was falling but she glimpsed the innkeeper’s back as he disappeared through the inn door. He had stayed only long enough to be certain of her swift departure, thought Victoria wryly. She looked up at the parlor window and made out a tall figure. She thought that he raised his hand in farewell, but she couldn’t be certain. The trees bordering the inn yard quickly obliterated any view of the hostelry.

Victoria sat back against the musty seat squabs. Her brows furrowed as she pondered Lord Damion St. Claire. She had found him to be disturbingly attractive and her response was due to more than his strong lean looks. In his company she had felt the stirring of an old excitement that she had been certain had died with Charles.

Victoria loosened the ribbons under her chin so that she could put back her bonnet. Lord Damion had called himself a rake and Victoria could well imagine that his aloof amusement fascinated many women. She herself was not immune to him. Victoria caught her thoughts lingering on the impenetrable expression that had been in Lord Damion’s eyes when they had rested on her. With unwonted energy she ran her fingers through her flattened curls. “Don t be foolish!” she said aloud.

Yet Victoria knew, however she might wish it, that she would not soon forget Lord Damion’s disturbing effect on her. Charles March, for all his engaging charm, had never caused her to stare like an awkward schoolgirl on first meeting.

On the contrary, she had tried to lash him with her riding crop for his impudence in catching up her bridle and thus ending an impromptu race across the plain. She smiled, remembering. It had been a stormy introduction but Charles March had soon had her laughing with him.

When she and Charles had returned to the stables that day, Victoria had been surprised to find her uncle, Carlos Silva y Montoya, waiting for them. Carlos had not often intruded on her riding hours and she wondered what could be so important. But her uncle had not come to meet her.

Charles March had kicked out of his stirrups to land agilely on his feet beside the older man. The two men embraced as only comrades-in-arms can. With open astonishment Victoria watched the meeting between her uncle and the young Englishman.

“So, young Carlos, you have come at last. I expected you earlier,” Carlos had said. Victoria regarded the young Englishman with new eyes, for her uncle’s warm reception of him spoke volumes about his character. Carlos Silva y Montoya was reputed to be a man of action who had little time for less hardy souls. During the war he acted at times as a guide and an informant for the British army. Victoria wondered how someone like Charles March could possibly have become his friend.

“I had a rare bit of action to attend to first,” Charles March had said with a flashing grin. His lively gaze turned toward Victoria, who had dismounted and joined them. “But as it happens I am happy to have been delayed until this morning, or I would not have made the acquaintance of this charming lady.” He bowed low to Victoria.

Carlos drew his niece’s gloved hand through the crook of his elbow and gave Victoria’s fingers an affectionate squeeze. “Your eye is a discerning one. My niece is as a rare jewel. She came to me when her father died two years ago and I have seen her become a beautiful woman. So, Victoria, what do you think of my young friend?”

“I suspect that he could charm the birds from the sky if he wished. And you are yourself no sluggard, Carlos,” Victoria said, her eyes dancing.

The two men laughed. Carlos Silva y Montoya clapped the young Englishman on the shoulder. “You shall stay with us when you can, young Carlos.”

“I shall be happy to do so, sir,” Charles March said. His admiring eyes met and held Victoria’s glance.

Victoria could scarcely recall a moment afterwards that Charles had not figured in her life. Since his death, she found herself to be incredibly lonely though she was still surrounded by their mutual friends.

Victoria did not know what she might have done if she had not had her young daughter to look after.

The chaise suddenly bounded into the air, jolting Victoria from her bittersweet memories. The carriage landed hard with a sharp crack and slewed. Victoria grabbed the hand strap set in the ceiling even as the chaise crashed over. She was flung from the seat and lay still a moment, stunned.

The door above her jerked open and she looked up into the coachman’s weathered face. His head and shoulders almost obliterated the fast waning afternoon sun. “Be ye all right, m’lady?” he asked anxiously.

Victoria groped and found her reticule, then put her hand on the door beneath her to steady herself as she sat up. Under her flattened fingers broken glass shifted. She raised her hand to inspect the thin ribbon of blood traced across her palm. “Yes, I am perfectly fine,” she said calmly, plucking out the minute sliver of window glass.

