"There's another reason why it won't work," Alexandra said firmly.

"What is that?"

"I won't do it. Even if I could accomplish it, which I can't, I don't want to try."

"But why?" Melanie burst out. "Why ever not?"

"Because," Alexandra declared hotly, "I don't like him! I do not want him to love me, I do not even want him near me." So saying, she walked over to the bellpull to ring for tea.

"Nevertheless, it is still the only and best solution to this coil." Snatching up her gloves and reticule, Melanie pressed a kiss to Alexandra's forehead. "You're shocked and exhausted, you aren't thinking clearly. Leave everything to me.

She was halfway across the room when Alexandra realized that Melanie seemed to have a specific destination in mind and that she was in some haste to get there. "Where are you going, Mel?" she asked suspiciously.

"To see Roddy," Melanie said, turning in the doorway. "He can be depended upon to make certain Hawthorne is informed at the earliest possible moment that you are no longer the naive, unsophisticated country mouse he may think you are. Roddy will adore doing it," Melanie predicted cheerfully. "It's exactly the sort of rabble-rousing he most enjoys."

"Melanie, wait!" Alexandra burst out tiredly, but she did not particularly object to this part of Melanie's plan—not at this moment when exhaustion was beginning to overwhelm her. "Promise me you won't do anything else without telling me."

"Very well," Melanie said gaily and vanished with a wave.

Alexandra leaned her head back and closed her eyes as drowsiness began to overcome her.

The clock chiming the hour of ten, combined with the incessant arrivals of callers in the main hall downstairs, finally brought her fully awake. Leaning on an elbow, Alexandra blinked her eyes in the candlelit gloom of her bedchamber, surprised that she had somehow fallen asleep on the settee at what was normally considered a very early hour of the evening. She listened to the commotion downstairs, the constant opening and closing of the front door, and she sat up, groggily wondering why the entire haute ton seemed to be arriving on their doorstep… And then she remembered.

Hawk was back.

Evidently everyone thought he was here, and they were too eager to see him and speak to him to follow their own precepts of decorum, which would have required them at least to wait until tomorrow to call.

Hawk must have anticipated this, Alexandra decided irritably, as she got up and changed into a silk peignoir and climbed into bed. That was probably why he had chosen to spend the night at the duchess' house, leaving the rest of them here to try to deal with the furor of callers.

Her husband, she had no doubt, was blissfully in his bed, and enjoying a peaceful night.

Chapter Twenty

Alexandra was wrong on both counts. Jordan was not in bed and he was not enjoying his evening.

Seated in the baroque drawing room at his grandmother's town house, with his legs negligently stretched out in front of him and a bland expression upon his face, he was with three friends who'd come to welcome him home, as well as Roddy Carstairs, who'd apparently come to regale him with "amusing" stories about Alexandra's escapades.

After listening to Carstairs' tales for nearly an hour, Jordan was not mildly exasperated, nor somewhat irritated, nor very annoyed. He was livid. While he had been lying awake at night, worrying that his adoring young wife would be out of her mind with grief, she had been setting London on its ear. While he rotted in prison, Alexandra had been carrying on a dozen widely publicized flirtations. While he lay in chains, "Alex" had evidently pursued victory in a race at Gresham Green, and fought a mock duel with Lord Mayberry while wearing tight-fitting men's breeches that reportedly so distracted her opponent that the famous swordsman lost the match. She had gallivanted about at fairs and participated in some sort of havey-cavey assignation with a vicar at Southeby, who Jordan could have sworn was at least seventy years old. And that was not the half of it!

If Carstairs were to be believed, Tony had apparently received six dozen offers for her hand; and her rejected suitors had taken first to arguing over her, then quarreling, and finally one of them, Marbly, had actually tried to abduct her; some young fop named Sevely had published a poem in praise of her charms called "Ode to Alex"; and old Dilbeck had named his new rose "Glorious Alex"…

Leaning back in his chair, Jordan crossed his long legs at the ankles, raised a brandy to his lips, and listened to Carstairs' voice drone on, his features carefully showing only mild amusement at his wife's antics.

It was exactly the reaction his three friends expected of him, he knew, for amongst the Quality it was understood that husbands and wives were free to do as they wished—so long as they behaved with discretion. On the other hand, among the close-knit fraternity of gentlemen, it was also understood that a man was to be informed by his closest friends—in as delicate a fashion as possible—when his wife's antics threatened to cross the line of acceptability and cause him embarrassment. Which, Jordan suspected, was why his friends had not tried harder to silence Carstairs tonight.

If Carstairs hadn't chanced to arrive tonight simultaneously with Jordan's friends, he would never have been admitted to the house. To Jordan, he was nothing but a distant acquaintance and an irritating gossip, but the other three men in the room were Jordan's friends. And even though they had repeatedly tried to force Carstairs to talk of something else besides Alexandra's antics, it was obvious from their carefully neutral expressions that what Carstairs was saying was mostly true.

Jordan glanced speculatively at Carstairs, wondering why he had bothered to dash over here so quickly to regale Jordan with his stories. The entire ton knew that Jordan had never regarded women as anything other than amusing bedwarmers. He was the last man on earth they might have suspected of losing his senses over a pretty face or voluptuous body. They would have been amazed had they known he'd lost his head over an enchanting, dark-haired moppet, and long before she had shown much sign of becoming a real beauty.

The four men in the drawing room on Gloucester Street would have been equally dumbfounded to know that as Jordan languidly listened to Carstairs, he was seething inside. He was furious with Tony for letting Alexandra get out of hand and angry with his grandmother for not exerting some sort of control over her. Obviously, the fact that she was the Duchess of Hawthorne had enabled her to do as she pleased with relative impunity. Jordan could not change the past; however, he could drastically alter her future. But it was not Alexandra's antics that actually made him the angriest, or even her flirtations.