Chapter Eight
January 18, 1840
G o away. Turn around, you blaggard, and don’t look back.
Thomas thought he should be commended for not actually saying the words out loud. They were on the tip of his tongue, desperate to be spat out at the rogue who had approached them.
Inserting himself into our conversations, making it impossible for me to talk to Victoria—to Miss Ainsworth, as she must be at the Assembly Rooms—on her own. It is despicable! It is deplorable! It is…
Downright disastrous.
Thomas straightened his back even more, as though that were possible, and tried as best he could to drown out the nonsense the man, whoever he was, was spouting.
“Such an elegant muslin, and the embroidering at the hems, most…most delicate,” said the simpering man.
Thomas snorted as he watched the triangular-faced man’s gaze drop to the edgings of Victoria’s gown…around her bust. Yes, he was sure it was the embroidery that had the man’s attention.
Victoria cleared her throat, the man’s blotchy, pink face rose to meet hers, and Thomas crowed in the solitude of his own mind.
Yes! See, Mr. Whoeveryouare. She is not interested.
“Indeed,” she said sweetly, “and is it the scalloped edge hem or the twisting fly knots of the embroidery you best admire?”
The man’s eyes widened in panic. “I…er…”
“Was it the fineness of the weave of the muslin, or the delicate dying of each individual thread that had you transfixed?” Victoria asked, a little of the sweetness disappearing with every word. “Please, do tell, Mr. Halifax.”
“It was…ah… In fact, now I think…think about it…”
She was a wonder. Really, I should be congratulated , Thomas thought proudly as he watched the woman he had decided to marry outwit the man before them. He was going to be the husband of a woman who actually had a brain, which was more than you could say for half the young things in Society these days.
To think, but for the toss of a coin, he would never have known that Miss Victoria Ainsworth was so…so interesting. So brilliant. So bright.
So beautiful.
The memory of the kiss he had not been able to take roared in his mind, but Thomas attempted to push it aside for now, even as the heady lavender of her scent threatened to send him straight back to that moment. He could indulge in that memory later.
“—oh, I do believe my party wish for my—that is, I must depart, Miss Ainsworth, so sorry…”
The man scampered away almost as fast as his legs, and the crush of people in the Assembly Rooms, would allow.
Thomas snorted. “What a fool.”
“Yes,” Victoria said thoughtfully, tilting her head as she always did when she was considering something. “He was rather silly. He should have complimented me on something easy to lie about. My jewels, perhaps. My hair.”
Irritation sparked in Thomas’s stomach, flaring like fire. “You—You mean you wanted him to compliment you?”
“Why not?” she returned, raising a sardonic brow. “Are you saying there is a reason why other gentleman should not compliment me?”
Thomas opened his mouth. He ran through the plethora of different options, discounted them all, and shut it again.
Hell. She had a point, not that he was about to admit it.
He had gone on a walk with Miss Ainsworth; had taken tea with her mother, twice, which was more than any man should ever have to bear; he had accompanied her to a private ball, and now the Assembly Rooms.
And still he had not spoken of his…intentions.
Not the real intentions. Not his hope that he could soon be putting her money to good use, spending it on a dowry for his sister and to pay off those last pesky debts.
No, the pretend intentions. The pretensions?
He had to marry her. He had to make Victoria Ainsworth his bride…and yet when it came to it, Thomas did not appear to have the right words to say.
“That is what I thought,” Victoria said with a flicker of a smile. “Ah, and here comes Lord Zouch. Good evening, my lord.”
The jealousy that had only just started to subside in Thomas flashed once more, this time a dangerous, red-hot bitterness that threatened to cause a scowl across his forehead.
Well, really! What did Victoria think she was doing, conversing with this other man, when Thomas was standing right here!
Standing there , a small voice in the back of his mind pointed out, not proposing matrimony.
Well, yes , Thomas argued silently with the voice who was most unwelcome. Yet .
Ah, so you have a plan then. Excellent.
“As a matter of fact I do,” Thomas said heatedly.
Then he blinked. Lord Zouch and Victoria were staring, brows furrowed, puzzlement evident on both their faces.
“Ah.”
“Indeed? How fascinating, Your Grace,” said the lord vaguely. “I had no idea you had an interest in Ancient Greek.”
