Page 67 of The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter
Her head would not stop spinning, nor would her heart stop hammering. It was pounding too hard and she thought it was in danger of bursting.
The breath rushed out of her and she could not regain it.
She closed her eyes to steady herself before she fell into a faint.
“Viola,” the viscount cried softly and caught her in his arms. Then he growled, a sound low and menacing. “Grandmama. Phoebe,” he said, brazenly addressing Lady Withnall by her given name. “Don’t you dare breathe a word of this to anyone.”
Viola burst into tears.
She had never cried so much in her life as she had over these past few days. “I will never be your mistress, but now none of your friends or family will take me into their home. They think I am soiled and wanton.”
He had the temerity to laugh. “Hardly that. Viola, it was your first kiss.”
“I know, but no one else knows it. Please, release me. I have to go. I am so ashamed.”
He growled again. “Don’t ever be ashamed of anything that passes between us.”
She sniffled. “Easy for you to say. You’re the viscount. I’m the nobody.”
“You are not a nobody.” He pinned her against him when she tried to wriggle out of his arms. “Do you hear me, Viola?”
“I hear you just fine.” She emitted a grunt of frustration because his arms were iron bands around her body and she was never going to break free. “But you are wrong. I am nobody at all. And now I am a disgraced nobody at all.”
“Blast it, you are not.”
“Oh, right. Then what am I? The next Queen of England?”
“No,” he said with aching softness. “Hopefully, my wife.”
She did not know what possessed her, but she managed to extricate her arm from his grasp, haul it back, and punch him in the nose.
He yelped and gaped at her.
She took the opportunity to shove out of his grasp while he stood there looking on in surprise.
“Smoothly done, Alex,” she heard his grandmother mutter, and then both she and Lady Withnall began to laugh.
Viola had to leave Ardley Hall.
But first she had to run back to the kitchen to gather her possessions. Perhaps she would just leave everything behind and run straight back to the vicarage. No, she needed her things otherwise she would be forced to return here.
All she wanted now was to be home with her father. Dear heaven, what was she going to say to him? How could she admit to disappointing him when news of her shame would destroy him?
Her eyes were so filled with tears, she could hardly see where she was going. It was after midnight. The vicarage wasn’t far, but she had no idea what ruffians might be lurking about at this hour. There was no help for it, she would have to wake one of the grooms and have him drive her home in one of the viscount’s wagons.
As for the viscount, he would have to rely on his kitchen staff to prepare the rest of the house party meals.
She was still crying as she stumbled into the conservatory on her way to the kitchen.
“Viola, enough. You need to stop running before you fall and hurt yourself.” The viscount caught up to her and grabbed her around the waist. Well, he’d probably been beside her all along and the grass simply muffled his footsteps. Nor was it particularly clever of her to have hit him after he’d said he would marry her.
He didn’t mean it.
He couldn’t mean it.
“Let me go!”
“No.”
