Once and Always @FOREVER.

Chapter Twenty nine.

VICTORIA AWOKE WITH A HEAVY, aching heart, feeling as if she hadn't slept at all. A lump of harsh despair grew in her throat when she remembered Jason's humiliating, unprovoked revenge on her last night. Shoving her tousled hair off her face, she leaned up on an elbow, her gaze drifting with numb abstractedness about the room. And then her eyes fell on the leather jewelry case beside the bed.

A rage unlike any she had ever experienced exploded in her brain, obliterating every other emotion within her. She hurtled out of bed, pulled on a dressing robe, and snatched up the box.

In a furious swirl of pale green satin, she flung open the door to Jason's room and stalked in. "Don't you ever give me another piece of jewelry!" she hissed.

He was standing beside his bed, his long legs encased in biscuit-colored trousers, his chest bare. He glanced up just in time to see her hurl the box at his head, but he didn't flinch, didn't move a muscle to avoid the heavy leather box that sailed by, missing his ear by a hairsbreadth.

It hit the polished floor with a loud thud and slid beneath his bed. "I'll never forgive you for last night," Victoria blazed, her nails digging into her palms, her chest rising and falling with each furious breath. "Never!"

"I'm sure you won't," he said in a flat, expressionless voice and reached for his shirt.

"I hate your jewelry, I hate the way you treat me, and I hate you! You don't know how to love anyone—you're a cynical heartless bastard!"

The word flew out of her mouth before Victoria realized what she had said, but whatever reaction she expected, it was not the one she received. "You're right," he agreed tightly. "That's exactly what I am. I'm sorry to have to shatter any illusions you may still have about me, but the truth is, I'm the by-product of a brief, meaningless liaison between Charles Fielding and some long forgotten dancer he kept in his youth."

He pulled a shirt on over his muscular shoulders and shoved his arms into it, while it slowly began to register on Victoria that he thought he was confessing something ugly and repugnant to her.

"I grew up in squalor, raised by Charles's sister-in-law. Later, I slept in a warehouse. I taught myself to read and write; I didn't go to Oxford or do any of the things your other refined, aristocratic suitors have done. In short, I am none of the things you think I am—none of the good things or the nice things."

He began buttoning his shirt, his hooded gaze carefully lowered to his hands. "I'm not a fit husband for you. I'm not fit to touch you. I've done things that would make you sick."

Captain Farrell's words sliced through Victoria's mind: The hag made him kneel and beg for forgiveness in front of those dirty Indians. Victoria looked at Jason's proud, lean face, and she felt as if her heart would break. Now she even understood why he wouldn't, couldn't, accept her love.

"I'm a bastard," he finished grimly, "in the truest meaning of the word."

"Then you're in excellent company," she said, her voice shaking with emotion. "So were three sons of King Charles, and he made them all dukes."

For a moment he looked nonplussed; then he shrugged. "The point is that you've told me you loved me, and I can't let you go on thinking that. You loved a mirage, not me. You don't even know me."

"Oh yes, I do," Victoria burst out, knowing that whatever she said now would determine their entire future. "I know everything about you—Captain Farrell told me more than a week ago. I know what happened to you when you were a little boy. . . ."

Rage blazed in Jason's eyes for a moment, but then he shrugged resignedly. "He had no right to tell you."

"You should have told me," Victoria cried, unable to control her voice or the tears streaming down her cheeks. "But you wouldn't because you're ashamed of the things you should be proudest of!" Brushing furiously at her tears, she said brokenly, "I wish he hadn't told me. Before he did, I only loved you a little. Afterward, when I realized how brave and—and how strong you really are, then I loved you so much more, I—"