JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (23 page)

With a determined scowl upon her face and Ramsey trailing solicitously upon her heels, the duchess walked slowly into the yellow salon the next morning, where Anthony was reading the newspaper and Alexandra was sitting at a desk, staring pensively into space.

As the duchess gazed at the pale, courageous girl with the hollow cheekbones who had pulled her through her grief, her expression softened, then underwent an immediate, radical change as her glance fell on Henry, who was alternately chasing his own tail and tugging at the hem of Alexandra's black mourning gown. "Be still!" she commanded the undisciplined beast.

Alexandra started, Anthony jumped, but Henry merely wagged his tail in greeting and renewed his gleeful play, undeterred. Caught off guard by this unprecedented case of flagrant defiance, the dowager attempted to stare the rambunctious puppy into submission and, when that had no effect, she rounded on the stately butler. "Ramsey," she commanded imperiously, "see that this deplorable creature is taken for a long, exhausting walk."

"Yes, your grace. At once," the stately butler said, bowing again, his expression deadpan. Bending down, he grasped the puppy by the scruff of his neck with his right hand, placed his left hand under the dog's furry rump, and held the squirming puppy as far away from his fastidious self as the length of his arms permitted.

"Now then," the duchess said briskly, and Alexandra hastily stifled her wayward smile. "Anthony informs me you intend to go home."

"Yes. I'd like to leave tomorrow, after the memorial service."

"You'll do nothing of the sort. You will accompany Anthony and me to Hawthorne."

Alexandra had been dreading having to return to her old life and trying to go on as if Jordan had never lived, but she had not considered going to Hawthorne. "Why should I do that?"

"Because you are the Duchess of Hawthorne, and your place is with your husband's family."

Alexandra hesitated, then she shook her head. "My place is at home."

"Rubbish!" the duchess declared stoutly, and Alexandra couldn't help smiling at the return of the elderly woman's familiar, autocratic manner; it was vastly preferable to the hollow shell that grief had made of her. "On the same morning you wed Hawthorne," the duchess continued determinedly, "he specifically entrusted me with the task of making you into all you should be, in order that you might ultimately take your rightful place in Society. Although my grandson is no longer here, I trust I have enough
loyalty,"
she emphasized, "to carry out his wishes."

The emphasis on the word "loyalty" made Alexandra recall—as the dowager meant her to do—that she herself had told the duchess her grandson had admired that trait in her. Alexandra hesitated, caught between guilt, responsibility, and concern for her own welfare should she try to live at Hawthorne, removed from everything and everyone she knew and loved. The duchess was valiantly struggling to cope with her own grief; she could not help Alexandra shoulder hers. On the other hand, Alexandra wasn't certain she could carry the terrible burden alone, as she had done when her grandfather and her father died. "You are kindness itself to suggest I live with you, ma'am, but I fear I cannot," Alexandra declined after a moment's further thought. "With my mother gone away, I have responsibilities to others, which must take first consideration."

"What responsibilities?" the duchess demanded.

"Penrose and Filbert. With my mother gone away, they will have no one to look after them. I had intended to ask my husband to make a place for them at his house, but—"

"Who" she interrupted imperiously, "are Filbert and Penrose?"

"Penrose is our butler and Filbert our footman."

"I have long been under the impression," said her grace with asperity, "that servants exist to care for their employers, and not the other way round. However," she unbent enough to say, "I applaud your sense of responsibility. You may bring them to Hawthorne," she magnanimously decreed. "I daresay we can always use another servant or two."

"They're quite old!" Alexandra hastily interjected. "They can't work hard, but they're both proud, and they need to believe they're desperately helpful. I've, well, fostered that delusion in them."

"I, too, have always felt it my Christian duty to ensure elderly servants are allowed to work so long as they wish to and are able," the duchess lied baldly, hurtling a killing glance at her incredulous grandson. Converting Alexandra into a polished young socialite was a project she was bent on accomplishing. It was a challenge—a duty—a goal. She was unwilling to admit that the courageous girl with the gypsy curls, who had pulled her through her shock and grief, might have stolen a permanent place in her heart, or that she was loath to bid her goodbye.

