JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (35 page)

Obviously, he considered her less important than Lord Wedgeley's two-year-old mare or Sir Markham's promising colt, she realized. Not that she should have been surprised by that, she reminded herself bitterly, for as she had discovered to her mortification a short time ago, Jordan Townsende had never considered her anything but an irksome responsibility.

When all matters, down to the most trivial, had finally been discussed, an uneasy silence fell over the room, and Alexandra naturally assumed her time was finally here. Just when she expected Jordan to ask to see her alone, he abruptly straightened from his lounging posture at the fireplace and announced his intention to leave!

Prudence warned her to keep silent, but Alexandra could not bear another hour, let alone another day, of this awful suspense. Striving to sound calm and impersonal, she said, "I think there is one more issue that needs to be discussed, your grace."

Without bothering to so much as glance in her direction, Jordan reached out and accepted Tony's outstretched hand. "That issue can wait," he said coldly. "When I've seen to some important matters, you and I will talk privately."

The implication that she was not an "important" matter was unmistakable, and Alexandra stiffened at the deliberate, unprovoked insult. She was a fully grown young woman now, not an easily manipulated, wildly infatuated child who would have done anything to please him. Putting a tight rein on her temper, she said with unarguable logic, "Surely a human being warrants the same amount of your time as Sir Markham's colt, and I would rather discuss it now, while we are all together."

Jordan's head jerked toward her, and Alexandra's breath froze at the hard anger flaring in his eyes. "I said 'privately'!" he snapped, leaving her with the staggering realization that beneath his cool, impassive facade Jordan Townsende was burningly angry. Before she could assimilate that or withdraw her request for his time—as she was on the verge of doing—the duchess swiftly arose and beckoned Uncle Monty and Tony to follow her out of the room.

The door to the salon closed behind them with an ominous thud, and for the first time in fifteen months, Alexandra was alone with the man who was her husband—alarmingly, nerve-rackingly alone.

From the corner of her eyes, she watched him walk to the table and pour himself another glass of champagne, and she took advantage of his preoccupation to really look at him. What she saw made her tremble with foreboding. Wildly, she wondered how she could have been naive enough, or infatuated enough, to imagine that Jordan Townsende was
gentle
. Seen now, through the eyes of an adult, she could not find a trace of gentleness or kindness anywhere in his tough, ruggedly chiseled features. How, she wondered in amazement, could she ever have likened him to Michelangelo's beautiful David?

Instead of gentle beauty, there was ruthless nobility stamped on Jordan Townsende's tanned features, implacable authority in the tough jawline and straight nose, and
cold determination in the thrust of his chin. Inwardly she shivered at the harsh cynicism she saw in his eyes, the biting mockery she heard in his drawl. Long ago, she had thought his grey eyes soft, like the sky after a summer rain, but now she could see they were cold and unwelcoming as glaciers; eyes without kindness or understanding. Oh, he was handsome enough, she conceded reluctantly—devastatingly so, in fact, but
only
if one were drawn to dark, blatantly aggressive, wickedly sensual men, which she assuredly was not.

Racking her brain for the best way to broach the matter on her mind, she approached the table and poured herself another glass of champagne, oblivious to the fact that her first glass was still full, then she looked around, trying to decide whether to sit or stand. She decided to stand so he would not seem so tall and intimidating.

At the fireplace Jordan raised his glass to his lips, watching her. She could have only two possible reasons for insisting on this meeting, he thought. The first possibility was that she honestly believed she was in love with Tony, and that was why she wished to marry him. If that was the case, she would begin by telling him so—simply and truthfully—as had been her habit. The second possibility was that she wanted to be married to whoever was the Duke of Hawthorne. If that was the case, she would now try to soothe Jordan with some form of tender, feminine theatrics. But first she would wait a bit for his temper to cool—exactly as she was doing now.

Jordan drained his glass and put it down on the mantel with a sharp thud. "I'm waiting," he snapped impatiently.

Alexandra jumped and whirled to face him, appalled by his biting tone. "I—I know," she said, determined at all costs to speak to him with calm maturity and to make it infinitely clear to him that she no longer wished to be his concern or responsibility. On the other hand, she did not want to do or say anything which might reveal to him how hurt and angry and disillusioned she had been when she discovered the truth about his feelings for her, or what a fool she had made of herself grieving for London's most infamous libertine. To add to her dilemma, it was rapidly becoming obvious that in his current mood, Jordan was not likely to react reasonably to the scandalous subject of a divorce. In fact, she instinctively knew he would react the opposite. "I'm not quite certain how to begin," she said hesitantly.

"In that case," he drawled sarcastically as his blistering gaze sliced over her glorious ice-blue satin bridal gown, "allow me to offer a few suggestions: If you're about to tell me very prettily how sorely you've missed me, I'm afraid that gown you are wearing is a little incongruous. You would have been wiser to change it. It's extravagantly lovely by the way." His drawl became clipped and abrupt. "Did I pay for it?"

"No—that is, I don't know exactly how—"

"Never mind about the gown," he interrupted scathingly. "Let's get on with your charade. Since you cannot very well fling yourself into my arms and weep tears of joy at my return, while you're dressed as another man's bride, you'll have to think of something else to soften my attitude toward you and win my forgiveness."

"Win
your what
?" Alexandra exploded as outrage conquered her fears.

"Why not begin by telling me how deeply grieved you were when you first learned of my 'untimely demise'?" he continued savagely, ignoring her outburst of righteous indignation. "That would have a nice ring to it. Then, if you could manage one tear, or even two, you could tell me how you mourned me, and wept, and said prayers for my—"

That was so close to the truth that Alexandra's voice shook with shamed anger. "Stop it! I have no intention of doing anything of the sort! Furthermore, you arrogant hypocrite, your forgiveness is the
last
thing I care about."

