“Yes, your grace. At once,” the stately butler said, bowing again, his expression deadpan. Bending down, he grasped the puppy by the scruff of his neck with his right hand, placed his left hand under the dog’s furry rump, and held the squirming puppy as far away from his fastidious self as the length of his arms permitted.
“Now then,” the duchess said briskly, and Alexandra hastily stifled her wayward smile. “Anthony informs me you intend to go home.”
“Yes. I’d like to leave tomorrow, after the memorial service.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You will accompany Anthony and me to Hawthorne.”
Alexandra had been dreading having to return to her old life and trying to go on as if Jordan had never lived, but she had not considered going to Hawthorne. “Why should I do that?”
“Because you are the Duchess of Hawthorne, and your place is with your husband’s family.”
Alexandra hesitated, then she shook her head. “My place is at home.”
“Rubbish!” the duchess declared stoutly, and Alexandra couldn’t help smiling at the return of the elderly woman’s familiar, autocratic manner, it was vastly preferable to the hollow shell that grief had made of her. “On the same morning you wed Hawthorne,” the duchess continued determinedly, “he specifically entrusted me with the task of making you into all you should be, in order that you might ultimately take your rightful place in Society. Although my grandson is no longer here, I trust I have enough loyalty,” she emphasized, “to carry out his wishes.”
The emphasis on the word “loyalty” made Alexandra recall—as the dowager meant her to do—that she herself had told the duchess her grandson had admired that trait in her. Alexandra hesitated, caught between guilt, responsibility, and concern for her own welfare should she try to live at Hawthorne, removed from everything and everyone she knew and loved. The duchess was valiantly struggling to cope with her own grief; she could not help Alexandra shoulder hers. On the other hand, Alexandra wasn’t certain she could carry the terrible burden alone, as she had done when her grandfather and her father died. “You are kindness itself to suggest I live with you, ma’am, but I fear I cannot,” Alexandra declined after a moment’s further thought. “With my mother gone away, I have responsibilities to others, which must take first consideration.”
“What responsibilities?” the duchess demanded.
“Penrose and Filbert. With my mother gone away, they will have no one to look after them. I had intended to ask my husband to make a place for them at his house, but—”
“Who” she interrupted imperiously, “are Filbert and Penrose?”
“Penrose is our butler and Filbert our footman.”
“I have long been under the impression,” said her grace with asperity, “that servants exist to care for their employers, and not the other way round. However,” she unbent enough to say, “I applaud your sense of responsibility. You may bring them to Hawthorne,” she magnanimously decreed. “I daresay we can always use another servant or two.”
“They’re quite old!” Alexandra hastily interjected. “They can’t work hard, but they’re both proud, and they need to believe they’re desperately helpful. I’ve, well, fostered that delusion in them.”
“I, too, have always felt it my Christian duty to ensure elderly servants are allowed to work so long as they wish to and are able,” the duchess lied baldly, hurtling a killing glance at her incredulous grandson. Converting Alexandra into a polished young socialite was a project she was bent on accomplishing. It was a challenge—a duty—a goal. She was unwilling to admit that the courageous girl with the gypsy curls, who had pulled her through her shock and grief, might have stolen a permanent place in her heart, or that she was loath to bid her goodbye.
“I don’t think—” Alexandra began.
Realizing Alexandra was about to refuse again, the duchess pulled out all the stops: “Alexandra, you are a Townsende now, and your place is with us. Moreover, it is your avowed duty to honor your husband’s wishes, and he specifically wished for you to become a credit to his illustrious name.”
Alexandra’s resistance dissolved as the duchess’ last words finally struck home. Her name was Townsende now, not Lawrence, she realized with a burst of pride and pleasure. She had not lost everything when she lost him; he had given her his name! In return, Alexandra recalled with a sharp pang of nostalgia, she had solemnly pledged her word to Jordan to honor him and to obey his wishes. Apparently, he had wished her to become a proper lady worthy of his name and to take a place in Society—whatever that meant. Tenderness swelled in her heart as she raised her eyes to the duchess and softly promised, “I will do as he wished.”
