Andrew cast a look at Stephen who was listening intently to their exchange. "I would regret more the sullying of our family name."
Stephen's shrill laughter filled Alexandra with dread, and she had to remind herself that he was bound and helpless. "If it is a bastard you are looking for, McKenna," he called out although Matthew was already out of earshot, "look elsewhere in this room."
Dayla flinched as if struck and Alexandra, riddled with guilt for the dreadful things she'd thought about the woman, lashed out at Stephen. "How dare you? Dayla is from another culture. You cannot hold her responsible for an accident of birth."
"Quite convincing, aren't you?" Stephen drawled. "One would almost believe you did not know."
Apprehension snaked its way across her back and coiled itself around her heart. "I do not know what you are talking about."
Stephen turned and looked at his uncle who was sitting up, his weight supported by the fragile woman at his side. "But you know, don't you, Uncle Andrew?"
Andrew went yet another shade of white and remained mute as the marble sculptures all around them.
"Show her the picture, Uncle Andrew," Stephen urged, his voice dripping with venom. "Let her draw her own conclusions."
"What picture?" Andrew demanded.
"The one Dayla took from the safe."
Andrew said something low to Dayla who quickly rose to fetch a small canvas that had fallen near the easel. She returned to the bed and handed it to him. Alexandra watched, scarcely breathing, while Andrew studied the painting. Her fists were clenched so tightly that her nails dug bloody grooves in the palms of her hands.
"No," said Andrew, breaking the troubled silence in the room. "This cannot be."
"Perhaps the name Mary Margaret Kilbride will restore your memory." Stephen's voice shimmered with the sound of victory.
A moan of despair escaped Andrew and his eyes closed for a moment.
"Take a look, darling girl," Stephen urged. "Look back upon your past and tell me what you see."
Her eyes met Andrew's. He nodded and she crossed the room toward the bed and took the small painting from him.
"This is my mother," she said instantly, gazing upon the beautiful coppery-haired woman. "She must have been very young." Straightening her shoulders, she looked down upon Stephen. "She was the most famous artist's model in Paris."
"Marisa Glenn," said Stephen, "was also the most famous whore in Montmartre."
"Liar!" Alexandra screamed. She wanted to drag her nails down his cheeks until his blood ran freely for exposing all that she refused to see. "She was a model, nothing more!"
"She was a whore," Stephen bellowed. "Andrew Lowell's whore."
She whirled on Andrew. "Tell him she was just your model. Tell him the truth!"
Andrew's eyes met hers. "You know the truth, girl," he said quietly. "You know the truth as well as I."
"I don't!" Her voice broke on a note of panic. "My mother is a widow. She never—"
"Your mother spread her legs for half of Europe," Stephen cut in. "My elegant uncle was merely the first in a long line of swordsmen to come to rest within her sheath."
"You're wrong," she said, clinging to a shred of hope. "You've made a mistake. My father left her well-provided for. We never wanted for a thing."
"Your father left her nothing, darling girl, but a bastard growing in her belly."
"You'll regret this, Stephen," Andrew warned. "Say no more."
"I'll say it all, old man!" Stephen lashed out. "It is long past time for it to be said."
"He cannot hurt me," she said, praying to maintain her composure. "My father was a highly-placed English soldier."
"No, darling girl, your father was not a soldier." Stephen smiled and she knew she evil faced for the very first time. "Your father is Andrew Lowell."
She could scarcely hear over the wild crashing of her heart. "No! That cannot be. Tell him he is wrong!" she demanded of Andrew.
Andrew raised a gnarled hand to silence her. "Come here, girl," he said, motioning her to his side. "Let me see you."
Trembling uncontrollably, she knelt down before him and studied his face. Those eyes! Those golden eyes, so strange and yet so familiar.
How blind had she been to not see they were the same eyes that looked back at her each morning in the mirror? The one, unmistakable legacy of Andrew Lowell to his bastard daughter.
