Ruined by Rumor

by Alyssa Everett

  She was out of her depth. She wished she’d stayed in the country, only reading about failed marriages and broken hearts from a safe, happy distance, a bored young lady so far removed from real disgrace that gossip seemed nothing but a harmless diversion. Alex lived most of the year among these people. Politics were his life. What if her appearance here spawned gossip about their marriage? He would never forgive her.

  She glanced at the door, turning her fan over and over in her hands. What was keeping Tom, anyway? She had to leave now, before George spotted her—before someone found out who she was and why she was there alone—before she made matters worse in some horrific fashion. She stood on tiptoe, straining to see over the heads of the crowd to where Tom had disappeared.

  “Looking for me?” said a voice just behind her.

  Oh, no. Roxana wheeled about to discover George’s handsome face grinning down at her. “Why, George. I—I had no idea you were here.” It had to be one of the most transparent falsehoods ever told.

  “You could have knocked me over with a feather myself, when I first caught sight of you. I suppose Ayersley is lurking about here somewhere, doing his best impression of a wallflower?”

  If only she hadn’t blushed, he might never have guessed the truth. But she did blush, and her answer didn’t sound nearly as casual as she’d hoped. “I came with my brother.”

  “Your brother?” George raised one eyebrow. “Well, well, well. Trouble in paradise already?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She turned her back to him. Checking the door for Tom’s return, she blinked and looked again, unable to believe her eyes.

  Alex was standing in the doorway.

  He didn’t look at all like his usual neat, proper self. His dark hair was falling over his forehead, his cravat was slightly askew, and his face was pinched and white. As she stared in surprise, their eyes met from across the room.

  He started toward her at once, weaving his way through the crowd with evident determination. At his grim expression, all her earlier impatience to see him fled in a panic. Dear God, he was still furious with her, and now he’d discovered her out in public with George. Suddenly she couldn’t remember a single one of the hundred apologies she’d rehearsed during the five-day journey from Broadslieve. She could barely even breathe.

  He would never take her back now. Her marriage was over.

  * * *

  She was with Wyatt. Alex might have guessed as much. Well, it didn’t change how he felt.

  He pushed through the crowd to reach her. “Thank God I found you,” he said in a low, fervent voice, barely glancing at Wyatt. “I’ve been nine days on horseback, back and forth and back again. We can’t leave things this way.”

  She must have been holding her breath, for she let it out in a shaky sigh. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you too.”

  Wyatt had been following their reunion with a gleam of interest. “My, my—do my ears deceive me, or have I happened on a lover’s quarrel?”

  Alex barely glanced at him. “This doesn’t concern you, Major.” Lowering his voice again, he gazed down at Roxana. “I should never have said the things I did. If you’ll only give me another chance, we’ll find some way to work this out.”

  “I came all the way from Broadslieve to see you,” she said. “I can’t bear the thought of your hating me for the rest of our lives.”

  “Hating you? I rather think you must hate me. I deserve it after the things I said. I didn’t believe half of them even when I was saying them, but the thought of you with—” He broke off, realizing where they were and what he was saying.

  Wyatt, of course, could not let such a golden opportunity pass. “How touching.”

  “This is between Lady Ayersley and me, Wyatt, and I’ll thank you to stay out of it.” Taking Roxana by the arm, Alex drew her toward a more private corner of the ballroom.

  Wyatt trailed after them, wearing a smirk. “Ah, yes, you’re very quick to insist I stay out of your affairs. But when have you ever stayed out of mine?”

  “I’ve never cared what you do, Major,” Alex said stiffly, “except when it involves those I have a duty to protect.”

  Wyatt scowled. “You had no business going to my father about Polly.”

  “I wouldn’t have done if you’d left the poor girl alone, but her mother asked for my help. It’s a mercy I stepped in before it was too late, and you didn’t leave her with another mouth to feed.”

