My Lady Vixen (9 page)

“You don’t know, then?”

“Know what?”

“That Adam Foxworth is Lord Penwell. It was you who invited the man into your home.”

A string of vile oaths assaulted Alexa’s ears. “I invited that viper into my home? How was I to know that bloody Colonial was Adam Foxworth? Now that I know I’ll see him hunted down and hung. The king will uphold me in this.”

“It’s too late, Father. Adam has already left England. He’s accomplished what he set out to do. No doubt neither of us will ever see him again.”

“Damn!” cursed Sir John. “You’ve become the scandal of London. And I’m the laughingstock. Fifteen years is not long enough for people to forget how my wife cockolded me with Martin Foxworth, or what followed afterwards. That the same thing should happen again with my daughter is too much. He could not have done me more harm had he driven a knife through my heart.”

“I am not my mother.” Alexa declared stubbornly. “It
is unfair of you to accuse me unjustly or make comparisons.”

“Get out of my sight, Alexa, you disgust me! I’ll summon you when I decide what’s to be done with you.”

“I’ll save you the trouble, Father. I’ll send for Charles and we’ll be married immediately. You needn’t worry over my future.”

Raucous laughter met her words. “Charles! Oh my dear deluded daughter,” he mocked. “Charles broke off the engagement the moment he returned from his tour at sea and learned what had happened to you.”

“Who told him?”

“Why, I did. Don’t you think he deserved to know that his future bride had become whore to another man? He broke the engagement immediately.”

“No!” Alexa denied vehemently. “Charles loved me! He wouldn’t do such a thing!”

“He would and did.”

“I’ll go to him. Explain. I’m certain he’ll understand.”

“It’s too late, Alexa. Only last week Charles announced his engagement to Lady Diana Paine.” His cruel words smote her like stones.

“Diana! Why she’s several years older than Charles and quite … er … matronly,” Alexa protested, devastated by Charles’s lack of faith in her. Yet, somehow it didn’t surprise her.

“Money has a way of disguising a multitude of flaws,” said Sir John. “Lady Diana’s dowry is larger even than yours would have been. Now, do as I say. Leave me. I’ve a lot of thinking to do.”

Stunned by her father’s rejection and Charles’s desertion, Alexa had no choice but to obey. Squaring her slim shoulders she slowly ascended the stairs, followed by a thoroughly confused Maddy. Never had she expected to see her darling Alexa treated so shabbily, and by her
own father!

“And take off that disreputable costume,” Sir John called out as Alexa disappeared into her room.

Immediately Maddy became solicitous and began fussing about her woebegone charge. “Oh my dear Alexa, how you must have suffered at the hands of that … blackguard! My heart goes out to you. I don’t know how your father can treat you so shabbily?”

“Nor do I, Maddy.” Alexa shook her head sadly. “And … and it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Adam wasn’t cruel, or abusive. It’s not in his nature. I wasn’t hurt … physically.” But I was hurt in other ways, she thought to herself. Ways that don’t show but are much more cruel than any bruises he could have left on my flesh.

Soon Alexa was soaking in a hot tub with Maddy clucking around her like a mother hen. The bewildered woman couldn’t seem to do enough for her poor abused chick no matter what Alexa had told her to the contrary. She just knew Alexa wasn’t telling the whole truth. After all, the young virginal girl had been cruelly abducted and made to submit to a man whose hatred extended to an innocent child still in her teens.

“Maddy, does … does everyone know about me? All my friends?”

“Everyone, Alexa, I’m so sorry.”

“Who told them?”

“Your fiancé, of course. The moment he heard about your disappearance and who had taken you he became livid with rage. I was nearby when your father told him and heard everything. For some unexplained reason he appeared angrier with you than with that Foxworth fellow. He even went so far as to suggest you went along willingly. He flew out of here muttering something about you giving freely to a rogue what you denied him,” Maddy revealed confidentially.

Alexa was stunned. Surely Charles couldn’t be so
petty! What happened to the undying love and commitment he spoke of? Evidently he was angrier than she would have guessed over her resistance to his advances. And to think she had once considered Charles the perfect mate.

