ictoria was seated in the salon late that afternoon, waiting for Jason to return from an errand, when the elderly butler who presided over the London house appeared in the doorway. “Her grace, the Duchess of Claremont wishes to see you, my lady. I told—”

“He told me you were not in to visitors,” her grace said gruffly, marching into the room to the horror of the butler. “The silly fool doesn’t seem to understand that I am ‘family,’ not ‘visitors.’ ”

“Grandmama!” Victoria burst out, leaping to her feet in nervous surprise at the unexpected appearance of the gruff old lady.

The duchess’s turbaned head swiveled to the shocked servant. “There!” she snapped, waving her cane at the butler. “Did you hear that? Grandmama!” she emphasized with satisfaction. Mumbling abject apologies, the butler bowed himself out of the room, leaving Victoria apprehensively confronting her relative, who sat down upon a chair and folded her blue-veined hands upon the jeweled head of her cane, scrutinizing Victoria’s features minutely. “You look happy enough,” she concluded, as if surprised.

“Is that why you came here from the country?” Victoria asked, sitting down across from her. “To see if I am happy?”

“I came to see Wakefield,” her grace said ominously.

“He isn’t here,” Victoria said, taken aback by the old lady’s sudden scowl.

Her great-grandmother’s scowl darkened. “So I understand. All London understands he isn’t here with you! I mean to run him to ground and call him to task if I have to chase him clear across Europe!”

“I find it amazing,” Jason drawled in amusement as he walked into the salon, “that nearly everyone who knows me is half-afraid of me—except my tiny wife, my young sister-in-law, and you, madam, who are three times my age and one-third my weight. I can only surmise that courage—or recklessness—is passed through the bloodline, along with physical traits. However,” he finished, grinning, “go ahead. I give you leave to take me to task right here in my own salon.”

The duchess came to her feet and glowered at him. “So! You have finally remembered where you live and that you have a wife!” she snapped imperiously. “I told you I would hold you responsible for Victoria’s happiness, and you are not making her happy. Not happy at all!”

Jason’s speculative gaze shot to Victoria, but she shook her head in helpless bewilderment and shrugged. Satisfied that Victoria was not responsible for the duchess’s opinion, he put his arm around Victoria’s shoulders and said mildly, “In what way am I failing in my duties as a husband?”

The duchess’s mouth fell open. “In what way?” she repeated in disbelief. “There you stand, with your arm about her, but I have it on the best authority that you have been to her bed only six times at Wakefield!”

“Grandmama!” Victoria burst out in horror.

“Hush, Victoria,” she said, directing her dagger gaze at Jason as she continued. “Two of your servants are related to two of mine, and they tell me all Wakefield Park was in an uproar when you refused to bed your bride for a week after the ceremony.”

Victoria let out a mortified moan and Jason’s arm tightened supportively around her shoulders.

“Well,” she snapped, “what have you to say to that, young man?”

Jason quirked a thoughtful eyebrow at her. “I would say I apparently need to have a word with my servants.”

“Don’t you dare make light of this! You, of all men, ought to know how to keep a wife in your bed and at your side. God knows half the married females in London have been panting after you these four years past. If you were some mincing fop with his shirtpoints holding up his chin, then I could understand why you don’t seem to know how to go about getting me an heir—”

“I intend to make your heir my first priority,” Jason drawled with amused gravity.

“I will not countenance any more shilly-shallying about,” she warned, somewhat mollified.

“You’ve been very patient,” he agreed drolly.

Ignoring his mockery, she nodded. “Now that we understand each other, you may invite me to dinner. I cannot stay long, however.”

With a wicked grin, Jason offered her his arm. “No doubt you intend to pay us an extended visit at a later date—say, nine months hence?”

“To the day,” she affirmed boldly, but when she glanced at Victoria, there was laughter in her eyes. As they headed into the dining room, she leaned toward her great-granddaughter and whispered, “Handsome devil, isn’t he, my dear?”

