hile Victoria put on her still-damp clothes, Captain Farrell brought the horse and carriage around from his small barn. He helped her into it, and mounted his own horse. The downpour had subsided to a gloomy, persistent drizzle as he rode beside her in the early darkness toward Wakefield.

“There’s no reason for you to ride all the way back with me,” she said. “I know the way.”

“There’s every reason,” Captain Farrell warned. “The roads aren’t safe for a woman alone after dark. Last week a coach was stopped just the other side of the village, the occupants robbed, and one of them shot. A fortnight before that, one of the older girls at the orphanage wandered too far abroad at night and was found dead in the river. She was an addled girl, so there’s no telling whether foul play was involved, but you can’t take chances.”

Victoria heard him, but her mind was on Jason, her heart filled with warmth for the man who had sheltered her when she came to England, given her beautiful things, teased her when she was lonely, and ultimately married her. True, he was frequently distant and unapproachable, but the more she contemplated the matter, the more convinced she became that Captain Farrell was right—Jason must care for her, or he’d never have risked another marriage.

She remembered the hungry passion of his kisses before they were married and she became even more convinced. Despite the torment he had suffered as a child in the name of “religion,” he had gone into a church and married her there, because she asked him to.

“I think you’d better not come any farther,” Victoria said when they neared the iron gates of Wakefield.

“Why?”

“Because if Jason knows I’ve spent the afternoon with you, he’s bound to suspect you told me about him as soon as I act differently toward him.”

Captain Farrell lifted his brows. “Are you going to act differently toward him?”

Victoria nodded in the darkness. “I rather think I will.” In a soft underbreath she said, “I’m going to try to tame a panther.”

“In that case, you’re right. It’s best not to tell Jason you came to my place. There were two deserted cottages before you reached mine. I suppose you could say you stopped there—but I warn you, Jason has an aversion to deceit. Don’t get caught up in the lie.”

“I have an aversion to deception, too,” Victoria said with a little shiver. “And an even greater aversion to being caught in one by Jason.”

“I’m very much afraid he’ll be worried and angry if he’s returned and discovered you’ve been out in this storm alone.”

Jason had returned, and he was worried. He was also furious. Victoria heard his raised voice coming from the front of the house as soon as she entered it from the rear, after tying Wolf outside. With a mixture of alarm and eagerness to see him, she walked down the hall and stepped into his study. He was pacing back and forth, his back to her, addressing a group of six terrified servants. His white shirt was soaked, clinging wetly to his broad shoulders and tapered back, and his brown riding boots were covered in mud. “Tell me again what Lady Fielding said,” he raged at Ruth. “And stop that damned weeping! Start from the beginning and tell me her words exactly.”

The maid wrung her hands. “She—she said to have your gentlest horse harnessed to the smallest carriage, because she said she weren’t—wasn’t too good at driving carriages. Then she told me to have Mrs. Craddock—the cook—pack baskets with food left over from the party last night, and to have the baskets put in the carriage. I w-warned her it was comin‘ on to storm, but she said it wouldn’t start for hours. Then she asked me if I was certain-sure you’d left the house and I told her I was. Then she left.”

“And you let her go?” Jason exploded at the servants, passing a contemptuous glance over all of them. “You let an overemotional woman, who’s completely inept at the reins, take off in a storm with enough food to last her for a month, and not one of you had the brains to stop her!” His eyes sliced over the groom. “You heard her tell the dog they were ‘free at last’ and you didn’t think that was peculiar?”

Without waiting for a reply, he turned his dagger gaze on Northrup, who was standing like a proud man before a firing squad, prepared to meet a terrible and unjust fate. “Tell me again, exactly what she said to you,” Jason snapped.

“I asked her ladyship what I should tell you when you returned,” Northrup said stiffly. “She said, ‘Tell him I said good-bye.’ ”

“And that didn’t sound a damned bit odd to you?” Jason bit out. “A new bride leaves the house and says to tell her husband good-bye!”