“But why would Charles deliberately set out to ruin my reputation?” Alexa mused aloud. “Perhaps no one would have known what had happened to me had Charles not bandied it about so freely.”

“Oh, they would have found out anyway, my lady.” Maddy said scornfully. “Some lord or other. I forget his name, but he attended your party that night, well, he brazenly announced to the whole assemblage that he had seen you go off with another man in his carriage after Charles left to go back to his ship.”

“Oh, no!” gasped Alexa, dismayed. Adam had certainly been thorough.

“When he returned, Charles acted the properly jilted bridegroom, moaning to all who would listen how you had run off with another man nearly on the eve of your wedding. It wasn’t long before he was being consoled by all your friends of marriagable age.”

That night Alexa took supper in her room. Her father had made it perfectly clear that her company would be neither welcomed nor tolerated. Would all her friends feel the same as her father? she wondered bleakly.

The next day she put them to the test. Dressed in her most becoming outfit, Alexa arose early and left the house shortly after her father’s departure for the palace and his daily interview with the king. Before noon she had called on two of her closest friends and had been refused admittance after she left her calling card.

The afternoon went much the same. Two more of her acquaintances sent messages that they would not be home to her. She was even snubbed in the street by Betsy Cummins who had been her bosom friend during
the years they attended Miss Marchand’s Finishing School for Young Ladies. Not one of her so-called friends allowed her the opportunity or the courtesy to explain about Adam Foxworth.

No matter that she was the innocent victim of a man bent on vengeance. In the eyes of her friends and family she was held responsible, even blamed, for being forced to submit to a man who wished to destroy her father. And from all appearances he had succeeded only too well. Mother and daughter, each in their own way had both become the victims of a Foxworth.

But John Ashley could think of no one but himself. The framework of his entire life had been torn apart when his daughter became the mistress of Adam Foxworth. Everywhere he went he imagined his friends’ laughter, pointing a finger at a man twice a fool.

Alexa was home a week before Sir John required her presence in his study. During that week she had neither seen nor spoken with him. Her meals were sent to her room and, since all her friends snubbed her, she had kept mostly to her room, pondering the sad predicament in which she found herself. She had been cruelly taken and then summarily abandoned by a cold, calculating man who left her carrying his seed without a thought to her future. What would happen to her when she told her father she was pregnant? she wondered fearfully. Would he, too, abandon her, casting her adrift to fend for herself and her child as best she could?

In the days since Adam had abandoned her Alexa refrained from thinking about him. When she did, the pain became unbearable. She expressly forbade herself to analyze her feelings for the vengeful Lord Penwell, for strange as it may seem she could not hate him as she should. She could only remember those days and nights in his arms when she was fulfilled beyond her wildest yearnings. But neither could she give him her
unqualified love. For the pain and embarrassment he brought to her was beyond bearing. He had shown her tenderness, gentleness, all the while reminding her that she was in his bed for one purpose only. What hurt the most was that Adam had left without so much as a goodbye, his heart totally intact though her own lay in tatters.

Alexa entered her father’s study and waited silently for him to acknowledge her. When he finally looked up he thought he had never seen her so beautiful. Though she wore a simple gown of buttercup yellow her face glowed with an inner, almost mysterious quality that took his breath away. He had finally come to the realization that Alexa might have repeated the sin of her mother but she was still flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, and he owed her a future. Charles was no longer her fiancé but Sir John hadn’t been idle in the week since Alexa had returned home in shame.

Clearing his throat, Sir John motioned Alexa to a chair. “No matter what you might think, Alexa, I am not entirely heartless,” he informed her grandly. “This past week I’ve gained my senses and calmed down long enough to consider your future. I owe you that much. You carry a proud name and I won’t abandon you.”

“Oh, Father!” cried Alexa, her heart leaping with joy, only to plummet when she heard his next words.

“I’ve found a husband for you. It wasn’t easy what with all of London aware that you were sharing the bed of an upstart earl no one had ever heard of. But Sir Henry is so anxious for an heir he is willing to overlook your indiscretion. His wife and grown children were all taken by the plague and if he doesn’t produce an heir his line will die out. It’s a good match, Alexa. When he dies you’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams,” he added when he saw dismay cloud Alexa’s features.

