he sky was cloudy and gray as Jason’s shiny, black-lacquered coach swayed gently through the crowded London streets, drawn by four prancing chestnut horses in magnificent silver harness. Six outriders in green velvet livery led the procession, followed by four more mounted, uniformed men behind the coach. Two coachmen sat proudly erect atop the coach and two more clung to the back of the vehicle.

Victoria huddled in the deep, luxurious squabs of Jason’s coach, wrapped in a gown of incredible beauty and wildly extravagant expense, her thoughts as bleak as the day outside.

“Are you cold, my dear?” Charles asked solicitously from his place across from her.

Victoria shook her head, wondering nervously why Jason had insisted upon making such a grand spectacle of their marriage.

A few minutes later, she put her hand in Charles’s and stepped down from the coach, walking slowly up the long shallow steps of the massive Gothic church like a child being led to a frightening event by her parent.

She waited beside Charles at the back of the church, trying not to think of the enormity of what she was about to do, letting her gaze wander aimlessly over the crowds of people. Her apprehensive mind fastened haphazardly on the vast differences between the London aristocrats garbed in silks and fine brocades who had come to witness her wedding and the simple, friendly villagers she had always expected to have near her on her wedding day. She scarcely knew most of these people—some she had never even seen before. Carefully averting her gaze from the altar, where Jason, not Andrew, would soon be waiting for her, she stared at the pews. An empty place, reserved for Charles, was vacant on the first bench on the right, but the rest of them were filled with guests. Directly across the aisle on the first bench, which would normally have been reserved for the bride’s immediate family, there was an elderly lady leaning on an ebony cane, her hair concealed by a vivid purple satin turban.

The turbaned head seemed vaguely familiar, but Victoria was much too nervous to remember where she had seen it, and Charles diverted her attention by nodding toward Lord Collingwood, who was coming toward them.

“Has Jason arrived?” Charles asked when Robert Collingwood had reached them.

The earl, who was Jason’s best man, kissed Victoria’s hand, smiled reassuringly, and said, “He’s here, and he’s ready when you are.”

Victoria’s knees began to shake. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready to do this at all!

Caroline straightened the train of Victoria’s diamond-studded blue satin gown and smiled at her husband. “Is Lord Fielding nervous?”

“He says he isn’t,” Robert said. “But he would like to get this proceeding under way.”

How cold, Victoria thought, her fear escalating to panic. How unemotional. How Jason.

Charles was fidgety, eager. “We’re ready,” he said enthusiastically. “Let’s begin.”

Feeling like a marionette whose strings were being pulled by everyone else, Victoria placed her hand on Charles’s arm and began the endless walk down the candlelit aisle. She moved through the candlelight in a luxurious swirl of shimmering blue satin with diamonds sparkling like tiny twinkling lights in her hair, at her throat, and scattered across her veil. In the wide loft above, the choir sang, but Victoria didn’t hear them. Behind her, moving farther away with each step, were the laughter and carefree days of her girlhood. Ahead of her... ahead of her was Jason, dressed in a splendid suit of rich midnight blue velvet. With his face partly shadowed, he looked very tall and dark. As dark as the unknown... as dark as her future.

Why are you doing this?! Victoria’s panicked mind screamed at her as Charles led her toward Jason.

I don’t know, she cried in silent answer. Jason needs me.

That’s no reason! her mind shouted. You can still escape. Turn and run.

I can’t! her heart cried.

You can. Just turn around and run. Now, before it’s too late.

I can’t! I can’t just leave him here.

Why not?

He’ll be humiliated if I do—more humiliated than he ever was by his first wife.

Remember what your father said—never let anyone convince you that you can be happy with someone who doesn’t love you. Remember how unhappy he was. Run! Quick! Get out of here before it’s too late!

