Once and Always by Judith McNaught Read Free Book Online Page A

me, we’re awful sorry, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll take you on to Wakefield Park—that is, if you don’t mind us puttin‘ yer trunk in back with them piglets?”
    Grateful not to have to walk the two miles, Victoria readily agreed. She paid the coachman with the traveling money Charles Fielding had sent her and climbed onto the bench between the two burly farmers. Riding in a farm cart, although less prestigious than a coach, was scarcely any bumpier and far more comfortable. Fresh breezes cooled her face and her view of the lavish countryside was unrestricted.
    With her usual unaffected friendliness, Victoria soon succeeded in engaging both men in a conversation about farming, a topic about which she knew a little and was perfectly happy to learn more. Evidently, English farmers were violently opposed to the implementation of machines for use in farming. “Put us all out of work, they will,” one of the farmers told her at the end of his impassioned condemnation of “them infernal things.”
    Victoria scarcely heard that, because their wagon had turned onto a paved drive and passed between two imposing iron gates that opened onto a broad, seemingly endless stretch of gently rolling, manicured parkland punctuated with towering trees. The park stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see, bisected here and there by a stream that meandered about, its banks covered with flowers of pink and blue and white. “It’s a fairyland,” Victoria breathed aloud, .her stunned, admiring gaze roving across the carefully tended banks of the picturesque stream and the sweeping landscape. “It must take dozens of gardeners to care for a place this size.”
    “That it do,” Jack said. “His lordship’s got forty of ‘em, countin’ the ones what takes care of the
real
gardens—the gardens at the house, I mean.” They had been plodding along the paved drive for fifteen minutes when the cart rounded a bend and Jack pointed proudly. “There it is— Wakefield Park. I heert it has a hunnert and sixty rooms.”
    Victoria gasped, her mind reeling, her empty stomach clenching into a tense knot. Stretched out before her in all its magnificent splendor was a three-story house that altogether surpassed her wildest imaginings. Built of mellow brick with huge forward wings and steep rooftops dotted with chimneys, it loomed before her—a palace with graceful terraced steps leading up to the front door and sunlight glistening against hundreds of panes of mullioned glass.
    They drew to a stop before the house and Victoria tore her gaze away long enough for one of the farmers to help her down from the wagon seat. “Thank you, you’ve been very kind,” she said, and started slowly up the steps. Apprehension turned her feet to lead and her knees to water. Behind her, the farmers went to the back of the wagon to remove her bulky trunk, but as they let down the back gate, two squealing piglets hurtled out of the wagon into empty air, hit the ground with a thud, and streaked off across the lawns.
    Victoria turned at the sound of the farmers’ shouts and giggled nervously as the red-faced men ran after the speedy little porkers.
    Ahead of her, the door of the mansion was flung open and a stiff-faced man dressed in green and gold livery cast an outraged glance over the farmers, the piglets, and the dusty, disheveled female approaching him. “Deliveries,” he told Victoria in a loud, ominous voice, “are made in the
rear.”

    Raising his arm, he pointed imperiously toward the drive that ran alongside the house, Victoria opened her mouth to explain she wasn’t making a delivery, but her attention was diverted by a little piglet, which had changed direction and was headed straight toward her, pursued by a panting farmer.
    “Get that cart, those swine, and your person out of here!” the man in the livery boomed.
    Tears of helpless mirth sprang to Victoria’s eyes as she bent down and scooped the escaped piglet into her arms.