It seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke. When he did, his voice was calm and authoritative: “We have had two ‘beginnings,’ you and I—that first one at my grandmother’s house a year ago, and the one here in this house yesterday. Because of the circumstances, neither of them has been particularly auspicious. Today is the third—and last—beginning for us. In a few minutes, I will decide what the course of our future will be. In order to do that, I’d first like to hear what you have to say about this . . .” Reaching behind him, he picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and calmly handed it to her.
Curious, Alexandra took the sheet, glanced at it, then nearly shot out of her chair as fury boiled up inside her, exploding through her body with the force of a holocaust. On the sheet, Jordan had listed more than a dozen “questionable activities” including her dueling practice with Roddy, her race in Hyde Park, her brush with disgrace when Lord Marbly tried to lure her off to Wilton, and several other escapades that had been relatively harmless, but when catalogued in this fashion read like an indictment.
“Before I decide on the course of our future,” Jordan continued dispassionately, immune to the wrathful expression on her beautiful face, “I thought it only fair to give you a chance to deny any item on the list that isn’t true, as well as to offer any explanations you may wish to give.”
Rage, full-bodied and fortifying, sent Alexandra slowly to her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected he would have the gall to criticize her behavior. Why, next to the life he had led, she was as innocent as a babe.
“Of all the loathsome, hypocritical, arrogant—!” she burst out furiously, and then with a superhuman effort, she took control of her rampaging ire. Lifting her chin, she looked straight into his enigmatic eyes and took infuriated pleasure in baldly admitting to the entire—grossly exaggerated—list. “I’m guilty,” she wrathfully declared. “Guilty of every single meaningless, harmless, innocuous incident on that list.”
Jordan gazed at the tempestuous beauty standing before him, her eyes flashing like angry jewels, her breasts rising and falling with suppressed fury, and his anger gave way to a reluctant admiration for her honesty and courage in admitting her guilt.
Alexandra, however, was not finished. “How dare you confront me with a list of accusations and give me ultimatums about my future!” she raged, and before he could react, she moved sideways out of his reach, turned on her heel, and headed for the door.
“Come back here!” Jordan ordered.
Alexandra spun around so swiftly that her shining hair came spilling over her left shoulder in a riotous waterfall of gleaming waves and curls. “I’ll be back!” she assured wrathfully. “Just give me ten minutes.”
Jordan let her go, his brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown as he stared at the door she had slammed behind her. He hadn’t expected her to react quite so violently to the items on the list. In fact, he wasn’t entirely certain what he’d hoped to achieve by showing her the list, other than to somehow discover from her reaction if that was all she’d been up to while he was gone. The only thing he wanted, needed to know, was the one question he couldn’t possibly ask her—and that was who had shared her bed and her body while he was gone.
Reaching over to the stack of papers on his desk, he picked up a shipping contract and began absently reading it while he waited for her to return.
The list, he admitted to himself, had not been a sterling idea.
That conclusion was emphatically borne out a few minutes later, when Alexandra rapped upon the door, stalked into his study without waiting for him to invite her to do so, and slapped a sheet of paper on the desk beside his hip. “Since you want to exchange accusations and offer opportunities for denial,” she told him furiously, “I’ll give you the same ‘courtesy’ before I hand you an ultimatum about our future.”
Jordan’s curious glance shifted from her flushed, beautiful face to the sheet of paper lying on his desk. Laying aside the contract he’d been reviewing, he nodded toward the chair where she had been seated earlier, and waited until she sat down, then he picked up the list.
It consisted of only sixteen words. Eight names. Of his former paramours. Setting the list aside, he quirked a speculative brow at her and said nothing.
“Well?” she demanded finally. “Are there any inaccuracies on that list?”
“One inaccuracy,” he stated with infuriating calm, “and several omissions.”
“Inaccuracy?” Alexandra demanded, distracted by the glint of amusement in his eyes.