Victoria’s heart lost the battle against terror as Charles put her frozen hand in Jason’s warm one and stepped away. Her body tensed for flight, her free hand grasped her skirts, her breath quickened. She started to jerk her right hand from Jason’s grasp at the same moment that his fingers clamped around hers like a steel trap and he turned his head sharply, his intense green eyes locking onto hers, warning her not to try it. Then suddenly his grip slackened; his eyes became aloof, blank. He released her hand, letting it fall to her side in front of her wide skirts, and he looked at the archbishop.

He’s going to stop it! Victoria realized wildly as the archbishop bowed and said, “Shall we begin, my lord?”

Jason curtly shook his head and opened his mouth.

“No!” Victoria whispered, trying to stop Jason.

“What did you say?” the archbishop demanded, scowling at her.

Victoria lifted her eyes to Jason’s and saw the humiliation he was hiding behind a mask of cynical indifference. “I’m only frightened, my lord. Please take my hand.”

He hesitated, searching her eyes, and relief slowly replaced the iron grimness on his features. His hand touched hers, then closed reassuringly around her fingers.

“Now, may I proceed?” whispered the archbishop indignantly.

Jason’s lips twitched. “Please do.”

As the archbishop began reading the long service, Charles gazed joyously upon the bride and groom, his heart swelling until it felt ready to burst, but a flash of purple seen from the corner of his eye combined with an eerie feeling that he was being watched suddenly drew his attention. He glanced sideways, then stiffened in shock as his eyes clashed with the pale blue ones belonging to the Duchess of Claremont. Charles stared at her, his face alive with cold triumph; then, with a final contemptuous glance, he turned from her and pushed her presence from his mind. He watched as his son stood beside Victoria, two proud, beautiful young people taking vows that would unite them forever. Tears stung his eyes as the archbishop intoned, “Do you, Victoria Seaton...”

“Katherine, my love,” Charles whispered to her in his heart, “do you see our children here? Aren’t they beautiful together? Your grandmother kept us from having children of our own, my darling—that victory was hers, but this one is ours. We shall have grandchildren instead, my sweet. My sweet, beautiful Katherine, we shall have grandchildren....” Charles bent his head, unwilling to let the old woman across the aisle see that he was crying. But the Duchess of Claremont could see nothing through the tears that were falling from her own eyes and racing down her wrinkled cheeks. “Katherine, my love,” she whispered to her in her heart, “look what I have done. In my stupid, blind selfishness I prevented you from marrying him and having children with him. But now I have arranged it so that you shall have grandchildren instead. Oh, Katherine, I loved you so. I wanted you to have the world at your feet, and I wouldn’t believe that all you wanted was him....”

When the archbishop asked Victoria to repeat her vows, she remembered her bargain to make it appear to everyone that she was deeply attached to Jason. Raising her face to his, she tried to speak out clearly and confidently, but when she was promising to love him, Jason’s gaze suddenly lifted toward the domed ceiling of the church, and a sardonic smile tugged at his lips. Victoria realized he was watching for lightning to strike the roof, and her tension dissolved into a muffled giggle, which earned a deeply censorious frown from the archbishop.

Victoria’s mirth vanished abruptly as Jason’s deep, resonant voice echoed through the church, endowing her with all his worldly goods. And then it was over. “You may kiss the bride,” the archbishop said.

Jason turned and looked at her, his eyes gleaming with a triumph that was so intense, so unexpected, and so terrifying that Victoria stiffened when his arms encircled her. Bending his head, he claimed her trembling lips in a long, bold kiss that caused the archbishop to glower and several guests to chuckle; then he released her and took her arm.

“My lord,” she whispered imploringly as they walked up the aisle toward the doors leading from the church, “please—I can’t keep up with you.”

“Call me Jason,” he snapped, but he slowed down. “And the next time I kiss you, pretend you like it.”

His icy tone hit her like a bucketful of freezing water, but somehow Victoria managed to stand between Charles and Jason outside the church and smile tightly at all of the 800 guests who paused to wish them both happy.

Charles turned aside to talk to one of his friends just as the last guest emerged from the church, leaning heavily on the jeweled handle of her ebony cane.

