Victoria and the Rogue by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page B

Victoria informed him. “It’s my marrying so soon after
    my arrival that they don’t like. Not that there’s anything they can do about it.”
    Jacob lifted a single dark brow. “Isn’t there?”
    Victoria gave a haughty toss of her head. “Hardly! What can they do? They don’t hold my purse strings;
    I do. I can do as I like.”
    “And what you like,” Jacob said, “is to marry Hugo Rothschild. A man you hardly know.”
    “Why does everyone keep saying that?” Victoria shook her head in wonder. “I know him very well
    indeed. I was with him for a month longer than I was with you on the Harmony, you’ll remember.”
    “As if I could forget,” Jacob said obliquely. Then he demanded, “And just what was Lord Malfrey, a
    gentleman whom I understand is in some financial straits, doing in Bombay, anyway? Did you ever bother
    asking him that?”
    “Of course I did,” Victoria said. “Lord Malfrey was seeing to the sale of some property left to him by a
    distant relation.”
    “In India?”
    “That’s correct.” Victoria wondered why she was bothering to explain her fiancé’s business affairs to
    this man, who was not even a relation, but seemed to harbor some sort of absurd proprietary feelings
    toward her just the same. “And now he’s off to Lisbon to spend the proceeds buying back some family
    portraits that he was forced to part with a few years ago, when he was in somewhat different financial
    straits.”
    Jacob Carstairs looked disgusted. “Good Lord,” he said. “And you really want to marry this fellow? It
    seems he can barely manage to keep his personal affairs in order.”
    “Of course he can’t,” Victoria said. “That’s why he needs me.”
    “To pay his bills, you mean,” Jacob said, rudely.
    “To help him organize his life,” Victoria corrected him.
    But she instantly regretted her unguarded words when Jacob Carstairs let out a bark of laughter, and
    cried, “Good Lord, I’d almost forgotten. Of course a fellow like that would appeal to a busy bee like
    you. Why, he needs no end of improving.”
    Victoria leveled a very meaningful gaze at Jacob Carstairs’s collar points and said, “I can think of a few
    things I’d like to improve about you.”
    “It all makes sense now.” Jacob did not seem to have noticed the direction of her gaze, nor heard her
    remark. “The Hugo Rothschilds of the world are irresistible to all little Miss Bees like you. Tell me, where
    did you intend to start with him? His finances, of course, are in lamentable condition. But if I were you,
    I’d begin with his mother. I understand she’s quite a gorgon.”
    “I’ll tell you where I’d start with you,” Victoria piped up. “You need to learn to keep your—”
    “Ah, no,” Jacob said, lifting a warning finger. “You and I are not engaged. I have not paid for the
    privilege of one of your improving speeches—elucidating as I am sure they must be. You will have to
    save your lectures for me until such time as you are unattached again.”
    “Well,” Victoria said, feeling more vexed with him than ever, “then you will have to wait forever, for I
    plan never to be unattached again.”
    Jacob, though the dance abruptly finished, forgot to bow in response to Victoria’s curtsy. Instead he just
    stood there looking down at her with a very astonished expression on his face.
    “What?” he said, seemingly quite unaware that all the other couples save themselves were moving from
    the dance floor. “You still intend to go through with it?”
    “With what?” Victoria thought that, for all he was in charge of a shipping line worth many thousands of
    pounds, Jacob Carstairs was rather dim. “My wedding to Lord Malfrey? Why, certainly. I think I already
    informed you of that.”
    “But… but your aunt and uncle,” Jacob stammered. “I saw the way they reacted to the news. Surely
    they can’t… they haven’t given you permission to wed him.”
    “Of course they haven’t.” Really,