Once and Always by Judith McNaught Read Free Book Online

instructed by her grace, the Duchess of Claremont, to escort you to her home. Where are your trunks?”
    “Right there,” Dorothy said. “There’s only one.”
    He glanced over his shoulder and two liveried men climbed off the back of a shiny black coach with a gold crest on the door and hurried forward. “In that case, we can be on our way,” the man said as her trunk was lifted up and loaded atop the coach.
    “But what about my sister?” Dorothy said, her hand clasping Victoria’s in a stranglehold of eager terror.
    “I’m certain that the party meeting your sister will be here directly. Your ship arrived four days ahead of schedule.”
    “Don’t worry about me,” Victoria said with a bright confidence she didn’t quite feel. “I’m certain the duke’s carriage will be here any minute. In the meantime, Captain Gardiner will let me stay on board. Run along now.”
    Dorothy enfolded her sister in a tight hug. “Tory, I’ll contrive some way to persuade our grandmother to invite you to stay with us, you’ll see. I’m scared. Don’t forget to write. Write every day!”
    Victoria stayed where she was, watching Dorothy climb daintily into the luxurious vehicle with the gold crest on the door. The stairs were put up, the coachman snapped his whip, and the four horses bounded off as Dorothy waved good-bye from the window.
    Jostled by sailors leaving the ship in eager search of “foine ale and tarts,” Victoria stood on the dock, her gaze clinging to the departing coach. She had never felt so utterly alone in her life.
    She spent the next two days in bored solitude in her cabin, the tedium interrupted only by her short walks on deck and her meals with Captain Gardiner, a charming, fatherly man who seemed to greatly enjoy her company. Victoria had spent a considerable amount of time with him over the past weeks, and they had shared dozens of meals during the long voyage. He knew her reasons for coming to England, and she regarded him as a newly made friend.
    When by the morning of the third day no coach had arrived to convey Victoria to Wakefield Park, Captain Gardiner took matters into his own hands and hired one. “We were early getting into port, which is a rare occurrence,” he explained. “Your cousin may not think to send someone for you for days yet. I have business to conduct in London and I cannot leave you on board unprotected. In the time it would take to notify your cousin of your arrival, you can be there yourself.”
    For long hours, Victoria studied the English countryside decked out in all its magical spring splendor. Pink and yellow flowers bloomed in profusion across hedgerows that inarched up and down the hills and valleys. Despite the jostling and jarring she received every time the coach wheels passed over a rut or bump, her spirits rose with every passing mile. The coachman rapped on the door above her and his ruddy face appeared. “We’re ‘bout two miles away, ma’am, so if you’d lie to—”
    Everything seemed to happen at once. The wheel hit a deep rut, the coach jerked crazily to the side, the coachman’s head disappeared, and Victoria was flung to the floor in a sprawling heap. A moment later, the door was jerked open and the coachman helped her out. “You hurt?” he demanded.
    Victoria shook her head, but before she could utter a word, he rounded on two men dressed in farmers’ work clothes who were sheepishly clutching their caps in their hands. “Ye bloody fools! What d’ye mean pullin‘ out in the road like that! Look what ye’ve done, me axle’s broken—” The rest of what he said was laced with stout curses.
    Delicately turning her back on the loud altercation, Victoria shook her skirts, trying unsuccessfully to rid them of the dust and grime they’d acquired from the floor of the coach. The coachman crawled under his coach to inspect his broken axle, and one of the farmers shuffled over to Victoria, twisting his battered cap in his hands. “Jack ‘n’