Instead of shooting Jordan’s assailant the night she met him, she should have shot Jordan Townsende! How boring her inexperience must have seemed to him, and no wonder he hadn’t wanted to hear her naive declarations of love!
* * *
“How much longer?” George Morgan whispered to Jordan in the darkness.
“An hour, and then we can make a run for it,” he answered tightly as he flexed his cramped muscles, forcing blood into them to strengthen them for their impending flight.
“Are you sure you heard them say your troops are fighting fifty miles south of here? I’d hate for us to walk fifty miles in the wrong direction, me with a game leg and you with a hole in yours.”
“It’s only a nick,” Jordan answered, referring to the wound he’d received from the guard they overpowered yesterday.
The cave they’d been hiding in since yesterday while the French searched the woods for them was so small that they were both nearly doubled in half. Pain shot through Jordan’s cramped leg and he stopped moving, his breathing shallow and fast as he automatically called up Alexandra’s image and focused on it with eve-y fiber of his being. He tried to imagine how she looked now, but today all he saw was a girl in a wooded glade, looking up at him with a puppy in her arms and all the love in the world shining in her eyes. With his eyes clenched shut, Jordan slowly traced every curve of her face in his mind. The pain in his legs retreated until it was an ache on the perimeters of his mind, still present but bearable now. It was a technique he’d used hundreds of times in the past, and it was as successful now as it had been before.
In the beginning of his imprisonment, when weeks of torture and deprivation drove him to the brink of madness, it was Alexandra he focused on to escape the pain that racked his body and tried to devour his mind. In his imagination, he relived, slowly, every second he had spent with her, concentrating fiercely on each minute detail of their surroundings, recalling every word, every inflection. He made love to her in the inn, time after time, undressing her and holding her, clinging to the memory of her incredible sweetness and the way she felt in his arms.
But as weeks faded into months, his memories of their brief time together were no longer enough to counteract the torment; he needed another weapon to silence the sweetly insidious voice that urged him gently to give up the fight to live, to let himself succumb to the pleasant anesthesia of death. And so Jordan began to invent scenes and build them around her, using them to reinforce his flagging will to survive because he knew from his experience with wounded men in Spain that when despair set in, death soon followed.
In his mind, he invented all sorts of scenes—pleasant ones in which Alexandra ran ahead of him, laughing her musical laugh, then she turned, holding out her arms to him—waiting for him to come to her, frightening scenes where he saw her cast out on the streets by Tony and living in a London slum—waiting for Jordan to come home and rescue her, tender scenes where she lay in naked splendor on satin sheets—waiting for him to make love to her.
He invented dozens of scenes, and the only feature each one had in common was that Alexandra was always waiting for him. Needing him. He knew the scenes were fantasy, but he concentrated on them anyway. Because they were his only weapon against the demons in his brain that shrieked for him to give up the struggle, to loosen his grip on sanity—and then on life.
And so, in the squalor of his vermin-infested cell, he had closed his eyes and planned his escape so that he could go home to her. Now, after a year of looking back on the bleakness of his former world, he was ready to let Alexandra show him her world, where everything was fresh and alive and unspoiled—where “something wonderful” was waiting just around the corner. He wanted to lose himself in her sweetness and surround himself with her laughter and joie de vivre. He wanted to cleanse himself of the filth of that prison and then rid himself of the tarnish of his misspent life.
Beyond that, he had only one other goal, and it was less noble, but equally important to him: He wanted to discover the identity of whoever had twice tried to end his life. And then he wanted vengeance. Tony had the most to gain from his death, Jordan knew, but he couldn’t bear to think about that yet. Not here. Not without proof. Tony had been like a brother to him.
Chapter Seventeen
ALEXANDRA AWAKEMED feeling oddly refreshed after her awful night of tearful self-recriminations. The discovery of Jordan’s treachery had destroyed her illusions, but as she slowly went about her morning routine of bathing and dressing, she began to realize that what she had teamed last night had released her from the bonds of loyalty and devotion that had kept her tied to his memory for over a year.
