JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (46 page)

Tomorrow, she decided, she would take whatever money Penrose had obtained for her grandfather's watch, and as soon as Jordan left the house, she and her two faithful old friends would leave London.

Stripping off her gown, Alexandra stretched out on the narrow bed, which had no linen on it, and closed her eyes. Weariness and confusion closed over her as she went over Jordan's behavior tonight. How could he be so murderously angry with her, and at the same time try to spare her public embarrassment, she wondered. She would never understand him. All she was sure of at that moment was that she was reduced to hiding from him in his own house—hiding in fear and anger from the same man whose disappearance had once made her want to die in order to be with him.

Lord Camden had arrived at the ball just as Jordan was leaving, only to discover that Melanie had already left. Politely refraining from showing the slightest surprise when Jordan suddenly recalled that he'd sent his own carriage home an hour earlier because he'd intended to ride home with Alexandra, Lord Camden obligingly offered him a ride home. The Camden carriage drew up before the house at No. 3, and Jordan bounded down. His mind on Alexandra, who would by now be awaiting him in her room, Jordan paid scant attention to the lone horseman who waited in the shadow of a house across the street, hat pulled low over his face, but his presence registered somewhere on the perimeter of Jordan's preoccupied mind. As if he scented danger, he turned on the second step to say goodbye to John Camden, but his gaze flicked to the slender horseman just as the shadowy figure raised his arm.

Jordan dove down and to the left just as the pistol fired, then came up in a running crouch, charging across the street in a futile attempt to give chase to the assassin who was already galloping away, wending deftly between the bulky carriages making their decorous way along Brook Street—the same crowd of carriages that prevented John Camden from giving chase in his own.

Edward Fawkes, a ruggedly built gentleman who specialized in handling delicate matters for a group of very select clients who did not want the authorities involved, glanced at his watch. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning as he sat across from the Duke of Hawthorne, who had employed him yesterday to investigate the two attempts on the duke's life and to learn who was behind them.

"My wife and I will depart for Hawthorne in the morning after we arise," the duke was saying. "An assassin can melt into the streets and alleys of London far easier than he can conceal himself in the country. If it were only my own life that is in jeopardy, I'd stay in the city. But if my cousin is behind this, he won't be able to risk my producing an heir, therefore my wife is now also endangered."

Fawkes nodded his agreement. "In the country, my men will be able to spot an unfamiliar person on the grounds of Hawthorne or loitering about the village. We can watch him."

"Your primary job is to protect my wife," the duke said curtly. "Once we're all at Hawthorne, I'll think of some plan to draw whoever is doing this out of hiding. Arrange for four of your men to ride guard around my coach tomorrow. With my own people, that will give us a total of twelve outriders."

"Is it possible the person who shot at you tonight could have been your cousin?" Edward Fawkes asked. "You said he wasn't at White's or the Lindworthy ball tonight."

Jordan wearily kneaded the knotted muscles at his nape. "It wasn't him. The horseman was much smaller than my cousin. Moreover, as I told you, I'm not completely convinced my cousin is behind this." Until today, when he learned old Grangerfield was dead, Jordan had hoped
he
was the one. After all, the first attempt had been made the night Jordan met Alexandra—only two days after he wounded Grangerfield in a duel. After tonight's episode, however, Jordan could no longer hold on to that hope.

"The two most common motives for murder are revenge and personal gain," Fawkes said carefully. "Your cousin has a great deal to gain from your death. More now even than before."

Jordan didn't ask what he meant; he already knew it was Alexandra. Alexandra—? His face paled as he recalled the vaguely familiar, slender figure who'd shot at him tonight. It could have been a woman…

"You've thought of something important?" the investigator said quickly, correctly assessing Jordan's expression.

"No," Jordan snapped and surged to his feet, abruptly concluding the meeting. The idea of Alexandra trying to kill him was ludicrous. Absurd. But the words she'd hurled at him this morning came back to haunt him:
Whatever it takes, I'll be free of this marriage
.

"Just one more thing, your grace," Fawkes said as he also arose. "Could the person who shot at you tonight have been the same one you thought you'd killed on the road near Morsham last spring—the one you left for dead? You described him as being of small stature."

Jordan felt dizzy with relief. "It could have been. As I said, I couldn't see his face tonight."

When Fawkes left, Jordan climbed the stairs to his own chamber. Tired, angry, and frustrated at being the target of some unknown lunatic who wanted him dead, he sent his sleepy valet off to bed and slowly removed his shirt. Alexandra was in the next room, he thought, and his weariness began to dissipate as he visualized awakening her from sleep with a kiss.

Walking over to the connecting door, he strode through her dressing room and into the dark bedchamber. Moonlight sifted through the windows, casting a silvery beam across the perfectly smooth satin coverlet atop her bed.

Alexandra had not come home.

Striding swiftly into his own room, he jerked the bellrope.

Thirty minutes later, the entire sleepy-eyed household staff was lined up before him in the drawing room answering his questions—with the single notable exception of Penrose, Alexandra's elderly servant. He, too, was mysteriously missing.

After intensive questioning, all Jordan had learned for certain was that his coachman had watched Alexandra walk up the front steps of the house and safely reach the door. Then she had waved him off—an action which the coachman confirmed was unprecedented.

"You may go back to bed," he told all thirty-one servants but one old man with spectacles, whom Jordan identified as Alexandra's footman, hung back looking worried and angry.

Jordan went over to the side table, poured the last of his port into a glass, and with a cursory glance at Filbert, instructed him to bring up another bottle. Negligently tossing down the liquid, he sank into a chair and stretched his legs out, trying to calm his rampaging fear. Somehow, he didn't quite believe Alexandra had come to any harm, and he would not let himself consider that her absence incriminated her in the attempt on his life tonight.

