Alexandra opened her mouth to give her name, but gave a shriek of outraged panic instead when he suddenly slid his hands onto her breasts.
Jordan jerked his hands away as if they’d been scorched. “You’re a girl!”
“I can’t help it!” Alexandra flung back, stung by the sharp accusation in his voice.
The absurdity of their exchanged words struck them both at the same time: Jordan’s black scowl gave way to a sudden grin and Alexandra started to laugh. And that was how Mrs. Tilson, the innkeeper’s wife, found them—both on the bed, laughing, the man’s hands arrested a few inches above Miss Alexandra Lawrence’s gaping shirt and bosom.
“Alexandra Lawrence!” she exploded, barging into the room like a battleship under full sail, sparks shooting from her eyes as they leveled on the man’s hands above Alexandra’s open shirt. “What is the meaning of this!”
Alexandra was blessedly oblivious to the portent of what Mrs. Tilson was seeing and thinking, but Jordan was not, and he found it nauseating that this woman’s evil mind could apparently accuse a young girl of no more than thirteen years of collaborating in her own moral demise. His features hardened and there was a distinct frost in his clipped, authoritative voice. “Miss Lawrence was hurt in an accident just south of here on the road. Send for a physician.”
“No, do not, Mrs. Tilson,” Alexandra said and lurched into a sitting position despite her swimming senses. “I’m perfectly well and wish to go home.”
Jordan spoke to the suspicious woman in a curt, commanding voice. “In that case, I’ll take her home, and you can direct the physician to the bend in the road a few miles south of here. There, he’ll find two thugs who are beyond needing his skill, but he can ensure they’re properly disposed of.” Reaching into his pocket, Jordan withdrew a card with his name engraved on it beneath a small gold crest. “I’ll return here to answer any questions he may have, once I’ve taken Miss Lawrence to her family.”
Mrs. Tilson muttered something scathing under her breath about bandits and debauchery, snatched the card from his hand, glowered at Alexandra’s unbuttoned shirt, and marched out.
“You seemed surprised—about my being a girl, I mean,” Alexandra ventured uncertainly.
“Frankly, this has been a night of surprises,” Jordan replied, dismissing Mrs. Tilson from his mind and turning his attention to Alexandra. “Would I be prying if I were to ask you what you were doing rigged out in that suit of armor?”
Alexandra slowly swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. The room swayed. “I can walk,” she protested when the man reached out to lift her into his arms.
“But I’d prefer to carry you,” Jordan said firmly and did exactly that. Alexandra smiled inwardly at the blithe way he stalked through the common room, serenely indifferent to the staring villagers, carrying in his arms a disheveled, dusty girl clad in breeches and shirtsleeves.
Once he had set her gently onto the deep, luxurious squabs of his coach and settled in across from her, however, her amusement vanished. Soon, she realized, they would pass by the gruesome scene she’d partially caused. “I took a man’s life,” she said in a tortured whisper as the coach headed toward the dreaded bend. “I will never forgive myself.”
“I would never forgive you if you hadn’t,” Jordan said with a teasing smile in his voice. In the glow of the lighted coach lamps, huge aqua eyes brimming with tears lifted to his face, searching it, silently beseeching him for more comfort, and Jordan responded automatically. Reaching forward, he lifted her off the seat and onto his lap, cradling her in his arms like the distraught child she was. “It was a very brave thing you did,” he murmured into the soft, dusky curls that brushed his cheek.
Alexandra drew in a shuddering breath and shook her head, unknowingly rubbing her cheek against his chest. “I wasn’t brave, I was simply too frightened to run away like a sensible person.”
Holding the trusting child in his arms, Jordan was startled by the unprecedented thought that he might like to have a child of his own to hold someday. There was something profoundly touching about the way this little girl was snuggled against him, trusting him. Remembering that fetching little girls inevitably become spoiled young women, he promptly discarded the notion. “Why were you wearing that old suit of armor?” he asked for the second time that night.
Alexandra explained about the jousts, which were a ritual whenever one of the O’Toole children had a birthday, then she made him repeatedly laugh aloud by describing some of her foibles and triumphs during today’s lists.
