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Victoria outwardly winced. She’d earned that blunt question fair and square.
She’d been a horrible brat last year and had made so many of the Christmas festivities painfully awkward. So many heavy silences.
Somany.
She shrugged, the tips of her ears burning. “I will try. For my cousins.”
Eva laughed. “Not for the adults? Please let it be for the adults. The children don’t care what is happening above their heads as long as the sugar plums are forthcoming.”
Victoria chuckled. “For the adults, then.” Her smile faded quickly, that aching, vulnerable piece of her she hated surfacing in the quiver of her voice. “It is just that it is hard. It doesn’t go away.”
Eva’s lips pulled inward, then settled in a comforting frown. “Desmond abandoned you. For eighteen years. True, he didn’t know you were alive, yet that was the reality of what happened. I can’t imagine that hurt will ever go away.” She leaned across the carriage and grabbed Victoria’s hand. “But he does love you, you know. Des loves you so very much.”
“He just wants me to…” She heaved her shoulders. “I don’t know what he wants out of me. He wants me to be the little girl that he missed growing up, but I can’t give him that.”
“As long as you know the love is there.”
Victoria nodded. She did know that fact. Her father did love her. Was devastated that he’d been apart from her for so long. Would do anything to protect her.
Yet none of that curbed her tongue when it came to her father.
She would try this year.Reallytry.
A distraction to that end would be helpful.
Her eyes hopeful, she looked at Eva, arching her eyebrows. “Will there be extra Scotsmen coming from Vinehill this year?” Her uncle had a slew of distant relatives that were constantly moving in and out of Vinehill Castle. Far too many of them hulking and handsome and with heart-melting brogues that she loved to be around.
Eva wagged her gloved finger at Victoria. “Lachlan was told to only bring the scaly, ugly ones this year. I learned my lesson on that score. There will be none that you will be even remotely interested in flirting with.”
“Always spoiling my fun.”
“Just trying to keep your fathers from having heart attacks and—or—killing anyone.”
Victoria exhaled a laugh. “You paint me a trollop.”
“I’m just looking to not get skewered with Des and Reiner’s terrifying glares this year.”
Victoria’s lips pursed for a long second. “Speaking of the glaring duo—or not speaking of them, more importantly—I wanted to ask you a question about the Eve of Winter Ball.”
“What is it?”
“Were you introduced to a man, Lord Winfred? I believe he was at the ball through a connection with Lady Frantole.”
Eva’s head tilted to the side and she stared out the window for a long moment, thinking. “I think, maybe, yes. I met a Lord W…something or another.” Her hand flipped casually in the air. “But there was such a crush there—more so than last year—and it would have been late into the evening. What did he look like?”
“He was handsome.”
“Was he? I didn’t notice whether the lord I was introduced to was handsome or not. We were in the crowd and by the time I turned to him, Lady Odfole’s feathered headdress was blocking his face from me.”
Victoria smirked a tease. “You don’t think anyone but Uncle Lach is handsome.”
“Not true. I think Dunkin is very handsome as well.” Eva grinned. “Tell me more, refresh my memory.”
“Lord Winfred has lighter brown hair but darker eyes, I think. I only saw him outside so it was hard to tell. He’s tall, upwards to the height of Reiner and Lachlan.”
Eva pursed her lips, her head shaking. “Anything else about him?”
“He has a rather peculiar accent,” Victoria said. “Not quite English, but I’m not sure what other dialect or language is in his words. And I’ve never heard of his title before, so I’m not sure it’s an English title.”
