Page 103 of The Viscount and the Vixen
She hadn’t followed Beaumont to London to become his mistress. She’d followed him to become his wife.
Although she doubted Locksley would understand. She wished she hadn’t been so quick to discourage any talk of their pasts. She’d been so worried that he’d figure her out that she hadn’t given him a real opportunity to get to know her. Perhaps if she had, he’d have been more understanding when he learned the truth. Perhaps if she’d known him better, she’d have grasped how to tell him before Beaumont could toss out his hateful rejoinder.
She’d made such a mess of things, handled everything poorly. But knowing what Beaumont had planned for this child—hisoffspring—she’d seen no other choice in order to ensure the child’s safety as well as her own. She’d needed someone who could stand up to the earl. Could a farmer or a shopkeeper or a blacksmith have taken Beaumont to task? Could any of them have struck him and not found themselves brought before a magistrate? Could any of them have threatened him with ruination and carried through on it if it came to that?
Locksley could. Locksley had and when his fist had struck Beaumont, at that moment, she loved him more than she thought it possible to love.
Hearing a key scraping in a lock, she bolted upright and reached over to increase the flame in the lamp. The door burst open. Locksley charged in, slammed it behind him, and stood there, his fists clenched at his sides, his eyes those of a madman. She’d seen him angry before, but he was always controlled. At that moment, it appeared he was barely holding on to a strained tether, that he was contemplating murder.
As she scrambled out of bed, he staggered across the room, stumbled, grabbed the post at the foot of the bed, and glared at her. “How did you come to be his mistress?” he demanded, revulsion hardening his voice.
She wanted to explain, to confess all, to tell him everything, but not when he was in this condition. “You’re foxed.” She didn’t bother to hide her disgust at seeing him in this unkempt and repulsive state.
“At least three sheets to the wind, if not more.” He wavered, tightened his grip on the post until his knuckles turned white. “Answer me,my lady. How the devil did you come to be his mistress?”
“Do you really want to do this here, where people might hear through the walls?”
“Bloody well explain to me what possessed you to crawl into his bed.”
“I never crawled, damn you. I loved him. I thought he was going to marry me. I gave myself to him because I believed he loved me as well.” Tears stung her eyes.
“For two years?”
She laughed bitterly, hollowly. “Where does a woman go once she is ruined? Once her family has washed their hands of her, declared she is dead to them? I loved him,” she repeated. “I thought he would marry me. He never said he wouldn’t. He only said it took a while. For the first time in my life I was happy. I felt cherished and appreciated. I don’t expect you to understand, you who has an aversion to love, but having his cherished regard made me so much more than I was. I was so glad to have him in my life I would have done anything to keep him there, did do anything.”
Breathing heavily, he closed his eyes, widened them as though he struggled to stay focused on her. “How did you meet him?”
Clutching her hands together, she realized it all sounded so stupid now. What a silly chit she was. “His estate is near the village where my father serves as vicar. There was a fall festival. I was always forbidden from attending at night when the bonfires were flaring and the music played and people were laughing and dancing. But I could hear the festivities, the joviality. I was all of nineteen, and I decided I was missing out on life. So I slipped out through my bedchamber window, climbed down a tree, and ran off into the night like some wanton, experiencing my initial taste of freedom. He was there. He danced with me and spoke with me and strolled with me. Just before dawn he kissed me. It was so gentle and sweet.”
Not like the first time Locksley had kissed her: demanding, devouring, determined.
“So you ran off to London with him.”
She hated that he sounded so blasted judgmental. It wasn’t as though he’d led the life of a saint. She’d actually returned home to an existence that involved hours on her knees, at her father’s command, praying that the devil would not have his way with her. Whenever she could, she would sneak off to be with Beaumont. For a year it was picnics and rowing and strolling and innocent kisses. But Locksley was too drunk to care about all that. “Not right away. My father discovered what we were about. He insisted that I was sinning with a lord even though our time together wasn’t carnal, but Father was determined I wouldn’t bring him shame. He arranged for me to marry a farmer.”
“A farmer when you wanted a lord,” he sneered.
She was growing weary of his thinking the worst of her. “I wasn’t opposed to marrying a farmer but he was three times my age.”
“A bit of irony there in you answering my father’s advert.”
“One does what one must. Beaumont asked me to come to London with him, promised he would always take care of me, that he loved me with all his heart. I assumed he meant to marry me. So I ran off with him. He was exciting, young, handsome, and a lord. What woman could want for more?”
Releasing his hold on the bedpost, Locksley bounded forward and wrapped his fingers around the post nearer to her as though he still needed the support to keep himself upright. “And when you got to London?”
The truth stared her in the face but she refused to see it. “He set me up in a house on a street commonly known as Mistress Row. Several lords lease townhomes there for their fallen women. At the time, I thought it temporary. Still, I was so pleased to be away from Fairings Cross and my father and marriage to an old man that when Beaumont kissed me with a bit more urgency and claimed he’d die if he didn’t have me, I didn’t resist. After all, we were going to marry.”
“But you didn’t marry.”
“No. I was silly enough to believe we would until I got with child. Before that, he put me off by saying that we had to wait until he was established within the aristocracy, until he was respected enough by everyone that he would be forgiven for marrying a commoner. Otherwise life for me would be unpleasant. He was trying to protect me, you see? Or so he said. And why shouldn’t I believe him when he loved me and I loved him?”
“Then you got with child and realized he was a scoundrel.”
She held his gaze. “I realized he was much worse than that. He told me that we would farm the baby out and someone else would take care of it. I was devastated. I wanted to care for the child, hire a nanny. But he assured me that wasn’t the way the aristocracy handled matters. Are you familiar with baby farming?”
He blinked, released his hold on the bedpost, and leaned his shoulder against it. “No.”
“The upper class’s dirty little secret. Sophie lived in the townhome next to mine. Lord Sheridan’s mistress.”