Victoria was trying, and failing, not to laugh. Thomas could see it, the pinch of her lips, the widening of her eyes—he knew her features so well now, it was obvious. Blatant. There was therefore no need to drop his eyes to her breasts to see them shake in repressed mirth.
Dear God, why had he not proposed yet? To think, he could be sinking his face into—
“And whom do you prefer, Your Grace?” asked the lean and graceful Lord Zouch curiously. “Pliny the Younger, or Pliny the Elder? Assuming you are a full-breadth classicist, of course.”
The square-jawed man laughed politely, as though what he had said were amusing. Victoria chuckled with him, tapping him with her—tapping him with her fan?
Thomas clenched his hands into fists by his sides but managed to keep his arms lowered, rather than cascading into the man’s narrow nose.
This is just a marriage of convenience , he tried to remind himself, just a convenience! She is a walking dowry, that’s all.
And that had been true, once.
“I don’t care for either of them,” Thomas said, striking out in the hope of making sense in a conversation that had entirely passed him by. “And you, Victoria—Miss Ainsworth, I mean.”
Only the merest pink in the cheeks suggested that Victoria had been scandalized by the intimacy of using her name. Lord Zouch, on the other hand, blanched.
“Oh! Oh, I see. Well, I suppose I should offer you my congratulations, Your Grace—”
“No, no, you don’t,” Thomas said hastily, hardly knowing what he was saying. “You don’t need to—”
“I don’t need to, but I would like to,” said Lord Zouch, offering out a hand. “Congratulations.”
Victoria was laughing, not bothering to hide it, and Thomas was forced to maintain a stiff expression as he did not take the man’s hand. “I regret you are mistaken. Victoria—damn, Miss Ainsworth and I—”
“Yes, I shall leave you to it,” said Lord Zouch with a bow and just a hint of a regretful look. “Good evening, Your Grace, Miss Ainsworth.”
He disappeared into what was fast becoming a crush, and Thomas groaned as he hung his head. He needed to tell her about St. Thomas’s soon, and he had thought this the perfect moment. Now Lord Zouch had utterly ruined it. What a beast.
“I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” said Victoria airily as she opened her fan and began to flutter it toward her admittedly pink cheeks. “I’m the one who will face a scandal if you don’t propose soon.”
She looked up through her eyelashes, a heady mixture of knowing woman and coquettish miss.
Thomas swallowed. “I…I suppose so.”
“Though in that regard, I believe you will be like your brother—Lord Alexander Chance, isn’t it?” Victoria said. “I have heard that he is quite the rakehell, breaking hearts all over London, Bath, Brighton—”
“Where did you hear that?”
Thomas had not intended to snap. He had not thought the insinuation would cause him as much harm as he felt, but there it was.
Victoria looked astonished. “Hear what?”
“That—What you just said,” Thomas said, attempting to keep calm and failing miserably. Where was all this anger coming from—this defensiveness, this need to shield his wayward brother?
Because she wasn’t wrong. Alexander had enjoyed more than his fair share of dalliances, and if he kept insisting on bedding widows, eventually, he supposed the news was going to get out.
But still. He hadn’t expected Victoria, of all people, to start speaking of his brother’s…exploits, for want of a better word, in the middle of the Bath Assembly Rooms!
“I couldn’t say—”
“I need to know, Victoria,” Thomas said urgently, dropping his voice as he stepped toward her.
He almost expected her to take a step back, but she held her ground, staring resolutely up at his face as though she had nothing to hide.
“And I said I couldn’t say because I cannot remember,” she said quietly, her eyes wide. “It’s… Well, it’s just something everyone knows.”
Thomas swore.
“Thomas!”
“Look,” he said in a hiss, ignoring the way she’d exclaimed his name, though reminding himself he could mull on it later. “It’s important to me, my brother’s reputation.”
Her face filled with curiosity. “Why?”
It was an excellent question, and one Thomas wasn’t sure how to answer. Because he was his brother. Because Xander getting himself into scrapes was what he did, and what Thomas did was get him out of them.
Dear God, perhaps he had far more in common with his father than he thought.
As he ruminated on that unpleasant thought, he almost missed Victoria’s next words.
“—personally think he should not be going about bedding widows and married ladies left, right, and center—”
Thomas growled. “No one has the right to judge my brother.”
It was instinctive, this need to protect, and he did not like it. He had always left his brothers to their own devices, always trusted them to make their own mistakes. Lord knew, he had.
