JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (24 page)

Late in the afternoon, Gibbons finished the tour by taking Alexandra to two places, one of which instantly became her favorite. It was the long gallery where a double row of life-size portraits of the previous eleven dukes of Hawthorne were displayed in identical gilt frames upon the long walls, along with other portraits of their wives and children.

"My husband was the handsomest of them all," she declared after studying each portrait.

"Me and Mr. Higgins have said that very thing ourselves."

"But his portrait isn't here with the other dukes."

"I heard him tell Master Anthony that he had better things to do with his time than stand about looking important and dignified." He nodded toward two of the portraits on the upper row. "That's him, right there—as a young boy, and then when he was sixteen. His papa insisted he stand for that last one, and Master Jordan was mad as fire about it."

A smile dawned across. Alexandra's pale features as she looked up at the little boy with the dark curly hair standing solemnly beside a beautiful blond lady with sultry grey eyes. Standing on the other side of her thronelike red velvet chair was a handsome, unsmiling man with broad shoulders and the proudest features Alexandra had ever seen.

The last place Gibbons took her was to a rather small room on the third floor that smelled as if it had been closed for a very long time. Three small desks faced a much larger desk at the front of the room, and an old globe stood on a brass stand.

"This here's the schoolroom," Gibbons said. "Young Master Jordan spent more time tryin' to git out o' it than he spent inside it. Then Master Jordan felt the side of Mr. Rigly's cane more than once for neglectin' his studyin'. Still, he learnt what-all he needed to know. Smart as a whip he was."

Alexandra's gaze scanned the austere little room, then came to an abrupt stop at the desk right beside her. Carved into the top of it were the initials
J-A-M-T
. Jordan's initials. She touched them tenderly while glancing around with a mixture of pleasure and uneasiness. How very unlike her grandfather's cheerful, disorderly study where she had eagerly learned her own lessons this gloomy, austere place seemed. How unthinkable it was to be caned by one's teacher, instead of fascinated by him.

When the footman finally bade her goodbye, Alexandra stopped once more at the gallery to gaze upon the likeness of her husband as a sixteen-year-old. Looking up at him, she whispered solemnly, "I'll make you proud of me, my love, I promise."

In the days that followed, Alexandra embarked on that task with all the determination and intelligence she possessed, memorizing entire pages of Debrett's
Peerage
, and poring over volumes on conduct, convention, and protocol which the duchess gave her. Her diligence quickly earned the duchess' approval, as did everything else Alexandra did—with two significant exceptions, both of which led the duchess to summon Anthony to her drawing room a week after the family had arrived at Hawthorne.

"Alexandra is fraternizing with Gibbons and Smarth," she declared in tones of bewilderment and grave concern. "She's already conversed more with them than I have in the last forty years."

Anthony lifted his brows and said blandly, "She regards servants as family. That was evident when she asked us if her butler and footman might come here. It's a harmless attitude."

"You won't think Filbert and Penrose are 'harmless' when you see them," the duchess shot back darkly. "They arrived this morning."

Anthony recalled Alexandra had described her two servants as elderly, and started to say it. "They're—"

"Deaf and blind!" the indignant dowager declared. "The butler can't hear a word that isn't roared into his ear and the footman walks into doors
and
into the butler! Regardless of Alexandra's tender feelings, we shall have to keep them out of sight when we are receiving callers. We can't allow guests to see them crashing into each other in the front hall and shouting the walls down.

When Anthony looked amused rather than alarmed, she glowered at him. "If you will not see that as objectionable, I've little hope of persuading you to discontinue your fencing matches with Alexandra each morning. It is an entirely unacceptable endeavor for any young lady, besides requiring the wearing of—of breeches!"

Anthony was no more inclined to see his grandmother's side on this matter than he'd been on the subject of fraternization with servants. "For my sake and for Alexandra's I hope you won't forbid her to fence with me. It's harmless enough and she enjoys it. She says it keeps her fit."

"And for your sake?" the duchess said irritably.

Anthony grinned. "She's a formidable opponent, and she keeps me in top form. Jordan and I were considered two of the best swordsmen in England, but I have to work to hold my own with Alexandra, and she still bests me about half the time."

When Tony left, the dowager gazed helplessly at the empty chair across from her, knowing full well why she had not been willing to speak to Alexandra about the issues she'd just discussed with Anthony: She simply could not bear to dampen Alexandra's spirits, not when she knew how valiantly Alexandra was trying to be cheerful. For nearly a week, Alexandra's heartwarming smile and musical laughter had brightened the entire atmosphere at Hawthorne. And as the duchess well knew, Alexandra was smiling, not because she felt like it, but because she was desperately trying to buoy up everyone's spirits—including her own. She was, the duchess thought, a unique combination of candor, gentleness, determination, and courage.

Unaware that she had done aught to distress the duchess, Alexandra adjusted herself to the rigid routine of formal living in a ducal mansion. As spring drifted into summer, she continued with her studies and spent her free time wandering about the beautiful grounds or visiting the vast Hawthorne stables where Smarth told her wonderful stories about Jordan as a boy and a young man. Like Gibbons the footman, Smarth was a great fan of Master Jordan, and, within a few weeks, Smarth was completely won over by the charming girl Master Jordan had married.

For Alexandra, the days were busy ones, but Jordan was never out of her mind. A month after his death, at Alexandra's request, a small marble plaque, bearing Jordan's name and dates of birth and death, had been placed—not in the family cemetery, as was usual, but at the far side of the lake at the edge of the woods near the pavilion.