Northrup flushed to the roots of his white hair. “Considering other things, my lord, it did not seem ‘odd.’ ”

Jason stopped pacing and stared at him in blank fury. “Considering what ‘other things’?” he demanded.

“Considering what you said to me when you left the house an hour before her ladyship did, I naturally assumed the two of you were not in accord, and that her ladyship was distressed about it.”

“Considering what I said when I left?” Jason demanded murderously. “What the hell did Isay?”

Northrup’s thin lips quivered with resentment. “When you left the house this morning, I bade you have a good day.”

“And?” Jason gritted.

“And you told me you had already made other plans. I naturally assumed that meant you did not intend to have a good day and so, when her ladyship came down, I assumed you were not in accord.”

“It’s too damn bad you didn’t ‘assume’ she was leaving me and try to stop her.”

Victoria’s heart ached with remorse. Jason thought she had left him, and for a man as proud as he to admit such a thing to his servants, he must be beside himself. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined he would jump to that conclusion, but now that she knew what Melissa had done, she could understand why he had. Determined to save his pride, she summoned up a bright, conciliatory smile and crossed the thick Aubusson carpet to his side. “Northrup would never be so silly as to think I would leave you, my lord,” she said brightly, tucking her hand in Jason’s arm.

Jason whirled around so violently that he nearly pulled her off her feet. Victoria recovered her balance and said softly, “I may be ‘overemotional,’ but I hope I’m not a complete fool.”

Jason’s eyes blazed with relief—a relief that was instantly replaced by fury. “Where in hell have you been?” he hissed.

Victoria took pity on the mortified servants and said contritely, “You’ve every right to scold me, and I can tell you intend to, but I hope you won’t do it in front of the servants.”

Jason clamped his jaws together so tightly that a nerve pulsed in his cheek as he bit back his wrath and nodded his head in the general direction of the servants, curtly dismissing them. In the charged silence that followed, the servants rushed out of the room, the last one closing the door behind him. The instant the door closed, Jason’s wrath erupted. “You idiot!” he bit out between clenched teeth. “I’ve turned the countryside upside down looking for you.”

Victoria looked at his handsome, ruggedly hewn face with its stern, sensual mouth and hard jaw, but what she saw was a helpless, dirty little boy with dark curly hair being whipped because he was “evil.” A lump of poignant tenderness swelled in her throat and she unthinkingly laid her hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered achingly.

Jason jerked away from her touch, his brows snapping together over biting green eyes. “You’re sorry?” he mocked scathingly. “Sorry for what? Sorry for the men who are still out there, searching for a trace of you?” He turned away as if he couldn’t bear her closeness and walked over to the windows. “Sorry for the horse I rode into the ground?”

“I’m sorry you thought I was leaving you,” Victoria interrupted shakily. “I would never do that.”

He turned back to her, regarding her ironically. “Considering that yesterday you tried to leave me at the altar, and this morning you demanded a divorce, I find your last announcement somewhat astonishing. To what shall I attribute your freakish streak of fidelity this evening?”

Despite his outward attitude of sarcastic indifference, Victoria heard the clipped terseness in his voice when he referred to her leaving him at the altar, and her heart sank. Evidently that had bothered him very much.

“My lord—” she began softly.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” he snapped. “Stop calling me your lord and don’t grovel. I despise groveling.”

“I was not groveling!” Victoria said, and in her mind saw him kneeling beneath a black, uncoiling whip. She had to clear the tears from her throat before she could go on. “What I started to say was that I only tried to take the extra food to the orphanage today. I’m sorry I worried you, and I won’t do it again.”

He stared at her, the anger draining out of him. “You’re free to do whatever you want to do, Victoria,” he said wearily. “This marriage was the greatest mistake of my life.”

Victoria hesitated, knowing nothing she could say would change his mind when he was in this mood, and finally excused herself to change her gown. He did not have supper with her, and she went to bed that night thinking he would surely join her there—if for no other reason than to hold her to her bargain to give him a son.

