Alexandra hastily cast the disloyal thought aside.
* * *
“What’s slowing us down?” Jordan demanded of the driver of the carriage that the captain of the Falcon had put at his disposal, which was bearing him with infuriating slowness to his house on Upper Brook Street.
“I don’t know, your grace. ’Pears to be somethin’ happenin’ at that church back there.”
Jordan glanced at the sun again, trying to ascertain the time. He had not enjoyed the luxury of a timepiece in over a year, yet he owned at least six solid-gold ones that he had never fully appreciated. He had taken everything he had for granted. After a year and a quarter of deprivation, however, he doubted if he would ever take anything for granted again.
The sights and sounds of London, which had pleased him so much since entering the city an hour ago, began to fade from his consciousness as he considered the shocks he was about to cause to those who loved him.
His grandmother was still alive—that much Jordan had learned from the captain of the Falcon, who said he recalled reading in the Gazette a few months ago that she was planning to reside in London for the Season. With any luck she was staying at her own town house and not at his, Jordan thought, so that he could send word to her first, rather than walk in on her without warning. Tony, if he was in London, would naturally be staying at Jordan’s house on Upper Brook Street, believing it to be his own.
More than once, it had occurred to Jordan that Tony might resent having him return and dispossess him of the ducal title and estates, but that possibility was nearly as repugnant as the idea that Tony was involved in a plot to have him murdered. Jordan refused to believe either, until he had reliable proof.
He refused to believe it—but unfortunately he could not banish the nagging suspicion from his mind any more than he could silence the memory of the thug’s voice on the wharf the night he’d been knocked unconscious: “The bloke paid us t’ kill ’im, Jamie, not t’ send him off on no ship . . .”
Jordan pushed all that aside. It was perfectly possible that some enraged husband—like old Grangerfield—was responsible for the plot to have Jordan killed. There were ways to find out who his enemy was. For today, however, he wanted to revel in the joy of coming home.
He thought about his impending arrival in Upper Brook Street, and he wanted to do everything at once—to walk into the house and shake Higgins’ hand, to pull his grandmother into his arms and soothe away the tears of relief and gratitude he knew she and the old butler would shed when they realized he was alive. He would clasp Tony’s shoulders and thank him for doing his best to manage the Hawthorne holdings. No matter how badly Tony had bungled Jordan’s complex business affairs—and Jordan was discouragingly certain he had—he would always be grateful.
After that, Jordan wanted a bath and his own clothes. And then—then he wanted Alexandra.
Of all the things that lay before him, his interview with his young “widow” was the only thing Jordan was truly worried about. No doubt her childlike devotion to him had caused her to suffer an extreme form of prolonged grief after she learned of his death. She had been thin as a reed when he last saw her; by now she was probably gaunt. God, what a miserable life she had lived from the day she encountered him.
He realized that she would have changed during his absence, but he hoped the changes had not been too many or too drastic. She would have matured into a woman now, one who was old enough to have the responsibilities of a husband and children. He would bring her to London and introduce her to Society himself.
They would not stay long in London, though. He had lost more than a year of his life, but he’d had plenty of time to decide how he wanted to spend the rest of it. He knew now what mattered and what didn’t, and he knew what he wanted—what he had probably always wanted. He wanted a life that had meaning, and a real marriage, not the shallow, empty arrangement that passed for marriage in his set. He wanted more of the love Alexandra had tried to give him—the love that had given him a reason to fight to survive. In return, he wanted to pamper her and pleasure her and keep her with him, safe from the corrosive effects of the outside world. Perhaps love was immune to the outside world. Or was that where trust came in? Was a man supposed to trust his wife not to change and to remain loyal to him no matter where she was, or with whom? Obviously, that was the case, Jordan decided. He didn’t know much about trust, and he knew even less about love, but Alexandra was the embodiment of both, and she had volunteered to teach him. He was willing to let her try now.
He tried to imagine how she would look, but all he could see was a laughing face, dominated by a pair of magnificent aquamarine eyes. A face that was almost, but not quite pretty. His “funny-face.”
