iss Dorothy Seaton?” the gentleman inquired politely, stepping aside as three burly English seamen with heavy sacks slung over their shoulders elbowed past him and strode off down the dock.

“I am she,” Dorothy said, her voice trembling with fright and excitement as she gazed at the impeccably dressed, white-haired man.

“I have been instructed by her grace, the Duchess of Claremont, to escort you to her home. Where are your trunks?”

“Right there,” Dorothy said. “There’s only one.”

He glanced over his shoulder and two liveried men climbed off the back of a shiny black coach with a gold crest on the door and hurried forward. “In that case, we can be on our way,” the man said as her trunk was lifted up and loaded atop the coach.

“But what about my sister?” Dorothy said, her hand clasping Victoria’s in a stranglehold of eager terror.

“I’m certain that the party meeting your sister will be here directly. Your ship arrived four days ahead of schedule.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Victoria said with a bright confidence she didn’t quite feel. “I’m certain the duke’s carriage will be here any minute. In the meantime, Captain Gardiner will let me stay on board. Run along now.”

Dorothy enfolded her sister in a tight hug. “Tory, I’ll contrive some way to persuade our grandmother to invite you to stay with us, you’ll see. I’m scared. Don’t forget to write. Write every day!”

Victoria stayed where she was, watching Dorothy climb daintily into the luxurious vehicle with the gold crest on the door. The stairs were put up, the coachman snapped his whip, and the four horses bounded off as Dorothy waved good-bye from the window.

Jostled by sailors leaving the ship in eager search of “foine ale and tarts,” Victoria stood on the dock, her gaze clinging to the departing coach. She had never felt so utterly alone in her life.

She spent the next two days in bored solitude in her cabin, the tedium interrupted only by her short walks on deck and her meals with Captain Gardiner, a charming, fatherly man who seemed to greatly enjoy her company. Victoria had spent a considerable amount of time with him over the past weeks, and they had shared dozens of meals during the long voyage. He knew her reasons for coming to England, and she regarded him as a newly made friend.

When by the morning of the third day no coach had arrived to convey Victoria to Wakefield Park, Captain Gardiner took matters into his own hands and hired one. “We were early getting into port, which is a rare occurrence,” he explained. “Your cousin may not think to send someone for you for days yet. I have business to conduct in London and I cannot leave you on board unprotected. In the time it would take to notify your cousin of your arrival, you can be there yourself.”

For long hours, Victoria studied the English countryside decked out in all its magical spring splendor. Pink and yellow flowers bloomed in profusion across hedgerows that inarched up and down the hills and valleys. Despite the jostling and jarring she received every time the coach wheels passed over a rut or bump, her spirits rose with every passing mile. The coachman rapped on the door above her and his ruddy face appeared. “We’re ‘bout two miles away, ma’am, so if you’d lie to—”

Everything seemed to happen at once. The wheel hit a deep rut, the coach jerked crazily to the side, the coachman’s head disappeared, and Victoria was flung to the floor in a sprawling heap. A moment later, the door was jerked open and the coachman helped her out. “You hurt?” he demanded.

Victoria shook her head, but before she could utter a word, he rounded on two men dressed in farmers’ work clothes who were sheepishly clutching their caps in their hands. “Ye bloody fools! What d’ye mean pullin‘ out in the road like that! Look what ye’ve done, me axle’s broken—” The rest of what he said was laced with stout curses.

Delicately turning her back on the loud altercation, Victoria shook her skirts, trying unsuccessfully to rid them of the dust and grime they’d acquired from the floor of the coach. The coachman crawled under his coach to inspect his broken axle, and one of the farmers shuffled over to Victoria, twisting his battered cap in his hands. “Jack ‘n’ me, we’re awful sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll take you on to Wakefield Park—that is, if you don’t mind us puttin‘ yer trunk in back with them piglets?”

Grateful not to have to walk the two miles, Victoria readily agreed. She paid the coachman with the traveling money Charles Fielding had sent her and climbed onto the bench between the two burly farmers. Riding in a farm cart, although less prestigious than a coach, was scarcely any bumpier and far more comfortable. Fresh breezes cooled her face and her view of the lavish countryside was unrestricted.