“Excellent,” said the duchess gruffly. When Alexandra left to see to her packing, Anthony leaned back in his chair and leveled his amused gaze upon his grandmother, who reacted by drawing herself up stiffly in her chair and trying to stare him out of countenance. The ploy failed. “Tell me,” he drawled in a laughter-tinged voice, “when did you develop this violent desire to employ elderly servants?”
“When I realized it was the only way to keep Alexandra from leaving,” she replied bluntly. “I will not permit that child to lock herself away in some godforsaken village and wear widow’s weeds for the rest of her life. She is scarcely eighteen years old.”
Chapter Fourteen
HAWTHORNE, THE ANCESTRAL ESTATE of twelve generations of Townsendes comprised 50,000 acres of woods, parkland, rolling hills, and fertile fields. Imposing black iron gates bearing the Hawthorne coat of arms blocked the entrance, and a liveried gatekeeper came out of a stone gatehouse to push open the heavy gates so the elegant traveling chaises could pass.
Sitting beside the duchess, Alexandra gazed out the windows as the coach swept down a smooth, curving drive that wound decorously through acres and acres of immaculately clipped green velvet lawns.
Huge trees marched along on either side of the smooth drive, stretching their stately branches like leafy umbrellas above the coaches. Although Hawthorne belonged to Anthony now, in her heart Alexandra thought of it as Jordan’s. This was his home, the place where he was born, and where he’d grown to manhood. Here she would learn about him and come to know him as she had never had the chance to do in life. Simply by being here, she already felt closer to him. “Hawthorne is more beautiful than any place I’ve ever imagined,” she breathed.
Anthony grinned at her awed enthusiasm. “Wait until you see the house itself,” he said, and from his tone Alexandra knew it would be very grand indeed. Even forewarned, however, she drew in her breath sharply when the coach rounded a bend in the drive. A half mile ahead, spread out before her in all its majestic splendor, was a three-story stone and glass mansion of over two hundred rooms, set against a backdrop of rolling green hills, crystal blue streams, and terraced gardens. In the foreground, across the drive from the house, swans drifted on the tranquil surface of an enormous lake, and, off to the right, a beautiful white gazebo with graceful columns in the classic Greek style overlooked the lake and parkland.
“It’s beyond beautiful,” Alexandra whispered, “it’s beyond anything.” A half-dozen footmen were standing at attention upon the shallow, graceful steps that led from the drive to the front door. Stifling the feeling that she was being very rude, Alexandra followed the duchess’ example when she alighted from the coach and walked past the servants as if they were invisible.
The front door was opened wide by a servant whose lofty bearing instantly proclaimed him head butler and ruler of the household staff. The duchess introduced him as Higgins, then walked into the hall with Alexandra at her side.
A wide, curving marble staircase swept upward in a graceful half circle from the foyer to the second story, then across a balcony and up to the third story. Alexandra and the duchess ascended the curving staircase together, and Alexandra was shown into a splendid suite of rooms decorated in shades of rose.
After the maid left them, the duchess turned to Alexandra. “Would
you like to rest? Yesterday was an ordeal for us both.”
Alexandra’s memory of Jordan’s memorial service yesterday was a blur of pain and unreality—a grim haze populated by hundreds of somber faces glancing speculatively at her as she stood quietly beside the duchess in the huge church. Anthony’s widowed mother and his younger brother, who was lame, stood on her other side, their faces pale and strained. A half hour ago, their coach had turned in to the drive of Anthony’s former home. Alexandra liked them both and was glad they’d be nearby.
“Instead of resting, would it be possible for me to see his room, ma’am? You see, I was married to Jordan, but I never had an opportunity to truly know him. He was a boy in this house, and he lived in it until the week before I met him.” The familiar, aching lump of tears swelled in Alexandra’s throat and she finished in an unsteady voice, “I want to find him, to learn about him, and I can do it here. That is one of the reasons I agreed to come with you.”