Ignoring Jason completely, the duchess approached Victoria, peering steadily into her blue eyes. “Do you know who I am?” she demanded without preamble when Victoria smiled politely at her.

“No, ma’am,” Victoria said. “I’m very sorry, but I do not. I believe I’ve seen you somewhere before, for you look familiar, and yet—”

“I am your great-grandmother.”

Victoria’s hand tightened spasmodically on Jason’s arm. This was her great-grandmother, the woman who had refused to offer her shelter and who had destroyed her mother’s happiness. Victoria’s chin lifted. “I have no great-grandmother,” she said with deadly calm.

This flat denouncement had a very odd effect on the dowager duchess. Her eyes glowed with admiration and a hint of a smile softened her stern features. “Oh, but you do, my dear,” she said. “You do,” she repeated almost fondly. “You are very like your mother in looks, but that defiant pride of yours came from me.” She chuckled, shaking her head as Victoria started to argue. “No—do not bother to disavow my existence again, for my blood flows in your veins and it is my own stubbornness I see in your chin. Your mother’s eyes, my willfulness—”

“Stay away from her!” Charles hissed furiously, his head jerking around. “Get out of here!”

The duchess stiffened and her eyes snapped with anger. “Don’t you dare use that tone on me, Atherton, or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” Charles bit out savagely. “Don’t bother to threaten me. I have everything I want now.”

The Dowager Duchess of Claremont regarded him down the full length of her aristocratic nose, her expression triumphant. “You have it because I gave it to you, you fool.” ignoring Charles’s stunned, furious stare, she turned to Victoria again and her eyes warmed. Reaching out, she laid her frail hand against Victoria’s cheek while moisture misted her eyes. “Perhaps you will come to Claremont House to see Dorothy when she returns from France. It has not been easy keeping her away from you, but she would have spoiled everything with her foolish chatter about old scand—old gossip,” the duchess corrected quickly.

She turned to Jason then and her expression became very severe. “I am entrusting my great-granddaughter into your keeping, Wakefield, but I shall hold you personally responsible for her happiness, is that clear?”

“Quite clear,” he said in a solemn voice, but he eyed the tiny woman who was issuing vague threats to him with thinly veiled amusement.

The duchess scrutinized his tranquil features sharply, then nodded. “So long as we understand one another, I will take my leave.” She lifted her wrist. “You may kiss my hand.”

With perfect equanimity, Jason took her upraised hand in his and pressed a gallant kiss to the back of it.

Turning to Victoria, the duchess said bleakly, “I suppose it would be too much to ask—?” Victoria could make little sense of what had transpired in the minutes since her great-grandmother had walked up to her, but she knew beyond any doubt that the emotion she saw in the old woman’s eyes was love—love, and a terrible regret.

“Grandmama,” she whispered brokenly, and found herself wrapped tightly in her great-grandmother’s arms.

The duchess drew back slightly, her smile gruff and self-conscious; then she bent an imperious look on Jason. “Wakefield, I’ve decided not to die until I’ve held my great-great-grandson in my arms. Since I cannot live forever, I shall not countenance any delays on your part.”

“I will give the matter prompt attention, your grace,” Jason said, straight-faced, but with laughter lurking in his jade eyes.

“I shall not countenance any shilly-shallying about on your part either, my dear,” she warned her blushing great-granddaughter. Patting Victoria’s hand, she added rather wistfully, “I’ve decided to retire to the country. Claremont is only an hour’s ride from Wakefield, so perhaps you will visit me from time to time.” So saying, she beckoned to her solicitor, who was standing at the church doors, and said grandly, “Give me your arm, Weatherford. I’ve seen what I wished to see and said what I wished to say.” With a final, triumphant look at a dazed Charles, she turned and walked away, her shoulders straight, her cane barely brushing the ground.

Many of the wedding guests were still milling about, waiting for their carriages, when Jason guided Victoria through the throngs and into his own luxurious vehicle. Victoria automatically smiled as people waved and watched them leave, but her mind was so battered by the emotion-charged day that she did not become aware of her surroundings again until they were approaching the village near Wakefield. With a guilty start, she realized she hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to Jason in over two hours.

