Page 76 of The Viscount and the Vicar's Daughter
“Do not think this amateurish trick to discover us in a compromising position will work. I shall never marry her. Do you understand me?Neverwill she be Lady Ardley. So I suggest you pack up and prepare to leave my home first thing in the morning. I give you until the morning out of courtesy, for you deserve to be tossed out on your ear this very moment.”
“Now, see here!”
“And if you dare encourage your son to call me out, I warn you now that I shall beat the stuffing out of him. If he dares draw a weapon on me, I shall kill him. Is this your wish? To have a daughter ruined and your heir killed?” He turned to Lady Alicia. “You are a beautiful girl and clever, too. If you can ever stop scheming, you might just find someone who truly cares for you. Stop taking your father’s advice. It is bad advice and will only lead you to destruction.”
She slapped him and stormed off.
Her mother followed after her, but her father remained. “Lady Withnall, you see how Lord Ardley has abused my daughter. Will you not help me seek justice? He must take responsibility for his behavior and marry her.”
The little termagant thumped her cane against the floor. “What I see is an innocent man whose only mistake was to fail to put up barricades against his door. If you dare attempt to shame him into marrying the girl, I shall call you out as a liar. I suggest you and your family take your dinner in your rooms tonight and be gone from here at first light tomorrow.”
“We shall see who will win this battle! I’ll have the story printed in every newspaper. He’ll come crawling to the altar. You’ll see. I have royal connections!”
“So have we all, Simmons,” Alexander said with a growl. “Don’t be a fool. You are hurting no one but your daughter.”
The marquess turned to Lady Withnall again, but she had even less patience for him now. “You forget who I am, Lord Simmons. I know all your secrets, and I assure you, every last one of them will come out in the wash if you dare persist with your scheme. As for your daughter, how can you be so vile as to put her reputation in such danger? Lord Ardley is no quaking coward. Nor does he give a fig what thetonthinks of him. Admit you picked the wrong mark and just walk away before it is too late.”
The man strode off in a huff, shouting for his wife to pack this instant.
“Good riddance,” Alexander muttered.
“Put some clothes on, dear boy,” his grandmother intoned.
“Marston is bringing up my bath. I’ll summon Greaves to keep an eye on the marquess and his family until they are safely off. Bloody hell, what else can go wrong today?”
CHAPTER 13
“WHAT A ROWthere was,” Sally, one of the upstairs maids, excitedly rushed into the kitchen to report the news to her friends.
Viola tried not to listen in, but the girl was bursting with the gossip and everyone, including herself, was eager to hear it.
“She was caught in his bedchamber and her father was livid. He demanded Lord Ardley marry her, but he refused!”
Viola’s heart shot into her throat. “Who are you talking about, Sally?”
“Lady Alicia and Lord Ardley. There he was standing practically naked in the hall and declaring he would never marry her. Not that I was listening closely, for who cares what he was saying when he was standing there with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and looking like a magnificent pagan god?”
All work stopped as Viola and her helpers listened to Sally go on. “He’s carved of granite stone down to every rippling muscle on that stunning man. I could hardly hear a word of their shouts while the blood was pounding so hard through my ears. Who can blame the lady for allowing him to seduce her? I would have jumped into bed with his lordship myself,” she said with a high-pitched giggle.
“Who wouldn’t want to be tangled in those sheets with him?” another of the maids said with a similar, irritating giggle.
Viola was going to be ill. “They were found in bed together?”
Sally shrugged. “They must have been. Lord Simmons, Lady Withnall, and his lordship’s own grandmother were all standing in the hall by his door when the lady was discovered leaving his bedchamber. Lord Simmons was going on about finding them in a compromising position and how his lordship had to make it right by marrying his daughter.”
Oh, she was definitely feeling ill and clutched her stomach to make it stop lurching. This had to be a mistake. “Are you quite certain?”
“I could not see it all clearly, Miss Ruskin. But her gown was in disarray. No doubt she’d had to hastily put it back on when her angry papa found them. And Lord Ardley was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, showing his big muscles. Goodness, my knees buckled when I saw them flex.”
“And that skimpy towel hastily tucked around his waist,” one of the other girls reminded.
“Yes,” Sally said with a shake of her head. “But I’ve never seen his lordship so angry. He’s tossed Lord Simmons and his family out this very evening. I suppose they would not want to stay around since the poor girl has been disgraced.”
“Still, feels quite harsh of his lordship,” another of the maids said. “But how can it be true? He’s no scoundrel. In all the years we’ve worked for him, he’s always been a gentleman.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. How are we to know for certain?” Sally insisted. “He was married all these years, then kept to himself while grieving. Grief can change a man. He might have been noble in the past, but who knows what he is capable of now? A man has needs, doesn’t he?”
“But to be so careless as to be caught in his bedchamber with Lady Alicia?” her friend commented. “Come to think of it, he and his wife had become a little distant after the birth of their little girl. Perhaps he has been straying all along and none of us realized it. Just because he never dallied with any of us doesn’t mean he didn’t dally elsewhere.”