Jason did not join her that night, nor for the next three. In fact, he went out of his way to completely avoid her. He worked in his study all day, dictating letters to his secretary, Mr. Benjamin, and meeting with men who came from London to talk to him about investments and shipping and all sorts of unfathomable business transactions. If he encountered Victoria at meals or passed her in the halls, he greeted her politely but without familiarity, as if she were a stranger to him.

When he was finished working, he went upstairs, changed his clothes, and drove off to London.

Since Caroline had gone to the south of England to visit one of her brothers whose wife was soon to give birth, Victoria spent most of her time at the orphanage, organizing games for the children, and paying calls upon the villagers so that they would continue to feel easy in her company. But no matter how busy she kept, she still missed Jason very much. In London, he had spent a good deal of time with her. He had escorted her nearly everywhere she went, to balls and parties and plays, and although he didn’t remain by her side, she had known he was there—watchful, protective. She missed his teasing remarks, she even missed his scowl. In the weeks since Andrew’s mother’s letter had come, Jason had become her friend, and a very special one.

Now he was a civil stranger who might need her, but who was purposely and effectively keeping her at arm’s length. She knew he was no longer angry with her; he had simply locked her out of his heart and mind as if she didn’t exist.

On the fourth night, Jason went to London again and Victoria lay awake, staring at the rose silk canopy above her bed, stupidly longing to dance with him again as she had done so many times before. Jason was wonderful to dance with; he moved with such natural grace....

She wondered what he did during these long nights in London before he came home. She decided he probably spent his time gambling in the exclusive gentlemen’s clubs to which he belonged.

On the fifth night, Jason didn’t bother coming home at all. The next morning at breakfast Victoria glanced at the gossipy section of the Gazette that reported on the doings of the haute ton, and she discovered what Jason had been doing while in London. He had not been gambling or meeting with more businessmen. He had been at Lord Muirfield’s ball— dancing with the elderly lord’s exquisite, voluptuous wife. It also mentioned that on the prior evening, Lord Fielding had attended the theater and been seen in the company of an unnamed brunette opera dancer. Victoria knew three things about Jason’s mistress—her name was Sybil, she was an opera dancer, and she was a brunette.

Jealousy bloomed in Victoria—full-bodied, frustrated, sick jealousy. It caught her completely off guard, for she had never experienced the bitter agony of it before.

Jason chose that untimely moment to stroll into the dining room wearing the same clothes he had left for London in the night before. Except that now his beautifully tailored black evening jacket was carelessly slung over his left shoulder, his neckcloth was untied and hanging loose, and his white lawn shirt was open at the throat. Obviously, he had not spent the night at his own house in London, where he kept a full wardrobe.

He nodded distantly to her as he went over to the sideboard and helped himself to a cup of steaming black coffee.

Victoria slowly arose from her chair, trembling with hurt fury. “Jason,” she said, her voice cool and stiff.

He glanced inquiringly over his shoulder at her, then saw her stony features and turned fully around. “Yes?” he said, lifting the cup to his lips and watching her over its rim.

“Do you remember how you felt when your first wife was in London, engaging in all sorts of salacious affairs?”

The coffee cup lowered an inch, but his features remained impassive. “Perfectly,” he said.

Amazed and a little impressed with her own bravery, Victoria glanced meaningfully at the paper, then lifted her chin. “Then I hope you won’t make me feel that way again.”

His gaze flicked to the open paper, then back to her. “As I recall, I didn’t particularly care what she did.”

“Well, I do care!” Victoria burst out because she couldn’t stop herself. “I understand perfectly that considerate husbands have—have paramours, but you are supposed to be discreet. You English have rules for everything and discretion is one of them. When you flaunt your—your lady friends, it’s humiliating and it hurts.” She strode out of the room, feeling like an undesirable, cast-off shoe.