“Maryanne Winthrop spells her first name with a ‘y’ rather than an ‘i.’ ”
“Thank you for that edifying piece of information,” Alexandra retorted. “If I ever decide to give her a gaudy diamond bracelet to match the necklace everyone says you gave her, I shall be sure to spell her name correctly on the card.”
This time there was no doubting the humor tugging at the comer of his mouth and she came to her feet—a proudly enraged goddess dwarfed by a dark, arrogant giant of a man. “Now that you’ve admitted your guilt, I will tell you what the course of our future will be.” Pausing to draw an infuriated breath, Alexandra announced triumphantly, “I am going to get an annulment.”
The harsh words rebounded through the room, ricocheting off the walls, reverberating in the deafening silence. But not a flicker of emotion registered on Jordan’s impassive features. “An annulment,” he finally repeated. With the patience of a teacher discussing an absurd rhetorical issue with an inferior student, he said mildly, “Would you care to tell me how you intend to accomplish that?”
His damnable calm made Alexandra long to kick him in the shin. “I’ll do nothing of the sort. You can discover what my legal grounds are from—from whoever it is that handles these things.”
“Solicitors,” Jordan provided helpfully, “handle these things.’ ”
Her ire at his condescending superiority was almost more than Alexandra could contain as he smoothly added, “I can recommend several excellent solicitors for you to consult. I keep them on retainer.”
That outrageous suggestion was such an insult to her intelligence that Alexandra felt tears sting her eyes. “Was I such a gullible fool over you two years ago?” she demanded in a pain-edged whisper. “Was I so gullible that you honestly think I’d ask your solicitor to give me advice?”
Jordan’s brows pulled together as several astonishing realizations struck him at once: First, despite her magnificent show of courage and unconcern, Alexandra was apparently on the brink of tears; second, the brave, innocent, engaging girl he had married had become a gorgeous creature of exotic beauty and spirit, but along the way she had also acquired an undesirable streak of fiery rebellion; last— and most disconcerting—was the discovery that he was as physically attracted to her now as he had been a year ago. More so. Much more.
Calmly he said, “I was merely trying to spare you what will be a very embarrassing and completely futile ordeal in the office of some unknown—and possibly indiscreet— solicitor.”
“It will not be futile!”
“It will,” he stated with certainty. “The marriage was consummated, or have you forgotten?”
The bold reminder of the night she had lain naked and willing in his arms was more than Alexandra’s taut nerves could withstand. “I’m not senile,” she retorted, and the spark of laughter in his eyes made her so desperate to demolish his damnable calm that she informed him how she intended to get an annulment, after all. “Our marriage is invalid because I didn’t choose to marry you of my own free will!”
Instead of reacting with alarm, Hawk looked more amused than ever. “Tell that to a solicitor and he may laugh himself into a seizure. If a marriage was invalid merely because the bride felt obliged to marry a groom not of her choosing, then most of Society’s couples are—at this very moment—living in sin.”
“I wasn’t merely ‘obliged,’ ” Alexandra flung back. “I was coerced, ca
joled, connived, and seduced into doing it!”
“Then find a solicitor and tell him that, but bring your smelling salts because you’re going to have to revive him.”
Alex was horribly certain he was right, and her heart plummeted sickeningly. In the last fifteen minutes, she had already vented all her pent-up resentment and fury on Jordan—without seeing a single gratifying scrap of reaction from him—and now she suddenly felt devoid of everything including hope and hate. Empty. Raising her eyes to his, she looked at him as if he were a stranger, an unfamiliar specimen of humanity for whom she felt . . . nothing. “If I can’t get an annulment, I’ll get a divorce.”
Jordan’s jaw hardened as he suddenly realized Tony had apparently lied about their “familial” feelings for each other. “Not without my consent, you won’t,” he clipped. “So you can forget the idea of marrying Tony.”
“I haven’t any intention of marrying Tony!” She blazed with such feeling that Jordan relaxed slightly. “And I haven’t any intention of living as your wife, either.”
His mood vastly improved by her denial of any wish to marry Tony, Jordan studied her without anger. “Forgive me if I’m being dense, but I’m rather surprised you want an annulment.”