"I don't think—" Alexandra began.

Realizing Alexandra was about to refuse again, the duchess pulled out all the stops: "Alexandra, you are a Townsende now, and your place is with us. Moreover, it is your avowed duty to honor your husband's wishes, and he specifically wished for you to become a credit to his illustrious name."

Alexandra's resistance dissolved as the duchess' last words finally struck home. Her name was
Townsende
now, not Lawrence, she realized with a burst of pride and pleasure. She had not lost everything when she lost him; he had given her his name! In return, Alexandra recalled with a sharp pang of nostalgia, she had solemnly pledged her word to Jordan to honor him and to obey his wishes. Apparently, he had wished her to become a proper lady worthy of his name and to take a place in Society—whatever that meant Tenderness swelled in her heart as she raised her eyes to the duchess and softly promised, "I will do as he wished."

"Excellent," said the duchess gruffly. When Alexandra left to see to her packing, Anthony leaned back in his chair and leveled his amused gaze upon his grandmother, who reacted by drawing herself up stiffly in her chair and trying to stare him out of countenance. The ploy failed. "Tell me," he drawled in a laughter-tinged voice, "when did you develop this violent desire to employ elderly servants?"

"When I realized it was the only way to keep Alexandra from leaving," she replied bluntly. "I will not permit that child to lock herself away in some godforsaken village and wear widow's weeds for the rest of her life. She is scarcely eighteen years old."

«
^
»

H
awthorne, the ancestral estate
of twelve generations of Townsendes comprised 50,000 acres of woods, parkland, rolling hills, and fertile fields. Imposing black iron gates bearing the Hawthorne coat of arms blocked the entrance, and a liveried gatekeeper came out of a stone gatehouse to push open the heavy gates so the elegant traveling chaises could pass.

Sitting beside the duchess, Alexandra gazed out the windows as the coach swept down a smooth, curving drive that wound decorously through acres and acres of immaculately clipped green velvet lawns.

Huge trees marched along on either side of the smooth drive, stretching their stately branches like leafy umbrellas above the coaches. Although Hawthorne belonged to Anthony now, in her heart Alexandra thought of it as Jordan's. This was his home, the place where he was born, and where he'd grown to manhood. Here she would learn about him and come to know him as she had never had the chance to do in life. Simply by being here, she already felt closer to him. "Hawthorne is more beautiful than any place I've ever imagined," she breathed.

Anthony grinned at her awed enthusiasm. "Wait until you see the house itself," he said, and from his tone Alexandra knew it would be very grand indeed. Even forewarned, however, she drew in her breath sharply when the coach rounded a bend in the drive. A half mile ahead, spread out before her in all its majestic splendor, was a three-story stone and glass mansion of over two hundred rooms, set against a backdrop of rolling green hills, crystal blue streams, and terraced gardens. In the foreground, across the drive from the house, swans drifted on the tranquil surface of an enormous lake, and, off to the right, a beautiful white gazebo with graceful columns in the classic Greek style overlooked the lake and parkland.

"It's beyond beautiful," Alexandra whispered, "it's beyond anything." A half-dozen footmen were standing at attention upon the shallow, graceful steps that led from the drive to the front door. Stifling the feeling that she was being very rude, Alexandra followed the duchess' example when she alighted from the coach and walked past the servants as if they were invisible.

The front door was opened wide by a servant whose lofty bearing instantly proclaimed him head butler and ruler of the household staff. The duchess introduced him as Higgins, then walked into the hall with Alexandra at her side.

A wide, curving marble staircase swept upward in a graceful half circle from the foyer to the second story, then across a balcony and up to the third story. Alexandra and the duchess ascended the curving staircase together, and Alexandra was shown into a splendid suite of rooms decorated in shades of rose.

After the maid left them, the duchess turned to Alexandra. "Would you like to rest? Yesterday was an ordeal for us both."