“But … Sir Henry is an old man! Old enough to be my grandfather! I remember him well. He always looked at
me as if he could gobble me up.”

Sir John chuckled crudely. “I doubt Sir Henry has the stamina to devour you, much less bed you. You are right in naming him aged, though. Under the … er … circumstances I find much favor with the match. And should Sir Henry prove us both wrong and you give him an heir, all the better.”

Alexa’s face grew still and white, utterly devoid of all color as her mind worked furiously. Would it not be to her advantage to marry an old man like Sir Henry? she asked herself, thinking of the child she carried. How easy it would be to foist Adam’s child off on Sir Henry who desired a child so desperately he would not question one born far too early. But to do so would require she bed the man, lie beneath him uncringing while his aging and sagging flesh touched hers intimately. After Adam’s thrilling caresses how could she endure it? Perhaps, for the sake of her child, she answered silently.

“Alexa, do you hear me? I asked you a question.”

Alexa shifted her attention back to her father who had been speaking to her. “What did you say, Father? I didn’t hear you.”

“I asked if your lover left you with child. It’s not an impossibility, you know. You shared that bastard’s bed for three months.” Sir John’s question stunned Alexa. Never had her father spoken so bluntly to her.

“Well, are you? Don’t lie. I could have Maddy summon a midwife to examine you if you’d prefer.”

“That won’t be necessary, Father, I have no intention of lying to you,” Alexa declared, aware that her disclosure would put an end to any marriage plans her father had for her once and for all. It was almost a relief to speak the truth.

“Aye, I am with child,” she admitted with forced
equanimity. “I learned of it before I had the opportunity to tell Adam.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed Sir John, shocking Alexa into silence. “Sir Henry will be thrilled to produce an heir so soon after his marriage. It is up to you to do what is necessary in order for him to believe the child is his. You must have learned something those three months in Foxworth’s bed and should have little difficulty in doing your part.”

“Father,” Alexa whispered raggedly, “I can’t marry Sir Henry, no matter what you say. He … he’s repulsive to me.”

“What of your child, Alexa? Surely you don’t expect me to welcome a Foxworth bastard into my home, let alone support it! Why do you insist on heaping dishonor upon my head when I am doing my best to restore your good name? I insist you see Sir Henry and give him a chance.”

Sir John’s reasoning defeated Alexa. Perhaps his way was best after all. “All right, Father,” she agreed wearily. “I’ll see Sir Henry but I won’t promise anything.”

“He’s coming tonight, be ready to receive him,” Sir John said, dismissing her with a curt nod. “In years to come you’ll thank me for thinking of your future when I should be reviling you.”

After supper one of the servants summoned Alexa to the drawing room where Sir Henry waited with her father. Short, squat, with wispy gray hair combed sideways to cover a bald spot. Sir Henry appeared every bit his age. Heavily wrinkled, he gazed through myopic blue eyes at Alexa when she entered the room. As Alexa had dryly remarked to her father earlier, he looked as if he could devour her.

Alexa greeted her father’s crony warily, but Sir Henry
grasped her hand and planted a wet kiss on it before she realized his intent and could snatch it away. It nearly sickened her.

“I’ll leave you and Sir Henry alone to become acquainted, Alexa,” her father informed her as he hastily left the room, careful to close the door behind him. “I’ll see that you’re not disturbed.” It’s a good thing that Alexa missed the conspiratorial look that passed between her father and Sir Henry or she would have left immediately.

“Come, my dear,” Sir Henry grinned salaciously, “and sit beside me. If we are to be married we should get to know one another. I don’t believe in long engagements and your father led me to believe you would be receptive to any suggestion I might make.”

“I promised my father nothing,” Alexa insisted, already regretting her decision to see Sir Henry alone. “I … I’m not at all sure I wish to marry you.”

Sir Henry smiled condescendingly. “Your choices are necessarily limited, my dear. I am willing to take damaged goods. What other respectable man would make such a statement? I know I am an old man desperately in need of an heir. My own choices are not the greatest, for under normal circumstances I would be forced to consider older widows beyond childbearing years.