The handsome father who died a hero's death had never existed except in her mother's devious mind. Colonel Glenn and his daring exploits, Colonel Glenn and the love he had for the child he fathered were lies, lies and more lies. She had no name, no family, nothing upon which to justify her very existence.
Only Andrew Lowell who watched her now, safe and secure within the framework of family and position, forever beyond her reach.
"Alexandra." His voice was soft with wonder. "My daughter."
"No," she whispered. "It can't be. My mother wouldn't—"
"She was young," Andrew said, "she was desperate."
"And you?" Her voice was raw with shame. "Were you not part of this? Surely it was not an immaculate conception."
"It was part of another time, Alexandra, another world. I am not proud of turning from her."
"You knew? You knew she was with child and yet you turned away?"
"Your mother was well provided for. She had all the money necessary for her confinement."
"And what then?" she pursued, voice rising. "Did you not care about the child? Didn't you want to see me?"
"Mary Margaret disappeared," Andrew said. "She took the money and fled from my life."
"The mighty Andrew Lowell wasn't curious about the child she was carrying?"
"No," he answered, meeting her eyes. "I wasn't."
Tears flooded her eyes and she breathed deeply to stem the flow. They were watching her—Andrew... Stephen... all of them—watching to see what she would do, how she would react. She wouldn't cry in front of them—would not!
"The great man speaks from the heart," she spat. "Well, here I am, Andrew Lowell, despite your wishes: your bastard."
"My child."
"Your bastard! Can you not admit even that much?" Nineteen years of lies, nineteen years of pretty stories lay crumbled at her feet.
He reached out to her and the touch of his hand against her cheek broke the last of her control and she slapped him hard across his face. Her palm stung with the feel of his sharp cheekbone as the sound echoed in the silent room.
She fled the room before anyone could react and ran headlong into a human form in the hallway.
"Alex?" McKenna gripped her by the forearms. "Is something wrong?"
Her laugh sounded wild and high to her ears as she violently pulled out of his grasp. "What could possibly be wrong?"
"Stephen," he said, his voice low and menacing. "If that bastard did anything more to harm you, I'll—"
"Don't blame Stephen for this, McKenna. I'm in his debt this time. He did me quite a favor in there."
"Alex, what the hell is—"
"Mr. Matthew?" Cook's husband Johnny approached them. "The coach is ready to go."
"Leave us alone," Matthew bellowed.
"Talk to me, Alex," he commanded as the bewildered Johnny backed away. "Let me help you."
"I don't need your help," she spat, her anger and pain erupting. "I don't need anyone at all."
Chapter Sixteen
Alexandra yanked her valise from under the feather bed and began tossing chemises and stockings into it in a tumbled pile of silk and cotton in her haste to flee Sea View.
Her father's house.
Tears blurred her vision as swept her toiletries from atop her dresser and flung them into her trunk. All she wanted was to get as far from the scene of her humiliation as possible, to put as many miles as she could between herself and Andrew Lowell and everyone else in this godforsaken place.
Male voices floated up from the courtyard near the carriage house and she parted the window curtains just enough to see the shadowy
figures of Matthew and Johnny standing near the coach that would take Stephen away. A slight breeze ruffled the curtains and Matthew stopped what he was doing and glanced up in her direction.
Tonight he had looked at her with a tenderness that on another evening would have made her heart sing with joy.
Tonight, however, there was no room in her heart for tenderness or joy. Indeed, there was no room in her heart for anything beyond the overwhelming sense of Marisa's betrayal thundering inside her head. Turning from the window she yanked her few dresses from the armoire. She wanted to be a thousand years away from this moment, a thousand miles away from this place.
Your father! Your father is Andrew Lowell. He lived in that house; she had talked with him and worked with him and, on occasion, laughed with him and never once guessed the truth. What a fool they must think her to be so easily gulled. Marisa had played her perfectly, moving her around as if she were no more than a chess piece and her life, a game to be won or lost at will.
