Page 354 of From Rakes to Riches

In her room, Victoria closed the door and leaned against it, suddenly exhausted. She knew there were other items on her list to do today besides helping with dinner, but at just this moment, she couldn’t think about anything but Tom?—

Viscount Thurlow.

Why was she feeling so betrayed? They’d shared writing in a journal, not an undying commitment.

But she’d trusted him, confided in him, believed in him.

And it had all been a lie.

She’d spent six years writing her deepest secrets…to a viscount. Her face burned with embarrassment, and she couldn’t stop feeling a rising tide of anger and despair.

Her last plan to save her mother winked out of existence.

Surely that was why she found herself crying. She pulled a handkerchief from a drawer and blew her nose, taking satisfaction in its unladylike loudness.

She could spend no more time dwelling on this mistake—oh, why had she even allowed impulse to guide her to his door?

It was done—no one need know of her foolish idea to marry Tom.

She washed her face in cold water, dried it, pasted on a false smile, and went down to the kitchen. If Mrs. Wayneflete noticed anything unusual, the dear woman said nothing.

It tookuntil early afternoon the next day for David’s curiosity to be satisfied. The investigator he’d hired presented his formal report at luncheon and went away paid handsomely. The money was worth it, for David never approached anything without knowing every fact.

He drank his coffee and opened the folder of papers. As he read, he eventually allowed his drink to grow cold. Victoria’s mother had been widowed ten months before—which explained the mourning gown. Victoria’s foolish father, once so successful in business, had let several bad decisions erase his empire. He’dleft his wife and daughters with nothing but a mortgage that had since been purchased by a cousin, who was on his way home to England to claim the town house. The man had his own family, and did not want strangers—relatives though they were—to intrude on him. The Shelbys had no other family to take them in and would be forced to support themselves somehow. He imagined shy Victoria confronted by the hard work required of a governess. She’d be overrun by the children.

And now she’d come looking for Tom. Why?

Because maybe he’d been her only childhood friend beside her sisters. Such thoughts made him uncomfortable, for he had to admit he’d considered her a friend, too. It was hard for him to remember how innocent he’d once been, before his father had ruined the family name.

As a child, the longer he had written to her, the more his fictional life had chafed at him. He’d wanted to tell her about his sick mother, about so many things that Tom the cook’s son wouldn’t know. But he’d been trapped in his lies. Then after his mother had died, he couldn’t put into words the loss he’d felt, couldn’t tell Victoria the truth, so he’d just stopped writing. He’d gone away to school after years of tutors, glad to escape from his father, whom David blamed for his mother’s death.

David and Victoria had been so close as children. Would she come to him to help solve her problems?

There was a brisk knock on the dining room door, and Smith the butler entered. With a single look from Smith, both footmen bowed and left the room.

David guessed the gist of what was to come. “What is it now, Smith?”

“The previous housekeeper”—the butler no longer said her name, as if she no longer existed—“had told the upstairs maids that they answer to the downstairs maid, and not to me. Forgiveme for disturbing you with this, my lord, but my authority must not be questioned.”

David sighed. “Please tell me you’ve placed an advertisement for a new housekeeper.”

“Heavens, no, my lord. I will find the right employee without resorting to such public displays of our…problems. Now if you’d be so good as to meet with the maids.”

David didn’t need this. He had an important railway meeting to host soon, and since the directors’ families needed to attend as a diversion, he’d been up to his elbows in party details that were normally a woman’s domain. And he’dthoughthe could count on his housekeeper’s help.

Bracing his forehead on his hand, David looked down at the report on the Shelby family. There was a housekeeper to find, a party to plan, his wastrel cousin to deal with, his father to placate—all the things a wife would take care of.

“Tom” could do nothing to help Victoria, but with one decision, David would solveeveryone’sproblems.

He would marry Victoria Shelby.

She was not the woman his father would have picked for him, but that was almost a grim pleasure. Although she was not of noble birth, she was long bred for the duties required of her—he remembered her writing about her studies of the feminine arts. And the most important duty would be providing him with an heir to secure the family fortune with his own line.

For a moment, he felt like his father, who demanded heirs of his mother even though David had already been born. But this was not the same situation, and he could not allow himself to worry about Victoria handling a pregnancy. She was a healthy woman, one who couldn’t refuse his proposal as other women had done. He didn’t even feel guilty for taking advantage of her desperation. After all, it would not be difficult to be the wife of a future earl. Women lived to plan parties, didn’t they?

He remembered Victoria as shy and kind, a girl who worried about hurting the servants’ feelings as much as her family’s. She had no great mission in life, as some women had, to reform society or negate poverty. She would cast little scandal on a family already brimming with its own. And Victoria could deal with his father and his household, leaving David free to pursue his business interests.

With everything figured out before dinner, the day was looking up. Now all he had to do was tell the bride.

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