She was free of Jordan Townsende now. A faint, wry smile touched her lips as she sat down before the dressing table and began brushing her long, heavy hair. How funny it was that, in trying to become “worthy” of being Jordan’s wife, she had turned herself into a rigidly prim and proper female who would have suited a cleric, but never, ever the wife of a scandalous, unprincipled rake. Which was really rather funny, she thought wryly, because her true nature was anything but rigid and starched.
She had always done that, Alexandra realized suddenly; she had always tried to be what those she loved wanted her to be: For her father, she had been more like a son than a daughter, for her mother, she had become the parent, rather than the child; for Jordan, she had become . . . a complete antidote.
However, from this day forward, all that was going to change. For better or for worse, Alexandra Lawrence Townsende was going to enjoy herself.
In order to do that, however, she first needed to eradicate the reputation for hauteur and boundless idiocy she had unwittingly earned amongst the haute ton. Since Sir Roderick Carstairs was her most vocal, and most influential, detractor, he was obviously the best place to start. Anthony intended to speak to him this morning, but perhaps she could say or do something to change his opinion of her while he was here.
While she was contemplating that problem, she suddenly remembered the last part of her conversation with Melanie Camden last night. Lady Camden had said her friends thought Alexandra was “the veriest greenhead ever to appear at a London ball,” so she had obviously known Alexandra was persona non grata amongst the ton, yet she had still wanted to befriend her. She had, in fact, been hinting at the same thing Tony had said later. The brush stilled in Alexandra’s hand, and a surprised smile lit her face. Perhaps she was going to have a true friend in London, after all.
Feeling more lighthearted than she had in over a year, she pinned her heavy hair atop her head and hurriedly pulled on a pair of the tight breeches and one of the shirts she wore each morning when she and Tony practiced their fencing. Snatching her rapier from the closet and picking up her face mask, she walked from the room, humming a cheerful tune, her steps light and buoyantly carefree.
Tony was standing alone in the center of the deserted ballroom where they practiced each, morning, idly tapping the tip of his rapier against the sole of his boot. He turned at the sound of her brisk footsteps upon the polished floor, his face mirroring his relief at her appearance. “I wasn’t certain you’d feel up to this, after last night . . .”
Alexandra’s flashing smile told him she harbored no grudge against him for his silence on the matter of Jordan’s perfidy, but she said nothing about last night. She wanted to forget it and Jordan Townsende. Picking up the padded chestplate from the ballroom floor, she put it on, then she put on her face mask, adjusted it, and touched her rapier to her forehead in a jaunty salute to her worthy opponent “En garde—” she said gaily.
“My word, Hawthorne,” Roddy Carstairs’ drawl stopped Alexandra and Anthony in the middle of a furious parry. “Isn’t it rather early to be cavorting about in such an energetic fashion?” Shifting his lazy gaze to Anthony’s unknown fencing partner, he said admiringly, “Whoever you are, you’re a damned fine swordsman.”
Waiting for her labored breathing to even out, Alexandra stood with hands on her hips while she quic
kly weighed the relative merits of showing herself to Carstairs as she now stood, or waiting to see him in the salon later, as she had intended. Recalling what Anthony had told her about him last night, she decided to be daring, rather than cowardly.
Reaching behind her head, Alexandra unfastened her face mask and simultaneously pulled out the pins that secured her heavy hair. In one quick motion, she pulled off her face mask and gave her head a hard shake that sent dark hair tumbling down over her shoulders in a gleaming chestnut waterfall.
“I don’t believe it!” the unshakable Sir Roderick uttered, staring at the laughing young woman before him, his expression almost comical as he tried to absorb the fact that the prim, proper peagoose Hawk had married was one and the same with the young woman standing before him, wearing tight buff breeches that were more physically alluring than the lowest-cut ballgown he had ever seen. Moreover, her blue-green eyes were dancing with laughter as she watched his shock register. “I’ll be damned—” he began, but Alexandra’s low, throaty laughter, which he had never heard before, interrupted his exclamation.