“Very,” Victoria agreed, patting her hand.

“And despite the gossip I heard, you’re happy, are you not?”

“Beyond words,” Victoria said.

“I would like it if you came to visit me someday soon. Claremont House is only fifteen miles from Wakefield, along the river road.”

“I’ll come very soon,” Victoria promised.

“You may bring your husband.”

“Thank you.”

In the days that followed, the Marquess and Marchioness of Wakefield appeared at many of the ton’s most glittering functions. People no longer whispered about his alleged cruelty to his first wife, for it was plain to everyone that Jason, Lord Fielding, was the most devoted and generous of husbands.

One had only to look at the couple to see that Lady Victoria was aglow with happiness and that her tall, handsome husband adored her. In fact, it gave rise to considerable amusement when the ton beheld the formerly aloof, austere Jason Fielding grinning affectionately at his new bride as he waltzed with her or laughing aloud in the midst of a play at some whispered remark of hers.

Very soon, it become the consensus of opinion that the marquess had been the most maligned, misjudged, and misunderstood man alive. The lords and ladies who had treated him with wary caution in the past now began actively to seek out his friendship.

Five days after Victoria had tried to put to rest gossip about her absent husband by speaking of him in the most admiring of terms, Lord Armstrong paid a call upon Jason to request his advice in winning over the cooperation and loyalty of his own servants and tenants. Lord Fielding had looked shocked, then grinned and suggested that Lord Armstrong speak to Lady Fielding about that.

At White’s that same evening, Lord Brimworthy good-naturedly blamed Jason for Lady Brimworthy’s latest purchase of an extravagantly expensive set of sapphires. Lord Fielding shot him an amused look, wagered five hundred pounds on the next hand of cards, and a moment later smoothly divested Lord Brimworthy of that sum.

The following afternoon in Hyde Park, where Jason was teaching Victoria to drive the splendid new high-perch phaeton he’d purchased for her, a carriage drew to an abrupt stop and three ancient ladies peered at him. “Amazing!” said Countess Draymore to her cronies as she scrutinized Jason’s features through her monocle. “She is married to Wakefield!” She turned to her friends. “When Lady Victoria said her husband was ‘the soul of amiability and kindness,’ I thought she must be talking of someone else!”

“He’s not only amiable, he’s brave,” cackled the eldest of the old ladies, watching the couple careening precariously down the lane. “She has nearly turned that phaeton over twice!”

To Victoria, life had become a rainbow of delights. At night, Jason made love to her and taught her to make love to him. He bathed her senses in pleasure and drew from her a stormy passion she had never known she was capable of, then shared it with her. She had taught him to trust and now he gave himself to her completely—body, heart, and soul. He withheld nothing and gave her everything—his love, his attention, and every conceivable gift he could think of from the whimsical to the extravagant.

He had his sleek yacht renamed the Victoria and coaxed her into sailing with him on the Thames. When Victoria commented that she enjoyed sailing on the Thames much more than on the ocean, Jason ordered another yacht to be built for her exclusive use, furnished entirely in pale blues and golds, for the comfort of Victoria and her friends. That piece of spectacular extravagance caused Miss Wilber to remark jealously to a group of friends at a ball, “One lives on tenterhooks wondering what Wakefield will buy her to surpass a yacht!”

Robert Collingwood raised his brows and grinned at the envious young woman. “The Thames, perhaps?”

To Jason, who had never before known the joy of being loved and admired not for what he possessed or for what he appeared to be but for what he really was, the quiet inner peace he felt was sheer bliss. At night, he could not hold her close enough or long enough. During the day, he took her on picnics and swam with her in the creek at Wakefield Park. When he was working, she was there on the perimeters of his mind, making him smile. He wanted to lay the world at her feet, but all Victoria seemed to want was him, and that knowledge filled him with profound tenderness. He donated a fortune to build a hospital near Wakefield—the Patrick Seaton Hospital—then he began arrangements for another one to be built in Portage, New York, also named for Victoria’s father.