JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (56 page)

Adams watched in amazement as an expression that could only be described as acute embarrassment crossed his employer's aristocratic face before the duke tossed the documents in his hand aside and curtly said, "That will be all for today, Adams. We'll continue tomorrow afternoon as usual."

While Adams was secretly wondering what momentous, dire event had caused his employer to cancel his afternoon work for the second time in eight years—the first time occurring on the day of the duke's uncle's interment—his employer added blandly, "No, not tomorrow afternoon, either."

Already partway across the room, Adams turned round and looked at his employer in startled inquiry, more amazed than ever by this additional postponement of a stack of rather urgent correspondence.

"I'm engaged for the afternoon," the duke explained blandly. "A picnic."

Struggling valiantly to maintain an impassive visage, Adams nodded and bowed. Then he turned and tripped over a chair.

Telling himself that he was merely restless and too long cooped up indoors, Jordan walked out of the house and headed for the stables. But when Smarth rushed out of the stables to ask if he wanted a mount, Jordan changed his mind and instead strolled along the path that led to one of the gamekeeper's cottages at the edge of the woods beyond the stables, where Alexandra had said she gave her lessons.

A few minutes later, the sound of singing reached him, and as he ascended the two wooden steps of the cottage, he smiled to himself as he realized that, instead of "wasting time" with song as he'd first supposed, Alexandra was teaching her pupils the alphabet, using a cheerful little song that named each letter. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he stood unseen in the doorway, listening to the sound of her lilting voice and looking about him with inner amazement.

Seated upon the floor, singing with rapt attention, were not only children of all ages, but several adults as well. After some thought, he was able to identify two of the women as wives of his tenants, and an elderly man as the grandfather of his head bailiff. Beyond that, he had no idea who the other adults were or to which families the children belonged.

They recognized him, however, and the singing began to grind down to an awkward unmelodious halt as older children stopped singing and silenced their younger siblings. A few yards to his right, Alexandra tipped her head to the side, smiling at her pupils. "Had enough for today?" she asked sympathetically, misunderstanding the reason for their sudden lack of attention. "In that case, here's your 'thought to remember' until we meet again on Friday: 'All men are equal,' " she quoted as she moved toward the doorway where Jordan was standing, obviously intending to bid her students goodbye as they left. "It is not birth that makes the difference, it is virtue." Her left shoulder collided with Jordan's and she whirled around.

"What a thing to tell them," Jordan said in a soft, teasing voice, ignoring the occupants of the cabin, who had hastily leapt to their feet and were gaping at him in awe. "You'll incite anarchy with quotations like that."

He stepped out of the doorway and the cottagers, correctly interpreting his movement as a dismissal, hastily lined up and filed awkwardly outdoors.

"They didn't say a word to you," Alexandra said, watching in bewilderment as the cheerful, friendly students she liked so well, scooted guiltily past and then fled into the woods beside the cottage.

"Because I didn't say a word to them," Jordan explained with utter unconcern.

"Why didn't you?" Alexandra asked uncertainly, her pleasure at his unexpected arrival almost blotting out her confusion.

"Unlike many landholders, my forebears have never been on personal terms with their cottagers," Jordan replied indifferently.

Unbidden, a vision of a lonely little boy, forbidden to fraternize with anyone on this vast, populated estate, came to mind, and Alexandra's eyes filled with tenderness as she gazed up at him. Longing to lavish him with all the love in her heart, she linked her arm through his and said, "I'm surprised to see you this afternoon. "What brought you out here?"

I missed you
, he thought. "I finished my work early," he lied. Covering her hand with his, Jordan strolled with her across the front lawns to the pavilion at the far edge of the lake. "This is my favorite spot at Hawthorne," he explained, propping a shoulder against one of the white columns that supported the pavilion's roof. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he swept the woods and lake with an absent glance, oblivious to the flowers she'd added to the clearing beside them. "I imagine that, if you combined all the hours I spent in this pavilion as a boy and young man, they'd amount to years."

Thrilled that the handsome, enigmatic man she had married was finally beginning to open himself to her, Alexandra smiled at him. "It was my favorite place while I was at Hawthorne before. What did you do when you were here?" she asked, remembering the vivid, hopeless daydreams she'd invented about Jordan, while sitting upon the brightly colored cushions of the pavilion.

"Studied," he answered flatly. "I didn't like the schoolroom much. Or my tutor, for that matter."

Alexandra's smile wobbled as she envisioned a handsome, solitary boy, driven by his father to excel in everything.

Jordan saw tenderness glowing in her blue eyes and grinned at her, completely unaware of
why
her attitude had warmed. "What did you do, when you came here?" he teased.

Alexandra shrugged uneasily. "Daydreamed, mostly."

"About what?"

"The usual things." She was spared the need to answer that, because Jordan was suddenly staring at a clearing in the woods with a puzzled frown. "What is that?" he asked, straightening from his lounging position and walking into the circular clearing. Strolling directly over to the wedge-shaped marble marker, he read the simple words upon it with an indescribable expression of disbelief on his face:

JORDAN MATTHEW ADDISON TOWNSENDE

12tH DUKE OF HAWTHORNE

BORN JUNE 27, 1786

DIED APRIL 16, 1814

Turning to Alexandra with a look of almost comical disgust, he demanded, "Anthony stuck me
out here
in the woods? Didn't I merit the family cemetery in his estimation?"

Alexandra chuckled at his unexpectedly droll reaction to seeing his own passing engraved in marble. "There's a monument to you there, too. But I—we—thought this was such a pretty spot for a, well, little marker in your memory." She waited for him to remark upon the fact that the clearing had been widened and flowers added, and when he didn't notice, she prompted lightly, "Do you notice anything different about this place?"