She looked like a beautiful young queen, with her long hair swaying in molten waves and thick curls at her back, her body moving with unconscious grace. Jason watched her in silence, the coffee cup forgotten in his hand. He felt the familiar, hot need for her rising in his loins, the longing he’d felt for months to gather her into his arms and lose himself in her. But he didn’t move toward her. Whatever she felt for him, it was not love or even desire. She thought it was “considerate” of him to keep a mistress discreetly tucked away so he could satisfy his disgusting lust with her, Jason realized bitterly. But Victoria’s pride was piqued at the idea of his being seen in public with that same woman.

Her pride was suffering, nothing more. But when he remembered the terrible beating her pride had already received from her beloved Andrew, he discovered he didn’t have the heart to hurt her more. He understood about pride; he remembered how shattered and enraged he had felt when he first discovered Melissa’s perfidy.

He stopped in his study to retrieve some documents and then walked up the staircase, reading the documents and carrying his jacket.

“Good morning, my lord,” his valet said, casting a look of reproof at the abused jacket hooked over his master’s thumb.

“Good morning, Franklin,” Jason said, handing over the jacket without taking his eyes from the newly arrived documents.

Franklin laid out Jason’s shaving mug, razor, and strop, then whisked the jacket to the wardrobe, where he began brushing it. “Is your attire for this evening to be formal or informal, my lord?” he inquired politely.

Jason turned to the second page of the document. “Informal,” he said absently. “Lady Fielding thinks I’ve been spending too much time away from home at night.”

He strolled toward the marble bath adjoining his bedchamber, unaware of the expression of pleasure dawning across his valet’s face. Franklin watched until Jason had disappeared into the bath, then laid the jacket aside and hastened down the stairs to share the happy news with Northrup.

Until Lady Victoria had burst into the house months ago and disrupted the orderly, disciplined tedium of everyone’s lives, Mr. Franklin and Mr. Northrup had jealously guarded their individual positions of trust. In fact, they had scrupulously avoided one another for four long years. Now, however, these two former adversaries were allied in their mutual concern for, and interest in, the well-being of the lord and lady of the house.

Mr. Northrup was in the front hall near the salon, polishing a table. Glancing about to ensure that there were no lesser menials around to overhear, Mr. Franklin hurried forward, eager to impart his news about this latest development in his lordship’s tumultuous romance—or more accurately, his lack of romance—and to hear in return any news that Mr. Northrup might wish to confide in him. He leaned near his confidant, blissfully unaware of O’Malley, who was in the salon pressing his ear to the wall in order to hear their conversation. “His lordship intends to dine at home this evening, Mr. Northrup,” the valet advised in a conspiratorial stage whisper. “I believe that is a good sign. A very good sign indeed.”

Northrup straightened, his expression unimpressed. “It is an unusual event, considering his lordship’s absences these five nights past, but I do not find it particularly encouraging.”

“You don’t understand—his lordship specifically said he was staying at home because her ladyship wished for him to do so!”

“Now, that is encouraging, Mr. Franklin!” Northrup leaned back, casting a cautious glance around to make certain no one was near enough to overhear, then said, “I believe the reason for her ladyship’s request may lie in a particular article in the Gazette that she saw this morning, which led her to believe that his lordship was possibly entertaining a certain lady of a certain class—an opera dancer, I believe.”

O’Malley pulled his ear from the wall, rushed to the side door of the salon, and sprinted down the back hall that was used by the servants to carry refreshments to the salon from the kitchen. “She’s done it!” he crowed triumphantly to the kitchen servants as he burst into the room.

Mrs. Craddock straightened from her task of rolling out pastry dough, so eager to hear what he had to say that she ignored the fact that he snatched an apple from her work-table. “What has she done?”

O’Malley leaned against the wall and helped himself to a large bite of the juicy apple, waving the uneaten portion in the air for emphasis as he spoke. “She gave his lordship what-for, that’s what! I heard it all from Franklin and Northrup. Her ladyship read in the paper that his lordship was with Miss Sybil, and her ladyship told Lord Fielding to stay home where he belongs. He’s goin‘ t’do it, too. I told the lot of you the lass could handle the master. Knew it as soon as she told me she was Irish! But she’s a true lady, too,” he added loyally. “All gentle-like and smiling.”

