JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (9 page)

The butler swept open a pair of carved oaken doors and stepped aside to admit them to a room lined with paintings in ornate frames. Repressing an urge to curtsy to the stiff-backed servant, Alexandra walked forward, dreading the moment when she would have to confront her newfound friend and see what she knew would surely be contempt written all over his features.

She was not wrong. The man seated behind the richly carved desk bore little resemblance to the laughing, gentle man she'd met only two days ago. Today, he was an aloof, icy stranger who was inspecting her family as if they were bugs crawling across his beautiful carpet. He did not even make a pretense at politeness by standing or by introducing them to the other two occupants of the room. Instead, he nodded curtly to Uncle Monty and her mother, indicating they should be seated in the chairs before his desk.

When his gaze finally shifted to Alexandra, however, his granite features softened and his eyes warmed, as if he understood how humiliated she felt. Coming around his desk, he drew up an additional chair especially for her. "Does the bruise cause you much pain, moppet?" he asked, studying the bluish mark upon her cheek.

Absurdly flattered by his courtesy and concern, Alexandra shook her head. "It's nothing, it doesn't hurt a bit," she said, immeasurably relieved because he didn't seem to hold
her
in aversion for invading his house in this brassy manner. Awkward in her mother's ill-fitting gown, Alexandra sat down on the edge of the chair. When she tried to wriggle demurely backward, the skirt of her gown caught on the velvet nap of the chair and the entire gown tightened until its neckline jerked at her throat and the high collar forced her chin up. Trapped like a rabbit in her own snare, Alexandra gazed helplessly up into the duke's inscrutable grey eyes. "Are you comfortable?" he asked, straight-faced.

"Quite comfortable, thank you," Alexandra lied, morbidly certain that he was aware of her predicament and was trying hard not to laugh.

"Perhaps if you stood up and sat down again?"

"I'm perfectly fine as I am."

The amusement she thought she'd glimpsed in his eyes vanished the moment he sat back down behind his desk. Looking from her mother to her Uncle Monty, he said without preamble, "You could have spared yourselves the embarrassment of this unnecessary visit. I had every intention of expressing my gratitude to Alexandra by means of a bank draft for £1,000, which would have been delivered to you next week."

Alexandra's mind reeled at the mention of such an enormous sum. Why, £1,000 would keep her entire household in relative luxury for at least two years. She'd have firewood to waste, if she wished, which of course she didn't…

"That won't be enough," Uncle Monty announced gruffly and Alexandra's head jerked around.

The duke's voice turned positively glacial. "How much do you want?" he demanded, his dagger gaze pinning poor Uncle Monty to his chair.

"We want what's fair," Uncle Monty said and cleared his throat "Our Alexandra saved your life."

"For which I am prepared to pay handsomely. Now," he said, and each word had a bite, "how much do you want?"

Uncle Monty squirmed beneath the icy gaze leveled at him, but he persevered nonetheless. "Our Alexandra saved your life and, in return, you ruined hers."

The duke sounded ready to explode. "I did
what
?" he grated ominously.

"You took a young lady of good breeding to a public inn and cohabited in a bedroom with her."

"I took a child to a public inn," Jordan bit out "An unconscious child who needed a doctor!"

"Now, see here, Hawthorne," Uncle Monty blustered in a surprisingly strong voice, "you took a
young lady
to that inn. You took her up to a bedroom with half the villagers looking on, and you carried her out thirty minutes later—fully conscious, her clothes in disarray, and without ever having summoned the leech. The villagers have a moral code, just like everybody else, and you publicly breached that code. Now, there's a huge scandalbroth over it."

"If the righteous citizens of your little backwater can make a scandal out of a child being carried into an inn, they need their minds laundered! Now, enough caviling over insignificant details, how much do you—"

"Insignificant details!" Mrs. Lawrence screeched furiously, leaning forward and clutching the edge of his desk so tightly her knuckles whitened. "Why, you—you vile, unprincipled lecher! Alexandra is seventeen and you've ruined her. Her fiancé's parents were there in the salon when you carried her into our home, and they've already broken off marriage negotiations. You ought to be hanged! Hanging is too good for you—"

The duke seemed not to have heard the last of that; his head turned sharply to Alexandra and he studied her face as if he'd never seen her before. "How old are you?" he demanded as if her mother's word was not good enough.

Somehow Alexandra managed to drag her voice through the strangling mortification in her chest. This was all worse, much worse, than she'd dreamed it could be. "Seventeen. I—I will be eighteen next week," she said in a weak, apologetic voice, then she flushed as his gaze swept over her from the tip of her head to her small bosom, obviously unable to believe her dress concealed a woman fully grown. Driven to apologizing for her deceptively boyish shape, she added miserably, "Grandfather told me that all the women in our family bloom late, and I—" Realizing that what she was saying was inexcusably crude, not to mention irrelevant, Alexandra broke off, blushed furiously, and shot an anguished glance at the two unknown occupants of the room, hoping for some sort of understanding or forgiveness. She saw none. The man was watching her with a mixture of shock and amusement. The lady looked as if she were chiseled out of marble.

Alexandra's glance skidded from them back to the duke, and she saw that his expression had become positively savage. "Assuming that I made such a mistake," he said to Alexandra's mother, "what is it you want of me?"

"Since no decent man will marry Alexandra after what you've done, we expect
you
to marry her. Her birth is unexceptionable and we are connected with an earl and a knight. You can have no objection to her suitability."

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.