“No doubt you’re amazed to discover there’s a female on earth who finds you resistible,” she retorted bitterly.
“And that’s why you want an annulment? Because you find me ‘resistible.’ ”
“I want an annulment,” Alex replied, looking him right in the eye and speaking in a polite voice that completely belied her words, “because I don’t like you.”
Unbelievably, he smiled at that. “You don’t know me well enough to dislike me,” he teased.
“Oh, yes, I do!” Alex replied darkly. “And I refuse to be your wife.”
“You have no choice, sweetheart.”
The casual, empty endearment made her cheeks flame with ire. It was exactly the sort of thing she would have expected from a notorious flirt; no doubt she was supposed to melt at his feet now. “Don’t call me ‘sweetheart’! Whatever it takes, I’ll be free of you. And I do have a choice,” she decided on the spur of the moment “I—I can go home to Morsham and buy a cottage there.”
“And just how,” he asked dryly, “do you intend to pay for that cottage? You have no money.”
“But—when we were married you said you’d settled a large sum of money on me.”
“Which is yours to use,” Jordan clarified, “so long as I approve of the way you spend it.”
“How very convenient for you,” Alex said with stinging scorn. “You gave yourself money.”
Seen in that light, it was close enough to the truth that Jordan almost chuckled. He stared down into her stormy blue eyes and flushed face, wondering why, from the very first, she had always been able to make him laugh— wondering why he felt this consuming, unquenchable need now to possess and gentle her without breaking her spirit. She had changed tremendously during the past year, but she still suited him better than any other woman he could ever hope to find. “All this discussion of legalities has reminded me rather forcibly that I have several legal rights I haven’t claimed in more than a year,” he said, and caught her firmly by the arms, pulling her between his thighs.
“Have you no decency—” Alex burst out, squirming in mindless panic. “I’m still legally betrothed to your cousin!”
His chuckle was rich and deep. “Now there’s a persuasive argument.”
“I don’t want you to kiss me!” Alexandra warned furiously, pushing hard against his chest with her flattened hands and straining backward.
“That’s too bad,” he softly replied, and hauled her up against the solid wall of his chest, wrapping his arm around her back and effectively trapping her hands and forearms between their bodies, “because I intend to see if I can still make you feel ‘overheated.’ ”
“You’re wasting your time!” Alexandra cried, turning her head aside, drowning in humiliation at the brutal reminder of how openly besotted with him she had been when she told him his kisses had warmed her heart and body. According to all she’d heard, Jordan Townsende’s kisses were responsible for raising the temperatures of half the female population of England. “I was a naive child. I’m a grown woman now and I’ve been kissed by other men who do it very bit as well as you! Better in fact!”
Jordan retaliated by plunging the fingers of his free hand into the heavy hair at her nape and tugging sharply, forcing her head back. “How many have there been?” he asked, a muscle leaping in his taut jaw.
“Dozens! A hundred!” she choked.
“In that case,” he drawled in a soft, savage voice, “you ought to have learned enough to be able to make me burn.”
Before she could reply his mouth swooped down and captured hers with angry possessiveness, his lips moving back and forth in a ruthless, punishing kiss that was nothing like Tony’s gentle ones or the few stolen by the occasional overamorous gentlemen eager to see whether or not she would permit him some liberties. This kiss was unlike any other because, beneath the ruthlessness of it, there was flowing a demanding persuasion, an insistence that she kiss him back that was almost beyond denial—a promise that if she yielded, the kiss might gentle and become something quite different.
Alexandra felt the silent promise, understood it without knowing how she did, and her whole body began to shake with terror and shock as his mouth gentled imperceptibly and began molding itself to the contours of hers, exploring her lips with slow, searching intensity, urging her to participate in the kiss.
A gasp behind them made Jordan loosen his grip and Alexandra whirl around, only to have his arm tighten, clamping her firmly to his side as they both looked at a horrified Higgins, who was in the act of escorting three men, including Lord Camden, into the library.
