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Damien Carstairs, Baron Drago, walked to where Victoria sat, stiff as a stick, in her high-backed chair. He leaned down and looked at her closely. Victoria forced herself to remain still. She could do nothing. Not here, not now.
“Didn’t you sleep well, Victoria?”
“Yes,” she said. “I slept very well. Very deeply, in fact.”
“Ah. That explains much, and yet it doesn’t, not really.”
Elaine’s voice was suddenly high and shrill. “Be certain not to overdo, Victoria. You know how terrible your leg looks if you push yourself too hard.”
Victoria wanted to thank her cousin. “Yes, it does look horrible, doesn’t it? Ugly and disgusting. Yes, that is quite true.”
But Damien, to her chagrin, only smiled. He flicked a careless finger across her pale cheek, then straightened.
“Is there anything you wish in St. Austell, my love?”
Elaine shrugged. “I am thinking that perhaps Victoria should remain here today. We are having a party, and Ligger could use her assistance. The silver, you know.”
“I know,” said Damien easily.
“Perhaps you don’t wish to attend the party, Victoria,” Elaine continued to her cousin. “There will be dancing, and I don’t wish you to be placed in an embarrassing situation.”
She knows or she guesses something is amiss with her husband, Victoria realized in that moment. She is trying to give Damien a disgust of me. Victoria prayed for her success. “You’re right, Elaine. I shall help Ligger with the preparations. My leg is feeling particularly bothersome this morning. Dancing would doubtless embarrass all of us. I will keep Damaris and Nanny Black company in the nursery.”
Damien gave his wife a lazy look that was neatly belied by his voice, which brooked no further arguments. “Victoria will ride this morning, with Damaris and myself. She will attend the party and the dancing. I shall help her choose a gown, my dear. Perhaps one of yours that are no longer of any use to you. Now, if there is nothing more of grave importance, I shall be with Corbell. The stables, Victoria, in half an hour.”
“But I need her to help—”
“Half an hour.”
Victoria raised her chin. “I’m sorry, Damien. I will be riding with David. Damaris will be our chaperon,” she added with a nod toward Elaine.
“Yes,” said Elaine quickly. “That will be fine. I do wonder when David will speak to you, my dear.”
Damien stared at his wife. “David Esterbridge,” he said slowly. “So, that is the way of it, hmmm?”
“Yes,” said Victoria, “that is the way of it.”
Damien smiled suddenly, nodding to his wife. “Well, this is very interesting, yes indeed.”
Both women watched him stride from the breakfast room. The instant the door closed, Elaine rose and splayed her fingers on the table. She said in a low, hard voice, “You are wise to accept David Esterbridge. He is suitable. It is time you left Drago Hall.”
Things were moving rapidly, too rapidly. Victoria had always known that she hadn’t a sou, and it hadn’t been important. But now it was. She would have to tell David that she was poor, wretchedly poor, that she would bring him nothing. Squire Esterbridge appeared to Victoria to be a man of stern and rigid fiber, with even more fibrous notions of what was due to his family. Surely he couldn’t want a daughter-in-law with nothing to recommend her but the Abermarle name, her blue eyes, and her straight teeth. She simply couldn’t bring herself to believe that he did want her in the Esterbridge family, even though David had assured her at the beginning of each of the three proposals that his father was desirous of having her for a daughter-in-law. She lowered her head. She would speak to David, make him fully aware of her concerns before she accepted his proposal. Perhaps she was making problems for herself where there should be none. Surely David was certain of his feelings and of his father’s attitudes toward her, for they were of long enough standing. She was worrying for naught. Perhaps, she thought, more optimistic now, just perhaps Damien, once he realized that he wouldn’t gain his ends, would provide her with a dowry.
She left Elaine with a brisk step and went to the nursery. Nanny Black merely gave her her usual dour nod and straightened the pink velvet bow on the little girl’s riding hat.
“You wish to be my chaperon, Damie?” Victoria dropped to her knees in front of the child, carefully, of course, favoring her left leg.
“David?”
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“Yes, David is riding with us. We will go to Fletcher’s Pond and feed Clarence and his family.”
“Yes, yes, yes, Torie!”
Victoria ruffled Damie’s black curls, thinking that she was the picture of her father. Except there was no cruelty in her clear gray eyes. Only innocence and eagerness and an only child’s occasional petulance.
Victoria rose gingerly to her feet, feeling the slight strain in her left leg from the kneeling position. Nothing but a twinge, but it made her realize that this was something else she and David had never discussed before.
