Something Wonderful Read online

  When the butler merely gaped at her, Mary Ellen whirled around and confronted a footman, executed another curtsy, and then implored, “Where is Alexandra, sir? Please tell me!”

  Alexandra plummeted down the staircase and into the foyer, throwing her arms around Mary Ellen, packages, bonnet, and all. “Mary Ellen!” she burst out joyously. “I’m so happy you’ve come—”

  In the normal tomblike silence of the duchess’ stately home, this noisy greeting ranked as an uproar and therefore drew not only three more servants into the foyer, but the dowager duchess and her eldest grandson as well.

  In Morsham, Mary Ellen came from a simple, straightforward farm family which neither knew nor cared about refined manners, genteel behavior, or the opinions of their betters, whom they never came into contact with anyway. And so Mary Ellen was blessedly unaware of, and supremely unconcerned with, the fact that she was being judged on sight and found wanting by the inhabitants of Rosemeade, including the butler and footmen.

  She cared naught for their opinions; all that mattered to her loyal heart was that Alexandra was apparently in some sort of trouble. “Oh, Alex!” Mary Ellen exclaimed in an agitated, disjointed rush. “I thought you were dying! And here you are looking almost as well as ever, except a little pale, which probably comes from inhabiting this gloomy house with these gloomy people.” Scarcely pausing for breath, she continued anxiously, “Your note sounded so grim, and Mama was going to come too, but she couldn’t, because my papa’s not well again. And that dreadful coachman wouldn’t tell me a thing about what was wrong with you, although I pleaded with him to do so. All he would do was look down his huge nose at me and say, ‘I’m sure it isn’t my place to know.’ Now tell me at once before I burst! Why are you ‘desolate’ and what is the ‘horrible disaster’ you wrote about and—and whoever are these people!”

  Behind them the duchess’ voice snapped like a whip, “I believe Miss Lawrence is ‘desolate’ because she is about to be married to the owner of this ‘gloomy’ house, who happens to be my grandson.”

  Mary Ellen’s mouth dropped open and she whirled on Alexandra. “Oh, no!” she wailed, her horrified gaze flying to Ramsey, whom she erroneously deduced from his fine black suit to be the owner of the house. “Alex, you aren’t going to marry that man! I won’t let you! Alex, he’s fat!”

  Seeing the electrified wrath which was beginning to emanate from his grandmother, Jordan cleared his throat from the doorway across the hall, where he had been observing the scene with mingled irritation and amusement. “Alexandra, perhaps your friend would like to be relieved of her parcels and then properly introduced?”

  Alexandra jumped at the unexpected sound of his deep voice. “Yes. Yes, of course,” she said hastily as Ramsey stepped forward and took a bundle from each of Mary Ellen’s arms. “Whatever is in that large one?” Alexandra asked in an underbreath as Ramsey turned and started down the hall.

  “Remedies made from entrails and mold,” Mary Ellen lied loudly, “which Mama made for whatever might have ailed you.”

  Ramsey’s arm shot straight out, and both girls choked back their laughter, but Alexandra’s amusement vanished as quickly as it had come. Grasping Mary Ellen’s elbow and giving it a warning squeeze, she turned her friend around so they faced Jordan and his grandmother. Mary Ellen took one look at the duchess’ granite features and took an alarmed step back, while Alexandra stumbled nervously through the introductions.

  Ignoring Mary Ellen’s stammered greeting, the duchess snapped a question at the girl: “Irish?” she demanded in an awful voice.

  More confused than intimidated, Mary Ellen nodded.

  “I should have expected that,” her grace replied bitterly. “And Catholic, too, no doubt?”

  Mary Ellen nodded again.

  “Naturally.” With a long-suffering look at Jordan, the duchess turned on her heel and marched into the salon—a queen unable to endure the offensive presence of such lowly, repulsive mortals.

  Mary Ellen watched her leave, a perplexed expression on her pretty face as she peered after her, then she turned while Alex introduced the tall man as the Duke of Hawthorne.

  Too thunderstruck to say a word to the man, Mary Ellen looked to Alex, her eyes wide. “A duke?” she whispered, ignoring the holder of that title, who was waiting for her curtsy.

  Alexandra nodded, already realizing that having Mary Ellen come here had been impossibly unfair to the simple country girl.

  “A real, genuine, honest-to-goodness duke?” Mary Ellen persisted in an underbreath, so intimidated she could not bear to look upon his face.

  “The real thing,” Jordan drawled dryly. “A real, genuine, honest-to-goodness duke. Now that we’ve all decided who I am, why don’t we guess who you are?”

  Flushing to the roots of her flaming red hair, Mary Ellen curtsied, cleared her throat, and said, “Mary Ellen O’Toole, sir. My lord. Your highness.” She curtsied again. “At your service, sir. Er—my lor—”

  “ ‘Your grace’ will do,” Jordan interrupted.

  “What?” Mary Ellen echoed blankly, her flush deepening.

  “I’ll explain upstairs,” Alexandra whispered. Regathering her wits, she looked uncertainly at Jordan, who was looming in the doorway like a dark, giant god. Larger than life. Forbidding. Yet strangely compelling. “If you’ll excuse us, your grace, I will take Mary Ellen upstairs.”

  “By all means,” Jordan drawled, and Alexandra had the humiliating feeling that he found the pair of them as absurdly amusing as a pair of clumsy mongrel puppies tumbling about in a stableyard.

  As they passed the salon, the duchess’ voice rolled out like a muted clap of thunder: “Curtsy!” she snapped.

  Both girls lurched around and curtsied in unison to the doorway of the salon.

  “Is she demented?” Mary Ellen burst out the moment they had gained the privacy of Alexandra’s bedchamber. Her eyes wide with fright and affront, she looked around the luxurious room as if she expected the duchess to materialize like an evil specter. “Does she always go about snapping single words at people—‘Irish’? ‘Catholic’? ‘Curtsy’?” Mary Ellen mimicked.

  “This is bedlam,” Alexandra agreed, her spontaneous laugh choked off as her dire predicament reclaimed her thoughts. “And I’m marrying into it.”

  “But why?” Mary Ellen breathed, her open features a mask of alarm. “Alex, what has happened to you? Only four days ago, we were jousting and laughing together, and then you vanished, and now the whole village is talking about you. Mama says I mustn’t pay any mind to anything I hear until we talk to you ourselves, but the squire’s wife told Honor, who told me, that we mustn’t ever speak to you again. We must cross the street if we see you coming and avoid you because you are soiled now.”

  Alexandra did not know it was possible to feel more alone and wretched than she already did, but this piece of news made her heart cry out in anguished protest. Everyone had believed the worst of her, after all. The people she had known since babyhood were willing to make her an outcast, without ever hearing her side of the story. Only Mary Ellen and her family believed in her enough to wait for explanations.

  Sinking down on the gold coverlet, Alexandra raised her stricken eyes to her only friend. “I’ll tell you what happened . . .”

  For several long minutes after Alexandra finished explaining everything, Mary Ellen could only stare at her in amazed silence. Slowly though, Mary Ellen’s blank expression faded and became more thoughtful, then it became positively luminous. “Alex!” Mary Ellen breathed, breaking into a broad smile as her mind conjured up a fresh vision of the tall man Alexandra was about to marry. “Your betrothed husband is not only a duke, he’s positively gorgeous! He is—don’t deny it. I thought so the moment I clapped eyes on him downstairs, only I was very distressed over you, and so I didn’t really think about it.”

  Well aware of Mary Ellen’s fascination with and for the opposite sex, Alexandra said a little self-consciously, “His appearance is—not e