“Don’t people outside of Morsham have jousts and such? I always assumed people were the same everywhere, although I don’t know it for certain, since I’ve never been beyond Morsham. I doubt if I ever will.”
Jordan was shocked into momentary silence. In his own wide circle of acquaintances, everyone traveled everywhere, and often. It was hard to accept that this bright child would never see any place beyond this godforsaken tiny village on the edge of nowhere. He glanced down at her shadowy face and found her watching him with friendly interest, rather than the deferential awe he was accustomed to. Inwardly he grinned at the image of uninhibited peasant children throwing themselves into jousts. How different their childhood must be from that of the children of the nobility. Like himself, they were all raised by governesses, ruled by tutors, admonished to be clean and neat at all times, and constantly reminded to act like the superior beings they were born to be. Perhaps children who grew up in remote places like this were better and different—guileless and courageous and unaffected, as Alexandra was. Based on the life Alexandra described to him, he wondered if perhaps peasant children were the lucky ones, after all. Peasant children? It dawned on him that there was nothing of the rough peasant in this child’s cultured speech.
“Why did your coachman call you ‘your grace’?” she asked, smiling, and a dimple appeared in her cheek.
Jordan jerked his eyes away from the fetching little dent. “That is how dukes are generally addressed.”
“Dukes?” Alexandra echoed, disappointed by the discovery that this handsome stranger obviously dwelled in a world far beyond her reach and would therefore vanish from her life forever. “Are you truly a duke?”
“I’m afraid so,” he answered, noting her crestfallen reaction. “Are you disappointed?”
“A little,” she floored him by replying. “What do people call you? Besides Duke, I mean?”
“At least a dozen names,” he said, both amused and confused by her genuine, unguarded reactions. “Most people call me Hawthorne, or Hawk. My close friends call me by my given name, Jordan.”
“Hawk suits you,” she remarked, but her agile mind had already leapt ahead to an important conclusion. “Do you suppose those bandits specifically chose you to rob because you’re a duke? I mean they took a terrible risk in accosting you on the road not far from an inn.”
“Greed is a powerful motivation for risk,” Jordan replied.
Alexandra nodded her agreement and softly quoted, “ ‘There is no fire like passion, no shark like hatred, no torrent like greed.’ ”
In blank amazement, Jordan stared at her. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say that, Buddha did,” Alexandra explained.
“I’m familiar with the quotation,” Jordan said, recovering his composure with an effort. “I’m merely surprised that you are familiar with it.” He saw a faint light coming from a shadowy house directly ahead and assumed the home was hers. “Alexandra,” he said quickly and sternly as they neared the house, “you must never feel guilty about what you did tonight. You have nothing whatever to feel guilty about.”
She looked at him with a soft smile, but as the coach drew up in the rutted drive of a large, run-down house, Alexandra suddenly exclaimed, “Oh no!”
Her heart sank as she beheld the squire’s shiny carriage and fancy mare, which were still tied near the front door. She had so hoped they’d be well gone by now.
The duk
e’s coachman opened the door and let down the stairs, but when Alexandra attempted to follow the duke out of the coach, he reached in and scooped her into his arms. “I’m certain I can walk,” she protested.
His lazy, intimate smile made her catch her breath as he said, “It’s embarrassing in the extreme for a man of my dimensions to be rescued by a slip of a girl, even one wearing a suit of armor. For the sake of my wounded ego, you’ll have to permit me to be gallant now.”
“Very well,” Alexandra agreed with a resigned chuckle. “Who am I to crush the ego of a noble duke?”
Jordan scarcely heard her, his sweeping glance was registering the overgrown lawns surrounding the house, the broken shutters hanging askew at the windows, and all the other signs of a house that was sadly in need of repair. It was not the humble cottage he’d expected to find; instead it was an old, eerie, neglected place, which the inhabitants could obviously not afford to keep up. Shifting Alexandra’s weight against his left arm and leg, he raised his right hand and knocked upon the door, noting the peeling paint.