“No doubt you will be,” she said with sham sympathy, walking toward him with the easy natural grace of a young athlete. “And if you aren’t, you ought to be,” she added, and then graciously extended her hand to him as if she hadn’t just wished him to perdition.
Feeling as if some sort of trick—twins, perhaps—were being played on him, Roddy automatically took her hand in his own. “Why ought I?” he demanded, angry with himself for his inability to control his facial expression.
“Because,” Alexandra said lightly, “you have made me an object of considerable ridicule here, which I partially deserved. However, perhaps you could consider making amends, so that you could spend eternity in a more comfortable climate?” One delicately arched brow lifted as she waited for his reply, and in spite of himself, Roddy nearly grinned.
Anthony stood back in pleased silence, watching Carstairs react to this lovely duelist exactly as he’d hoped when he instructed Higgins to send him to the ballroom as soon as he arrived.
“I gather you are blaming me for your lack of . . . er . . . shall we say, popularity?” Roddy Carstairs put in, beginning to recover his composure.
“I am blaming myself,” the young beauty replied, her smile sweet, yet unconsciously seductive. “I am asking you to help me change matters.”
“Why should I?” he demanded bluntly.
Alexandra lifted her brows and her smile widened, “Why, to prove you can, of course.”
The challenge was thrown down as lightly as a glove, and Roddy hesitated before taking it up. From sheer perversity and extreme boredom, he had unscrupulously flayed the reputations of dozens of pretentiously proud females, but he had never once attempted to rebuild one of those demolished reputations. To try would be to put his influence with the ton to the acid test. Ah, but to fail . . . Still, the challenge was intriguing. The dowager duchess had enough influence to force the old crones to accept Alexandra, but only Roddy could make her popular with the younger set who followed his lead.
Glancing down at her, he noted that she was watching him out of the corner of her eyes, a tiny, irresistible smile playing about her soft lips. With a jolt of surprise, he noticed how incredibly long and curly her lashes were as they lay like dark fans, casting shadows on her high delicate cheekbones. Almost against his will—and against his better judgment—Roddy Carstairs offered his arm to her. “Shall we discuss our strategy later—say, tonight, when I arrive to escort you to the Tinsleys’ ball?”
“You’ll help me then?”
Sir Roderick affected a bland smile and answered with a philosophical quotation: “ ‘Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals— We storm heaven itself in our folly.’ That is a quote from Homer, I believe,” he added informatively.
The nineteen-year-old vixen at his side shook her head and sent him an impertinent, plucky smile. “Horace.”
Carstairs stared at her, momentarily lost in thought. “You’re right,” he said slowly, and there was the beginning glimmer of admiration in his hooded eyes.
* * *
How easy it had been, Alexandra thought with an inward smile four weeks later as she stood, surrounded by a crowd of friends and admirers. At Melanie’s advice, she had ordered a whole new wardrobe in bright pastels and rich primary colors—gowns that emphasized her figure to advantage and flattered her vivid coloring. Beyond that, she had only needed to ignore many of the duchess’ strictures on appropriate demeanor and, instead, to say virtually whatever came to mind.
Roddy had done the rest, by appearing in public with her and putting his stamp of approval upon her, along with giving her some pithy advice that included instructing her to put herself on good terms with Jordan’s former paramours, Lady Whitmore and Lady Grangerfield: “Given your excruciatingly naive remarks about your husband’s imaginary virtues,” he had informed her as he escorted her to the first ball, “and your absurd compliments to his former paramours’ beauty, there is nothing for it but that you must be seen to be on friendly terms with those ladies. Society will then assume that, rather than being an utter nitwit—which you were—you are instead a young lady with a heretofore unappreciated, highly developed sense of humor.”
Alexandra had followed that and all the rest of his advice, and in four short weeks she had become A Success.
Amidst young, blushing girls in their first Season, Alexandra’s natural wit and innate intelligence made her seem more sophisticated and desirable; surrounded by truly sophisticated married women, her unaffected candor and gentle smile made her seem softer, more feminine, less brittle. Against a sea of blondes with milk-white complexions, Alexandra, with her vivid coloring and lush mahogany hair, glowed like a jewel against pale satin.