And how willing a partner Marisa had found in Stephen.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror as she folded her faded pink cotton frock. An ugly bruise was blossoming along her jaw line and the imprint of Stephen's hands formed a necklace of red marks on her throat.
And yet she felt nothing, only that sickening sense of treachery that had gripped her since he broke the news.
That was her father in the room down the hall. Her own flesh and blood. Surely that should mean something in the vast scheme of things, should it not?
She sank down onto the bed next to the valise. She used to dream about her father, the imaginary Colonel Glenn, dream that he had somehow been lost at war and had finally found his way home, found his way back to her. He would be tall and distinguished, handsome enough to make her schoolmates jealous as cats. Rich as a king he would be, and he would love her more than anything on earth.
Colonel Glenn didn't exist. He never had.
Only Andrew Lowell was real.
She could walk down that hall and throw her arms around him and finally call a man "Father," as she had longed to all her life, for all that it would matter. He was her blood, her family, her father and she cursed the emptiness that made her long for the impossible.
She couldn't force him to love her, could she? Her arrival in his life came nineteen years too late and she knew that what there was between them was all there could ever be.
But that wasn't true for her and Matthew. Last night their relationship had taken a dangerous, passionate turn; she vibrated with all she had felt during those brief moments in his arms.
If she fled now she would be turning away from him forever. There was a sadness in Matthew that called out to her; a tenderness that moved her; an extraordinary intensity that thrilled her and made her blood run hot.
What on earth was she to do? Running away would be an admission of guilt, and she knew she was guilty of nothing, save the sorry fact that she was the victim in her mother's wicked game. If she left in haste, she would never have the opportunity to speak to Andrew as her father, to ask questions for which only he had the answers.
Tomorrow morning she would ask to speak to him and then she would leave by the front door just as she had arrived. It didn't matter where she went: to California or Chicago or back to Provence. When she left she would hold her head up with dignity and no one at Sea View would ever know how much it hurt.
If only she could blink her eyes and wake up to discover this was all a terrible dream. If only this night were over—surely in the light of day her pain would seem more bearable.
What a fool she'd been! What an arrogant, naive child to imagine herself somehow immune from the darker side of life.
No one was: not McKenna, not Andrew, not Stephen, nor anyone else in this great house. Only her mother had managed to elude the darkness, turning each setback she faced into a triumph, no matter what the cost.
No matter whom she hurt.
She noticed her pearls nestled on a piece of black velvet in the open drawer of her dresser.
The Glenn pearls.
Her legacy.
Picking them up she savored their weight against her palm and then, before she had the chance to change her mind, she threw them against the wall and watched them scatter, rolling under the bed and the armoire and bouncing against the nightstand.
Perhaps it was time to raise a glass to her sainted mother.
The hallway was deserted. Clutching her robe tightly around her, she raced down the staircase then darted into the library to find the whiskey bottle in its usual place on the side table. Snatching it up, she thrust it inside her robe and hurried back to her room, closing the door behind her.
How many nights had she seen Matthew pour whiskey down his throat in his search for oblivion? How many nights had she heard him pacing the hall on the second floor, haunted by demons she had believed herself safe from?
With great ceremony she filled her crystal water glass with whiskey. "To you, mother," she said, raising the glass high in salute. "Marisa Glenn... Mary Margaret Kilbride... whoever you are, may you rot in hell for eternity."
Closing her eyes, she brought the glass to her lips and was about to gulp down the whiskey when her door swung open and she found herself looking into the beautiful eyes of Matthew McKenna.
"You needn't look so shocked," she said as he stepped into her bedroom and closed the door behind him. "Do you think you are the only one in this house with a taste for whiskey?"
"Put it down, Alex." He advanced toward her. "Don't be a damned fool."
She swirled the amber liquid around in the glass,, admiring the way it picked up the glow of the candle burning atop her dresser. "Don't be selfish, McKenna. You seem to take tremendous pleasure in this liquid. I intend to get blindingly drunk tonight."