  Roxana looked from Wyatt to Alex, a bewildered expression on her face. “Polly Whitehead? You don’t mean—George is the man who ruined her?” She turned to him in evident shock. “Was that why you were on the road outside Broadslieve the day after my wedding? It had nothing to do with me, did it? And then again on my birthday—you’d been to the Whiteheads’ farm!”

  Wyatt had the unaccustomed grace to look abashed. “Roxana, only think a moment. I never would have taken the least interest in Polly if you hadn’t gone and married Ayersley. Where else did I have to turn, after you’d broken my heart?”

  Alex was about to point out that Wyatt had already been preying on Polly even before Roxana agreed to marry him, but a faint stir from the entrance made him break off. They turned as one to discover Oliver speaking to the footman there, his gestures animated. Oliver’s eyes searched the room until they alighted on Roxana—then widened as he realized she was standing between Wyatt and Alex.

  He came plunging through the crowd toward them, guests glancing at him curiously as he pushed past.

  Roxana greeted him in an anxious whisper. “Mr. Dean! Is Fanny all right? What are you doing here?”

  His reply sounded more than a little breathless. “I came looking for you, Lady Ayersley, as soon as I learned his lordship had returned. But I can see he’s already found you.”

  “So it takes two of you to keep her at home.” Wyatt snickered. “That’s rather amusing. I can’t recall her ever running away from me.”

  Alex had never seen his secretary flush before, but Oliver bristled at Wyatt’s laugh. “I don’t think you’re in any position to comment on other people’s marriages, Major.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was at the Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury today, obtaining a special license.” Oliver’s eyes swung to Roxana. “Were you aware Major Wyatt has a wife of his own, Lady Ayersley?”

  “A wife?” Roxana colored when several heads turned in her direction. She lowered her voice. “But—what do you mean? Who…?”

  “I’ll leave the lady’s name out of it, but I assure you, he’s a married man. He’s only in London now because he’s installed his wife in a cottage in St. John’s Wood.” Oliver looked at Alex. “Suffice it to say our suspicions were correct, Lord Ayersley. When the clerk was recording my name, I couldn’t miss Major Wyatt’s entry on the top of the next-to-last page. He took out the license in early August.”

  Roxana gasped. “Early August? But that’s when George called off our engagement.” A look of dawning understanding crossed her face. “When George disappeared after he jilted me, I thought he’d simply gone to rejoin his regiment, but—Miss Hammond disappeared around that time, too, and wrote her family she’d married her baby’s father. Do you mean to say…?”

  “You don’t understand,” Wyatt said. “I had to marry Susan. She threatened to go to my father and tell him the baby was mine, and she’s a gentleman’s daughter. You know my father. He would have cut me off without a sou.”

  “You didn’t have to keep your marriage secret,” Roxana said.

  Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think my father would be any happier to know I’d thrown myself away on a girl with no dowry?”

  “My God.” Roxana stared at him, dumbstruck, before giving an incredulous shake of her head. “I would never have believed it of you.”

  She looked pale, shocked. Though Alex had known she would likely learn the truth about Wyatt eventually, it had to hurt even so. “I’m sorry, Roxana.”

  “
It doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I suppose you can’t help how you feel about him.” So even learning of Wyatt’s double life hadn’t shaken her devotion to him. Alex should have guessed as much, but… “However much you may care for him, we’re still married, for better or worse. Isn’t there anything I can say to persuade you to give me another chance?”

  Her forehead creased. “You’re convinced I care for George, and you want me back anyway? Why? Just for appearance’s sake? Because you’re obliged to look after me? Because you need an heir?”

  “None of those reasons.” Alex knew at least fifty witnesses were looking on, and he could count on Wyatt to snicker. Roxana herself would probably laugh. He deserved as much, but he had to say it anyway. “I want you back because I love you.”

  Roxana’s jaw dropped as if he’d just cropped out in some incomprehensible foreign tongue. “Did you just say you love me? But what about that other girl you hoped to marry?”

  Alex made an impatient gesture. “There isn’t any other girl. There never was. I love you. I’ve loved you for years.”