With her usual unaffected friendliness, Victoria soon succeeded in engaging both men in a conversation about farming, a topic about which she knew a little and was perfectly happy to learn more. Evidently, English farmers were violently opposed to the implementation of machines for use in farming. “Put us all out of work, they will,” one of the farmers told her at the end of his impassioned condemnation of “them infernal things.”

Victoria scarcely heard that, because their wagon had turned onto a paved drive and passed between two imposing iron gates that opened onto a broad, seemingly endless stretch of gently rolling, manicured parkland punctuated with towering trees. The park stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see, bisected here and there by a stream that meandered about, its banks covered with flowers of pink and blue and white. “It’s a fairyland,” Victoria breathed aloud,.her stunned, admiring gaze roving across the carefully tended banks of the picturesque stream and the sweeping landscape. “It must take dozens of gardeners to care for a place this size.”

“That it do,” Jack said. “His lordship’s got forty of ‘em, countin’ the ones what takes care of the real gardens—the gardens at the house, I mean.” They had been plodding along the paved drive for fifteen minutes when the cart rounded a bend and Jack pointed proudly. “There it is— Wakefield Park. I heert it has a hunnert and sixty rooms.”

Victoria gasped, her mind reeling, her empty stomach clenching into a tense knot. Stretched out before her in all its magnificent splendor was a three-story house that altogether surpassed her wildest imaginings. Built of mellow brick with huge forward wings and steep rooftops dotted with chimneys, it loomed before her—a palace with graceful terraced steps leading up to the front door and sunlight glistening against hundreds of panes of mullioned glass.

They drew to a stop before the house and Victoria tore her gaze away long enough for one of the farmers to help her down from the wagon seat. “Thank you, you’ve been very kind,” she said, and started slowly up the steps. Apprehension turned her feet to lead and her knees to water. Behind her, the farmers went to the back of the wagon to remove her bulky trunk, but as they let down the back gate, two squealing piglets hurtled out of the wagon into empty air, hit the ground with a thud, and streaked off across the lawns.

Victoria turned at the sound of the farmers’ shouts and giggled nervously as the red-faced men ran after the speedy little porkers.

Ahead of her, the door of the mansion was flung open and a stiff-faced man dressed in green and gold livery cast an outraged glance over the farmers, the piglets, and the dusty, disheveled female approaching him. “Deliveries,” he told Victoria in a loud, ominous voice, “are made in the rear.”

Raising his arm, he pointed imperiously toward the drive that ran alongside the house, Victoria opened her mouth to explain she wasn’t making a delivery, but her attention was diverted by a little piglet, which had changed direction and was headed straight toward her, pursued by a panting farmer.

“Get that cart, those swine, and your person out of here!” the man in the livery boomed.

Tears of helpless mirth sprang to Victoria’s eyes as she bent down and scooped the escaped piglet into her arms. Laughing, she tried to explain. “Sir, you don’t under—”

Northrup ignored her and glanced over his shoulder at the footman behind him. “Get rid of the lot of them! Throw them off—”

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a man of about thirty with coal black hair, stalking onto the front steps.

The butler pointed a finger at Victoria’s face, his eyebrows levitating with ire. “That woman is—”

“Victoria Seaton,” Victoria put in hastily, trying to stifle her mirth as tension, exhaustion, and hunger began pushing her perilously close to nervous hysteria. She saw the look of unconcealed shock on the black-haired man’s face when he heard her name, and her alarm erupted into hilarity.

With uncontrollable laughter bubbling up inside her, she turned and dumped the squirming piglet into the flushed farmer’s arms, then lifted her dusty skirts and tried to curtsy. “I fear there’s been a mistake,” she said on a suffocated giggle. “I’ve come to—”

The tall man’s icy voice checked her in mid-curtsy. “Your mistake was in coming here in the first place, Miss Seaton. However, it’s too close to dark to send you back to wherever you came from.” He caught her by the arm and pulled her rudely forward.