When no one answered, Alexandra volunteered, “I’m afraid you’ll have to knock more loudly. Penrose is quite deaf, you see, although he’s much too proud to admit it.”
“Who,” Jordan said, rapping more loudly upon the heavy door, “is Penrose?”
“Our butler. When Papa died, I had to discharge the staff, but Penrose and Filbert were too old and infirm to find new employment. They had nowhere to go, so they remained here and agreed to work in return for only lodging and food. Penrose does the cooking, too, and helps with the cleaning.”
“How very odd,” Jordan murmured the thought aloud, waiting for the door to be opened.
In the light of the lamp above the door, her piquant face was turned up to him in laughing curiosity. “What do you find ‘odd’?”
“The idea of a deaf butler.”
“Then you will surely find Filbert even more of an oddity.”
“I doubt that,” Jordan said dryly. “Who is Filbert?”
“Our footman.”
“Dare I ask what his infirmity is?”
“He’s shortsighted,” she provided ingenuously. “So much so that only last week he mistook a wall for a door and walked into it.”
To his horror, Jordan felt laughter welling up inside him. Trying to spare her pride, he said as solemnly as possible, “A deaf butler and a blind footman. . . . How very—ah— unconventional.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it,” she agreed almost proudly. “But then, I shouldn’t like to be conventional.” With a jaunty smile, she quoted, “ ‘Conventionality is the refuge of a stagnant mind.’ ”
Jordan raised his fist and pounded so hard she could hear the sound thunder through the inside of the house, but his puzzled gaze was riveted on her laughing face. “Who said that about conventionality?” he asked blankly.
“I did,” she admitted impenitently. “I made it up.”
“What an impertinent little baggage you are,” he said, grinning, and before he realized what he was doing, he started to press an affectionate, paternal kiss on her forehead. He checked the impulse as the door was flung open by a white-haired Penrose, who glared indignantly at Jordan and said, “There is no need to hammer on the door like you’re trying to waken the dead, sir! No one in this house is deaf!”
Stunned into momentary silence by this dressing-down from a mere butler and, moreover, one whose uniform was faded and threadbare, Jordan opened his mouth to give the servant the blistering setdown he richly deserved, but the old man had just realized that it was Alexandra whom Jordan held, and that there was a bruise on her jaw. “What have you done to Miss Alexandra?!” the servant demanded in a furious hiss, and reached out his feeble arms with the obvious intention of snatching Alexandra into them.
“Take me to Mrs. Lawrence,” Jordan ordered curtly, ignoring the butler’s gesture. “I said,” Jordan enunciated more loudly when the servant seemed not to hear, “take us to Mrs. Lawrence at once.”
Penrose glowered. “I heard you the first time,” he declared irately, turning to do as he was bidden. “The dead could hear you . . .” he muttered as he walked off.
The faces that turned to stare at them in the drawing room were beyond Alexandra’s worst imaginings. Her mother jumped up with a startled scream; the stout squire and his stouter wife both leaned forward in their chairs, intent, avidly curious—staring at Alexandra’s shirt, which was gaping open nearly to her breasts.
“What happened?” Mrs. Lawrence burst out. “Alexandra, your face—dear God, what has happened?”
“Your daughter saved my life, Mrs. Lawrence, but in the process, she suffered a blow to her face. I assure you it looks much more serious than it really is.”
“Please put me down,” Alexandra said urgently, for her mother seemed about to swoon. When Jordan complied, she decided to belatedly make the introductions and thus restore some semblance of decorum to the atmosphere. “Mother,” she said in a quiet, reassuring voice, “this is the Duke of Hawthorne.” Despite her mother’s gasp, Alexandra continued in a polite, matter-of-fact tone, “I came upon him when he and his coachman had been set upon by bandits and I—I shot one of them.” Turning to Jordan, she said, “Your grace, this is my mother, Mrs. Lawrence.”
Silence reigned complete. Mrs. Lawrence seemed to be struck dumb and the squire and his wife continued to gape, their mouths slack. Embarrassed by the total silence in the room, Alexandra turned with a bright relieved smile as Uncle Monty tottered into the room, swaying slightly, his glassy eyes testifying to an evening spent secretly imbibing his forbidden Madeira. “Uncle Monty,” she said a little desperately, “I’ve brought home a guest. This is the Duke of Hawthorne.”