Alexandra thought the setting near the pavilion pretty—particularly in contrast to the lonely cemetery beyond the crest of a hill behind the mansion. Yet when the plaque had been placed, she was not entirely satisfied. She visited the head gardener, who gave her a few bulbs that she planted just inside the woods. Every few days, she returned to obtain more flowers. But not until she was finished did Alexandra realize she had unconsciously duplicated the little glade where Jordan had once told her she looked like a Gainsborough portrait.

She loved the place more when she realized it, and spent hundreds of happy hours seated in the pavilion, gazing into the miniature glade and recalling every moment they had spent together.

Alone in the pavilion, she dwelled with tenderness upon every kindness Jordan had shown her—from buying her a puppy he obviously hadn't liked, to marrying her to save her from ruin. But mostly she relived the heady sweetness and hungry insistence of Jordan's kisses, the torturous pleasure of his caressing, wandering hands. When she tired of recalling their real kisses, she imagined more of them in different settings—wonderful kisses that ended in Jordan dropping to his knee, with his hand over his heart, and pledging his undying love to her. The longer she thought of their time together, the more certain she became that he had begun to love her before he died.

Aided and encouraged by Gibbons' and Smarth's exaggerated versions of Jordan's most minor boyhood braveries and manly skills, Alexandra enshrined Jordan in her heart, endowing him with the virtues of a saint, the courage of a warrior, and the beauty of an archangel. In the rosy glow of her memory, every gentle word he'd spoken, every warm smile, each stirring kiss, was immortalized—and then improved upon.

It did not occur to her that Smarth and Gibbons might have been blind to his faults or that they would, by unspoken mutual consent, carefully censor from their conversation any activities of his which might have put him in a less saintly light in the eyes of his legal wife. Never once did they mention a certain lovely ballerina or her many predecessors, or the governess who had shared his bed in this very house.

Based on the glowing stories that Smarth and Gibbons told her, Alexandra naturally assumed her husband had been noted for his bravery, daring, and honor. She had no way of knowing that he was equally well known for his flagrant flirtations, amatory conquests, and scandalous liaisons with women who possessed only one significant social asset in common: Beauty.

And so, with all the fervor of her eighteen years, Alexandra spent each day practicing at the pianoforte, memorizing tomes on social protocol, rehearsing polite conversation with her tutor, and emulating the manners of the only duchess she had available to use as an example—Jordan's grandmother. She did it all so that when she went to London, Society would look upon her and find her worthy of Jordan Townsende's name and reputation.

And while Alexandra was diligently applying herself to mastering all manner of accomplishments that would have bored a living Jordan to distraction, Nature—as if amused by her needless efforts—casually showered upon her in lavish bounty the one required social asset that would guarantee Society would truly find her "worthy" of Jordan Townsende: Beauty.

Standing at the windows, watching Alexandra gallop down the drive in a bright-blue riding habit, Anthony glanced at his grandmother beside him. "It's astonishing," he said wryly. "In one year, she's blossomed into a beautiful young woman."

"It's not in the least astonishing," the duchess said with gruff loyalty. "She always had good bones and excellent features, she was simply much too thin and too young. She had not filled out yet—I myself was just such a late bloomer."

"Really?" Anthony said, grinning.

"Indeed," she primly replied, and then she became somber. "She still brings flowers to lay on Jordan's plaque every day. Last winter, I thought I'd cry when I saw her wading through the snow with flowers from the conservatory in her arms."

"I know," Tony said somberly. His gaze shifted back to the window as Alexandra waved at them and handed Satan over to a groom. Her glossy, wind-tossed hair was long now, tumbling in waves and curls partway down her back; her complexion was rosy, and her sooty-lashed eyes were glowing like enormous aquamarines.

Jordan had once mistaken her for a boy, but now her bright-blue riding habit revealed an alluring female form with ripened curves in all the right places. Anthony's eyes followed the gentle sway of her hips as she walked up the front steps, admiring the easy, long-legged grace of her stride. Everything about her drew a man's gaze and held it.

"In a few weeks, when she makes her bow," Tony thought aloud, "we're going to have to beat off her suitors with a club."

«
^
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A
nthony
,"
the duchess said
, nervously pacing the length of the drawing room in her silver satin gown. "Do you suppose I made a mistake in not hiring a younger woman to teach Alexandra how to go about in Society?"

Turning from the mirror, where he had been needlessly rearranging the intricate folds of his pristine white neckcloth, Tony smiled sympathetically at his grandmother's last-minute panic over Alexandra's debut tonight. "It's too late to change that now."

"Well, who could possibly be better suited than I to teach her how to behave properly? I am," the dowager reminded him bluntly, reversing her earlier opinion, "regarded as a paragon of proper behavior by Society, am I not?"

"You are indeed," Tony said, refraining from reminding her that he'd told her at the outset Alexandra shouldn't be taught to emulate a woman of seventy-one years.

"I can't go through with it," the duchess remarked suddenly and sank into a chair, her expression positively dire.

Tony chuckled at her unprecedented display of doubt and uncertainty, and she sent him a glowering look. "You won't be laughing a few hours from now," she predicted darkly. "Tonight, I will attempt to persuade the crème de la crème of Society to accept a female without fortune, family connections, or ancestry to recommend her. The chances for disaster are mind-boggling! I'm bound to be found out and exposed for a trickster."

Anthony approached the stricken woman whose blighting eye, razor tongue, and cold demeanor had intimidated Society and her entire family, with the exception of Jordan, for five decades. For the first time in his life, he pressed a spontaneous kiss to her forehead. "No one would dare oppose you by ostracizing Alexandra, even if they suspected her origins. You'll carry this off without a hitch. A lesser woman might fail, but not you, Grandmama—not a woman of your enormous consequence."

The duchess digested that for a moment and then slowly inclined her white head in a regal nod. "You're entirely correct, of course."