“If ye give me your hand, m’lady, I can pull ye out,” said the coachman. Victoria stood up and discovered that her shoulders topped the side of the chaise. With the coachman’s solicitous help she scrambled over the side of the chaise to the road.

Victoria stood on the damp gravel and surveyed the scene. The uneasy team shifted, hooves clopping softly the soaked ground. One of her portmanteaus had been thrown from the chaise and opened on impact. White shifts had tumbled in the damp roadway. The chaise itself lay on its side and even her untutored eye found the cause of the accident. A large rock sat behind the off wheel of the chaise.

The coachman joined her a brief moment. “The axle is broken in two, m’lady,” he said regretfully.

“We shall have to return to the inn, of course,” said Victoria resignedly.

“Aye. Or mayhap ye would prefer to wait here with the lad while I ride one of the leaders to Belingham Manor for help,” said the coachman.

Victoria bit her lip, scanning the overcast sky. The trees crowded close, looming across the narrow section of road. The wind rustled through the branches overhead and tugged at her skirts. She wondered if the weather would hold. It was not to her liking to be caught out at night in a downpour without better shelter than the disabled chaise. It occurred to her that she had not seen the postilion since the accident. “Where is the boy now? Is he all right?”

“Eh, Jem was thrown and he is a bit shaken, m’lady. But he will protect ye, never fear. I’ll just leave the blunderbuss with him,” said the coachman comfortably.

“Very well, then,” said Victoria, deciding quickly. “The boy and I shall await your return from Belingham.”

The coachman nodded and walked over to the team, at the same time calling to the postilion, who came slowly from around the chaise and abruptly sat down, holding his head. The coachman shook his head and clucked soothingly at the horses as he began to undo the traces.

A swiftly moving chaise-and-four swept around the bend in the road. The sun’s dying rays illuminated the scene of the accident and the sharp-eyed driver pulled on his reins. A passenger thrust his head out the carriage window, his dark hair wild in the swift passage of the wind.

Victoria drew a thankful breath at sight of the slowing vehicle. She moved out of the roadway to stand in the deepening shadows at the road’s edge and brushed a loose curl back from her brow. All at once she felt somehow foolish to be found in such straits.

The chaise-and-four had not come completely to a stop before its door was flung open and a man swathed in a greatcoat leaped out. The stranger strode swiftly in her direction. “Have you been injured?” he called sharply.

Victoria started, recognizing the deep voice. She sighed, thinking that it was simply too provoking to be rescued by the same man twice in the same evening. She stepped out of the tree shadows and met him as he came up. “I am perfectly well,” she said calmly, though she still felt unnerved. “Once more I owe you thanks for your timely appearance, my lord.”

“It appears to be one of my better habits this evening, said Lord Damion dryly. He seized the opportunity to satisfy his earlier curiosity. “Forgive me, but my memory seems to have deserted me. I have forgotten your name, madame.”

“I am Lady Victoria March,” Victoria said without thinking as she readjusted her bonnet over her hair.

“The devil you say!” There was a mixture of animosity and distaste in Lord Damion’s voice.

Victoria steeled herself against his unfriendly tone, realizing that her prior instincts had been correct. Coolly she looked up at him. “Indeed the devil it is.” She noticed that the coachman was bent over the postilion and heard a low exchange between them. Dismissing Lord Damion’s displeasure as unimportant, she joined the coachman. “Is the boy hurt badly?”

The coachman pulled the boy up, supporting him around the waist when he was on his feet. “Naught wrong with Jem but a sore head and a cracked shoulder, m’lady,” said the coachman cheerfully. “A pint or two and the sawbones in to him will set him up in a trice. Eh, Jem?”

“Aye,” whispered the postilion manfully, his pale young face pinched with pain.

Victoria heard Lord Damion’s step beside her. “Get him on one of the horses before he faints,” he ordered the coachman. “I will send my man over with a flask. He’ll need a stiff swallow to get him over these abominable roads.”