ictoria snapped the reins with more Assurance than she felt, and the spirited horse bounded forward, its satiny coat glistening in the gloom. “Easy, now,” Victoria whispered in fright. Jason obviously did not believe in keeping sedate carriage horses in his stables—the flashy mare harnessed to Victoria’s carriage was incredibly hard to control. She pranced and danced until Victoria’s hands were blistered and red from trying to hold her to a slow trot.

As Victoria was nearing the village, the wind picked up and lightning flashed in blue streaks, splitting the sky into jagged slices while thunder boomed an ominous warning and the sky turned almost as black as night. Minutes later, the sky opened up and rain came down in blinding sheets, driving into her face, obscuring her vision, and turning her cloak to a sodden mass.

Straining to see the road ahead, Victoria shoved her dripping hair off her face and shivered. She had never seen the orphanage, but Captain Farrell had told her where the road was that led to it, as well as the road that led to his own house. Victoria strained her eyes, and then she saw what looked like one of the roads he had described. It forked off to her left and she turned the horse onto it, not certain whether she was heading toward the orphanage or Captain Farrell’s house. At the moment she didn’t care, so long as she was going to a warm, dry place where she could get out of the downpour. The road rounded a bend and began to climb upward through increasingly dense woods, passed two deserted cottages, then narrowed until it was scarcely more than a dirt track, which was rapidly becoming a quagmire in the torrential downpour.

Mud sucked at the wheels of the carriage and the mare began to labor with the effort of freeing her hooves from the deep slime every time she took a step. Up ahead Victoria saw a dim light coming through the trees. Shivering with relief and cold, she turned onto a little lane that was sheltered by a thick stand of ancient oak trees, their branches meeting overhead like a dripping umbrella. Suddenly lightning rent the sky, illuminating a cottage large enough for a small family but certainly not large enough to house twenty orphans. Thunder cracked deafeningly overhead and the mare shied, half-rearing in the traces. Victoria jumped down from the carriage. “Easy now,” she told the mare soothingly as she reached for the nervous animal’s bridle. Her feet sank into the mud as she led the horse to the post in front of the cottage and tied her there.

With Wolf protectively at her side, she lifted her sodden skirts, walked up the front steps of the cottage, and knocked.

A moment later the door was flung open and Captain Farrell’s rugged face was silhouetted in the light from the cheerful fire behind him. “Lady Fielding!” he gasped, reaching out to pull her quickly inside. A low, vicious snarl from Wolf stopped his hand in midmotion and his eyes widened as he beheld the wet gray beast that was snarling at him, its lip curled back above white fangs.

“Wolf, stop it!” Victoria commanded wearily, and the animal subsided.

Keeping a wary eye on the ferocious-looking beast, Captain Farrell cautiously drew Victoria inside. Wolf followed close at her heels, his tawny eyes riveted warningly on Mike Farrell. “What in heaven’s name are you doing out in this weather?” he asked worriedly.

“S-swimming,” Victoria tried to joke, but her teeth were chattering and her body was trembling with cold as he pulled her cloak off and tossed it over the back of a chair near the fire.

“You’ll have to get out of those wet garments or you’ll catch your death. Will that great beast let you out of his sight long enough to put on some warm clothes?”

Victoria wrapped her arms around herself and nodded, glancing at her fierce canine guardian. “S-stay here, Wolf.”

The dog flopped down in front of the fireplace and put his head on his big paws, his eyes trained on the doorway into the bedroom through which they disappeared.

“I’ll stoke up the fire,” Captain Farrell said kindly in the bedroom, handing her a pair of his own trousers and one of his shirts. “These clothes are the best I can offer.” Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but he forestalled her. “I’ll not listen to any foolish arguments about the impropriety of wearing men’s clothes, young woman,” he said authoritatively. “Use the water in the pitcher to wash and then put on these clothes and wrap yourself up in that blanket. When you’re ready, come out by the fire and get warm. If you’re worried about whether Jason might disapprove of you wearing my clothes; you can stop worrying—I’ve known him since he was a very small lad.”

Victoria’s head came up defensively. “I am not at all concerned with what Jason might think,” she said, unable to keep the rebellious note out of her voice. “I have no intention of freezing to death to suit him. Or anyone,” she amended quickly, realizing how much she was giving away in her beleaguered discomfort.