“She’s been a sad lady these last days, poor thing,” Mrs. Craddock said, still looking a little worried. “She scarcely eats when he isn’t here, and I’ve made all her favorites. She always thanks me so politely, too. It’s enough to make a body weep. I can’t think why he isn’t in her bed at night where he belongs....”

O’Malley shook his head glumly. “He hasn’t been there since their weddin‘ night. Ruth says she’s certain-sure of it. And her ladyship ain’t sleeping in his bed neither, because the upstairs maids are keeping an eye on his chambers, and there’s never more than one pillow on his bed with a crease in it.” In morose silence, he finished his apple and reached for another, but this time Mrs. Craddock whacked his hand with her towel. “Snop snitching my apples, Daniel, they’re for a pie I’m makin’ for dessert.” A sudden smile flickered across her kindly features. “No, go ahead and take the apples. I’ve decided to make something else for them tonight. Something more festive than a pie.”

The youngest scullery maid, a homely, buxom girl of about sixteen, piped up, “One of the laundry maids was tellin‘ me about a certain powder you can put in a man’s wine that gets him into the mood for having a woman, if his manhood’s what’s causin’ the problem. The laundry maids all think mebbe his lordship ought to have a little speck o‘ that powder—just to help things along.”

The kitchen servants all murmured agreement, but O’Malley exclaimed derisively, “Lord, girl! Where do you get such ideas? His lordship don’t need them powders, and you can tell everyone in the laundry I said so! Why, John coachman’s nose runs year-round from a permanent chill he got while spendin‘ nearly every night last winter waitin’ atop the coach, out in the elements, for his lordship to leave Miss Hawthorne’s bed. Miss Hawthorne,” he finished informatively, “was his ladybird afore Miss Sybil.”

“Was he with Miss Sybil last night?” Mrs. Craddock asked, already measuring out flour for her “festive” dessert. “Or was that just newspaper talk?”

O’Malley’s cheerful face sobered. “He was there, right enough. I heerd it from one of the grooms. Course, we don’t know fer shure that anythin‘ happened whilst he was there. Mebbe he was payin’ her off.”

Mrs. Craddock sent him a weak, unconvinced smile. “Well, at least he’s stayin‘ home for supper with his wife tonight. That’s a good start.”

O’Malley nodded agreement and headed off to share his latest news with the groom who’d provided him with the master’s exact whereabouts last night.

Which was why, of the 140 people at Wakefield Park, only Victoria was surprised when Jason strolled into the dining room that night to join her for supper.

“You’re staying home tonight?” she burst out in amazed relief as he sat down at the head of the table.

He sent her a measuring look. “I was under the distinct impression that was what you wanted me to do.”

“Well, I did,” Victoria admitted, wondering if she looked her best in the emerald green gown she was wearing and wishing he wasn’t so far away from her at the opposite end of the long table. “Only I didn’t really expect you to do it. That is—” She broke off as O’Malley turned from the sideboard, carrying a tray with two sparkling crystal glasses filled with wine. It was nearly impossible to carry on a conversation with Jason so far away, both emotionally and physically.

She sighed as O’Malley headed straight toward her, an odd, determined gleam in his eye. “Your wine, my lady,” he said and swept a glass from the tray, plunking it on the table with a queer, exaggerated flourish that inevitably tipped the glass and spilled wine all over the linen tablecloth in front of her place.

“O’Malley—!” Northrup bit out from his station near the sideboard where he routinely supervised the serving of meals.

O’Malley sent him a look of ignorant innocence and made a great fuss of pulling back Lady Victoria’s chair, helping her to stand, and guiding her down to Jason’s end of the table. “There now, my lady,” he said, positively emanating anxious contrition as he pulled out the chair on Jason’s immediate right. “I’ll have more wine for ye in a trice. Then I’ll clean up that mess down there. Smells awful, it does, spilled wine. Best to stay far away from it. Can’t think how I came to spill yer wine thataway,” he added, whisking up a linen napkin and placing it across Victoria’s lap. “Me arm’s been painin‘ me of late and that’s prob’ly what did it. Nothin’ serious fer ye to worry ‘bout—just an old bone what was broken years ago.”

