Victoria and the Rogue Read Free Page A

make a
    habit of going about and shooting wild animals, and that she really ought to have kept this particular talent
    of hers secret—rather like she was trying to keep secret that particular moonlit night off the coast of
    Lisbon… no thanks to Captain Carstairs, who was forever reminding her of it, as he did so now.
    “Oh, Lady Victoria is as skilled at firing a rifle as she is at winning hearts. She has as many tiger pelts as
    she does marriage proposals,” he said with a wink—an actual wink!—in Victoria’s direction. “She
    collects them. Don’t you, my lady?”
    Victoria was convinced that if there were a ruder young man in all the world, she had yet to encounter
    him. It was on the tip of her tongue to point this fact out to the impertinent Captain Carstairs when Mrs.
    White’s husband, who’d gone portside to supervise the lowering of the longboat, suddenly reappeared
    with the announcement, “Lady Victoria, if you are quite ready, the swing has been prepared.”
    Victoria, still smarting over Jacob Carstairs’s reminder of the tender scene he’d so rudely interrupted the
    other night, replied, without stopping to think what she was saying, “I shan’t need the swing, Captain. I
    am perfectly able-bodied, and shall climb the ladder down to the longboat like everyone else.”
    Young Captain Carstairs raised his dark eyebrows upon hearing this, but for once said nothing. It was
    Mrs. White who looked likely to suffer an apoplexy over Victoria’s announcement.
    “The ladder?” she cried. “The ladder? Oh, my lady, you can’t know… you must not be aware… the
    ladder will never do at all. Oh, no, not at all. I cannot allow it. I simply cannot.”
    Stuff and bother. Belatedly, Victoria realized she had, once again, committed a faux pas. Young English
    ladies did not apparently climb down ladders, any more than they went strolling around the decks of
    sailing ships after dark with young men to whom they were not related—as she had had pointed out to
    her several times, and to her everlasting chagrin, by Jacob Carstairs. It might, Victoria reflected, have
    been nice if her uncles had warned her of these things before they’d so unceremoniously shipped her off
    to this bizarre and foreign land.
    A glance at Jacob Carstairs, however, showed Victoria that she could not back down now. His gray
    eyes looked more mischievous than ever, and his mouth was distinctly curled up at the corners.
    “Tut, tut, Mrs. White,” he said. “Lady Victoria, take the swing? Swings are for mealymouthed misses
    who swoon at the sight of a shark fin. Lady Victoria is made of much sterner stuff than that. Why, I’d pit
    her against a shark any day of the week.”
    Victoria narrowed her eyes at the odious Captain Carstairs. Really, but he was extraordinarily full of
    himself! Back in Jaipur, if any of the young officers had addressed her in such a manner, Victoria’s uncles
    would have had the unfortunate young man stripped of his rank.
    To show Mr. Carstairs that his teasing did not bother her in the least, Victoria turned to Mrs. White and
    said calmly, “I shan’t bang about on a swing in this wind. I’d be dashed along the side of the ship. The
    ladder will do for me nicely, thank you.”
    Mrs. White fluttered her hands. “Oh, but my lady, really, I feel I must… as your own dear parents are
    no longer with us, and your uncles appointed me as your guardian for your journey, I feel I must act in
    their stead, and say that it is truly not at all seemly—”
    “Stuff and bother,” Victoria said sharply. How tiresome these English ladies were! “Show me the ladder
    and let us have done with it before the rains come.” For the sky overhead definitely looked threatening to
    Victoria, no matter what anyone else might say, and she did not want her new bonnet, which she’d saved
    for this very day, to be ruined.
    Upon being led to the ladder, however, Victoria found that her enthusiasm for it waned somewhat.