“Won’t Papa wish to be there for the meeting?”
“He has agreed to let me handle this on my own and will trust my reports on the matter.” She did not miss how Luke stood a little straighter. Nothing made him prouder than earning their father’s trust and having an opportunity to prove it was not misplaced—especially when it came to the company their grandfather had built. Still, she would have much preferred herbrother attend the ball as well, because he had perfected the art of acting as a buffer to the eyes of theton, and because he was so easy to converse with, making it easier to pass the time. However, she understood his decision.
“Admit it,” Victoria groused theatrically. “You far prefer those stuffy, number-loving Englishmen to escorting your little sister around London.”
Luke chuckled warmly. “You’ve found me out. I would have a thousand meetings with them to discuss an infinite number of dreadfully boring numbers if it meant I never had to set foot in another English dress shop with you.”
And so, thenext evening, Victoria stood in a grand, gilded ballroom owned by a lord and lady whose name she could not recall, with her father by her side. Most young women her age might have felt put out at being left to spend the evening with their fathers, but, as much as she’d complained to Luke, it did not bother Victoria in the slightest. She adored Papa, and he, in turn, doted upon her. With his booming laugh and deceptively soft exterior, he’d always had a way of charming people and had never cared what anyone had to say to him or about him. He was fortunate enough to know and be secure in his place in the world, and he was damned proud of his success—and rightly so, if Victoria had anything to say about it. Her father’s unflappable joviality and confidence in any situation were enviable. Lord knew Victoria would have benefited from inheriting some of her father’s disposition on more than one occasion; alas, she was cursed with having the most readable face in Creation (or so one New York tabloid had once commented). As such, it was sometimes difficult for her to interact with a particularly acerbic matron without pulling at least once face.
This was, rather unfortunately, her current predicament.
A baroness with the jowls of a hound had taken it upon herself to educate Victoria on all the ways the English were superior to Americans. At first, she’d believed it all to be in jest, but she’d quickly learned that that was not the case. What the woman hoped to accomplish, Victoria couldn’t quite comprehend, but she was all but cornered between a wall and her father, who was too engrossed in a conversation with another guest to hear what was being said to his daughter. Time and time again, Victoria had to snap herself to attention and remember to smile rather than grimace, to nod when she would have rather rolled her eyes.
“Furthermore…” the woman droned on indignantly, and it was everything Victoria could do not to give the woman the satisfaction of proving just how “savage” Americans could be. A well-placed flick of her fan to the woman’s throat might stun her enough for Victoria to make her escape…
But no.
That would not do.
She’d always prided herself on her openness and honesty. As she’d come of age and experienced Society first in New York and now England, she’d learned some unpleasant lessons. What she interpreted as a manifestation of her soul’s honesty, however, was not always well-received in English ballrooms. She’d discovered early on that the smiling faces and polite inquiries of the ladies at these events quite often acted as disguises for the most vicious venom. It was galling to do so, but she’d promised her father that she would do her best not to insult anyone of any import. The last thing Rockford Shipping needed was opposition from those who held actual sway in government (as opposed to those who simply held inflated opinions of themselves). She liked to play a game with herself as she tried to distinguish between the two, pasting a smile upon her face as she remained resolutely confident.
She did her best not to sag in relief when the baroness finally ran out of wind and moved onto a more receptive target. Her relief was short-lived when she looked out at the expansive room and realized she was being watched by no less than a dozen pairs of eyes.
To Victoria, the men at these events were more welcoming than the vipers’ nests to be found in the clutches of women whispering behind their fluttering fans. Unfortunately for her, these men seemed to find her so interesting that she barely had time to breathe. Her dance card filled at an alarming pace, and to say that she was swarmed by admirers of the male persuasion would not have been an understatement.
Though she hid it well behind a practiced mask, Victoria found herself often overwhelmed by these Englishmen attempting to snag her attention and garner her favor. Unfortunately, this only further villainized her in the eyes of the jealous women of the aristocracy who, more and more, saw her as their competition in what she’d quickly realized was the cutthroat field of the London Marriage Mart. Victoria wasn’t deaf or blind—she heard the whispers calling her self-preservative ways sheer vanity. She was viewed as taking away rightful attention from women and daughters who’d had centuries of breeding on her.
Unlike those women, though, Victoria realized the male attention she received had little to do with her charm, beauty, or wit, and much more to do with her fortune. She’d have been quite happy if the attention ceased altogether, but that was hardly the case. In fact, it seemed to worsen as word of the Americans spread throughout England.
She longed to share a genuine laugh with someone outside of her family, to find someone who might be a friend and companion these months abroad. London, however, conspired against her, and most of the overtures of friendship she madewere summarily shut down. She was grateful for the friendship of the Duchess of Morton and would attend the next meeting of her Reading Society held at Morton House the coming week, but, being a duchess, she was also quite busy with her various responsibilities and organizations. There was also the matter of the blossoming pregnancy Victoria imagined she could see beneath Lady Morton’s fashionable skirts. To comment upon it would have been unseemly, but she believed it was the reason behind the duchess’s aberration of morning calls. Even though she’d never been pregnant, she had enough acquaintances back home who’d experienced the state for Victoria to appreciate just how difficult it might be for a woman to adhere to social schedules when she felt unwell.