Uncle Monty leaned heavily on his ivory-handled cane and blinked twice, trying to focus on the face of their guest. “Good God!” he exclaimed in sudden shock. “It is Hawthorne, by Jove! It truly is.” Belatedly recalling his manners, he executed a clumsy bow and said in a hearty, ingratiating voice, “Sir Montague Marsh, your grace, at your service.”
Alexandra, who was embarrassed only by the awkwardness of the prolonged silences and not by her shabby house, ancient servants, or peculiarly behaving relatives, smiled brightly at Jordan, then inclined her head toward Filbert who was shuffling into the room bearing a tea tray. Ignoring the fact that she was probably committing a grave social faux pas by introducing a nobleman to a mere footman, she said sweetly, “And this is Filbert, who takes care of everything which Penrose does not. Filbert, this is the Duke of Hawthorne.”
Filbert glanced up in the act of putting the tea tray on a table and squinted nearsightedly over his shoulder at Uncle Monty. “How do,” he said to the wrong man and Alexandra saw the duke’s lips twitch.
“Would you care to stay for tea?” she asked the duke, studying the suspicious glimmer of laughter in his grey eyes.
He smiled, but shook his head without a trace of regret. “I cannot, moppet. I’ve a long journey ahead of me and before I can resume it, I will have to return to the inn and meet with the authorities. They will require some sort of explanation for tonight’s debacle.” Directing a brief nod of farewell at his watchful audience, Jordan looked down at the beguiling face turned up to his. “Would you see me out?” he invited.
Alexandra nodded and led him to the front door, ignoring the babble of voices that erupted behind them in the drawing room, where the squire’s wife was saying in a shrill voice, “What did he mean ‘back to the inn’? Surely, Mrs. Lawrence, he cannot possibly have meant Alexandra was there with—”
In the hallway, the duke paused and gazed down at Alexandra with a warmth in his grey eyes that made her entire body feel overheated. And when he lifted his hand and laid it tenderly against her bruised jaw, her pulse leapt in her throat. “Where—where do you go on your journey?” she asked, trying to delay his leavetaking.
“To Rosemeade.”
“What is that?”
“My grandmother’s small coun
try estate. She prefers to spend most of her time there because she thinks the house ‘cozy.’ ”
“Oh,” Alexandra said, finding it quite difficult to speak or breathe because his fingertips were now deliciously sliding over her cheek, and he was looking at her in a way that struck her as being almost reverent.
“I’ll never forget you, poppet,” he said, his voice low and husky as he bent down and pressed his warm lips to her forehead. “Don’t let anyone change you. Stay exactly the way you are.”
When he left, Alexandra stood stock still, reeling from the kiss that seemed branded into her forehead.
It did not occur to her that she might have just fallen under the spell of a man who automatically used his voice and smile to charm and disarm. Practiced seducers were beyond the realm of her experience.
* * *
Dishonest rakes and practiced seducers were not, however, beyond the experience of Mrs. Lawrence, who had fallen victim to just such a treacherous charmer when she was scarcely older than Alexandra. Like the Duke of Hawthorne, her husband had been outrageously handsome, with suave manners, beautiful clothes, and absolutely no scruples.
Which was why, when Alexandra awakened the next morning, it was to see her mother storming into her room, her voice vibrating with fury. “Alexandra, wake up this instant!”
Alexandra wriggled into a sitting position and pushed her curly hair out of her eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” her mother said, and Alexandra was shocked at the virulent rage emanating from her mother. “We’ve had four visitors this morning, beginning with the innkeeper’s wife, who informed me you shared a bedroom there with that low, conniving seducer of innocents last night. The next two visitors were curiosity seekers. The fourth visitor,” she enunciated in a voice shaking with pent-up wrath and tears, “was the squire, who told me that, because of your scandalous behavior last night, your state of undress, and your general lack of modesty and sense, he now considers you beyond the bounds of a fit wife for his son or for any other self-respecting man.”