24S Beneath her lashes she stole a swift glance at the handsome man who was now her husband. His face was turned away from her, his profile a hard, chiseled mask, devoid of all compassion or understanding. He was angry with her for trying to leave him at the altar, she knew—angry and unforgiving. Fear of his possible revenge jarred through her nervous system, adding more tension to her already overburdened emotions. She wondered frantically if she had created a breach between them that might never heal. “Jason,” she said, timidly using his given name, “ I’m sorry about what happened in the church.”

He shrugged, his face emotionless.

His silence only increased Victoria’s anxiety as the coach rounded a bend and descended into the picturesque little village near Wakefield. She was about to apologize again when church bells suddenly began tolling, and she saw villagers and peasants lining the road ahead, dressed in their holiday best.

They smiled and waved as the coach passed by, and little children, holding bouquets of wild flowers clutched tightly in their fists, ran forward, offering their posies to Victoria through the open coach window.

One little boy of about four caught his toe on a thick root at the side of the road and landed in a sprawled heap atop his bouquet. “Jason,” Victoria implored, forgetting about the uneasiness between them, “tell the driver to stop—please!”

Jason complied, and Victoria opened the door. “What lovely flowers!” she exclaimed to the little boy, who was picking himself up from the road beside their coach while some older boys jeered and shouted at him. “Are those for me?” she asked enthusiastically, nodding to the bedraggled flowers.

The little boy sniffed, rubbing the tears from his eyes with a grimy little fist. “Yes, mum—they was for you afore I failed on ‘em.”

“May I have them?” Victoria prodded, smiling. “They would look lovely right here in my own bouquet.”

The little boy shyly held out the decapitated stems to her. “I picked ‘em myself,” he whispered proudly, his eyes wide as Victoria carefully inserted two stems into her own lavish bouquet. “My name’s Billy,” he said, looking at Victoria with his left eye, his right eye skewing up toward the corner near his nose. “I live at the orphanage up there.”

Victoria smiled and said gently, “My name is Victoria. But my very closest friends call me Tory. Would you like to call me Tory?”

His little chest swelled with pride, but he shot a cautious look at Jason and waited for the lord’s nod before he nodded his head in an exuberant yes.

“Would you like to come to Wakefield someday soon and help me fly a kite?” she continued, while Jason watched her in thoughtful surprise.

His smile faded. “I don’t run so good. I fall down a lot,” he admitted with painful intensity.

Victoria nodded understanding. “Probably because of your eye. But I may know a way to make it straight. I once knew another little boy with an eye like yours. One day when we were all playing Settlers and Indians, he fell and hurt his good eye, and my father had to put a patch on it until it healed. Well, while the good eye was covered up, the bad eye began to straighten out—my father thought it was because the bad eye had to work while the good eye was covered up. Would you like me to visit you, and we’ll try the patch?”

“I’ll look queer, mum,” he said hesitantly.

“We thought Jimmy—the other little boy—looked exactly like a pirate,” Victoria said, “and pretty soon we were all trying to wear patches on one eye. Would you like me to visit you and we’ll play pirate?”

He nodded and turned to smile smugly at the older children. “What did the lady say?” they demanded as Jason signaled the driver to continue.

Billy shoved his hands into his pockets, puffed out his chest, and proudly declared, “She said I can call her Tory.”

The children joined in with the adults, who formed a procession and followed the coach up the hill in what Victoria assumed must be some sort of festive village custom when the lord of the manor married. By the time the horses trotted through the massive iron gates of Wakefield Park, a small army of villagers was following them and more people were awaiting them along the tree-lined avenue that ran through the park. Victoria glanced uncertainly at Jason, and she could have sworn he was hiding a smile.