But being the eldest brother brought out something in him that he hardly knew what to do with. This was Victoria, the woman he intended to marry. Yet even her mere repetition of a rumor she’d had no hand in creating was making his blood boil.
Hell. Is this what my father feels like all the time? Is this some sort of…of duke thing?
“I do not judge him—I would spend half my life judging all the rakehells in the ton if I did,” Victoria pointed out, aggravatingly calm in the face of his anger. “I just think… Well. He shouldn’t.”
“You have very strong opinions for a lady,” Thomas said.
It was the wrong thing to say. Victoria glared, her frown pronounced over her expressive eyes. “You think ladies should not have strong opinions?”
Oh, no . This was a trap, and Thomas knew it.
He attempted to escape the net. “I didn’t say that. I just—”
“Just what?” Victoria said fiercely.
“I just—well… Ladies, they don’t…” floundered Thomas, wishing to goodness a lord would come and interrupt them. How had he managed to get into this argument? “They don’t, that’s all. Well, I suppose my sister, Maude, does. She would agree with you, actually. She’s been saying to Xander for years—”
“So it’s acceptable for a woman to have a strong opinion if she’s a Chance?” shot back Victoria, almost laughing. “But no one else?”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, and Thomas was about to say so…but he hesitated.
Well, now she put it like that…
The music was growing louder, their voices raised over the din of the musicians and the stomping of the dancers, and yet somehow, the conversation felt…intimate. Personal. Private.
“Look, I’m not always right,” Thomas said finally.
Victoria tilted her head. “You astonish me.”
“I’m trying to admit that I’m wrong here,” he said with a dry laugh. “Will you let me do that?”
“I don’t know,” she returned with a knowing look. “Are you actually going to say the words ‘I was wrong’?”
Not if he could help it. But then, she knew that. He could see it in her eyes, see the intelligence gleaming.
Dear God, how had every other man overlooked this woman?
“Fine!” Thomas said, throwing up his hands and almost toppling a woman’s befeathered headdress. “Oh, damn—fine, fine, I was wrong! There, are you happy?”
“Happier,” said Victoria with a grin.
Somehow, she had stepped closer, her arm brushing up against his sleeve. It made Thomas wish his coat were elsewhere, his shirtsleeves rolled up, feeling the soft caress of her skin against his own.
“And besides, you know I’m right,” Victoria said suddenly. “Your brother is doing far too much—I will not call it courting. I mean, there are probably broken hearts in a littered trail behind him, every time he—”
“What do you know of it?” Thomas snapped.
This time, Victoria jutted up her chin, as though prepared to debate with him. Him! About his own brother!
“You think merely because I have not—well, because I haven’t…because I haven’t , that I don’t know what it is for a gentleman to take advantage of a lady?” she said in a low voice, cheeks pinking at the insinuation.
“You speak of that which you do not know.” Thomas growled, fingers itching to take hold of the blasted woman and show her precisely what it was to be taken advantage of . “You can’t possibly—”
“Oh, really?”
And before Thomas knew what was happening, before he could cry out or ask what on earth she was thinking, Victoria had grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, his feet almost tripping over each other, into a small alcove. Somewhere amidst the party, Mrs. Ainsworth might notice her daughter missing. However, the music was loud, the dancers cheering, the other patrons chattering—they could not be heard. They couldn’t be seen, either. They were hidden now by a large fern in one of those ridiculously huge pots, but Thomas could not enjoy the moment.
Not with Victoria stabbing a finger into his waistcoat.
“You think that just because ladies do not speak of it, that they have no desire? That they do not want—want more than Society permits them? You think,” said Victoria, her voice low and hot and angry, “that merely because a woman is not allowed to express—well, lust, that she does not feel it?”
Thomas could hardly believe what he was hearing. He had stepped into one of his delightful dreams and discovered a Victoria there outspoken about all the delectable things she wished to do.
Things he wanted her to wish him to do to her.
“You think that I don’t see it?” Thomas growled back, unable to prevent the gravel slipping into his voice. “You think I don’t see the way you look at me?”
Victoria’s lips parted, but she was prevented from speaking because she was too preoccupied with gasping.
And that was because Thomas, rash anger and heat and need burning in his veins, had grabbed her shoulders, pushed her back against the wall, and pinned her against it with his body.