Alexandra's memory of Jordan's memorial service yesterday was a blur of pain and unreality—a grim haze populated by hundreds of somber faces glancing speculatively at her as she stood quietly beside the duchess in the huge church. Anthony's widowed mother and his younger brother, who was lame, stood on her other side, their faces pale and strained. A half hour ago, their coach had turned in to the drive of Anthony's former home. Alexandra liked them both and was glad they'd be nearby.

"Instead of resting, would it be possible for me to see his room, ma'am? You see, I was married to Jordan, but I never had an opportunity to truly know him. He was a boy in this house, and he lived in it until the week before I met him." The familiar, aching lump of tears swelled in Alexandra's throat and she finished in an unsteady voice, "I want to find him, to learn about him, and I can do it here. That is one of the reasons I agreed to come with you."

Tenderness so overwhelmed the duchess that she started to raise her hand and lay it against Alexandra's pale cheek, then she checked herself and said a trifle brusquely, "I'll have Gibbons, the head footman, sent up to you."

Gibbons, a spry, elderly man, appeared a few moments later and escorted Alexandra to what he called "the Master Bedchambers"—a majestic suite of rooms on the second floor, with an entire wall of mullioned glass from floor to ceiling, which overlooked the grounds.

The instant Alexandra stepped inside, she noticed the faint, achingly familiar scent of Jordan's spicy cologne, the same scent that had clung to his smoothly shaven jaw and chin when she had fallen asleep in his arms at night. The pain of his death seeped into her very bones and lodged there like a dull, aching throb, and yet, she felt strangely comforted being here, because it banished the haunting feeling that her sudden, four-day marriage to a splendid stranger had been imaginary.

Turning, she let her gaze rove lovingly over every inch of the room, from the lavishly carved plasterwork at the ceiling to the magnificent Persian carpets of deep blue and gold beneath her feet. Two massive fireplaces of cream marble were at opposite ends of the enormous room, their hearths so cavernous she could easily have stood up inside them. An immense bed with a deep-blue satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold stood on a raised dais on her far left, beneath a stately canopy of blue and gold attached to the high ceiling. On her right, a pair of gold-silk settees faced each other in front of one of the fireplaces.

"I would like to look around," she explained to the footman, her voice a reverent whisper, as if she were in some holy, sanctified place, which indeed she rather felt she was. Walking over to the rosewood bureau, she lovingly touched his onyx-backed brushes, still laid out as if they were only waiting for his hand to grasp them, then she stood on tiptoe, trying to see her reflection in the mirror above the bureau. Jordan's mirror. The mirror was hung at a height to suit its former owner and, even standing on tiptoe, Alexandra could see only her forehead and eyes.
How very tall he was
, she thought, smiling winsomely.

Three more rooms opened off the bedchamber—a dressing room, a study with book-lined walls and soft leather chairs, and another room that made Alexandra gasp. Spread out before her was a huge semicircular room of gold-veined black marble walls and floors with a huge, round sunken marble pit of some sort in the center. "What in the world is this?" Alexandra asked.

"A bathing room, your grace," the footman replied and bowed again.

"A bathing room?" Alexandra repeated, staring in wonder at the gold faucets and graceful marble pillars that stood at the perimeter of the bathing pool, then soared to the ceiling beneath a round skylight.

"Master Jordan believed in modern-i-zations, your grace," the footman put in and Alexandra turned at the sound of pride and fondness in the old servant's voice.

"I'd rather be called simply 'Miss Alexandra,' " she explained with a warm smile. He looked so appalled that she conceded," 'Lady Alexandra' then. Did you know my husband well?"

"Better'n any of the staff, 'cept Mr. Smarth, the head groom." Sensing that he had an avid audience in Lady Alexandra, Gibbons promptly volunteered to give her a tour of the house and grounds, which lasted all of three hours and included visits to Jordan's favorite boyhood haunts, as well as introductions to Smarth, the head groom, who offered to tell her "all about Master Jordan," whenever she came down to the stables.