The reason for his smile became obvious as soon as their coach neared the great house. She had told Jason that she had always planned to be married in a little village with all the villagers there to help celebrate the occasion, and in a strangely quixotic gesture, the enigmatic man she had just married was trying to fulfill at least part of her dream. He had transformed the lawns of Wakefield into a fairy-tale bower of flowers. Enormous canopies of white orchids, lilies, and roses stretched above huge tables laden with silver plate, china, and food. The pavilion at the far end of the lawns was covered in flowers and strung with gaily colored lamps. Torches burned brightly everywhere she looked, driving off the encroaching dusk and adding a festive, mysterious glow to the scene.

Instead of being annoyed at leaving most of the wedding guests in London, Jason had obviously spent a fortune turning the estate into a haven of whimsical beauty for her, and then he had invited all the village to come and celebrate their marriage. Even nature had collaborated with Jason’s scheme, for the clouds began to vanish, driven away by the setting sun, which decorated the sky in splashes of vivid pink and purple.

The coach came to a stop in front of the house, and Victoria looked around at this evidence of Jason’s thoughtfulness—a thoughtfulness that was in direct opposition to his normal facade of callous indifference. She glanced at him, seeing the little smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes despite his best efforts to hide it, and she laid her hand softly on his arm. “Jason,” she whispered, her voice shaky with emotion. “I—I thank you.” Recalling his admonition to thank him with a kiss, she laid her hand against his hard chest and kissed him, with shy tenderness pouring through her veins.

A man’s laughing Irish voice jerked Victoria back to reality. “Jason, my boy, are you going to get out of that coach and introduce me to your bride, or must I introduce myself?”

Jason swung around and a look of surprised pleasure broke across his tanned features as he bounded down from the coach. He reached out to shake the brawny Irishman’s hand, but the man enfolded him in a great bear hug. “So,” the stranger said finally, grasping Jason’s shoulders and beaming at him with unhidden affection, “you’ve finally gotten yourself a wife to warm up this big, cold palace of yours. At least you could’ve waited until my ship put into port, so I could’ve attended the wedding,” he teased.

“I didn’t expect to see you until next month,” Jason said. “When did you get back?”

“I stayed to see the cargo unloaded, then I came home today. I rode over here an hour ago, but instead of finding you hard at work, I learned you were busy getting yourself married. Well, are you going to introduce me to your wife?” he demanded good-naturedly.

Jason turned to help Victoria down and then he introduced the seaman to her as Captain Michael Farrell. Captain Farrell was about fifty, Victoria guessed, with thick auburn hair and the merriest hazel eyes she had ever seen. His face was tanned and weathered, with tiny lines feathering out from the corners of his eyes, attesting to a life spent on the deck of a ship. Victoria liked him on sight, but hearing herself referred to for the first time as Jason’s wife shook her composure so badly that she greeted Mike Farrell with the reserved formality she had been required to maintain since coming to England.

When she did so, Captain Farrell’s expression altered. The warm approval vanished from his eyes, and his manner far surpassed hers in rigidity. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Fielding,” he intoned with a brief, cool bow. “You’ll pardon my lack of proper attire. I had no idea when I came here that a party was soon to commence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been at sea for six months and I’m eager for my own hearth.”

“Oh, but you can’t leave!” Victoria said, reacting with the unaffected warmth that was far more natural to her than regal formality. She could see that Captain Farrell was an especially good friend of Jason’s, and she wanted desperately to make him feel welcome. “My husband and I are overdressed for this time of day,” she teased. “Besides, when I was at sea for only six weeks, I positively longed to dine on a table that didn’t tilt and sway, and I’m certain our tables will stay just where they are.”

Captain Farrell scrutinized her as if uncertain what to make of her. “I gather you did not enjoy your voyage, Lady Fielding?” he asked noncommittally.

Victoria shook her head, her smile infectious. “Not as much as I enjoyed breaking my arm or having measles—at least then I didn’t retch, which I did for an entire week at sea. I am not a good sailor, I fear, for when a storm blew up before I’d recovered from mal de mer, I was shamefully afraid.”