Though she was coming close with Lady Morton, this meant for the time being that Victoria was woefully without a true and consistent companion thus far in England, and she’d begun to despair of that ever changing.
Chapter Three
From across thestifling ballroom, Rafe watched the dark-haired woman dressed in ivory, from the ribbons and brilliants woven into her complicated coiffeur to the elegant lace and beadwork of her outrageously expensive gown, right down to the dainty slippers that peeked out from beneath her skirts when she danced with partner after partner after partner. He jabbed an elbow into the tall blond man beside him and lifted his chin in the woman’s direction.
“That is her—the American heiress.”
Simon Stratford, Rafe’s oldest and closest friend, despite their wildly different personalities, followed his gaze. “And?”
Rafe stifled a sigh. He cherished Simon like a brother, but sometimes he was a bit difficult to converse with. They’d formed a bond all the way back at Eton when Rafe had been naught more than a scrappy lad with a chip on his shoulder who couldn’t stand by as Simon was tortured for no reason other than he was a bit different. The second son of the Earl of Aldborough had always been a bit too in love with his books, spoke too often about mathematics, and took little interest in the things other boys their age deemed most important. In the decades since Rafe had saved him from a cruel beating, their friendship had stuck. Though he didn’t always understand Simon’s idiosyncrasies and Simon couldn’t comprehend Rafe’s free, rakish lifestyle, they’d made it work.
Simon’s wife, on the other hand, had made things a bit difficult as of late. Odette (along with most of London) believed Rafe to be a poor influence. To be honest, it was probably truer than not. He hadn’t garnered his reputation as an irreverent rakehell by chance. However, Rafewasthe reason Simon had been at the theater the night he’d met Odette! They had him to thank for their wedded bliss—did that count for nothing? Couldn’t her gratitude over that help her overlook the fact that he’d called off his affair with one of her old friends from the theater business? That had been a few months and at least five paramours ago, andstillOdette was chilly around him. The fact that Odette was friends with the brokenhearted girl was regrettable, but Rafe had been nothing if not upfront about what he wanted from their liaison. It had never been malicious. Any of his interactions with the fairer sex were intended to be temporary and nothing more. If a woman built it up in her head that she’d be the one to make him turn over a new leaf, then, as far as Rafe was concerned, that was on her.
Simon’s wife ended her conversation with another guest and saw where the men were looking. “The American?” she asked, easily interpreting the situation after a few years of practice. Rafe felt her eyes narrow on him. “Don’t tell me you’re planning on trying to make her your latest conquest?”
Rafe turned to Odette. Shorter than her husband by more than a head and elegantly curvaceous, she presented a lovely juxtaposition to all of Simon’s harsh angles and inelegant manners. “What? You don’t think I’ll be able to?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, intentionally trying to earn a reaction from Odette.
She scoffed. “Of course not. I spent quite a bit of time speaking to her at Lady Morton’s supper the other night—you were not invited to that dinner, were you?” Rafe missed the days when Odette had been much quieter and less confident in herbarbs. “Miss Rockford seems quite self-sure and bright. If she can run the gauntlet of all these money-hungry men of theton, then I don’t think she’ll find your brand of charm very moving. Besides, Lady Morton will be quite put out if you break Miss Rockford’s heart; she likes her. She’s even invited her to the Reading Society, and you know the duchess does not extend that privilege to just anyone.”
Simon caught Rafe’s eye over his wife’s head. His oldest friend was the only one who had an inkling of Rafe’s dire financial straits, and that was only because he’d known him for so long. Simon had witnessed the old viscount’s neglect of his only son and watched Rafe’s childhood home slowly deteriorate into shambles from apathy and neglect. He was aware of how difficult it had been for Rafe’s sister, Alice, to make a decent marriage with a humiliatingly paltry dowry. It didn’t take a person with Simon’s brilliant intellect to deduce that an obscenely wealthy heiress was just the woman Rafe needed, and the one most likely to entice him to seek something more than a temporary arrangement.
“That sounds like an irresistible challenge to me.”
With that, Rafe excused himself from their little group without waiting for Odette’s retort and made direct progress toward the American heiress who had so consumed the tabloids as of late.
Rafe had spent the weeks since her arrival scouring the papers and gossip rags for any tidbits of substance about her—anything that might help ingratiate him with her. Unfortunately, those sources were predictably shallow. He may have learned that she was fashionable and looked quite lovely in the indigo blue frock she wore on a shopping excursion, and that she’d been in the company of quite a few notable members of theton. However, it seemed she hadn’t yet been connected with any man in particular, which left Rafe just the opening he needed.