Captain Farrell shot her an odd, narrow look, but he only nodded. “Good. That’s very sensible thinking.”

“If I were sensible, I would have stayed home today.” Victoria smiled wanly, trying to hide her misery over her abortive effort to brighten her life.

When she emerged from the bedroom, Captain Farrell had already put her horse in the small barn beyond the house, stoked up the fire, and made her a cup of tea. He handed her a big cloth. “Use this to dry your hair,” he commanded kindly, indicating that she should sit in the chair he’d drawn up close to the fire.

“Do you mind if I smoke this?” he asked, holding up a pipe as he sat down across from her.

“Not at all,” Victoria said politely.

He filled the bowl with tobacco and lit it, puffing idly, his disconcertingly direct gaze focused on Victoria’s face. “Why didn’t you do that?” he asked finally.

“Why didn’t I do what?”

“Stay at home today.”

Wondering if she looked as guilty and unhappy as she felt at the moment, Victoria gave a light, evasive shrug. “I wanted to bring food to the orphanage. There was so much of it left after our party last night.”

“Yet it was obviously going to rain, and you could have sent a servant to the orphanage—which, by the way, is another mile past here. Instead, you decided to brave the weather and try to find the place yourself.”

“I needed—wanted, I mean—to get away, to get out of the house for a while, that is,” Victoria said, paying unnecessary attention to the act of stirring her tea.

“I’m surprised Jason didn’t insist you stay home,” he persisted pointedly.

“I didn’t think it was necessary to ask his permission,” Victoria replied, uneasily conscious of Captain Farrell’s searching questions and intent gaze.

“He must be worried sick about you by now.”

“I very much doubt if he’ll discover I’ve been gone.” Or that he’d care, even if he knew, she thought miserably.

“Lady Fielding?”

There was something about the bluntness beneath his polite tone that made Victoria certain she did not want to continue this conversation. On the other hand, she had little choice. “Yes, Captain?” she said warily.

“I saw Jason this morning.”

Victoria’s unease grew. “Oh, yes?” She had the worst feeling that for some reason Jason might have come here to discuss her with his old friend, and she felt as if all the world was turning against her.

Apparently Captain Farrell sensed her suspicion, because he explained, “Jason owns a large fleet of ships. I have command of one of them, and he wanted to discuss the success of this last voyage with me.”

Victoria seized on that remark to try to shift the conversation away from herself. “I didn’t know Lord Fielding knew anything about ships, or that he was involved with them,” she said in a bright, inquiring voice.

“That’s odd.”

“What is?”

“Perhaps I am simple and old-fashioned, but I find it rather odd that a woman wouldn’t know that her husband spent years of his life aboard a ship.”

Victoria gaped at him. As far as she knew, Jason was an English lord—an arrogant, wealthy, world-weary, spoiled aristocrat. The only thing that distinguished him from the rest of the noblemen she’d met was that Jason spent a great deal of time in his study working, while the other wealthy gentlemen she’d met in England seemed to spend all their time in the pursuit of pleasure and diversion.

“Perhaps you simply aren’t interested in his accomplishments?” Captain Farrell prodded, his manner chilling. He puffed on his pipe for a moment, then said bluntly, “Why did you marry him?”

Victoria’s eyes flew wide open. She felt like a trapped rabbit—a feeling she was beginning to experience very often and which was beginning to grate terribly on her pride. She raised her head and regarded her inquisitor with ill-concealed resentment. With as much dignity as she could muster, she replied evasively, “I married Lord Fielding for the usual reasons.”

“Money, influence, and social position,” Captain Farrell summarized with scathing disgust. “Well, you have all three now. Congratulations.”

This unprovoked attack was too much for Victoria to bear. Tears of fury sprang to her eyes as she stood up, clutching the blanket to herself. “Captain Farrell, I am not wet enough or miserable enough or desperate enough to sit here and feel obliged to listen to you accuse me of being mercenary and— and selfish and—a social parasite—”

“Why not?” he bit out. “Evidently, you’re all those things.”

“I don’t care what you think of me. I—” Her voice cracked and Victoria started toward the bedroom, intending to get her clothes, but he rolled to his feet and blocked her way, angrily searching her face as if he were trying to look into her soul.