“Thomas!”
“I see the way you look at me,” he said, glaring with barely contained need. “I see the way you watch me, how you hold yourself near me. You want—”
“And you want me,” Victoria said with a gasp that most inconveniently pushed her breasts against him, making all rational thoughts flee from his mind. “I tasted it in your mouth when you kissed me. You want—”
Thomas swore again. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re incorrigible,” she shot back, far faster than he could have imagined. How on earth does the woman think with so much desire surely within her? “You’re the one courting me, Thomas—”
“Because you want me so badly,” he growled.
“I’m not alone in that, I think.” She chuckled as she glanced down.
Thomas glanced down in turn, bemused to understand what on earth she was talking about.
Ah. Yes. That. Well.
“It’s different for men,” he said darkly, trying to ignore the very obvious sign of his attraction. The part of him pressing into her hip.
“Just because I can’t show it,” Victoria said softly, “doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
Thomas was breathing rapidly now, trying to fight off the temptation to crush his mouth on hers to keep her quiet, hike up her skirts with one hand, and unbutton his trousers with the other.
This was not the time. It was not the place.
It certainly wasn’t part of the plan.
And then Victoria arched her back, ever so slightly, pressing her breasts into him as her hips ground against his—
“Damn it, woman, I’m trying to be honorable!” he exploded in a hiss.
Victoria grinned. “Not so honorable that you would propose to me.”
And Thomas knew what he should say…and he did not say it.
How could he? The damned woman was tangling up his thoughts like threads woven into a tapestry, but the pattern was random, uncontrolled, undefined. He could no sooner ask this firebrand to marry him than he could ask the sun to shine all through the night.
He was not good enough for her.
He had known it the moment she had smiled, all those weeks ago. Had kept away from her, and others, knowing they did not deserve to have a husband who could not stop spending money on orphanages.
Victoria gave what could have been a sigh but sounded more like a whimper. His grip on her shoulders tightened, just for a moment.
“Let go,” Victoria whispered, lifting her lips to his, straining under his grip in a way that made Thomas almost giddy with need. “Let go, Thomas. Take me…”
And that was when Thomas let go. He let go of Victoria completely and took two hurried steps back.
Dear God, that was close.
Breathing heavily and pulling a hand through his hair as though to settle his mind before looking up, Thomas saw Victoria was flushing pink and rearranging her hairpins.
Yes, that made more sense. Young ladies of impeccable breeding did not go around propositioning gentlemen.
At least, not in his experience. Perhaps Xander moved with a different crowd.
“I…I shouldn’t have—”
“I never should have—”
Both of them broke off, Thomas allowing a grin to crease his lips. “Dear God, woman, you’re a danger.”
Victoria gave a laugh. “I suppose I am.”
“And once again, I have underestimated you,” he said ruefully, glancing momentarily at the tent in his trousers. “To my peril.”
“I hope this will be the last time you underestimate me,” she said, meaning laden in every word. “At least not to completion, anyway.”
Thomas closed his eyes momentarily in an attempt to gain his bearings. He had not expected…
Well, this. Her . Victoria Ainsworth was charm itself, very pretty, and other than that, he’d had no fixed opinion of her. He’d thought her mind as empty as her corset was full. She had seemed like an easy woman to impress, to charm, and so she had been the tails of the coin.
And that had been it.
It? H e’d never been more wrong in his life. Other than spending all that money on—
“And now I will leave you.”
Thomas’s head jerked up. “You will?”
“Well, you are hardly in a fit state to go anywhere,” she said with a giggle, looking pointedly at his—
Thomas moved his hands to hide the… Well, the very obvious attraction he felt. “Ah.”
“ Ah , indeed,” said Victoria with a twinkle in her eye. “Now, I am going to go back out there and find a gentleman with whom to dance—”
“ Victoria !” he hissed, stepping toward her with a need he had not known he could feel.
She danced out of the way of his hands as she laughed. “That’ll teach you not to follow through on your—”
“Victoria Ainsworth!”
“I’m not like all those other ladies you’ve bedded,” she said, eyes bright and far too knowing. “I’m one in a million, Thomas Chance. And the sooner you understand that, the better.”
And she was gone. The fern waved slightly in the breeze created by her sudden movement, and Thomas half-fell, half-leaned against the wall in a daze.
Dear God. What on earth was he going to do?