“Good Lord!” Captain Farrell said, his smile regaining some of its original warmth. “Don’t call yourself a coward on that account. Seasoned seamen have been afraid of dying during an Atlantic storm.”

“But I,” Victoria contradicted, laughing, “was afraid I was not going to die.”

Mike Farrell threw back his head and laughed; then he grasped both Victoria’s hands in his huge, calloused paws and grinned at her. “I’ll be delighted to stay and join you and Jason. Forgive me for being so... er... hesitant before.”

Victoria nodded happily. Then she helped herself to a glass of wine from the tray being passed by a footman and went off to visit the two farmers who had brought her to Wakefield the day of her arrival.

When she was gone, Mike Farrell turned to Jason and said quietly, “When I saw her kissing you in the coach, I liked the look of her right off, Jason. But when she greeted me in that prim, proper way—with that blank look in her eyes as if she weren’t really seeing me—I feared for a moment you’d married another haughty bitch like Melissa.”

Jason watched Victoria putting the awkward farmers at ease. “She’s anything but haughty. Her dog is part wolf and she’s part fish. My servants dote on her, Charles adores her, and every stupid fop in London fancies himself in love with her.”

“Including you?” Mike Farrell said pointedly.

Jason watched Victoria finish her wine and reach for another glass. The only way she could make herself marry him this morning was by pretending he was Andrew, and, even so, she’d damned near left him standing at the altar in front of 800 people. Since he had never seen her drink more than a sip of wine before, and she was already on her second glass, Jason assumed she was now trying to dull her revulsion at having to couple with him tonight.

“You don’t quite look like the happiest of bridegrooms,” Mike Farrell said, observing Jason’s dark frown.

“I’ve never been happier,” Jason replied bitterly, and went to greet guests whose names he didn’t know so that he could introduce them to the woman he was beginning to regret having married. He performed the function of host and acted the part of bridegroom with an outward appearance of smiling cordiality, all the while remembering that Victoria had nearly fled from him in the church. The memory was seanngly painful and belittling, and he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Stars were twinkling in the sky as Jason stood on the sidelines, watching her dance with the local squire and Mike Farrell and then several of the villagers. She was deliberately avoiding him, he knew, and on those rare occasions when their eyes met, Victoria quickly looked away.

She had long since removed her veil and asked the orchestra to play more lively tunes, then charmed the villagers by asking them to teach her the local dances. By the time the moon was riding high in the sky, everyone was dancing and clapping and thoroughly enjoying themselves, including Victoria, who had now finished five glasses of wine. Evidently she was trying to drink herself into a stupor, Jason thought sarcastically, noting the flush on her cheeks. Disgust knotted his stomach as he thought of his hopes for tonight, for their future. Like a fool, he had believed happiness was finally within his grasp.

Lounging against a tree, he watched her, wondering why women were so attracted to him until he married them, and then they loathed him. He had done it again, he thought furiously. He had made the same idiotic mistake twice—he had married a woman who agreed to have him because she wanted something from him, not because she wanted him.

Melissa had wanted every man she saw, except him. Victoria wanted only Andrew—good, gentle, kind, spineless Andrew.

The only difference between Melissa and Victoria was that Victoria was a much better actress, Jason decided. He had known Melissa was a selfish, calculating bitch from the start, but he had thought Victoria was closer to an angel... a fallen angel, of course—thanks to Andrew—but he hadn’t held that against her. Now he did. He despised her for having given herself freely to Andrew, yet wanting to avoid giving herself to her husband, which was exactly what she was trying to do by consuming enough wine to render her insensible. He hated the way she had trembled in his arms and avoided his gaze when he danced with her a few minutes ago, and then she had shuddered when he suggested it was time to go inside.

Dispassionately, Jason wondered why he could make his mistresses cry out in ecstasy, but the women he married wanted nothing to do with him the moment the vows were said. He wondered why making money came so easily to him, but happiness always eluded him. The vicious old bitch who had raised him had evidently been right—he was the spawn of the devil, undeserving of life, let alone happiness.