Victoria sobered instantly; the situation no longer seemed riotously funny, but terrifyingly macabre. Timidly, she stepped through the doorway into a three-story marble entrance hall that was larger than her entire home in New York. On either side of the foyer, twin branches of a great, curving staircase swept upward to the next two floors, and a great domed skylight bathed the area in mellow sunlight from high above. She tipped her head back, gazing at the domed glass ceiling three stories above. Tears filled her eyes and the skylight revolved in a dizzy whirl as exhausted anguish overcame her. She had traveled thousands of miles across a stormy sea and rutted roads, expecting to be greeted by a kindly gentleman. Instead she was going to be sent back, away from Dorothy— The skylight whirled before her eyes in a kaleidoscope of brilliant blurring colors.

“She’s going to swoon,” the butler predicted.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” the dark-haired man exploded, and swept her into his arms. The world was already coming back into focus for Victoria as he started up the right-hand branch of the broad marble staircase.

“Put me down,” she demanded hoarsely, wriggling in embarrassment. “I’m perfectly—”

“Hold still!” he commanded. On the landing, he turned right, stalked into a room, and headed straight for a huge bed surrounded by blue and silver silk draperies suspended from a high, carved wood frame and gathered back at the corners with silver velvet ropes. Without a word, he dumped her unceremoniously onto the blue silk coverlet and shoved her shoulders back down when she tried to sit up.

The butler rushed into the room, his coattails flapping behind him. “Here, my lord—hartshorn,” he panted.

My lord snatched the bottle from his hand and rammed it toward Victoria’s nostrils.

“Don’t!” Victoria cried, trying to twist her head away from the terrible amoniac odor, but his hand persistently followed her face. In sheer desperation, she grasped his wrist, trying to hold it away while he continued to force it toward her. “What are you trying to do,” she burst out, “feed it to me?”

“What a delightful idea,” he replied grimly, but the pressure on her restraining hand relaxed and he moved the bottle a few inches away from her nose. Exhausted and humiliated, Victoria turned her head aside, closed her eyes, and swallowed audibly as she fought back the tears congealing in her throat. She swallowed again.

“I sincerely hope,” he drawled nastily, “that you are not considering getting sick on this bed, because I’m warning you that you will be the one to clean it up.”

Victoria Elizabeth Seaton—the product of eighteen years of careful upbringing that had, until now, produced a sweet-tempered, charming young lady—slowly turned her head on the pillow and regarded him with scathing animosity. “Are you Charles Fielding?”

“No.”

“In that case, kindly get off this bed or allow me to do so!”

His brows snapped together as he stared down at the rebellious waif who was glaring at him with murder in her brilliant blue eyes. Her hair spilled over the pillows like liquid golden flame, curling riotously at her temples and framing a face that looked as if it had been sculpted in porcelain by a master. Her eyelashes were incredibly long, her lips as pink and soft as—

Abruptly, the man lunged to his feet and stalked out of the room, followed by the butler. The door closed behind them, leaving Victoria in a deafening silence.

Slowly she sat up and put her legs over the side of the bed, then eased herself to her feet, afraid the dizziness would return. Numb despair made her feel cold all over, but her legs were steady as she gazed about her. On her left, light blue draperies heavily embellished with silver threads were pulled back, framing an entire wall of mullioned windows; at the far end of the room, a pair of blue-and-silver-striped settees were placed at right angles to an ornate fireplace. The phrase “decadent splendor” drifted through her mind as she dusted off her skirts, cast one more look about the room, and then gingerly sat back down on the blue silk coverlet.

An awful lump of desolation swelled in her throat as she folded her hands in her lap and tried to think what to do next. Evidently she was to be sent back to New York like unwanted baggage. Why then had her cousin the duke brought her here in the first place? Where was he? Who was he?

She couldn’t go to Dorothy and her great-grandmother, because the duchess had written Dr. Morrison a note that made it clear that Dorothy, and Dorothy alone, was welcome in her home. Victoria frowned, her smooth brow furrowing in confusion. Since the black-haired man had been the one to carry her upstairs, perhaps he was the servant and the stout, white-haired man who’d opened the door was the duke. At first glance, she’d assumed he was a ranking servant—like Mrs. Tilden, the housekeeper who always greeted callers at Andrew’s house.