She would have spent one year in mourning, he knew, then another six months learning the ropes of Society with his grandmother. She would only now be preparing to make her entrance into Society during the Little Season in the fall, assuming his grandmother had posthumously carried out his wishes to see her “polished.”
It was far more likely, and far more alarming, Jordan thought grimly, that Alexandra might have been so grief-stricken and desolate that she had returned to her run-down house in Morsham—or shied away completely from people —or, God, lost her mind after everything she’d been through!
The coach pulled up before No. 3 Upper Brook Street and Jordan got out, pausing on the front steps to look up at the elegant three-story stone mansion with its graceful ironwork and bow windows. It seemed so familiar, and yet so strange.
He lifted the heavy polished knocker and let it fall, bracing himself for Higgins to open the door and fall upon him in a frenzy of joy.
The door swung open. “Yes?” an unfamiliar face demanded, peering at him through wire-rimmed spectacles.
“Who are you?” Jordan demanded, perplexed.
“I might ask the same question of you, sir,” Filbert haughtily replied, looking around for Penrose, who hadn’t heard the knocker.
“I am Jordan Townsende,” Jordan replied brusquely, knowing that he would only be wasting his time if he tried to convince this unknown servant that he, and not Tony, was the Duke of Hawthorne. Brushing past the footman, Jordan stalked into the marble foyer. “Send Higgins here to me.
“Mr. Higgins has gone out.”
Jordan frowned, wishing Higgins or Ramsey were here to help prepare his grandmother for his sudden appearance. Walking quickly forward, he looked into the large salon to the right of the foyer and the smaller one on the left. They were filled with flowers and empty of people. The whole downstairs seemed to be filled with baskets of white roses and greenery. “Are we giving a party later?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s about to become a ‘homecoming party,’ ” Jordan predicted with a chuckle, then he said briskly, “Where is your mistress?”
“At church,” Filbert replied, squinting at the tall, deeply tanned gentleman.
“And your master?” Jordan asked, meaning Tony.
“Also at church, of course.”
“Praying for my immortal soul, no doubt,” Jordan joked. Knowing that Tony surely would have retained the services of Mathison, Jordan’s superior valet, Jordan said, “Is Mathison about?”
“He is,” Filbert averred, then he watched in amazement as this unknown member of the Townsende family began walking up the staircase, issuing orders over his shoulder as if he owned the place. “Send Mathison to me at once. I’ll be in the gold suite. Tell him I want a bath and a shave immediately. And a change of clothes. Mine preferably, if they’re still around. If not, I’ll wear Tony’s, or his, or anyone’s he can steal.”
Jordan walked swiftly past the master bedroom suite, which Tony would undoubtedly be occupying, and opened the door to the gold guest suite. It was not quite so lavish, but at that moment seemed like the most beautiful room he’d ever beheld. Pulling off the ill-fitting jacket that the captain of the Falcon had lent him, he flung it on a chair and began unbuttoning his shirt.<
br />
He stripped it off and tossed it atop the jacket, and was in the process of unbuttoning his pants when Mathison bustled into the suite like an outraged penguin, his black coattails flapping behind him. “There seems to be some misunderstanding as to your name, sir, good God!” The valet stopped short and gaped. “Good God, your grace! Good God!̶
Jordan grinned. This was somewhat more like the homecoming he’d envisioned. “I’m sure we’re all very grateful to the Almighty for my return, Mathison. However, at the moment, I’d be nearly as grateful merely for a bath and a decent change of clothes.”
“Certainly, your grace. At once, your grace. And may I say how extremely happy, how very delighted I am to— GOOD GOD!” Mathison exploded, this time in horror.
Jordan, who had never seen the indomitable manservant exhibit any sign of fluster even under the most trying circumstances, watched in some amazement as his valet sprinted across the hall, disappeared into the master bedroom suite, then came dashing out again with one of Tony’s shirts floating from his fingers and a pair of Jordan’s own riding breeches and boots. “I discovered these at the back of the wardrobe only last week,” Mathison panted. “Quickly! You must make haste,” he gasped. “The church!” he uttered wildly. “The wedding—!”
