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Victoria groaned.
“You have no idea how much I hate that title.”
“Well, it’s your title now. You’re going to have to put up with it from now on.”
“Unfortunately.” Victoria stood up and faced him, pinning him with a cool stare. “What do you want, Mr Mayfield?”
“May I speak to you in private?”
“You can, but we shouldn’t be in my bedchamber. That would raise a lot of questions.”
“Then I’ll keep the door open.” Mayfield rubbed the back of his neck. “Are you all right? You’ve not left your room since yesterday afternoon, and it’s now sunset.”
Victoria bit back a snort.
“After what’s happened to my family and the position I’ve been put in, you think I should be all right?”
“It’s not an ideal situation….”
“That’s an understatement.”
“But you should think about making the most of it. You and Rafe…Blackmore, I mean…you don’t have to hate each other.”
Victoria folded her arms.
“Did Blackmore send you up here to speak on his behalf? Because you can leave if he has.”
“Actually, he doesn’t know I’m up here. He’s barely left the study all day.” Mayfield shook his head. “He’s not happy about this situation, either. The house is very quiet despite the fact there’s a married couple living here.”
“Did you expect to hear us consummating the marriage?”
Mayfield held up his hands.
“There are some things I’m happy to hear, but the sound of you two doing an…intimate dance…let’s just say I would prefer to die happy to not hear that. I heard enough of that when we were out in the wilderness.”
The wilderness. Victoria found herself faltering a little. In all of this, while she knew Blackmore had lived in America for a long time after the death of her brother, she had never bothered to know anything more. But now, there was a part of her that wanted to find out.
She wasn’t about to ask Blackmore, though. Not when her feelings for him were all over the place. Victoria wanted to get her back onto an even keel with her emotions before she confronted him.
“What was he like in America? You must have known him for a while?”
“Since he joined us. That was about…five years ago.”
“You mentioned the wilderness. I thought he would have stayed with people of our social standing.” Victoria went on hurriedly when Mayfield raised an eyebrow, “No offence, Mr Mayfield.”
“None taken.” Mayfield gestured at the chairs by the fire. “May we sit? We can leave the door open.”
“All right.”
Having the door open did make Victoria feel like she had a bit of control. At least he wasn’t forcing her out of the room. Going over to the empty fireplace, she sat down and smoothed her skirts out. Mayfield sat opposite her.
“Rafe did try. But even across an ocean, news can travel fast. He was scared of having what happened follow him. So, he went further west. My group met him in Ohio, looking worse for wear and very drunk. I stopped him from getting into a fight with a much bigger man, and he slept it off in my room. You can imagine I didn’t get much sleep that night.”
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t stop screaming. He was asleep, but he would toss and turn, and then he was screaming incoherently. We tried to wake him up, but he just wouldn’t. In the end, he settled down on his own, but I couldn’t sleep knowing that he could react like that when he was resting.”
Victoria frowned.