Victoria straightened her skirts and looked at him with a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry your arm pains you, Mr. O’Malley.”

O’Malley then turned to Lord Fielding, intending to utter more false excuses, but his mouth went dry when he met Jason’s piercing, relentless gaze and saw him rubbing his finger meaningfully along the edge of his knife as if he were testing its sharpness.

O’Malley ran his forefinger between his collar and neck, cleared his throat, and hastily mumbled to Victoria, “I-I’ll get yer ladyship another glass of wine.”

“Lady Fielding doesn’t drink wine with dinner,” Jason drawled, stopping him in his tracks. He glanced at her as an afterthought. “Or have you changed your habits, Victoria?”

Victoria shook her head, puzzled by the unspoken communication that seemed to be flying back and forth between Jason and poor O’Malley. “But I think I’d like some tonight,” she added, trying to soothe over a situation she didn’t understand.

The servants withdrew, leaving them to dine in the oppressive splendor of the ninety-foot-long dining room. Heavy silence hung over the entire meal, punctuated only by the occasional clink of gold flatware against Limoges porcelain as they ate—a silence that was made more awful for Victoria because she was acutely aware of the dazzling gaiety that would be surrounding Jason right now if he’d gone to London, rather than remaining here with her.

By the time the plates were being cleared away and dessert brought in, her misery had turned to desperation. Twice she had tried to break through the barrier of silence by commenting on such nonabrasive topics as the weather and the excellence of their ten-course meal. Jason’s replies to these conversational gambits were polite but unencouragingly brief.

Victoria fidgeted with her spoon, knowing she had to do something, and quickly, because the gap between them was widening with every moment, growing deeper with every day, until soon there would be no way to bridge it.

Her dismal anxiety was temporarily forgotten when O’Malley marched in with dessert and, with an ill-concealed smile, set before them a small, beautiful cake, decorated with two intertwined, colorful flags—one British, the other bearing the stars and stripes of America.

Jason glanced at the cake and lifted his sardonic gaze to the meddlesome footman. “Am I to assume Mrs. Craddock was in a patriotic mood today?” O’Malley’s face fell, his eyes taking on a wary look as his master regarded him with cold displeasure. “Or is this supposed to remind me, symbolically, that I’m married?”

The footman blanched. “Never, milord.” He waited, impaled on Jason’s gaze, until Jason finally dismissed him with a curt nod.

“If this was supposed to represent our marriage,” Victoria said with unintentional humor, “Mrs. Craddock should have decorated the cake with two crossed swords, not two flags.”

“You’re right,” Jason agreed blandly, ignoring the beautiful little cake and reaching for his wineglass.

He sounded so infuriatingly uninterested in the terrible state of their marriage that Victoria panicked and plunged into the topic she’d been trying to bring up all evening. “I don’t want to be right!” She dragged her gaze to his unreadable face. “Jason, please—I want things to be different between us.”

He looked mildly surprised as he leaned back in his chair and studied her impassively. “Exactly what sort of arrangement do you have in mind?”

His manner was so distant and unconcerned that Victoria’s nervousness doubled. “Well, I’d like us to be friends, for one thing. We used to laugh together and talk about things.”

“Talk away,” he invited.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to talk about?” she asked earnestly.

Jason’s eyes moved over her intoxicating features. He thought, I want to talk about why you need to drink yourself into oblivion before you can face going to bed with me. I want to talk about why my touch makes you sick. He said, “Nothing in particular.”

“Very well, then, I’ll start.” She hesitated, and then said, “How do you like my gown? It is one you had Madame Dumosse make for me.”