  “I’ve loved her for years,” Wyatt said. “She was engaged to me when she didn’t even know you were alive.”

  Alex wheeled on him, not bothering to moderate his tone despite the crowd around them. “Major Wyatt, will you stay out of this?”

  More heads turned their way.

  Roxana stared at him. She looked confused, disbelieving. “You can’t really mean you love me. When you proposed to me you came talking of ‘friendship’ and ‘fondness.’ You told me outright it wouldn’t be a love match.”

  “I knew it wouldn’t be a love match on your part. You had your heart set on marrying Wyatt.”

  “Dashed right she did,” Wyatt said, loudly enough to draw more attention. “And I was a fool to let her get away.”

  “Perhaps we should take this outside…” Oliver said.

  But, for once, Alex didn’t care who might hear. He shot a glare in Wyatt’s direction. “Keep out of this, Major.”

  At his angry tone, a buzz spread through the crowd.

  Roxana glanced uneasily at the sea of eyes around them, her brother Tom’s among them, all trained on the complimentary freak show they were providing. “But you never gave any sign you loved me. Until this past summer, you’d never even asked me to dance. You hardly spoke to me.”

  “I couldn’t. I was so desperately in love with you, I could scarcely put two words together. I was too afraid of ruining things between us.”

  She raised a hand to her throat. “Truly?”

  Alex nodded. “I wanted to make you an offer years ago. I assumed you were going to have a Season, and I meant to offer for you here in London. I planned to dazzle you with my townhouse and my matched bays and my friends in high places. Only…the next thing I knew, you were engaged to Major Wyatt.”

  “But that was years ago,” Roxana said before Wyatt could weigh in with another uninvited remark. “I rarely even saw you until this summer. I always thought you’d taken me in dislike.”

  “Dislike? I only stayed away because I couldn’t trust myself that close to you. There’s a name for the kind of man who chases after another man’s betrothed. But when I heard about my mother’s accident, and I did come home—” Alex shook his head. “Seeing you, all the old feelings came flooding back.”

  “But even after our wedding, you barely spent time with me. More often than not, you asked Mr. Dean to join us.”

  “I was trying to stay out of your way. I didn’t want you to grow tired of me.”

  She stared at him with a dazed expression.

  “Well, she has grown tired of you,” Wyatt said. “It’s a wonder she put up with your tedious moralizing for a whole three months.”

  Alex turned on him, one fist clenching at his side. “Is something wrong with your hearing? This is the last time I’m going to warn you, Major—keep out of this, or you’ll wish you had.”

  Another buzz spread through the room. Roxana gulped.

  Wyatt reddened, but with the eyes of everyone in the room upon him, pride won out over discretion. “It’s not my fault if you can’t keep your wife happy at home.”

  Alex didn’t even think. His fist just flashed out, his punch landing so hard and so squarely on Wyatt’s jaw it sent him flying. Wyatt hurtled backward, knocking over a potted palm and sending the onlookers behind him scrambling for safety before he skidded to a stop on the marble floor, flat on his back.

  More than fifty witnesses gasped in unison.

  For a seemingly endless moment, stunned silence reigned. Everyone in Lady Huffnell’s ballroom looked as one from Alex to where Wyatt lay sprawled on the polished floor. Then a wave of excited chatter broke rapidly over the room.

  Wyatt made a sputtering sound and struggled to a sitting position, his face contorted in pain. With a grimace, he spat blood and something else into his right hand, peering down at his palm with a look of disbelief.

  “Damn you!” He glared up at Alex, the gap in his mouth rendering his expression of outrage considerably less formidable. “You knocked out two of my teeth!”

  “I did warn you.” Alex flexed the hand he’d used to hit him. It hurt like the very devil. He could hardly believe he’d just done something so outlandish—and before half of polite society, no less.

  Apparently Roxana couldn’t believe it, either. She gave a joyful laugh. “Why, Alex, you do love me!”

