JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (29 page)

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 ft 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 quickly 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 frends 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.

The Corinthian set admired not only her abundant beauty, but her famous skill with a rapier, and they flocked to the house on Upper Brook Street in hopes of seeing her fence, which they were rarely permitted to do—or, better yet, to fence with Hawthorne and thus impress her with their
own
skill, so they might win her undivided notice.

In that last regard, young Lord Sevely, who was too clumsy to fence and too shy to ask her to dance with him, outdid them all. After noting that Lady Melanie Camden and the elderly under-butler at the house on Brook Street (who seemed to be quite deaf) called Alexandra by a special nickname, he wrote a poem to her and had it published. He called it "Ode to Alex."

Not to be outdone by a mere "weanling" like Sevely, the elderly Sir Dilbeck, whose hobby was botany, named a new variety of rose he'd grafted in her honor, calling it "Glorious Alex."

The rest of Alexandra's suitors, annoyed by the implied liberties taken by the other two, followed suit. They, too, began calling her Alex.

«
^
»

I
n answer to
his grandmother's summons, Anthony strolled into the drawing room and found her standing at the window, gazing down at the fashionable carriages returning to Upper Brook Street from the ritual afternoon promenade in the park.

"Come here a moment, Anthony," she said in her most regal voice. "Look out at the street and tell me what you see."

Anthony peered out the window. "Carriages coming back from the park—the same thing I see every day."

"And what else do you see?"

"I see Alexandra arriving in one of them with John Holliday. The phaeton drawing up behind them is Peter Weslyn's—and Gordon Bradford is with him. The carriage in front of Holliday's belongs to Lord Tinsdale, who is already in the salon, cooling his heels with Jimmy Montfort. Poor Holliday," Anthony chuckled. "He sent word he wishes to speak privately with me this afternoon. So did Weslyn, Bradford, and Tinsdale. They mean to offer for her, of course."