The more he concentrated on that inexplicably bright smile she had given him when she promised to come directly home after the ball, the more convinced he became she'd simply gone somewhere else after tricking the coachman into believing she'd come inside. Before she actually left the ball, she'd undoubtedly asked some cicisbeo of hers to follow her home and then take her up. Since Jordan had threatened to beat some sense into her tonight, that wasn't at all surprising, he thought. She had probably gone to his grandmother, Jordan decided as the port began to soothe his raw nerves.

"Bring the bottle over here," he ordered, eyeing the sour-faced, elderly footman, with ill-concealed belligerence. "Tell me something," he said shortly, addressing a servant on a personal matter for the first time in his life, "was she always like this—your mistress?"

The old footman stiffened resentfully, in the act of pouring port in the duke's glass. "Miss Alex—" Filbert began, but Jordan interrupted him in a glacial voice: "You will refer to my wife properly," he snapped. "She is the Duchess of Hawthorne!"

"And a lotta good it's done her!" the servant flung back furiously.

"Just exactly what is that supposed to mean?" Jordan demanded, so taken aback by this unprecedented display of temper from a mere servant that he failed to react with the outrage one might have reasonably expected from a man of his temperament and rank.

"It means what it says," Filbert snapped, slamming the bottle down on the table. "Bein' the Duchess of Hawthorne ain't never brought her nothing but heartbreak! Yer as bad as her pa was—no, yer worse! He only broke her heart, you broke her heart and now yer tryin' to break her spirit!"

He was halfway across the room when Jordan's voice boomed like a thunderclap. "Get back here!"

Filbert obeyed, but his gnarled hands were clenched into fists at his sides, and he glared resentfully at the man who had made Miss Alexandra's life a misery from the day she met him.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Filbert's jaw jutted belligerently. "If you think I'm gonna tell you things so's you can use them agin'
Miss Alex
, then yer in fer a shock, yer high holiness!"

Jordan opened his mouth to tell the incredibly insolent man to pack his bag and get out, but more than satisfaction, he wanted an explanation for the servant's startling revelations. Reining in his temper with a supreme effort, Jordan said icily, "If you have anything to say that might soften my attitude toward your beloved mistress, then you'd be wise to speak out now." The servant still looked balky. "In the mood I'm in," Jordan warned him honestly, "when I get my hands on her, she'll wish to God she'd stayed out of my sight."

The old man paled and swallowed, but he remained mutinously silent. Sensing that Filbert was wavering but that intimidation alone would never get him to talk freely, Jordan poured some port into a glass and in an action that would have knocked Society onto its collective face, the Duke of Hawthorne held the glass toward a lowly footman and invited in a man-to-man voice, "Now then, since I apparently hurt your mistress—unintentionally—suppose you have a drink and tell me how I'm like her father. What did he do?"

Filbert's suspicious gaze shifted from the duke's face to the glass of port in his outstretched hand, then he slowly reached for it. "D'you mind if I sit whilst I drink?"

"By all means," Jordan replied, straightfaced.

"Her father was the lowest scoundrel what ever lived," Filbert began, oblivious to the way the duke's brows shot up at this added insult. He paused to take a long, fortifying swallow of his drink, then he shuddered, glaring at the stuff in the glass with unhidden revulsion. "Gawd!" he uttered. "What
is
this?"

"Port—a special kind that is made exclusively for me."

"Probably ain't no call fer it from no one else," Filbert replied, wholly unimpressed. "Vile stuff."

"That opinion is shared by most people. I seem to be the only one who likes it. Now, what did her father do to her?"

"Do yer happen to have any ale about?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Whisky?" Filbert asked hopefully.

"Certainly. In the cabinet over there. Help yourself."

It took six glasses of whisky and two hours to drag the story out of the reluctant footman. By the time Filbert was nearly finished, Jordan—who had felt challenged to switch to whisky and match him drink for drink—was slouched in his chair, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, trying to keep his head clear.

"And one day, about six, seven weeks after her pa dies," Filbert was finishing, "this fine carriage pulls up and in it is this beauteous lady and her pretty yellow-haired daughter. I was there when Miss Alex opened the door and the lady—who weren't no
real
lady—announces bald as you please that
she's
Lawrence's wife and the gel with her is his daughter!"

Jordan's head jerked around. "He was a bigamist?"

"Yep. And you shoulda seen the helter-pelter argument atween the two Mrs. Lawrences. But Miss Alex, she doesn't get mad. She jest looks at the yellow-haired girl and says in that sweet way o' hers: 'You're very pretty.'

"The blond chit don't say nothin', she sticks her nose up in the air. Then the chit notices this tin locket, shaped like a heart, that Miss Alex was wearin' round her neck. It was gived to Miss Alex by her pa on her birthday, and she treasured that locket like you wouldn't believe—always touchin' it whilst she wore it and worryin' it'd get lost. The blond chit asks Miss Alex if her pa gived her that, and when Miss Alex said he had, the gel pulls out this gold chain hangin' round her neck, and on the end o' it is this beautiful gold locket in the shape o' a heart.

" 'He gave
me
a valuable
gold
one,' the chit says in a way that made my hand itch to slap her. 'Yours is jest old tin.' "

Filbert paused to have another swallow of his whisky and smack his lips. "Miss Alex didn't say a word, she jest lifts her chin—like she does when she's tryin' to be brave—but there's so much pain in her eyes, it would have made a grown man cry. I cried," Filbert admitted hoarsely. "I went to my room, an' I cried like a babe."

Jordan swallowed against the unfamiliar aching lump in his throat. "Then what happened?"

"The next mornin' Miss Alex comes down to breakfast, jest like always, and she smiles at me, jest like always. But for the first time since her pa gived it to her, she weren't wearin' that locket. She never wore it again."