"That's not the answer," he said softly. "The problem will still be with you come morning."
"Then I'll drink more whiskey at dawn," she retorted. "I've watched you, McKenna. I understand the way these things work."
"You can't run away from yourself."
"And I say you're wrong." She sat down on the edge of her bed. "My mother did it and my newfound father as well. Andrew acts as if his younger self never existed, as if he came into this world fully grown and standing at an easel." She watched him as he took a sip of the whiskey from her glass, grimaced, then put it back down. "With such illustrious forebears, why shouldn't I try my hand at it?"
He glanced at the whiskey bottle as if to check the level. "You're not making sense, Alex."
Her eyes widened. "Don't tell me you don't know the wonderful news, Matthew! Congratulations are in order: Andrew Lowell has become a father at last."
"How much have you had to drink?"
"Not nearly enough."
"What happened in that room after I left? Andrew looked as if he'd seen a ghost."
She chuckled bitterly. "The ghost of sins past."
He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. "Alex, so help me God, if you don't tell me what this is all about I'll—"
"He's my father."
His grip tightened. "Say that again."
She looked him in the eye with all the bravado she could muster. "Andrew Lowell is my father."
He stared back at her as if she were speaking tongues.
"It's the truth, Matthew. I saw his portrait of my mother when she was no older than I. All the pieces fit together."
"Has he known about it all this time?"
"He says not."
"Trust him," said Matthew.
"Trust him! Good God, McKenna, do you know what you are asking of me?"
"He's a good man and a better friend."
She pulled out of his grasp. "I do not need a friend. What I needed was a father, not a pretty story about a man who never existed except in my mother's imagination."
"Give it time. This must be as difficult for him as it is to you."
"He knew," she said, her voice low. "He
knew my mother carried me and he salved his conscience with money."
McKenna's blue-green eyes seemed to absorb her pain. "Some men do even less, Alex."
"Some men are not my father!" she lashed out, her voice breaking. "Think how you would feel if your father had walked away from your birth." She paused, trying to gain control of her rampaging emotions. "Think how you would feel if your mother used you against him."
She watched as comprehension dawned on Matthew. "Your mother and Stephen—?"
"A pretty picture, isn't?" Hot tears sprang once again to her eyes. "What a colossal joke I must have been to them."
He drew her into his arms and this time she offered no resistance.
"This pain won't last forever," he whispered against her hair. "Tomorrow you'll talk to Andrew... tomorrow you'll ask the questions you need to ask..."
"Never!"
His lips gently brushed the curve of her ear. "Let me help you, Alex." His voice was a sweet and dangerous rumble rippling down her spine. "Let me ease your pain..."
His words were lost against the larger backdrop of pleasure. His voice curled inside her ear, insinuated itself around her heart as he stroked her hair then cupped her head with his large, warm hand.
Make me forget, she whispered silently. Just for tonight, make me forget it all. Give her one night without a past or present, one perfect night and she would ask for nothing more.
She was dizzied by his touch; her legs grew weak as pure physical sensation began to replace reason. His shirt was open nearly to the waist and she gave in to impulse and rested her cheek against his warm skin. How violently his heart hammered beneath her ear—and how quickly her own pulse points leaped to throbbing life in response.
She could lose herself with him, hide within his warmth and strength, forget the ugliness of the past few hours within the beauty of his touch.
"Alex?"
Her name penetrated the sensuous fog settling over her and she looked up into Matthew's beautiful eyes.
"Alex," he repeated, softer this time, then brought his mouth down to hers in a kiss that shattered the last of her reason and turned her into pure and shimmering heat.
Her mouth flowered beneath his, her lips opening at the touch of his tongue demanding entry. With thrilling, insistent strokes, he swept across her teeth then darted inside, drawing her into a sensual swordplay that sent tremors radiating throughout her body.
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