She was impulsive and witty and gay, but Alexandra’s popularity wasn’t due primarily to her beauty and wit, or the huge dowry Anthony had settled on her, or even the valuable connection to the Townsende family she would bring to her next husband.
She had become an exciting enigma, a mystery: She had been married to England’s most desired, and most notorious, rake; therefore it was naturally assumed she had been expertly initiated into the act of love. Yet even when she was her gayest, there was a glow of freshness and innocence that made most men hesitate to take liberties with her; a distinct aura of quiet pride about her that warned a man not to come too near.
As one besotted swain, Lord Merriweather, described it, “She makes me want to know everything about her at the same time she makes me feel as if I never really could. I daresay no one truly knows the ‘real’ her, not really. Hawthorne’s young widow is a mystery, I tell you. Everyone thinks so. It’s damned intriguing.”
When Roddy repeated Lord Merriweather’s remarks to her, Alexandra’s soft lips trembled as she valiantly fought back gales of laughter. She knew exactly why the elegant gentlemen of the haute ton found her “mysterious” and difficult to understand—it was because, beneath her carefully acquired veneer of sophistication, Alexandra Lawrence Townsende was a complete sham!
On the surface, she had partially adopted the attitude of languid nonchalance that was de rigueur among Select Society—and particularly Jordan’s lofty friends—but neither the strictures of Society, nor Alexandra herself, could completely repress her natural ebullience or her innate common sense. She could not prevent her eyes from glowing with laughter when someone paid her outrageously flowery compliments, nor could she stop the animated glow that leapt to her cheeks when she was challenged to a race in Hyde Park; nor completely hide her fascination with the tales a noted explorer told of his recent jaunt through the wild jungles of a distant continent, where, he said, the natives carried spears that had been dipped in deadly poison.
The world, and the people who inhabited it, had again become as exciting and interesting to her as they had been when she was a girl sitting at her grandfather’s knee.
* * *
Beside her, one of Alexandra??
?s swains handed her a glass of sparkling champagne, and she accepted it with a soft smile, raising the glass to her lips as she watched the swirling dancers waltzing before her. Across the room, Roddy raised his glass to her in a silent toast, and she lifted hers in answer. Roddy Carstairs, in many ways, was still a puzzle to her, but she was oddly fond of him and extremely grateful.
Only once in all these weeks had Roddy given Alexandra cause to dislike him and that was when he repeated the story of her original meeting with Jordan, which she had told him in confidence after obtaining his word not to spread the story.
Within twenty-four hours, London was on fire with the gossip that Alexandra Townsende, as a seventeen-year-old girl, had saved Hawk’s life.
Within forty-eight more hours, the “mystery” surrounding Alexandra multiplied tenfold. So did her popularity and the number of her suitors.
When Alexandra confronted Roddy with his perfidy, he had looked at her as if she were a complete fool. “My dear girl,” he had drawled, “I gave my word not to tell anyone that you shot a man to save dear Jordan, and I have not done so. I did not, however, promise not to tell anyone you saved his life—that tasty morsel was entirely too delicious to keep to myself. Your deceased husband, you see,” he had explained with a derisive smile, “was purported to be a rather dangerous man when crossed. He was a crack shot and an expert swordsman, as several husbands, including Lady Whitmore’s and Lady Grangerfield’s, ascertained for themselves.”
Inwardly, Alexandra was disgusted by the husbands’ hypocritical attitudes, but she tried not to judge them too harshly. She tried not to judge anyone too harshly, for that matter, because she remembered with painful clarity how it had felt to be ostracized.
As a result, shy young men flocked to her side because they knew the beautiful young Duchess of Hawthorne would never humiliate them with a disdainful glance or a joke at their expense. Older, intelligent men jostled one another for the right to take her down to dinner or dance with her, because she did not require them to mouth absurd, prescribed platitudes. Instead, they could speak to her on a variety of interesting subjects.