Jordan glanced around, oblivious to the serenity and beauty she'd created. "No. Is something different?"

She rolled her eyes in laughing disgust. "How can you possibly overlook a veritable garden of flowers?"

"Flowers," he repeated without interest. "Yes, I see them," he added, turning away from the clearing.

"Did you really?" Alexandra teased, but she was serious too. "Without turning back to look, tell me what colors they were."

Jordan shot her a quizzical look and took her arm, starting toward the house. "Yellow?" he ventured after a moment.

"Pink and white."

"I was close," he joked.

But on the way back to the house, he noticed for the first time that the roses blooming lavishly in the manicured beds beside the house were divided by color, rather than mixed together, and that the pink ones reminded him of her lips. Slightly embarrassed by the heretofore untapped sentimentality she was awakening in him, Jordan glanced at her bent head, but the next thought he had was even more shockingly sentimental than the last: His birthday was only five days away, and he wondered if she'd noted that when they'd looked at the dates carved into the marble marker.

A vision of Alexandra awakening him with a kiss and a wish for his happy birthday floated delightfully through his mind, and suddenly he very much wanted her to remember the date, to do some small thing to show him he was important to her. "I'm getting old," he remarked with careful nonchalance.

"Mmmm," Alexandra mused absently, toying with an idea so intriguing, so perfect, she was fairly bursting to think it through and begin to execute it.

Obviously, Jordan realized with disappointed chagrin, she neither knew nor cared that his birthday was near, and by hinting to her about it, he was behaving like a lovestruck boy who yearned for some special token of affection from his ladylove.

As soon as they entered the front hall, Jordan started to leave her and summon his bailiff, but Alexandra's voice stopped him. "My lord," she said.

"Jordan!" he said shortly.

"Jordan," she repeated, smiling into his eyes in a way that made him long to pull her into his arms, "are we still to have our picnic tomorrow at the stream?" When Jordan nodded, she explained, "I have some calls to make in the morning—Mrs. Little, the gamekeeper's wife, has just given birth to a baby boy, and I must bring her a gift. There are other calls, as well. May I meet you at the stream?"

"Fine."

Alarmed and annoyed by his ever-increasing desire to have her near him all the time, Jordan deliberately did not join her for supper nor did he take her to his bed that night. Instead, he lay awake in his huge bed atop its dais, his hands linked behind his head, staring at the ceiling and forcing himself not to go to her room. At dawn, he was still awake—mentally redesigning Alexandra's bedroom suite. She ought to have a spacious marble bathing room like his own, he had charitably concluded, and a much larger dressing area as well. Of course, if that were done, there would be no room in her own bedchamber for a bed. A faint, thoroughly satisfied smile touched his lips and he closed his eyes at last. He would let her sleep with him in his bed, he generously decided.

In the interest of modernization, no sacrifice was too great.

«
^
»

H
er heart singing
with the plans she'd been putting into effect all morning, Alexandra rode to the clearing and dismounted. Jordan was standing on the bank of the stream, his broad back to her, gazing across the water, apparently lost in thought. She felt neither guilt nor concern about her secret visit to Tony today, for she was confident Jordan wouldn't object when he discovered the reason for it tomorrow.

With the lush grass muffling the sound of her approach, she walked toward him, her emotions wavering between joy at seeing him and uncertainty because he had neither dined with her last night nor made love to her. Aware that his attitude toward her had begun to cool when they walked back from the pavilion, she hesitated and then threw caution to the winds. She loved him, and she was determined to teach him to love and to laugh.

In line with that resolve, she walked silently up behind him, rose up on her toes, and covered his eyes with her hands. Obviously, he'd heard her approach because he didn't flinch or move a single muscle. "You're late," he said with a smile in his voice because she was still covering his eyes.

"Quick,'' Alexandra said, "tell me what color are the flowers on the hill you've been looking at."

"Yellow," he said promptly.

"White," she sighed, taking her hands away.

"If I keep saying yellow," he dryly replied, turning to face her, "sooner or later I'm bound to be right."

Alexandra shook her head in mock despair and headed toward the blanket he'd spread out on the bank, "You are the most coldly unsentimental man alive," she told him over her shoulder.

"Is that right?" he asked, catching her shoulders and drawing her back against the lean, hard strength of his legs and chest His breath stirred the hair at her temple. "Do you really find me cold, Alexandra?"

Alexandra swallowed, vibrantly aware of the compelling sexual magnetism emanating from Jordan's powerful body. "Not cold, precisely," she said shakily, shamefully longing to turn in his arms and ask him why he hadn't wanted her with him last night. Forcibly trying to ignore her wanton longing for him, she knelt upon the blanket and quickly began removing food from the baskets.

"Are you so hungry?" he teased, sitting down beside her.

"I'm starved," she lied, sensing that he was going to kiss her at any moment and trying to get control of her senses before he did. It was one thing to banter with him and try to establish some sort of rapport; that was permissible. But it was
not
permissible to let him see that she was ready to fall into his arms whenever he decided to kiss her—particularly because he had ignored her completely last night. As if her life depended upon arranging their plates and crystal symmetrically, she remained kneeling, keeping her profile to him.

As she leaned forward to straighten their snowy linen napkins, Jordan's hand lifted, brushing away a lock of hair that had blown across her cheek. "You have gorgeous hair," he murmured in a velvety voice that sent an uncontrollable thrill shooting through her. "It sparkles in the sunlight like dark honey, and your skin is soft as a peach."

Alexandra sought safety in light humor. "Obviously, I am not the only one who's hungry."