Something Wonderful Read online

  It took Alexandra most of the waltz before she began to relax and stop counting off the steps in her head. In fact, she had just decided that she was not likely to miss a step and tread on the well-shod feet of her elegant, bored-looking dancing partner when he said something that nearly made her do exactly that. “Tell me, my dear,” he said in a sardonic drawl, “how have you managed to blossom as you have in the frigid company of the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne?”

  The music was building to a crescendo as the waltz neared its end, and Alexandra was certain she must have misunderstood him. “1—I beg your pardon?”

  “I was expressing my admiration for your courage in having survived a full year with our most esteemed icicle— the dowager duchess. I daresay you have my sympathy for what you must have endured this past year.”

  Alexandra, who had no experience with this sort of sophisticated, brittle repartee, did not know it was considered fashionable, and so she reacted with shocked loyalty to the woman she had come to love. “Obviously you are not well-acquainted with her grace.”

  “Oh, but I am. And you have my deepest sympathy.”

  “I do not need your sympathy, my lord, and you cannot know her well and still speak of her thus.”

  Roddy Carstairs stared at her with cold displeasure. “I daresay I’m well enough acquainted with her to have suffered frostbite on several occasions. The old woman is a dragon.”

  “She is generous and kind!”

  “You,” he said with a jeering smile, “are either afraid to speak the truth, or you are the most naive chit alive.”

  “And you,” Alexandra retorted with a look of glacial scorn that would have done credit to the dowager herself, “are either too blind to see the truth, or you are extremely vicious.” At that moment the waltz came to an end, and Alexandra delivered the unforgivable—and unmistakable —insult of turning her back on him and walking away.

  Unaware that anyone had been watching them, she returned to Tony and the duchess, but her actions had indeed been noted by many of the guests, several of whom lost no time in chiding the proud knight for his lack of success with the young duchess. In return, Sir Roderick retaliated by becoming her most vocal detractor that same night and expressing to his acquaintances his discovery, during their brief dance, that the Duchess of Hawthorne was a vapid, foolish, vain chit and a dead bore without conversation, polish, or wit.

  Within one hour, Alexandra innocently verified to the guests that she was certainly excruciatingly foolish. She was standing amidst a huge group of elegantly attired people in their twenties and early thirties. Several of the guests were enthusiastically discussing the ballet they’d attended the night before and the dazzling performance given by a ballerina named Elise Grandeaux. Turning to Anthony, Alexandra raised her voice slightly in order to be heard over the din, and had innocently asked if Jordan had enjoyed the ballet. Two dozen people seemed to stop talking and gape at her with expressions that ranged from embarrassment to derision.

  The second incident occurred shortly thereafter. Anthony had left her with a group of people, including two young dandies who were discussing the acceptable height of shirtpoints, when Alexandra’s gaze was drawn to two of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. They were standing close together, but with their backs to one another, and they were both minutely scrutinizing Alexandra’s features over their shoulders. One was a coolly beautiful blonde in her late twenties, the other a lush brunette a few years younger.

  Jordan had once remarked that Alexandra reminded him of a Gainsborough portrait, she remembered fondly, but these two women were worthy of no less a master than Rembrandt. Realizing that Mr. Warren had been speaking to her, Alexandra begged his pardon for her lack of attention, and inclined her head toward the two women who had distracted her. “Are they not the two loveliest females you’ve ever beheld?” she asked with a smile of sheer admiration and no jealousy.

  The group surrounding her looked first at the two women, then at her. Brows shot up, eyes widened, and fans lifted to conceal amused smiles. By the end of the ball, four hundred people had heard that Hawk’s widow had been admiring two of his former paramours, Lady Allison Whitmore and Lady Elizabeth Grangerfield. So diverting was that tidbit that even Lady Grangerfield and Lady Whitmore—whose friendship had long ago been destroyed by their mutual desire for the same man—heard about it. And for the first time in years, they were seen laughing uproariously together, like the best of friends.

  Alexandra was blissfully unaware of her latest gaffe, but she was acutely aware as the evening progressed that people seemed to be laughing at her behind their hands.

  On the way home in the coach, she pleaded with Anthony to tell her if something had gone awry, but he merely patted her shoulder and soothingly told her she was “a great success,” while the duchess remarked that she had given “an excellent account” of herself.

  Despite that, Alexandra knew instinctively that something was very wrong. During the following week of balls, soirées, Venetian breakfasts, and musicales, the sardonic, sidelong glances directed at her became almost unendurable. Hurt and bewildered, she sought refuge among the dowager’s acquaintances who, although decades older than she, did not seem to eye her as an amusing, peculiar, pathetic creature. Moreover, with them, she could repeat some of the wondrous stories of Jordan’s skill and daring which she’d heard from Hawthorne’s head footman and chief groom, such as the time he saved the head groom from drowning.

  It did not dawn on Alexandra that the polite, older people who listened to her glowing accounts were concluding that she had been sadly and ludicrously besotted with Hawthorne—or that these same people might repeat this observation to their younger relatives, who in turn spread the word to all their friends.

  On rare occasions, Alexandra was asked to dance, but only by men who were interested in the huge dowry Anthony and the duchess had settled on her—or by men who were mildly interested in sampling the body of the young woman who had been married to one of England’s most notorious libertines. Alexandra sensed, without knowing why, that none of these gentlemen truly liked her and she did the only thing she could think of to hide her confusion and misery: She put her chin up and with cool politeness made it infinitely clear she preferred to remain with the dowager’s set.

  As a result, Alexandra was dubbed the Ice Duchess, and the unkind sobriquet stuck. Jokes circulated amongst the ton which implied that Jordan Townsende may have thought drowning was preferable to being frozen to death in his wife’s bed. It was recalled with considerable relish that Jordan had been seen emerging from the lavish lodgings he provided for his lovely ballerina on the very afternoon the announcement of his marriage appeared in the Times.

  Moreover, it was remarked upon at length and with much derision that Jordan’s mistress had laughingly told a friend that very same evening that Jordan’s marriage had been one of “Inconvenience” and that he had no intention of breaking off their relationship.

  Within two weeks, Alexandra was painfully aware that she was a hopeless social outcast, but as she did not hear the talk, she had no way of discovering why. All she knew was that the ton treated her either with patronization, amusement, or occasionally, outright scorn—and that she had failed Jordan miserably. It was the latter that hurt her most. She spent hours standing in the hall in front of his likeness, trying not to cry, silently apologizing to him for her failure and begging him to forgive her.

  * * *

  “Can you hear me, Hawthorne? Wake up, man!”

  With an effort that nearly sapped his strength, Jordan responded to the whispered command and slowly forced his lids open. Blinding white light poured in through tiny openings in the walls high above, searing his eyes, while pain again sent him plunging into the dark oblivion of unconsciousness.

  It was night again when he came around and saw the grimy face of George Morgan, another captive from the Lancaster whom he hadn’t seen since they were taken off the ship three months ago. “Where am I?