Tenderness so overwhelmed the duchess that she started to raise her hand and lay it against Alexandra’s pale cheek, then she checked herself and said a trifle brusquely, “I’ll have Gibbons, the head footman, sent up to you.”
Gibbons, a spry, elderly man, appeared a few moments later and escorted Alexandra to what he called “the Master Bedchambers”—a majestic suite of rooms on the second floor, with an entire wall of mullioned glass from floor to ceiling, which overlooked the grounds.
The instant Alexandra stepped inside, she noticed the faint, achingly familiar scent of Jordan’s spicy cologne, the same scent that had clung to his smoothly shaven jaw and chin when she had fallen asleep in his arms at night. The pain of his death seeped into her very bones and lodged there like a dull, aching throb, and yet, she felt strangely comforted being here, because it banished the haunting feeling that her sudden, four-day marriage to a splendid stranger had been imaginary.
Turning, she let her gaze rove lovingly over every inch of the room, from the lavishly carved plasterwork at the ceiling to the magnificent Persian carpets of deep blue and gold beneath her feet. Two massive fireplaces of cream marble were at opposite ends of the enormous room, their hearths so cavernous she could easily have stood up inside them. An immense bed with a deep-blue satin coverlet heavily embroidered with gold stood on a raised dais on her far left, beneath a stately canopy of blue and gold attached to the high ceiling. On her right, a pair of gold-silk settees faced each other in front of one of the fireplaces.
“I would like to look around,” she explained to the footman, her voice a reverent whisper, as if she were in some holy, sanctified place, which indeed she rather felt she was. Walking over to the rosewood bureau, she lovingly touched his onyx-backed brushes, still laid out as if they were only waiting for his hand to grasp them, then she stood on tiptoe, trying to see her reflection in the mirror above the bureau. Jordan’s mirror. The mirror was hung at a height to suit its former owner and, even standing on tiptoe, Alexandra could see only her forehead and eyes. How very tall he was, she thought, smiling winsomely.
Three more rooms opened off the bedchamber—a dressing room, a study with book-lined walls and soft leather chairs, and another room that made Alexandra gasp. Spread out before her was a huge semicircular room of gold-veined black marble walls and floors with a huge, round sunken marble pit of some sort in the center. “What in the world is this?” Alexandra asked.
“A bathing room, your grace,” the footman replied and bowed again.
“A bathing room?” Alexandra repeated, staring in wonder at the gold faucets and graceful marble pillars that stood at the perimeter of the bathing pool, then soared to the ceiling beneath a round skylight.
“Master Jordan believed in modern-i-zations, your grace,” the footman put in and Alexandra turned at the sound of pride and fondness in the old servant’s voice.
“I’d rather be called simply ‘Miss Alexandra,”’ she explained with a warm smile. He looked so appalled that she conceded, “ ‘Lady Alexandra’ then. Did you know my husband well?”
“Better’n any of the staff, ’cept Mr. Smarth, the head groom.” Sensing that he had an avid audience in Lady Alexandra, Gibbons promptly volunteered to give her a tour of the house and grounds, which lasted all of three hours and included visits to Jordan’s favorite boyhood haunts, as well as introductions to Smarth, the head groom, who offered to tell her “all about Master Jordan,” whenever she came down to the stables.
Late in the afternoon, Gibbons finished the tour by taking Alexandra to two places, one of which instantly became her favorite. It was the long gallery where a double row of life-size portraits of the previous eleven dukes of Hawthorne were displayed in identical gilt frames upon the long walls, along with other portraits of their wives and children.
“My husband was the handsomest of them all,” she declared after studying each portrait.
“Me and Mr. Higgins have said that very thing ourselves.”
“But his portrait isn’t here with the other dukes.”
“I heard him tell Master Anthony that he had better things to do with his time than stand about looking important and dignified.” He nodded toward two of the portraits on the upper row. “That’s him, right there—as a young boy, and then when he was sixteen. His papa insisted he stand for that last one, and Master Jordan was mad as fire about it.”