“Why do you want a divorce?” he demanded sharply, but his expression gentled slightly as he stared down at her beautiful, fragile features. Even wrapped in a plain woolen blanket, Victoria Seaton was an incredibly lovely sight, with the firelight glinting in her red-gold hair and her magnificent blue eyes flashing with helpless resentment. She had spirit, but it was evident from the tears glistening in her eyes that her spirit was nearly broken. In fact, she looked as if she were about to splinter apart.

“This morning,” he persisted, “I jokingly asked Jason if you’d left him yet. He said you hadn’t left him, but you’d asked for a divorce. I assumed he meant that to be humorous, but when you walked in here just now, you certainly didn’t look like a happy new bride.”

Teetering on the brink of utter despair, Victoria gazed into her tormentor’s implacable, sun-bronzed face, fighting back her tears and trying to hold onto her dignity. “Will you please step out of my way,” she said hoarsely..

Instead of moving aside, he caught her by the shoulders. “Now that you have everything you married him for—the money, the influence, the social position—why do you want a divorce?” he demanded.

“I have nothing!” Victoria burst out, perilously close to tears. “Now, let go of me!”

“Not until I understand how I could have misjudged you so much. Yesterday, when you spoke to me, I thought you were wonderful. I saw the laughter in your eyes when you talked, and I saw the way you treated the villagers. I thought to myself that you were a real woman—one with heart and spirit, not some mercenary, spoiled little coward!”

Hot tears filled Victoria’s eyes at this unfair condemnation from a perfect stranger, and a friend of Jason’s to boot. “Leave me alone, damn you!” she demanded brokenly, and tried to shove him out of her way.

Amazingly, his arms wrapped around her, hauling her against his broad chest. “Cry, Victoria!” he ordered gruffly. “For God’s sake, cry.”

Victoria shuddered as he whispered, “Let the tears come, child.” He stroked her back with his broad hand. “If you try to hold all this inside you, you’ll shatter.”

Victoria had learned to deal with tragedy and adversity; she could not, however, cope with kindness and understanding. The tears rushed to her eyes and poured out of her in wrenching sobs that shook her body and tore themselves from her in painful torrents. She had no idea when Captain Farrell coaxed her to sit beside him on the plain sofa across from the fire, or when she began to tell him about her parents’ deaths and the events leading up to Jason’s coldblooded offer of marriage. With her face buried against his shoulder, she answered his questions about Jason and why she had married him. And when she was finished, she felt better than she had in weeks.

“So,” he said with a slight, admiring smile. “Despite Jason’s unemotional proposal, despite the fact that you actually know nothing about him, you still thought he truly needed you?”

Victoria self-consciously wiped her eyes and nodded sheepishly. “Obviously, I was foolish and fanciful to think that, but there were times he seemed so alone—times when I would look at him in a crowded ballroom, surrounded by people—usually women—and I would have this queer feeling that he felt as lonely as I did. And Uncle Charles said Jason needed me, too. But we were both wrong. Jason wants a son, it’s as simple as that. He doesn’t need me or want me.”

“You’re wrong,” Captain Farrell said with gentle finality. “Jason has needed a women like you since the day he was born. He needs you to heal wounds that are deep, to teach him how to let himself love and be loved in return. If you knew more about him, you’d understand why I say that.” Getting up, Captain Farrell walked over to a small table and picked up a bottle. He poured some of its contents into two glasses, then handed one to her.

“Will you tell me about him?” Victoria asked as he went to the fireplace and stood looking down at her.

“Yes.”

Victoria glanced at the potent-smelling whiskey he’d handed her and started to put it down on the table.

“If you want to hear about Jason, I suggest you drink that first,” Captain Farrell said grimly. “You’re going to need it.”

Victoria took a sip of the burning stuff, but the burly Irishman lifted his glass and gulped down half the liquid in it as if he, too, needed it.

“I’m going to tell you things about Jason that only I know, things he obviously doesn’t want you to know or he would have told you. By telling you these things, I’m betraying Jason’s trust, and until this moment, I was one of the few people close to him who had never betrayed him in some way or another. He is like a son to me, Victoria, so it hurts me to do this; yet I feel it is imperative that you understand him.”

