CHAPTER ONE

The Atlantic Ocean, Gibraltar, 1810

"Lady Victoria?"

Victoria turned her head at the sound of her name being called so softly from across the ship deck. The moon was full. She could see the person calling to her quite clearly by its silver light… but she doubted that he, in turn, would be able to perceive the blush that suffused her cheeks at the sight of him.

Yet how could she help but blush? The sight of the tall, flaxen-haired lord nearly always brought color to her cheeks—not to mention a curious flutter to her pulse. He was so handsome. What woman would not blush when such a good-looking man happened to glance her way?

And tonight Lord Malfrey was doing a good deal more than glancing. Indeed, he was crossing the deck to come and stand beside her at the ship railing, where she'd leaned for the past half hour staring at the hypnotic band of light that the moon was casting upon the water, and listening to the gentle lap of waves upon the sides of the Harmony, the ship that had carried them all from India.

"Good evening, my lord," Victoria murmured demurely, when the earl reached her side.

"You are well, Lady Victoria?" Lord Malfrey asked with just a hint of anxiety in his deep voice. "Forgive me for asking, but you hardly touched your dinner. And then you left the table before dessert was served."

Victoria did not think it would be at all romantic, standing as they were beneath that lush silver moon, to inform the earl that she'd left the table because the roast had been so scandalously underdone that she'd felt it her duty to go to the galley and have words about it with the cook.

It was not her place, of course, to have done so. Mrs. White, the captain's wife, was the one who ought properly to have taken the ship's cook to task.

But Mrs. White, in Victoria's opinion, would not know a roux from a bearnaise, and quite probably liked her meat undercooked. Victoria had never been able to abide slovenly cooking. And it was so simple to do a roast properly!

But this was hardly the kind of thing one brought up before a young man like Lord Malfrey. Not under a night sky like the one above them. Besides, one simply did not speak of underdone meat in front of an earl.

And so instead Victoria said, stretching a hand eloquently toward the moon, "Why, I only wanted a breath of fresh air and happened upon this view. It was so lovely, how could I return below and miss such a breathtaking sight?"

This was, Victoria thought to herself, a bit of a high-flown speech. There were those on board, she knew, who might well make retching noises had they happened to have overheard it.

Fortunately, Hugo Rothschild, the ninth Earl of Malfrey, was not one of those people. His blue-eyed gaze followed the graceful arc of her arm, and he said reverently, "Indeed. I have never seen such a beautiful moon. But"—and here his gaze returned to Victoria—"it is not the only breathtaking sight to be seen here on deck."

Victoria knew she was blushing quite hard now—but from pleasure, not embarrassment. Why, the earl was flirting with her! How perfectly delightful. Her ayah back in Jaipur had warned her that men might try to flirt with her, but Victoria had hardly expected someone as handsome as Lord Malfrey to pay her such civilities. It was beginning to seem as if the evening, which had looked rather dismal in light of the disastrous roast, was shaping up very nicely indeed.

"Why, Lord Malfrey," Victoria said, lowering her sooty eyelashes —though they were not really sooty, of course, as Victoria was a scrupulous bather. But they were, or so her ayah had informed her, as black as soot, anyway. "I can't think what you mean."

"Can't you?" Lord Malfrey reached out and suddenly took the hand that she'd purposefully left lying upon the ship's railing, temptingly close to his. "Victoria—may I call you Victoria?"

He could have called her Bertha and Victoria would not have minded in the least. Not when he was pressing her hand so tightly, as if it were the most precious thing in the world, against his chest. She could feel his heart drumming, strong and vibrant, beneath the cream-colored satin of his waistcoat. Goodness, she thought with some astonishment. I believe he is about to propose!

Which he promptly did.

"Victoria," Lord Malfrey said, the moonlight bringing into high relief the planes of his regularly featured face. He was such a handsome man, with his square jaw and broad shoulders. He would, Victoria decided with some satisfaction, make a very dashing husband indeed. "I know we have not been acquainted long—just under three months—but these past few weeks… well, they've been the happiest I've ever known. It breaks my heart that tomorrow I shall have to leave you to travel on to England alone, for I have business to attend to in Lisbon…."

Dreadful Lisbon! How Victoria hated the sound of that foul city, stealing away this excessively charming young man! Lucky Lisbon, that it should get to bask in the glow of the delightful Lord Malfrey.

"Oh, well," she said, trying to sound airily unconcerned. "Perhaps we shall meet again in London by and by—"

"Not by and by," Lord Malfrey said, flattening her palm against his heart with both hands. "Never say by and by when it concerns us! For I never met a girl quite like you, Victoria, so beautiful… so intelligent… so competent with the help. I cannot imagine what a perfect creature like you could ever see in a pitiful wastrel like myself, but I promise that if, whilst I am in Lisbon, you will wait for me, and then upon my return deign to give me your hand in marriage, I will love you until the day I die, and do nothing but try to make myself worthy of you!"

La, Victoria thought, very pleased at this turn of events. How jolly this is! A girl goes to chastise a cook for underdoing the roast, and comes back to the table a bride-to-be! Her uncle John would be quite put out when he heard about it, however. He'd wagered Victoria wouldn't get a proposal until she'd been at least a year in England, and here she was getting one before even setting foot on shore. He wouldn't be at all happy about owing her uncles Henry and Jasper a fiver.

The three of them would be taught a sharp lesson indeed! Imagine them sending her off to England so unceremoniously, simply because she had suggested—merely suggested, mind you—that one of them marry her dear friend Miss… Oh, what was her name again, anyway? Well, it was simply ridiculous, not one of them agreeing to marry poor Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Was, when Victoria had had such a lovely wedding planned. Now it was her own wedding she'd be planning instead! Perhaps when her uncles caught a glimpse of her own wedded bliss, they'd give Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Was a second look….

Copyright © 2003 by Meggin Cabot