A smile dawned across Alexandra’s pale features as she looked up at the little boy with the dark curly hair standing solemnly beside a beautiful blond lady with sultry grey eyes. Standing on the other side of her thronelike red velvet chair was a handsome, unsmiling man with broad shoulders and the proudest features Alexandra had ever seen.
The last place Gibbons took her was to a rather small room on the third floor that smelled as if it had been closed for a very long time. Three small desks faced a much larger desk at the front of the room, and an old globe stood on a brass stand.
“This here’s the schoolroom,” Gibbons said. “Young Master Jordan spent more time tryin’ to git out o’ it than he spent inside it. Then Master Jordan felt the side of Mr. Rigly’s cane more than once for neglectin’ his studyin’. Still, he learnt what-all he needed to know. Smart as a whip he was.”
Alexandra’s gaze scanned the austere little room, then came to an abrupt stop at the desk right beside her. Carved into the top of it were the initials J-A-M-T. Jordan’s initials. She touched them tenderly while glancing around with a mixture of pleasure and uneasiness. How very unlike her grandfather’s cheerful, disorderly study where she had eagerly teamed her own lessons this gloomy, austere place seemed. How unthinkable it was to be caned by one’s teacher, instead of fascinated by him.
When the footman finally bade her goodbye, Alexandra stopped once more at the gallery to gaze upon the likeness of her husband as a sixteen-year-old. Looking up at him, she whispered solemnly, “I’ll make you proud of me, my love, I promise.”
* * *
In the days that followed, Alexandra embarked on that task with all the determination and intelligence she possessed, memorizing entire pages of Debrett’s Peerage, and poring over volumes on conduct, convention, and protocol which the duchess gave her. Her diligence quickly earned the duchess’ approval, as did everything else Alexandra did—with two significant exceptions, both of which led the duchess to summon Anthony to her drawing room a week after the family had arrived at Hawthorne.
“Alexandra is fraternizing with Gibbons and Smarth,” she declared in tones of bewilderment and grave concern. “She’s already conversed more with them than I have in the last forty years.”
Anthony lifted his brows and said blandly, “She regards servants as family. That was evident when she asked us if her butler and footman might come here. It’s a harmless attitude.”
“You won’t think Filbert and Penrose are ‘harmless’ when you see them,” the duchess shot back darkly. “They arrived this morning.”
Anthony recalled Alexandra had described her two servants as elderly, and started to
say it. “They’re—”
“Deaf and blind!” the indignant dowager declared. “The butler can’t hear a word that isn’t roared into his ear and the footman walks into doors and into the butler! Regardless of Alexandra’s tender feelings, we shall have to keep them out of sight when we are receiving callers. We can’t allow guests to see them crashing into each other in the front hall and shouting the walls down.
When Anthony looked amused rather than alarmed, she glowered at him. “If you will not see that as objectionable, I’ve little hope of persuading you to discontinue your fencing matches with Alexandra each morning. It is an entirely unacceptable endeavor for any young lady, besides requiring the wearing of—of breeches!”
Anthony was no more inclined to see his grandmother’s side on this matter than he’d been on the subject of fraternization with servants. “For my sake and for Alexandra’s I hope you won’t forbid her to fence with me. It’s harmless enough and she enjoys it. She says it keeps her fit.”
“And for your sake?” the duchess said irritably.
Anthony grinned. “She’s a formidable opponent, and she keeps me in top form. Jordan and I were considered two of the best swordsmen in England, but I have to work to hold my own with Alexandra, and she still bests me about half the time.”
When Tony left, the dowager gazed helplessly at the empty chair across from her, knowing full well why she had not been willing to speak to Alexandra about the issues she’d just discussed with Anthony: She simply could not bear to dampen Alexandra’s spirits, not when she knew how valiantly Alexandra was trying to be cheerful. For nearly a week, Alexandra’s heartwarming smile and musical laughter had brightened the entire atmosphere at Hawthorne. And as the duchess well knew, Alexandra was smiling, not because she felt like it, but because she was desperately trying to buoy up everyone’s spirits—including her own. She was, the duchess thought, a unique combination of candor, gentleness, determination, and courage.
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