Victoria slowly shook her head. “Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me anything, Captain. Lord Fielding and I are at outs most of the time, but I would not like to see either of you hurt by the things you tell me.”

A smile flickered briefly across Captain Farrell’s grim features. “If I thought you might use what I tell you as a weapon against him, I’d keep my silence. But you won’t do that. There is a gentle strength about you, a compassion and understanding that I witnessed firsthand last night when I saw you mingling with the villagers. I watched you laughing with them and putting them at their ease, and I thought then that you were a wonderful young woman—and the perfect wife for Jason. I still think that.”

He drew a long breath and began. “The first time I saw your husband, I was in Delhi. It was many years ago, and I was working for a wealthy Delhi merchant named Napal who shipped goods back and forth from India all over the world. Napal not only owned the goods he traded, he owned four ships that carried them across the seas. I was first mate on one of those ships.

“I’d been away for six months on an extremely profitable voyage, and when we returned to port, Napal invited the captain and myself to come to his home for a small, private celebration.

“It’s always hot in India, but it seemed even hotter that day, especially because I got lost trying to find Napal’s home. Somehow I ended up in a maze of alleyways and when I finally worked my way out of them, I found myself in a squalid little square filled with filthy, ragged Indians—the poverty there is beyond imagination. At any rate, I looked around, hoping against hope to find someone I could speak to in French or English in order to ask directions.

“I saw a small crowd of people gathered at the end of the square, watching something—I couldn’t see what—and I went over to them. They were standing outside a building, watching what was going on inside it. I started to turn back, to try to retrace my steps, when I saw a crude wooden cross nailed up outside the building. Thinking it was a church and that I might find someone I could speak to in my own language, I pushed through the crowd and went in. I elbowed my way past a hundred ragged Indians toward the front of the place, where I could hear a woman screaming like a fanatic, in English, about lust and the vengeance of the Almighty.

“I finally got to where I could see, and there she was, standing on this wooden scaffold with a little boy beside her. She was pointing to the child and screaming that he was the devil. She shrieked that he was ‘the seed of lust’ and ‘the product of evil,’ and then she jerked the child’s head up and I saw his face.

“I was stunned when I realized the boy was white, not Indian. She shouted at everyone to ‘Look upon the devil and see what vengeance the Lord takes’; then she turned the boy around to show the ‘vengeance of the Lord.’ When I saw his back, I thought I would be sick.”

Captain Farrell swallowed audibly. “Victoria, the little boy’s back was black and blue from his last beating and it was scarred from God knows how many other beatings. From the looks of it, she’d just finished beating him in front of her ‘congregation’—the Indians don’t object to that sort of barbaric cruelty.

His face contorted as he continued. “While I stood there, the demented hag screamed at the child to get down on his knees, to pray for forgiveness from the Lord. He looked her right in the eye, not saying anything, but he didn’t move, and she brought her whip down across his shoulders with enough force to send a grown man to his knees. The child went down to his. ‘Pray, you devil,’ she screamed at the kneeling child, and she hit him again. The child said nothing, he just looked straight ahead; and it was then I saw his eyes... His eyes were dry. There wasn’t a single tear in them. But there was pain there—God, they were filled with such pain!”

Victoria shuddered with pity for the unknown child, wondering why Captain Farrell was telling her this hideous story before telling her about Jason.

Captain Farrell’s face twisted. “I’ll never forget the torment in his eyes,” he whispered hoarsely, “or how green they seemed at that moment.”

Victoria’s glass crashed to the floor and shattered. She shook her head wildly, trying to deny what he was telling her. “No,” she cried in anguish. “Oh, please, no—”

Seemingly oblivious to her horror, Captain Farrell continued, staring straight ahead, lost in the memories. “The little boy prayed then, he clasped his hands together and recited, ‘I kneel to the Lord and ask his forgiveness.’ The woman made him say it louder, over and over again, and when she was satisfied, she hauled him to his feet. She pointed at the dirty Indians and told him to beg the righteous for their forgiveness. Then she handed him a little bowl. I stood watching as the little boy went into the crowd to kneel at the feet of her ‘congregation’ and kiss the hems of their dirty robes and ‘beg them for their forgiveness.’ ”

“No,” Victoria moaned, wrapping her arms around her and closing her eyes as she tried to blot out the image of a little boy with curly black hair and familiar green eyes being subjected to such demented evil.