The butler and the three men all stopped short. “I—I beg your pardon, your grace!” Higgins burst out, losing his composure for the first time since Alexandra had known him. “I understood you to say that when the earl arrived—”
“I’ll join you in a quarter of an hour,” Jordan told his three friends.
They left, but not before Alexandra had noted the amused expressions on all the men’s faces, and she turned on Jordan in humiliated outrage. “They’re going to think we mean to continue kissing for another quarter of an hour!” she burst out. “I hope you’re satisfied, you—”
“Satisfied?” he interrupted with amusement as he studied this tempestuous, unfamiliar, wildly desirable young woman who had once regarded him with childlike admiration in her glowing blue eyes. Gone were her unruly curls. Gone was the admiration in her eyes. Gone was the ingenuous hoyden he had married. In her place was this ravishing young beauty of uncertain temperament whom he felt an uncontrollable, irrational need to tame and to make respond to him as she once had. “Satisfied?” he asked again. “With that pitiful excuse for a kiss? Hardly.”
“I didn’t mean that!” Alexandra cried miserably. “Three days ago I was marrying another man. Have you no idea how odd those men must have thought it was when they saw you kissing me?”
“I doubt if anything we do will ever seem ‘odd’ to anyone,” Jordan answered with equal parts of amusement and irony, “not when they’ve already witnessed the entertaining spectacle of me barging in on your wedding to put a stop to it.”
For the first time, it occurred to her how comical that must have looked to Society—and how embarrassing it must have been to him—and Alexandra felt a tiny bubble of satisfied mirth.
“Go ahead and laugh,” he invited dryly, watching her visibly struggling to remain coldly aloof. “It was funny as hell.”
“Not,” Alexandra corrected, keeping her face scrupulously straight, “at the time, however.”
“No,” he agreed, and a lazy, devastating smile suddenly swept across his tanned features. “You should have seen the look on your face when you turned around at that altar and saw me standing there. You looked as if you were se
eing a ghost.” For one brief moment, she had looked overjoyed—as if she were seeing someone infinitely dear to her, he remembered.
“You looked like the wrath of God,” she said, uneasily aware of the magnetic charm he was suddenly exuding.
“I felt ridiculous.”
Reluctant admiration for his ability to laugh at himself blossomed in Alexandra’s heart, and for the moment she ignored the things she’d learned about him. Time rolled back and he was once again the smiling, compelling, achingly handsome man who had married her, teased her, and fought a mock duel in a glade with her. Unaware of the seconds ticking past, she stared up into his bold, mesmerizing grey eyes while her dazed mind finally accepted, fully and completely, that he was truly alive—that this was not a dream that would end as all her earlier ones had ended. He was alive. And he was, unbelievably, her husband. At least for the moment.
So lost was she in her own thoughts that it took a moment before she realized that his gaze had dropped to her lips and his arms were encircling her, drawing her against his hard frame.
“No! I—”
He smothered her objection with a hungry, wildly exciting kiss. Temporarily robbed of the anger that had fortified her resistance, Alexandra’s traitorous body lost its rigidity, and the scream of warning issued by her mind was stifled by her pounding heart and the shocking pleasure of being held again in the strong arms of the husband she had believed dead. A large masculine hand curved round her nape, long fingers stroking and soothing, while his other hand slid up and down her back, moving her closer and tighter to his full length.
His warm lips moving on hers, the sensation of his hardening body pressing against hers—it was all so achingly, poignantly, vibrantly familiar to her, because she had lived it in her dreams a thousand times. Knowing she was playing with fire, she let him kiss her, permitting herself—just this once—the forbidden, fleeting joy of his mouth and hands and body. But she did not respond, dared not respond.
Pulling his mouth from hers, Jordan brushed a warm kiss against her temple. “Kiss me,” he whispered, his breath sending vibrant warmth spilling through her veins. “Kiss me,” he coaxed hotly, trailing his mouth across her cheek, brushing insistent kisses along the sensitive curve of her neck and ear. His hands slid into her heavy hair, tilting her face up to his and his eyes held hers, teasing, challenging. “Forgotten how to do it?”