"That was very foolish of you, my sweet," he drawled silkily, shoving away from the fireplace. "Tenderness and dainty tears are called for at times such as these, not insults. Moreover, softening my attitude ought to be your
first
concern. Well-bred females who aspire to be duchesses must seek to make themselves agreeable to any eligible duke at all times. Now then, since you can't change your gown and you can't weep, why not try telling me how much you missed me," he insolently suggested. "You did miss me, did you not? Very much, I'll vow. So much so that you only decided to marry Tony because he—ah—resembled me. That's it, isn't it?" he mocked.

"Why are you behaving like this?" Alexandra cried.

Without bothering to answer, he moved closer, looming over her like a dark, ominous cloud. "In a day or two, I'll tell you what I've decided to do with you."

Anger and confusion were warring in Alexandra's mind, sending her thoughts into a complete tumult. Jordan Townsende had never cared about her and he had no right, no
reason
to act like a self-righteous, outraged husband! "I am not a mindless piece of chattel!" she burst out. "You can't just dispose of me like a—a piece of furniture!"

"Can't I? Try me!" he clipped.

Alexandra's mind groped wildly for some way to neutralize his irrational anger and soothe what could only be his wounded ego. Raking a hand through her heavy hair, she sought desperately for some guiding logic.
She
was the innocent and injured party in their relationship, but at the moment he was the powerful and potentially dangerous party, and so she tried to reason with him. "I can see that you're angry—"

"How very observant of you," he mocked nastily.

Ignoring his sarcasm, Alexandra persevered in what she hoped was a reasonable tone, "And I can see there is no point in trying to reason with you in this mood—"

"Go ahead and try it," he invited, but the look in his eyes said the opposite as he took a menacing step toward her.

Alexandra hastily retreated a step. "There's—there's no point. You won't listen to me. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind…"

The quote from Ingersoll caught Jordan entirely off guard, reminding him poignantly of the enchanting, curly-haired girl who could quote from Buddha or John the Baptist, depending upon the occasion. Unfortunately, it only made him angrier now, because she was no longer that girl. Instead, she had become a scheming little opportunist. If she truly wanted to marry Tony because she loved him, she would have said so by now, he knew. Since she hadn't, she obviously wanted to remain the Duchess of Hawthorne.

And therein lay her problem, Jordan thought cynically: She could not convincingly throw herself into his arms and weep for joy when he had just witnessed her near-marriage to another man, but neither could she risk letting him walk out of this house without taking the first of many predictable steps toward reconciliation—not if she wanted to continue moving in Society with the full prestige and honor of her rank. To maintain that, the
ton
would need to see that she was in the good graces of the current duke.

She had become ambitious in the last fifteen months, he realized with blazing contempt. And beautiful. Arrestingly so at close range, with her glossy mahogany hair spilling over her shoulders and back in masses of waves and curls, contrasting vividly with her glowing alabaster skin, brilliant aqua eyes, and soft, rosy lips. In comparison with the pale blondes he remembered, who were usually the Acclaimed Beauties, Alexandra was incredibly more alluring.

He stared hard at her, convinced she was a scheming opportunist, yet despite all the evidence, he could not find a trace of guile in those flashing eyes of hers or her angry, upturned face. Furious with his inner reluctance to see her for what she had become, he turned on his heel and walked toward the door.

Alexandra watched him leave, buffeted by a myriad of conflicting emotions, including fury, relief, and alarm. He paused in the doorway and she tensed automatically.

"I will move in here tomorrow. In the meantime, let me leave you with some instructions: You are not to accompany Tony anywhere!"

His tone promised terrible consequences should she choose to ignore his order, and although she couldn't imagine what form those reprisals might take, or why she should want to walk out and face a furor of gossip, Alexandra was momentarily quelled by the threat in his voice. "You will, in fact, not leave this house. Have I made myself perfectly clear?"

With a magnificent gesture of unconcern that completely belied her alarm, she shrugged lightly and said, "I speak three languages fluently, your grace. One of them is English."

"Are you
patronizing
me?" he asked in a silken, threatening voice.

Alexandra's courage warred with common sense, but neither of them won. Afraid to advance and unwilling to retreat, she tried to hold her ground by daring to say in the tone of an adult addressing a cranky, unreasonable child: "I have no wish to discuss that or anything else with you when you are in such an unreasonable mood."

"Alexandra," he said in an
awful
voice, "if you're wondering how far you can push me, you've just reached your limit. In my present 'unreasonable mood,' nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to close this door and spend the next ten minutes making certain you can't sit down for a week. Do you take my meaning?"

The threat of being spanked like a child stripped away Alexandra's hard-won confidence and made her feel as gauche and helpless as she had a year ago in his presence. She put her chin up and said nothing, but bright flags of humiliated color stained her cheeks, and tears of frustration stung her eyes.

He stared at her in silence and then, satisfied that she was adequately chastened, Jordan defied all the rules of courtesy and walked off without so much as a nod to her.

Two years ago, she had been ignorant of the rules of etiquette to which polite ladies and gentlemen always conformed; she had not realized then that Jordan was insulting her when he never bothered to bow to her, or to kiss her hand, or treat her solicitously. For that matter, he had never deigned to permit her to call him by his given name. Now, as she stood alone in the middle of the drawing room, she was acutely, furiously aware of all those bygone slights, as well as the new ones he had heaped upon her today.

She waited until she heard the front door close, and then she walked woodenly out of the salon and up the stairs to her room. Anguish and disbelief poured through her as she dismissed her maid and mindlessly stripped off her wedding gown. He was back! And he was
worse
than she remembered,
worse
than she'd imagined—more arrogant, more dictatorial, completely heartless. And she was married to him.
Married
! her heart screamed.