“Something inside of me went crazy,” Farrell continued. “The Indians are a fanatic lot and I take no interest in their ways. But to see a child of my own race so abused did something to me. It was more than that, though. There was something about that little boy that reached out to me—he was filthy and ragged and undernourished, but there was a proud, defiant look in those haunted eyes of his that broke my heart. I waited while he kneeled to the Indians around me and kissed the hems of their robes, asking for their forgiveness while they dropped coins into the wooden bowl. Then he brought the bowl to the woman, and she smiled. She took the bowl and smiled at him; she told him he was ‘good’ now, smiling that fanatic, demented smile of hers.

“I looked at that obscene woman standing on the makeshift altar, holding a cross, and I wanted to kill her. On the other hand, I didn’t know how loyal her congregation was to her and, since I couldn’t fight them off single-handedly, I asked if she would sell the boy to me. I told her I thought he needed a man to punish him properly.”

Pulling his gaze from its distant focus, Captain Farrell looked at Victoria, a mirthless smirk on his face. “She sold him to me for the six months’ pay I was carrying in my pocket. Her husband had died a year before and she needed money as much as she needed a whipping boy. But before I was out of the place, she was showering my money on her congregation and shouting about God sending His gifts to them through her. She was insane. Utterly insane.”

Victoria’s voice was a pleading whisper. “Do you think things were better for Jason before his father died?”

“Jason’s father is still alive,” Captain Farrell answered stiffly. “Jason is Charles’s illegitimate son.”

The room began to whirl and Victoria clamped her hand over her mouth, fighting down the nausea and dizziness that assailed her.

“Does it disgust you so much to discover you’re married to a bastard?” he asked, watching her reaction.

“How could you think such a stupid thing!” Victoria burst out indignantly.

He smiled at that. “Good. I didn’t think you’d care, but the English are very fastidious about such things.”

“Which,” Victoria retorted hotly, “is extremely hypocritical on their part, since three royal dukes I could name are direct descendants of three of King Charles’s bastards. Besides that, I am not English, I am American.”

“You are lovely,” he said gently.

“Would you tell me the rest of what you know about Jason?” she asked, her heart already full to bursting with compassion.

“The rest isn’t quite as important. I took Jason to Napal’s home that same night. One of Napal’s servants cleaned him up and sent him in to see us. The child didn’t want to talk, but once he did, it was obvious he was bright. When I told Napal the story, he felt pity for Jason and took him into his business as a sort of errand boy. Jason received no money, but he was given a bed in the back of Napal’s office, decent food, and clothes. He taught himself to read and write—he had an insatiable desire to learn.

“By the time Jason was sixteen, he’d learned all he could from Napal about being a merchant. Besides being clever and quick, Jason had an incredible drive to succeed—I imagine that came from being forced to beg with a wooden bowl as a child.

“At any rate, Napal grew more mellow as he grew older and, since he had no children of his own, he began to think of Jason more as a son than a poorly paid, overworked clerk. Jason convinced Napal to let him sail on one of Napal’s ships so that he could learn the shipping business at firsthand. I had become a captain by then, and Jason sailed with me for five years.”

“Was he a good sailor?” Victoria asked softly, feeling terribly proud of the little boy who had grown into such a successful man.

“The best. He started as a common seaman, but he learned navigation and everything else from me in his free time. Napal died two days after we returned from one of our voyages. He was sitting in his office when his heart stopped. Jason tried everything to bring him back, he even bent over him and tried to breathe his own air into his lungs. The others in the office thought Jason had gone crazy, but you see, he loved the old miser. He grieved for him for months. But he didn’t shed a single tear,” Mike Farrell said quietly. “Jason can’t cry. The witch who raised him was convinced that ‘devils’ can’t cry, and she beat him worse if he did. Jason finally told me that when he was about nine years old.

“Anyway, when Napal died he left everything to Jason. During the next six years, Jason did what he’d tried to convince Napal to do—he bought an entire fleet of ships and he eventually multiplied Napal’s wealth many times over.”

