Page 29

" Y ou haven't been around all day," James commented over dinner.

Victoria looked up at him, her face a mask of surprise. "I did tell you that I was going out with Cressida," she said. "I know how important it is to you that you be told where I'm going, and I was determined to respect that."

"I know," James said. "I appreciate you telling me—I'm not criticizing you. I just noticed that you were gone for quite a long time. You told me that the two of you meant to have a picnic, and I suppose I simply anticipated that you would return earlier than you did—that's all."

"I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression," she said.

"No, no. You did nothing wrong," James assured her. "I just wondered what your day was like, that's all. Was the picnic the only thing you did, or did you go somewhere else?"

He expected a casual answer, but to his surprise, Victoria let out a sigh and set down her fork.

"What is it?" James asked her. "Is something wrong?"

"I debated whether or not I ought to tell you this," she said slowly.

"Well, I think you have to tell me now." He was beginning to feel worried. "Did something happen?"

"Something did, yes…and you're not going to like it very much. But I want to be honest with you, James, and I hope that counts for something."

He was going to be angry, he realized. She was giving him the sort of cautious look she had given him in the past when she thought she might have done something that would irritate him.

He gritted his teeth. He wanted very much not to be angry with her, but he also knew her capacity for defiance. "What happened?"

"We were in the park, having our picnic, when…well, Benjamin appeared."

She didn't look up from her plate. James stared at her, waiting to see if she would have the courage to meet his eyes, but she didn't.

Finally, he spoke. "I know you didn't speak with him," he said. "Because you and I discussed this. We talked about the fact that I didn't want you to associate with him. You agreed to respect my wishes."

"He approached me," Victoria said. "I didn't know what to do. Should I have told him that you didn't permit me to speak with him, so he needed to go away?"

" Yes . That's precisely what you should have done."

"I don't know if it would have worked. I don't know if he would have turned away or not. It was apparent that he wanted to speak to me."

"He did, did he?" James realized he was gripping his own fork so tightly that the metal was hurting his hand, and he forced himself to set it down. "And what was so important that he felt the need to come over and speak to you yet again? Had he not had enough of your company?"

"You make it sound as if my company is something people should tire of," Victoria shot back, finally looking up at him.

Her eyes were blazing, and for a moment James felt short of breath, remembering how engaging he always found her to speak to.

He couldn't quite think straight in that moment.

He wanted nothing more than to forget that he was angry at her at all, to tell her that none of this mattered.

All these years later and Benjamin was still a problem in his life—how wonderful it would be to set that burden down and focus instead on something he truly cared about!

But he couldn't. He couldn't face the fact that she had spoken to Benjamin against his will. "Don't be ridiculous," he snapped. "I want to know what he wanted with you, that's all."

"It's not me he wants anything with," Victoria said. "It's you."

"I don't know what you mean by that."

"You're his brother, James. You can't imagine why he might want to associate with you? He stops me, he speaks to me, because he wants me to put him in contact with you. He wants to talk to you, after all these years. He wants a relationship with you. Is that so difficult to believe?"

"Why would he want such a thing? Benjamin and I have never had any sort of relationship."

"Well, I mentioned that to him?—"

"Oh, so this was a whole conversation?"

"James, I know you don't want me to speak to him, but you can't very realistically control who I do and don't communicate with," Victoria said. "I do have manners, you know, and if someone greets me, I am going to respond in kind. I'm sorry you don't like that, but that's the way it's going to be."

"Perhaps I shouldn't allow you out at all anymore, if you can't follow a simple request!"

She sighed and met his gaze. "Are you so desperate to prevent me from speaking to Benjamin that you would lock me up in the house and forbid me from seeing anyone at all?

Remember, James, that's the life I was living before you returned to London.

That's the life you found so unacceptable.

You said that I had destroyed my own reputation to the point that it was doing harm to your business interests.

And now I try to go along with your attempts to force me out into society, and your only response has been to tell me that you don't like the fact that I'm socializing with people?

You want me to go out, but you just don't want me to actually speak to or communicate with anyone. Is that it?"

