Once and Always @FOREVER.

Chapter nineteen.

EARLY THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, DR. WORTHING was able to report that Uncle Charles was "still holding his own." The next day, he came downstairs to the dining room where Jason and Victoria were having dinner and informed them that Charles "appeared to be much improved."

  Victoria could scarcely contain her joy, but Jason merely quirked a brow at the physician and invited him to join them for dinner.

  "Er—thank you," Dr. Worthing said, shooting a sharp look at Jason's inscrutable features. "I believe I can leave my patient unattended for a short time."

  "I'm certain you can," Jason replied blandly.

  "Do you think he'll recover, Dr. Worthing?" Victoria burst out, wondering how Jason could appear so utterly unemotional.

  Carefully avoiding Jason's assessing stare, Dr. Worthing directed his uneasy gaze at Victoria and cleared his throat. "It's difficult to say. You see, he says he wants to live to see you two married. He's most determined to do so. You might say that he's clinging to that as a reason to live."

  Victoria bit her lip and glanced uneasily at Jason before asking the doctor, "What will happen if he starts to recover and we—we tell him we've changed our minds?"

  Jason answered her in a bland drawl. "In that case, he'll undoubtedly have a relapse." Turning to the physician, he said coolly, "Won't he?"

  Dr. Worthing's gaze skittered away from Jason's steely eyes. "I'm sure you know him better than I, Jason. What do you think he'll do?"

  Jason shrugged. "I think he'll have a relapse."

  Victoria felt as if life were deliberately tormenting her, taking away her home and the people she loved, forcing her to come to a strange foreign land, and now propelling her into a loveless marriage with a man who didn't want her.

  Long after both men left, she remained at the table, listlessly toying with the food on her plate, trying to find a way out of this dilemma for Jason's sake and her own. Her dreams of a happy home, with a loving husband at her side and a baby gurgling in her arms, came back to mock her, and she allowed herself a bout of self-pity. After all, she hadn't asked very much of life; she hadn't yearned for furs and jewels, for seasons in London or palatial homes where she could play reigning queen. She had wanted no more than what she'd had in America—except that she had wanted a husband and children to go with it.

  A wave of dizzying h
omesickness washed over her and she bent her head. How she longed to set time back a year and keep it there, to have her parents' smiling faces before her, to listen to her father speak of the hospital he wanted to build, and to be surrounded by the villagers who had been her second family. She would do anything, anything to go back home again. An image of Andrew's handsome, laughing face appeared to taunt her, and Victoria thrust it away, refusing to shed any more tears for the faithless man she had adored.

  She pushed her chair back and went looking for Jason. Andrew had abandoned her to her own fate, but Jason was here and he was obliged to help her think of some way out of a marriage neither of them wanted.

  She found him alone in his study—a solitary, brooding man standing with his arm draped on the mantel, staring into the empty fireplace. Compassion swelled in her heart as she realized that, although he had pretended to be cold and unemotional in front of Dr. Worthing, Jason had come in here to worry in lonely privacy.

  Suppressing the urge to go to him and offer sympathy, which she knew he would only reject, she said quietly, "Jason?"

  He lifted his head and looked at her, his face impassive.