When Captain Farrell stood staring silently into the fire, Victoria said, “Jason married, too, didn’t he? I discovered that only a few days ago.”

“Ah, yes, he married,” Mike said, grimacing as he walked over to the bottle of whiskey and poured himself another drink. “Two years after Napal’s death, Jason had become one of the richest men in Delhi. That distinction won him the mercenary interest of a beautiful, amoral woman named Melissa. Her father was an Englishman living in Delhi and working for the government. Melissa had looks and breeding and style, she had everything but what she needed most-money. She married Jason for what he could give her.”

“Why did Jason marry her?” Victoria wanted to know.

Mike Farrell shrugged. “He was younger than she was and dazzled by her looks, I suppose. Then too, the lady— and I use the term loosely—had a... er... look about her that would make any man expect to find warmth in her arms. She sold that warmth to Jason in return for everything she could wheedle from him. He gave her plenty, too—jewels that would please a queen. She took them and smiled at him. She had a beautiful face, but for some reason when she smiled at him like that, it reminded me of that demented old witch with the wooden bowl.”

Victoria had a sharp, painful vision of Jason giving her the pearls and the sapphires and asking her to thank him with a kiss. She wondered sadly if he thought he had to bribe a woman to care for him.

Lifting his glass, Mike took a long swallow. “Melissa was a slut—a slut who spent her life going from bed to bed after she was married. The funny thing was, she had a fit when she found out Jason was a bastard. I was at their house in Delhi when the Duke of Atherton appeared and demanded to speak with his son. Melissa went wild with fury when she realized Jason was Charles’s illegitimate son. It seems it offended her principles to mingle her bloodline with a bastard’s. It did not, however, offend her principles to bestow her body on any man of her own class who invited her into his bed. Odd code of ethics, wouldn’t you say?”

“Extremely!” Victoria agreed.

Captain Farrell grinned at her loyal reply, then said, “Whatever tenderness Jason felt for her when he married her was soon destroyed by living with her. She gave him a son, though, and for that reason, he kept her in the height of fashion and ignored her affairs. Frankly, I don’t think he cared what she did.”

Victoria, who had been unaware that Jason had a son, sat bolt upright, staring in dazed shock at Captain Farrell as he went on. “Jason adored that child. He took him nearly everywhere he went. He even agreed to come back here and spend his money restoring Charles Fielding’s run-down estates so that Jamie could inherit a proper kingdom. And in the end, it was all for nothing. Melissa tried to run away with her latest lover, and she took Jamie with her, intending to ransom him back to Jason later. Their ship sank in a storm.”

Captain Farrell’s hand tightened on his glass and the muscles in his throat worked convulsively. “I was the first to discover Melissa had taken Jamie with her. I was the one who had to tell Jason his son was dead. I cried,” he said hoarsely. “But Jason didn’t. Not even then. He can’t cry.”

“Captain Farrell,” Victoria said in a suffocated voice, “I would like to go home now. It’s getting late, and Jason may be worried about me.”

The sorrow vanished from the captain’s face and a smile broke across his rugged features. “An excellent idea,” he agreed. “But before you go, I want to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t let Jason fool you or himself into believing he wants nothing from you but a child. I know him better than anyone else does, and I saw the way he watched you last night. He’s already more than half in love with you, though I doubt he wants to be.”

“I can’t blame him for not wanting to love any woman,” Victoria said sadly. “I can’t imagine how he’s survived everything that’s happened to him and stayed sane.”

“He’s strong,” Captain Farrell replied. “Jason is the strongest human being I’ve ever known. And the finest. Let yourself love him, Victoria—I know you want to. And teach him how to love you. He has a great deal of love to give, but first, he’ll have to learn to trust you. Once he trusts you, he’ll lay the world at your feet.”

Victoria stood up, but her eyes were cloudy with trepidation. “What makes you so certain this will ail work out the way you think it will?”

The Irishman’s voice was soft and there was a faraway look in his eyes. “Because I knew another lass like you long ago. She had your warmth and your courage. She taught me how it feels to trust, to love, and to be loved. I don’t fear dying because I know she’s there, waiting for me. Most men love easily and often, but Jason is more like me. He will love only once—but it will be for always.”