Something Wonderful Read online

  Fury ignited in the duke’s eyes. “No objection—” he thundered, then he bit back the rest of his words, clenching his jaw so tightly a muscle jerked in the side of his cheek. “And if I refuse?” he bit out.

  “Then I shall bring you up on charges before the magistrates in London. Don’t think I won’t,” Mrs. Lawrence cried.

  “You won’t do anything of the sort,” he said with scathing certainty. “To bring me up on charges would only broadcast throughout London the very scandal you apparently find so damaging to Alexandra.”

  Pushed past the bounds of reason by his arrogant calm and the recollection of her own ill-use at her husband’s hands, Mrs. Lawrence sprang from her chair, shaking with wrath. “Now you listen to me—I’ll do exactly what I said I’d do. Alexandra is either going to have the respectability of your name, or she’s going to be able to buy respectability with your money—every cent of it, if I have my way. Either way, we have nothing to lose. Do you understand me?” she nearly screamed. “I’ll not let you take advantage of us and cast us off the way my husband did. You’re a monster, just as he was. All men are monsters—selfish, unspeakable monsters . . .”

  Jordan stared icily at the nearly demented woman standing before him, her eyes feverishly bright, her hands clenched into fists so tightly that blue veins stood out beneath her skin. She meant it, he realized. She was evidently so consumed with loathing for her husband that she would actually subject Alexandra to a public scandal, simply to get even with another man—himself.

  “You kissed her,” Mrs. Lawrence rasped in furious accusation. “You put your hands on her, she admitted it—”

  “Mama, don’t!” Alexandra cried, wrapping her arms around her middle and doubling over with shame or pain, Jordan wasn’t certain which. “Don’t, please don’t do this,” she whispered brokenly. “Don’t do this to me.”

  Jordan looked at the child-woman who was huddled into a pitiful ball and could scarcely believe she was the same brave, laughing girl who had charged to his rescue two days ago.

  “God knows what else you let him do—”

  Jordan’s palm crashed down on the desk with a force that exploded throughout the oak-paneled room. “Enough! he thundered in a murderous voice. “Sit down!” he commanded Mrs. Lawrence, and when she’d rigidly obeyed, Jordan got out of his chair. Stalking around his desk, he took Alexandra’s arm in a none-too-gentle grasp and drew her out of her chair. “You come with me,” he clipped. “I want to speak privately with you.”

  Mrs. Lawrence opened her mouth to object, but the old duchess spoke at last, and when she did her voice dripped icicles. “Silence, Mrs. Lawrence! We have heard enough from you!”

  Alexandra nearly had to run to keep up with the duke as he marched her across the drawing room, through the doorway, and down the hall to a small salon decorated in shades of lavender. Once inside, he let go of her arm, strode across the room to the windows, and shoved his hands into his pockets. The silence scraped against her raw nerves as he stared rigidly out across the lawns, his profile harsh, forbidding. She knew he was thinking hard for some way out of marrying her, and she also knew that beneath that tautly controlled facade of his there was a terrible, volcanic rage—a rage that was undoubtedly going to erupt against her at any moment. Shamed to the depths of her being, Alexandra waited helplessly, watching as he lifted one hand and massaged the taut muscles in his neck, his expression becoming darker and more ominous as each second ticked by.

  He turned so abruptly that Alexandra took an automatic step backward. “Stop behaving like a frightened rabbit,” he snapped. “I’m the one who’s caught in a trap, not you.”

  A deadly calm settled over Alexandra, banishing everything but her shame. Her small chin lifted, her spine stiffened, and before his eyes Jordan saw her put up a valiant fight for control—a fight she won. She stood before him now, looking incongruously like a proud, boyish queen in refurbished rags, her eyes sparking like twin jewels. “I could not speak in the other room,” she said with only a slight tremor in her voice, “because my mother would never have let me, but had you not asked to speak privately to me, I intended to ask to speak to you.”

  “Say what you have to say and have done with it.”

  Alexandra’s chin lifted even higher at his chilling tone. Somehow she had let herself hope he would not treat her with the same brutal contempt he’d treated her family. “The idea of our marrying is ludicrous,” she began.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he snapped rudely.

  “We’re from two different worlds.”

  “Right again.”

  “You don’t want to marry me.”

  “Another bull’s-eye, Miss Lawrence,” he announced in an insulting drawl.

  “I don’t want to marry you either,” she retorted, humiliated to the core by every unkind word he said.

  “That’s very wise of you,” he agreed caustically. “I’d make an exceedingly bad husband.”

  “Moreover, I do not wish to be anyone’s wife. I wish to be a teacher, as my grandfather was, and to support myself.”

  “How extraordinary,” he mocked sarcastically. “And all this while, I’ve been harboring the delusion that all girls yearn to snare wealthy husbands.”

  “I am not like other girls.”

  “I sensed that from the moment I met you.”

  Alexandra heard the insult in his smoothly worded agreement, and she almost choked on her chagrin. “Then it’s settled. We won’t wed.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, and each word rang with bitter fury. “We have no choice, Miss Lawrence. That mother of yours will do exactly as she’s threatened. She’ll bring me up on public charges before the Court. In order to punish me, she’ll destroy you.”

  “No, no!” Alexandra burst out. “She won’t do it. You don’t understand about my mother. She’s—ill—she’s never recovered from my papa’s death.” Unconsciously, she caught at the sleeve of his immaculately tailored grey jacket, her eyes imploring, her voice urgent. “You mustn’t let them force you to marry me—you’ll hate me forever for it, I know you will. The villagers will forget the scandal, you’ll see. They’ll forgive me and forget. It was all my fault for stupidly fainting so you had to take me to the inn. I never faint, you see, but I’d just killed a man and—”

  “That’s enough!” Jordan said harshly, and felt the noose of matrimony tighten inexorably around his neck. Until Alexandra began to speak, he had been searching madly for some means of escape from this dilemma—he had even been ready to seize on her assurance that her mother was likely bluffing. He had, in fact, been preparing to start listing all the reasons why she would hate being married to him—only he had not counted on her selflessly pleading with him not to sacrifice himself on the altar of matrimony for her sake. He had also managed, temporarily, to forget that she had killed a man to save his own life.

  He stared down at the proud, pathetic child before him in her shabby gown. She had saved his life at the risk of her own, and in return he had effectively destroyed all her chances of getting a husband. With no husband to lighten her cares, she would be carrying the burden of that bizarre household on her thin shoulders for as long as she lived. He had inadvertently, but effectively, destroyed her future.

  Impatiently, he pulled her hand away from his sleeve. “There’s no way out of it for either of us,” he clipped. “I’ll arrange for a special license and we’ll be married here within the week. Your mother and your uncle,” he said with blistering contempt, “can stay at the local inn. I’ll not shelter either of them under my roof.”

  That last comment caused Alexandra more shamed anguish than anything else he had said to her.

  “I’ll pay for their lodgings,” he said shortly, misunderstanding the reason for her stricken expression.

  “It isn’t the expense!” she denied.

  “Then what’s bothering you?” he demanded impatiently.

  “It’s—” Alexandra turned her head, her gaze traveling d