The only three women who had ever been part of his life— Victoria, Melissa, and his foster mother—had all seen something in him that made him loathsome and ugly in their sight, although both his wives had hidden their revulsion until after the wedding, when his wealth was finally theirs.

With implacable resolve, Jason approached Victoria and touched her arm. She jumped and pulled away as if his touch burned her. “It’s late and it’s time to go in,” he said.

Even in the moonlight her face turned noticeably pale and a trapped, haunted look widened her eyes. “B-but it’s not really late—”

“It’s late enough to go to bed, Victoria,” he told her bluntly.

“But I’m not the least bit sleepy!”

“Good,” Jason said with deliberate crudity. He knew she understood because her whole body began to tremble. “We made a bargain,” he said harshly, “and I expect you to keep your part of it, no matter how distasteful you find the prospect of going to bed with me.”

His icy, authoritative voice chilled her to the bone. Nodding, Victoria walked stiffly into the house and up to her new rooms, which adjoined Jason’s.

Sensing her withdrawn mood, Ruth silently helped Victoria remove her wedding gown and put on the cream satin and lace negligee Madame Dumosse had created especially for use on her wedding night.

Bile rose in Victoria’s throat and terror clutched at her insides when Ruth went over to turn the bed down. The wine she had drunk, hoping to quiet her fears, was now making her dizzy and sick. Instead of calming her as it had earlier, it was making her feel violently ill and horribly unable to control her emotions. She wished devoutly she hadn’t touched it. The only other time she’d had more than a sip of the stuff was after her parents’ funeral, when Dr. Morrison insisted she have two glasses. It had made her retch that time, and he had told her she might be one of those people whose systems couldn’t tolerate it.

With Miss Flossie’s lurid description screaming through her mind, Victoria walked toward the bed. Soon her blood would be spilled on these sheets, she thought wildly. How much blood? How much pain? She broke out in a cold sweat, and dizziness swept over her as Ruth plumped up the pillows. Like a puppet she climbed in, trying to control her quaking panic and rising nausea. She mustn’t scream or show her revulsion, Miss Flossie had told her, but when Jason pulled the connecting door open and strode into the room wearing a maroon brocade dressing robe that showed much of his bare chest and legs, Victoria couldn’t stifle her gasp of fear. “Jason!” she burst out, pressing back into the pillows.

“Who were you expecting—Andrew?” he asked conversationally. His hands went to the satin belt that held the sides of his dressing robe together, and Victoria’s fear escalated to panic. “D-don’t do that,” she pleaded wildly, unable to speak or think coherently. “A gentleman surely doesn’t disrobe in front of a lady, even if they are m-married.”

“I think we’ve had this conversation before, but in case you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you again that I’m no gentleman.” His hands pulled at the ends of the satin belt. “However, if the sight of my ungentlemanly body offends your sensibilities, you can solve that problem by closing your eyes. The only other solution is for me to get into bed and then remove my robe, and that option offends my sensibilities.” He opened the robe, shrugging out of it and Victoria’s eyes widened in mute terror on his huge, muscular body.

Whatever tiny, secret hope Jason had harbored that she might yet submit willingly to his advances vanished when she closed her eyes and averted her face from him.

Jason stared at her and then, with deliberate crudity, he yanked the sheets from her fists and swept them away. He got into bed beside her and wordlessly untied the bow at the low bodice of her satin and lace negligee; then he sucked in his breath as he beheld the nude perfection of her body.

Victoria’s breasts were full and ripe, her waist tiny, her hips gently rounded. Her legs were long and incredibly shapely, with slim thighs and trim calves. As his gaze roved over her, a blush stained her smooth ivory skin and when he laid his hand tentatively against one voluptuous breast, her whole body lurched and stiffened, rejecting his touch.

For an experienced woman, she was as cold and unyielding as a stone, lying there, her averted face twisted with revulsion. Jason considered trying to seduce her into cooperating, then tossed the idea aside with contempt. She had nearly left him at the altar this morning, and she obviously had no desire to suffer his prolonged caresses.