Jason’s gaze dropped to the creamy flesh swelling invitingly above the low green bodice of the gown. She looked ravishing in green, he thought, but she should have had emeralds to wear around her slim throat to complement the gown. If things were different, he would have dismissed the servants and pulled her onto his lap, and then he would have unfastened the back of her gown, exposing her intoxicating breasts to his lips and hands. He would have kissed each one, then carried her upstairs and made love to her until they were both too weak to move. “The gown is fine. It needs emeralds,” he said.

Victoria’s hand flew self-consciously to her bare throat. She did not have any emeralds. “I think you look very nice, too,” she said, admiring the way his expensively tailored dark blue jacket clung to his splendid shoulders. His face was so tanned, his hair so dark, that his white shirt and neckcloth stood out in dazzling contrast. “You’re very handsome,” she said wistfully.

A glimmer of a startled smile appeared at his lips. “Thank you,” he said, visibly taken aback.

“You’re welcome,” Victoria replied and, because she thought he seemed pleased by her compliment to his looks, she seized on that as an acceptable topic of conversation. “When I first saw you, I thought you were frightening-looking, did you know that? Of course, it was nearly dark and I was nervous, but—well—you’re so huge that it was frightening.”

Jason choked on his wine. “To what are you referring?”

“To our first meeting,” Victoria clarified innocently. “Remember—I was outside in the sunlight, holding that piglet, which I gave to the farmer, and then you dragged me inside the house and it was dark compared to outdoors—”

Jason stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry I treated you uncivilly. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll spend the evening doing some work.”

“No,” Victoria said hastily, also standing up, “please don’t work. Let’s do something else—something we can do together. Something you’d like.”

Jason’s heart slammed into his ribs. He gazed down at her flushed cheeks and saw the invitation in her imploring blue eyes. Hope and disbelief collided in his chest, exploding, as he laid his hand tenderly against her flushed cheek, slowly running it back, smoothing her heavy silken hair.

Victoria trembled with pleasure because he was finally treating her with warmth. She should have tried to draw him out days ago, rather than suffering in silence. “We could play chess if you like,” she said happily. “I’m not very good at it, but if you have cards—”

His hand jerked away from her, and his face became a closed mask. “Excuse me, Victoria. I have work to do.” He moved around her and disappeared into his study, where he remained for the rest of the evening.

Victoria’s heart sank with bewildered disappointment, and she spent the evening trying to read. By bedtime, she was absolutely resolved not to let him fall back into their former pattern of being polite strangers, no matter what it took to change things. She remembered the way he had looked at her just before she suggested playing chess—it was the same way he looked at her before he kissed her. Her body had recognized it instantly, turning warm and shaky in that unexplainable way it always did when Jason touched her. He may have wanted to kiss her, rather than play chess. Dear God, he may have wanted to do that awful thing to her again—

Victoria shuddered at the thought, but she was willing to do even that if harmony could be restored. Her stomach turned over at the thought of Jason fondling her when she was naked, studying her body in that awful, detached way as he’d done on their wedding night. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so terrible if he’d been nice to her while be did it—nice in the way he was when he kissed her.

She waited in her room until she heard Jason moving about in his, then put on a turquoise satin dressing robe trimmed with wide strips of beige lace at the hem and full sleeves. She opened the connecting door to Jason’s suite, which had been rehung—minus its lock—and walked in. “My lor—Jason,” she said abruptly.

He was shrugging out of his shirt, his chest almost completely exposed, and his head snapped up.

“I’d like to talk to you,” she began firmly.

“Get out of here, Victoria,” he said with icy annoyance.

“But—”

“I do not want to talk,” he bit out sarcastically. “I do not want to play chess. I do not want to play cards.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you out of here. Is that clear enough?”

“I’d say it’s very clear,” she replied with unbending dignity. “I won’t bother you again.” She walked back into her room and closed the door, but she was still angrily determined to make her marriage happy and solid. She didn’t understand what he expected from her. Most particularly she did not understand him. But she knew someone who did. Jason was thirty, much older and more worldly than she, but Captain Farrell was older than Jason, and he would be able to advise her about what to do next.