“A wedding. So that’s why everyone’s at church,” Jordan said, about to toss the trousers Mathison had thrust at him aside and insist on a bath. “Who’s getting married?”
“Lord Anthony,” Mathison panted in a strangled voice, holding up the shirt and trying to physically force one of Jordan’s arms into its sleeve.
Jordan grinned, ignoring the shirt that was now being flapped at him like a flag. “Who is he marrying?”
“Your wife!”
For a moment, Jordan was unable to absorb the full shock of that. His mind was grimly preoccupied with the fact that, if Tony were getting married, he would already have also signed a betrothal agreement as the Duke of Hawthorne and made pledges to his fiancée and her family that he could not keep now.
“Bigamy!” Mathison gasped.
Jordan’s head jerked around as the import of what he was hearing slammed into him. “Get out in the street and flag down anything that moves,” Jordan commanded shortly, snatching the shirt and pulling it on. “What time are they doing it and where?”
“In twenty minutes at St Paul’s.”
* * *
Jordan flung himself into a hired hack he snatched from beneath the nose of an outraged dowager in the middle of Upper Brook Street. “St. Paul’s,” he snapped at the driver. “And you can retire for life on what I’ll give you if you get me there in fifteen minutes.”
“Ain’t likely, guv,” said the driver. “There’s a wedding goin’ on there that’s had traffic tied up all mornin’.”
During the ensuing minutes, a dozen conflicting thoughts and emotions whirled through the chaotic turbulence of Jordan’s mind, the foremost being the need for urgent haste. Left with no way to control the flow of traffic, he had no choice but to sit back and grimly contemplate this enormous debacle.
Occasionally, during his absence, he had considered the unlikely possibility that when the required one-year mourning period had passed, Tony might have met someone and decided to marry her, but somehow he hadn’t really expected it. Tony had never been any more anxious than Jordan to bind himself to a woman, not even with the tenuous ties of modern matrimony that left both spouses free to do as they wished.
Jordan had also considered the possibility that Alexandra might meet someone someday and wish to marry him, but not this damned soon. Not while she had supposedly been in mourning! Not when she had supposedly been wildly in love with Jordan . . .
But the one thing he had never imagined—even in his worst nightmares about the possible complications associated with his return—was that some misguided sense of honor might cause Tony to feel duty-bound to marry Jordan’s poor widow. Dammit! Jordan thought as the spires of St. Paul’s finally came into view, what could have possessed Tony to do such an idiotic thing?
The answer came to Jordan almost instantly. Pity would have made him do it. The same pity Jordan had felt for the cheerful little waif who had saved his life and looked at him with huge, adoring eyes.
Pity had caused this entire near-catastrophe, and Jordan had no alternative but to stop the marriage at whatever stage it was in when he entered the church, otherwise Alexandra and Tony would be committing public bigamy. It dawned on him that poor Alexandra was about to have her groom snatched from her for a second time, and he felt a brief pang of regret for destroying her peace yet again.
Before the hack had come to a full stop at St. Paul’s, Jordan was already bounding up the long flights of steps leading to the doors, praying he might still be here in time to stop the damned wedding before it began. That hope died the moment he yanked open the heavy oaken doors of the candlelit church and saw the bride and groom standing with their backs to the crowded church.
Jordan stopped short, a long string of colorful oaths running through his mind, and then left with no choice, he started walking up the aisle, his booted footsteps echoing like sharp cannon shots in the crowded church.
Near the front, he stopped walking—waiting for the approaching moment when he would have to speak out. Then and only then, as he stood between the rows of lavishly dressed guests who had been his family and friends and acquaintances, did it finally dawn on Jordan that he had not been much mourned and that, if he had been duly mourned, he would not be forced to play this absurd part in the dramatic comedy that was about to unfold in this damned church. The realization sent a sudden surge of cold fury through him, but his features were impassive as he stood in the aisle between the second row of pews, his arms crossed over his chest—waiting for the moment that was nearing.