"What else did he have to say?" James asked. "Let's get this over with, since you seem so determined to talk to me about Benjamin."

"Well, he considers you his brother," Victoria said.

James scoffed. "He was never a brother to me when we were growing up. He enjoyed the fact that his mother favored him over me. He liked being the golden child. If he had ever shown any interest in being a brother to me back then things might be different now."

"He was a child," Victoria said. "He confesses that he was wrong not to stand up for you. He regrets it."

"Oh. Is that what he told you?"

"I think you already know it, James. You said yourself that your anger wasn't really toward him, that you just associated him too powerfully with your stepmother and her treatment of you.

" She hesitated. "You know, he mentioned the fact that your stepmother did care for you, even if you weren't her favorite. "

That was such an absurd statement that at first James was sure he had misunderstood. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Benjamin told me that your stepmother arranged a private tutor, that she kept you at home instead of sending you off to school," Victoria said.

"He presented that as evidence of her caring for me? And you believed that?"

"He said…well, he said you were a sickly child, and that you didn't have the proper constitution to attend school," Victoria said. "If she had hated you so much, wouldn't she have insisted you leave the house regardless of whether your health could take it?"

James laughed bitterly. "I wasn't a sickly child."

"What do you mean? Benjamin told me you were confined to your bed several times when the two of you were in your youth."

"Oh, for pity's sake—I was confined to my bed because my stepmother was poisoning me."

The words burst forth unplanned. He hadn't intended to tell her. He so rarely spoke of this to anyone at all. He didn't know whether he would be believed, and he didn't want anyone to think he was asking for sympathy.

She stared at him, her eyes going wide.

"What?" she whispered.

"What did you think—that I resented her and cut ties with her because she served me smaller slices of pie at meals than she did Benjamin?

Did you think I stayed away from London all these years because of the trauma of my stepmother just not really liking me all that much?

She tried to kill me, Victoria. She did it more than once.

I was desperate to get away to school and out from under her thumb, but she wouldn't let me go for fear I might tell someone what she had done.

It was only when I grew up and became too old for her to control that I was able to get away. "

"She was trying to kill you?" Victoria repeated, seeming as if she needed to say the words over again in order to force them to make sense.

"She wanted Benjamin to be my father's heir," he explained.

"She resented me for being the firstborn, and for being my mother's son—she felt it was a threat to her, to her status and her position, or maybe to her claim on my father's love.

I don't know. All I know is that she hated that her son wasn't his firstborn, and she would have done anything to remove me from the picture.

I know she asked my father to disinherit me, but he didn't. A part of me wishes he had.

I never needed to be a viscount. I just wanted to be left alone, to have no part in her machinations. But that was never an option for me."

"And that's why you don't like Benjamin," she realized. "You blame him for it?"

"Of course I don't blame him. He didn't have anything to do with it.

But I can't look at him without revisiting those memories.

And…all right, maybe I do blame him a bit.

Maybe I do wonder why he looked at everything that was going on and drew the conclusion that I was just ill .

That nothing suspicious was going on. I could have died, and I had no one on my side to help protect me against that.

It was too much to ask of him, of course.

He was only a child. But I was a child too . "

He was surprised by the swell of agony that rose up within him as he spoke.

Victoria stared at him, her eyes full of pain.

"Of course you were," she said gently. "Of course you had no way to cope with all that—you should never have had to. Oh, James, I wish you had told me."

"Why? Would you have done something differently?"

"I don't know what I would have done," she confessed. "I just…wish that I had known. I wish I had understood what you were going through." She reached across the dinner table as if to take his hand.

Was she really going to take his hand?

Time seemed to freeze, and for a moment James contemplated how good it might feel to let her. How, for the first time, he might feel as if he wasn't alone in all this. He might feel as if someone understood him. As if someone really cared for him.

It was frightening to realize how badly he wanted that.

And he knew he couldn't allow himself to have it. It was too risky.

He rose from the table. "Please don't see Benjamin again," he said brusquely. "You're right that I can't force you. All I can do is ask."

He turned and strode away from the table, feeling as if his heart was working overtime in his chest.