“Don’t do this,” she pleaded frantically as he caressed her breast. “I’m going to be sick!” she cried, trying to lunge out of bed. “You’re going to make me sick!”

Her words hammered into his brain like sharp nails, and black rage exploded inside him. Shoving his hands into her luxurious hair, Jason rolled onto her. “In that case,” he growled on a raw, infuriated breath, “we’d better get this over with in a hurry.”

Visions of blood and terrible pain roared through Victoria, adding their horror to the nausea the wine was causing. “I don’t want to!” she cried piteously.

“We made a bargain, and as long as we’re married, you’ll keep it,” he whispered as he pried her stiff thighs apart. Victoria whimpered as his rigid manhood probed boldly at her, but somewhere in the depths of her stricken mind, she knew he was right about the bargain and she stopped fighting him. “Relax,” he warned bitterly in the darkness above her, “I may not be as considerate as your dear Andrew, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

His vicious mention of Andrew at a time like this cut her to the heart, and her anguish erupted in a scream of pain as Jason rammed into her. Her body writhed beneath his, and tears poured from her eyes in hot, humiliated streaks as her husband used her without kindness or caring.

The instant his weight lifted from her, Victoria turned onto her side, burying her face in the pillow, her body racked with sobs that were part horror, part shock. “Get out,” she choked, pulling her knees up to her chest and curling into a ball of anguish. “Get out, get out!”

Jason hesitated, then rolled from the bed, picked up his robe, and walked into his room. He closed the door, but the sounds of her weeping followed him. Nude, he went over to his dresser, snatched up a crystal decanter of brandy and half-filled a glass with the potent brew. He swallowed all of the burning liquid, trying to drown out the memory of her resistance and the sound of her heartbroken revulsion, to blot out the thought of her stricken face when she tried to pull her hand free of his at the altar.

How stupid he’d been to believe he’d felt warmth from Victoria when she kissed him. She’d told him when he first suggested they marry that she didn’t want to marry him. Long ago, when she discovered they were supposedly betrothed, she’d told him what she really thought of him: “You are a cold, callous, arrogant monster.... No woman in her right mind would marry you.... You aren’t worth a tenth of Andrew....”

She’d meant every word.

How stupid he’d been to convince himself she actually cared for him.... Jason turned to put the glass down on the dresser and caught his reflection in the mirror. Traces of blood were smeared on his thighs.

Victoria’s blood.

Her heart might have belonged to Andrew, but not her beautiful body—that she had given only to Jason. He stared at himself while self-loathing poured through his veins like acid. He had been so damned jealous, so wounded by her attempt to leave him at the altar, that he hadn’t even noticed she was a virgin.

He closed his eyes in agonizing remorse, unable to bear the sight of himself. He had shown Victoria no more tenderness or consideration than a drunken seaman shows a paid doxy.

He thought of how dry and tight her passage had been, how small and fragile she had felt in his arms, how viciously he had used her, and a fresh surge of sickening regret ripped through him.

Opening his eyes, he stared at himself in the mirror, knowing he had turned her wedding night into a nightmare. Victoria was indeed the gentle, courageous, spirited angel he had thought she was from the very beginning. And he—he was exactly what his foster mother had called him as a child: the spawn of the devil.

Shrugging into his robe, Jason took a velvet box from a drawer and went back into Victoria’s room. He stood beside her bed, watching her sleep. “Victoria,” he whispered. She flinched in her slumber at the sound of his voice and he ached with remorse. How vulnerable and hurt she looked; how incredibly beautiful she was with her hair spilling over the pillows and gleaming in the candlelight.

Jason watched her in tormented silence, unwilling to disturb her. Finally he reached down and gently drew the covers over her slim bare shoulders, then smoothed her heavy hair off her forehead. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to his sleeping wife.

He blew out the candle and put the velvet box on the little table beside the bed where she would be certain to see it when she awoke. Diamonds would soothe her. Women would forgive anything for diamonds.