On both sides of him, guests were beginning to recognize him, and loud whispers were already racing through the crowd, bursting out like a brushfire. Alexandra heard the growing disturbance behind her and glanced uncertainly at Anthony, who seemed to be concentrating on the archbishop, who was intoning: “If there be any man present who knows any reason why this man, and this woman, should not be joined in matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace . . .”
For a split second there was total silence—the taut, tense quiet that always follows that ancient challenge—but this time the challenge was answered, and the silence was exploded by a deep, ironic baritone voice: “There is one reason—”
Tony spun around, the archbishop gaped, Alexandra froze, and three thousand guests whirled in their seats. An agitated babble of voices broke loose and swept through the church like a tidal wave. At the altar, Melanie Camden’s bouquet of roses slid through her numb fingers, Roddy Carstairs grinned broadly, and Alexandra stood there, convinced this was not really happening to her, this was a dream, she thought wildly, or else she had gone mad.
“On what grounds do you protest this marriage?” the archbishop finally barked.
“On the grounds that the bride is already married,” Jordan replied, sounding almost amused—“to me.”
This time there was no denying the reality of that achingly familiar deep voice, and shock waves roared up and down Alexandra’s spine, buffeting her entire body. Joy exploded in her heart, obliterating all memory of his treachery and deceit. Slowly she turned, afraid to look for fear this was some cruel trick of fate, and then she raised her gaze to his. It was Jordan! He was alive. The sight of his handsome, ruggedly chiseled face almost sent her to her knees. He was standing there, looking at her, a faint smile lingering on his firm lips.
Her entire being aglow, Alexandra mentally reached out to touch his beloved face and assure herself he was real. His smile warmed as if he felt her touch; his eyes shifted over her face, registering the changes in her appearance, and then, for no comprehensible reason, Jordan’s entire expression froze, and he looked sharply, accusingly at Tony.
In the front pew, the dowager duchess was immobilized, starin
g at Jordan, her right hand pressed to her throat. In the cataclysmic silence that ensued, only Uncle Monty seemed capable of speech or action—undoubtedly because the full bottle of Madeira he had secretly imbibed had impaired his ability to recognize Jordan’s profile. He did, however, vividly recall the dowager’s biting lectures about the necessity for decorum at this wedding, and so he took it as his duty to remonstrate with the newcomer. Leaning toward the intruder standing in the aisle, Sir Montague warned in a booming voice, “Take a seat, man! And don’t move a muscle till the archbishop walks off—otherwise, there’ll be hell to pay from the dowager!”
His voice seemed to break the spell holding everyone in thrall. The archbishop suddenly announced that the ceremony could not continue and walked off; Tony took Alexandra’s trembling hand in his and started down the aisle; Jordan stepped aside to let them pass; the stately duchess slowly rose, her gaze clinging to Jordan. In his muddled state, Uncle Monty assumed the wedding was happily complete and, following his previous instructions to the letter, he offered his arm to the dowager and escorted her proudly down the aisle in the bride and groom’s wake, beaming benignly upon the gaping spectators who had come to their feet and were staring in mummified amazement.
Outside the church, Uncle Monty kissed Alexandra soundly, took Tony’s hand, and was pumping it energetically, when Jordan’s harsh voice stopped him cold. “You damned fool, the wedding is off! Do something useful, and take my wife home.” Taking his grandmother’s arm, Jordan started toward the waiting coaches. Over his shoulder, he said curtly to Tony, “I suggest we get out of here, before that mob in there descends on us. The morning papers will carry the explanation of my miraculous return. They can learn about it there. We’ll meet you at my—at the town house in Upper Brook Street.”
“No way to flag down a hack, Hawthorne,” Uncle Monty said to Tony, taking charge when neither Alexandra nor Anthony seemed capable of movement. “There ain’t a hack in sight. You’ll ride with us.” Forcibly clutching Anthony by one arm and Alexandra by the other, he marched them forward toward Tony’s coach.