  She leaped into his arms. For a second Alex was too startled to react. After all, Wyatt was lying on the floor, ripe for an outpouring of sympathy, and there she was, throwing herself on him.

  Then he realized what it meant.

  Everyone was staring. Alex didn’t care. In what was undoubtedly the most publicly improper episode of his life, with the eyes of every single person in Lady Huffnell’s elegant ballroom trained on the two of them, he pulled Roxana into a long and ardent kiss.

  * * *

  By rights, it should have been a disgrace, and Roxana’s name should have become a byword. She’d been quarreled over by two men, been the cause of a fistfight and allowed herself to be kissed in public. How they escaped utter ostracism she would never know. Perhaps Alex had amassed enough social credit to cast the whole incident in a more excusable light. Perhaps society permitted greater latitude to a peer and his countess. Or perhaps it was only that they were so recently married, and the world looked with indulgence upon newlyweds. Whatever the reason, the ton chose to treat the incident at Lady Huffnell’s as a delightful piece of romantic folly instead of the outrageous exhibition it had been.

  And though her mother would have been horrified, Roxana was secretly rather taken with the caricature that appeared in the papers two days later. In it, she was depicted as a willowy Helen of Troy, while Alex was a savage Menelaus, crossing swords with a Paris who had golden curls and two missing front teeth. Though the mythology was certainly questionable—Roxana had a bubble coming out of her mouth saying “I’d rather London than Paris”—she adored the drawing of Alex in Spartan battle armor. The caption beneath the drawing read Hot Thoughts beget Hot Deeds.

  With no need for Roxana to dash off to Derbyshire, Fanny and Mr. Dean waited a week and a half for their wedding, allowing Fanny time to write her parents and obtain their blessing. Roxana had never seen two people more impatient to be married. But when she said as much to Alex, he merely laughed and said, “I was more impatient.”

  In those first giddy days after Lady Huffnell’s party, Alex rarely stopped smiling, so that it made Roxana’s heart glad just to look at him. One day when he came strolling into the drawing room, relaxed and wearing a youthful, carefree grin, it occurred to her he had not always looked so—that only a few months before, he had been excruciatingly stiff and self-conscious. Her feelings for him had changed, but he had changed too.

  Only one worry remained—he had yet to visit her bed again. At first she thought he was simply exhausted from having ridden nearly four hundred miles in nine days, bu
t when a second night went by and then a third, she knew there was something more at work. She dropped hints, but he simply made excuses—she must be tired, he was tired, they had to rise early for Fanny’s wedding breakfast. Meanwhile, she yearned to breach the last of the barriers between them.

  Something had to be bothering him, and if she’d learned nothing else about Alex, she’d learned he had a tendency to keep his troubles to himself. If she wanted to get to the bottom of the problem, she would have to confront it head-on.

  That night she went to the door between their rooms. Hot Thoughts beget Hot Deeds. She turned the knob.

  He was in bed, but he must not have been asleep, for she had no sooner taken a step into the room than he propped himself up on one elbow. “Roxana? Is something wrong?”

  She bit her lip as she drew closer. “Not exactly. I’m cold. May I get into bed with you?”

  He slid over to one side, lifting the bedcovers in invitation. She slipped in and huddled against him, face-to-face.

  She was cold, barefoot and dressed in nothing but her nightgown, and nestling against his warm, much larger body felt like heaven. She shivered, as much from excitement as from chills.

  His arms tightened around her. “Wasn’t there a fire in your room?”

  She nodded. “And the maids ran a bed warmer between the sheets as well. But I like this much better.” She snuggled closer. He smelled like soap and clean linen.

  He kissed her hair, but it was a chaste, offhand gesture. She tipped her head up and kissed him on the lips.

  He kissed back. She pressed against him, tilting her hips to his, and he grew hard between them. His breathing quickened. But when she began to tug his nightshirt higher, he broke off their kiss and pushed her gently away with a tortured look. “Roxana, don’t…”