Victoria and the Rogue Read Online Free PDF Page A

times have I told you not to hold
    him by the head? You might kill him!”
    Not to be defeated in her attempt to thank her hosts, Victoria turned toward her uncle. “And it’s very
    nice to see you again, too, Uncle Walter.”
    Her uncle, Mr. Gardiner, had terrified Victoria when she’d been little, due to his gruff
    uncommunicativeness. He had changed very little in the twelve years since she’d last seen him, she soon
    saw. “Harumph,” was all he said to her, though he did manage a bow of acknowledgment. Then he
    turned toward Captain Carstairs, who stood a few feet away, and growled, “Welcome back, Carstairs.
    And how did you find Africa?”
    Victoria was not able to hear Mr. Carstairs’s reply, because her aunt had started up again.
    “Let’s get poor Vicky home, darlings,” she was braying for all the dockhands in London to hear. “She
    isn’t used to English weather, and could easily come down with quinsy if the heavens break, which they
    seem threatening to do at any moment. And we wouldn’t want Cousin Vicky with a red, sniffling nose,
    now, would we?” Mrs. Gardiner let out a laugh that Victoria was certain could be heard all the way back
    to Bombay. “’Twould frighten away all her suitors!”
    Just as Victoria was certain she could not possibly feel more humiliated, she heard Jacob Carstairs quip,
    “Oh, I can think of one or two who wouldn’t mind.”
    Victoria shot him an aggrieved look, but saw at once that it didn’t do a bit of good. Captain Carstairs
    grinned at her above the heads of her cousins, and continued to do so as she was carried away by them
    toward the barouche. The last thing she saw, as they pulled away from the Harmony, was Mrs. White
    fluttering a lace handkerchief in her direction, crying, “Oh, good-bye, good-bye, Lady Victoria! I shall
    call upon you next week!” and beside her, Jacob Carstairs, smiling like a Hindi statue of Ginesh.
    Insufferable man!
    CHAPTER THREE
    “How lovely it must be to be rich,” Rebecca Gardiner said with a sigh, as she held one of Victoria’s
    many ball gowns to her shoulders and admired her reflection in the full-length looking glass of the dressing
    room they were to share during the course of Victoria’s stay.
    A stay that Victoria had already decided was going to be very short indeed. The Gardiners’ London
    town house was quite nice, but with nine children—nine!—four dogs, three cats, assorted rabbits, ferrets,
    and budgies, two parents, a butler, cook, housekeeper, two maids, a nanny, a driver and a stableboy, the
    place was entirely too crowded for Victoria’s taste. Already she was longing for the airy villa she and her
    uncles had shared, with a staff that lived out and only well-mannered dogs or the occasional
    mongoose—to kill the cobras that invariably coiled in the bath—as pets.
    How very different things were in the Gardiner household! It seemed that Victoria could not turn around
    without stepping on a small child or cat’s paw. As if that were not bad enough, the help left a good deal
    to be desired. Victoria could see that she was going to have to take her aunt’s staff firmly in hand. She
    had already resolved that Mariah, the undermaid, was going to have to go. In fact, Victoria was too
    concerned over Mariah’s less than careful unpacking of her belongings to pay much attention to what her
    cousin was saying.
    “Yes,” was how Victoria replied to her cousin’s statement. To the hapless Mariah, however, who was
    crushing a very expensive crepe de chine wrapper, Victoria said, “That is to be hung, Mariah, not
    folded.”
    Rebecca, rather like Mariah, paid not the slightest bit of attention to Victoria.
    “Mama says you’ve simply thousands of pounds.” Rebecca pointed one of her toes, and admired the
    way it peeped out from the ruffled hem of the dress she held. “I wish I had thousands of pounds. If I did,
    I wouldn’t stay here when I came to visit London. I would stay in a hotel, and order ices