Someone knocked at the door of the room, and Victoria guiltily jumped off the bed and carefully smoothed the coverlet before calling, “Come in.”

A maid in a starched black dress, white apron, and white cap entered, a silver tray in her hands. Six more maids in identical black uniforms marched in like marionettes, carrying buckets of steaming water. Behind them came two footmen in gold-braid-trimmed green uniforms, carrying her trunk.

The first maid put the tray on the table between the settees, while the other maids disappeared into an adjoining room and the footmen deposited the trunk at the end of the bed. A minute later, they all trooped right back out again in single file, reminding Victoria of animated wooden soldiers. The remaining maid turned to Victoria, who was standing self-consciously beside the bed. “Here’s a bite for you to eat, miss,” she said; her plain face was carefully expressionless, but her voice was shyly pleasant.

Victoria went over to the settee and sat down, the sight of the buttered toast and hot chocolate making her mouth water.

“His lordship said you were to have a bath,” the maid said, and started toward the adjoining room. Victoria paused, the cup of chocolate partway to her lips. “His lordship?” she repeated. “Would that be the... gentleman... I saw at the front door? A stout man with white hair?”

“Good heavens, no!” the maid replied, regarding Victoria with a strange took. “That would be Mr. Northrup, the butler, miss.”

Victoria’s relief was short-lived as the maid hesitantly added, “His lordship is a tall man, with black curly hair.”

“And he said I should have a bath?” Victoria asked, bristling.

The maid nodded, coloring.

“Well, I do need one,” Victoria conceded reluctantly. She ate the toast and finished the chocolate, then wandered into the adjoining room where the maid was pouring perfumed bath salts into the steaming water. Slowly removing her travel-stained gown, Victoria thought of the short note Charles Fielding had sent her, inviting her to come to England. He had seemed so anxious to have her here. “Come at once, my dear,” he had written. “You are more than welcome here—you are eagerly awaited.” Perhaps she wasn’t to be sent away after all. Perhaps “his lordship” had mistaken the matter.

The maid helped her wash her hair, then held up a fluffy cloth for Victoria and helped her out of the tub. “I’ve put away your clothes, mum, and turned down the bed, in case you’d like a nap.”

Victoria smiled at her and asked her name.

“My name?” the maid repeated, as if stunned that Victoria should care to ask. “Why, it’s—it’s Ruth.”

“Thank you very much, Ruth,” Victoria said, “for putting away my clothes, I mean.”

A deep flush of pleasure colored the maid’s freckled face as she bobbed a quick curtsy and started for the door. “Supper is at eight,” Ruth informed her. “His lordship rarely keeps country hours at Wakefield.”

“Ruth,” Victoria said awkwardly as the maid started to leave, “are there two... ah... ‘lordships’ here? That is, I was wondering about Charles Fielding—”

“Oh, you’re referrin‘ to his grace!” Ruth glanced over her shoulder as if she was fearful of being overheard before she confided, “He hasn’t arrived yet, but we’re expectin’ him sometime tonight. I heard his lordship tell Northrup to send word to his grace that you’ve arrived.”

“What is his—ah—grace like?” Victoria asked, feeling foolish using these odd titles.

Ruth looked as if she was about to describe him; then she changed her mind. “I’m sorry, miss, but his lordship doesn’t permit his servants to gossip. Nor are we allowed to be familiar-like with guests.” She curtsied and scurried out in a rustle of starched black skirts.

Victoria was startled by the knowledge that two human beings were not permitted to converse together in this house, simply because one was a servant and the other a guest, but considering her brief acquaintance with “his lordship,” she could fully imagine him issuing such an inhuman edict.

Victoria took her nightdress from the wardrobe, pulled it over her head, and climbed into bed, sliding between the sheets. Luxurious silk caressed the bare skin of her arms and face as she uttered a weary prayer that Charles Fielding would prove to be a warmer, kindlier man than his other lordship. Her long dark lashes fluttered down, lying like curly fans against her cheeks, and she fell asleep.