Something Wonderful (Sequels 2)

The duchess' brusque tone evidently evoked a pang of sympathy in the Minister, Bradburn, because he broke his own silence for the first time and tried to reassure her: "We are moving heaven and earth to discover what has happened to Hawthorne," he said gently. "Bow Street has a hundred men scouring the wharves, making official inquiries, and the Hawthorne family solicitors have employed another hundred investigators with instructions to use any means whatsoever to obtain information on their own. No demand for ransom has been received, so we do not think he was abducted for that purpose."

Stifling the tears that she knew the old duchess would despise, Alexandra made herself ask a question she feared to have answered: "What are the chances of finding him—?" Her voice trailed off. She could not say the word "alive."

"I—" He hesitated. "I don't know."

His tone implied the chances were not extremely good, and Alexandra's eyes blurred with scalding tears that she concealed by laying her cheek against Henry's soft fur while she swallowed against the painful knot of misery congealing in her throat.

For four endless days, Alexandra existed in the same house with the duchess, who persistently treated her as if she were invisible, neither speaking to her nor looking at her. On the fifth day, Alexandra was standing at the window of her bedchamber when she saw Sir George leaving the house. Too agitated to wait for a summons, she raced downstairs to the salon and burst in on the duchess. "I saw the Minister leaving. What did he say?"

The duchess glared her displeasure at Alexandra's peremptory entrance into the room. "Sir George's visits are of no concern to you," she coldly replied and turned her head away in rude dismissal.

Her words snapped the slender thread of control Alexandra had managed to keep on her emotions. Clenching her hands at her sides, she said in a voice shaking with frustration and fury, "Despite what you think, I am not a witless child, ma'am, and my husband is the most important person in the world to me now. You cannot, must not, keep information from me!"

When the duchess merely continued to regard her in stony silence, Alexandra switched to pleading. "It is so much kinder to tell me the truth than to hide it from me. I cannot bear not knowing—please don't do this to me. I won't embarrass you with hysterics… When my father died and my mother could not resume her life, I took over the running of our household at the age of fourteen. And when my grandfather died, I—"

"There is no news!" her grace snapped. "When news comes, I will see that you hear it."

"But it's been so long!" Alexandra burst out

The dowager's gaze raked over her, blazing with contempt. "You're quite a little actress, aren't you? However, you can stop worrying about your welfare. A marriage settlement was made between that mother of yours and my grandson, providing her with enough money to live in splendor for the rest of her days. She has more than enough to share with you."

Alexandra's mouth dropped open as she realized the duchess actually believed her concern was for her own future, instead of for her husband, who might even now be lying at the bottom of the English Channel.

Speechless with fury, Alexandra listened as the dowager scathingly finished: "Get out of my sight. I cannot abide your feigned concern over my grandson's well-being, not for another moment. You scarcely knew him, he was nothing to you."

"How dare you!" Alexandra cried. "How dare you sit there and say those things to me. You—you wouldn't understand how I feel about him, because you don't have any feelings! Even if you did, you're too—too old to remember what love is like!"

The duchess slowly arose, seeming to tower over Alexandra, but Alexandra was too hysterical, too enraged, to stop her mindless tirade: "You can't imagine what it was like for me to see him smile at me or to have him laugh with me. You can't know how it felt to look into his eyes—" A sob rose in Alexandra's throat and tears began pouring down her pale cheeks. "I don't want his money—I just want to be able to look into his eyes and to see him smile." To her horror, Alexandra's knees buckled and she sank to the floor, at the duchess' feet weeping. "I just want to see his beautiful eyes," she sobbed brokenly.

The duchess seemed to hesitate, then she turned on her heel and left the room, leaving Alexandra to weep out her grief and misery in lonely solitude. Ten minutes later, Ramsey entered the room bearing an ornate silver tea service. "Her grace said you were 'weak from hunger' and wishful of refreshment," he said.

Still on the floor with her arms on the settee and her face buried in them, Alexandra slowly raised her head and self-consciously brushed her tears away. "Please—take that away. I can't bear the sight of food."

Following the duchess' orders and ignoring Alexandra's request, Ramsey placed the unwanted tray on the table, then he straightened and, for the first time since Alexandra had met him, the servant looked uncertain and uneasy. "It is not my intent to gossip," he began stiffly after a pause, "but I am informed by Craddock, her grace's dresser, that her grace has scarcely eaten a meal in five days. A tray has just been brought to her in the small drawing room. Perhaps if you were to offer to dine with her, you could persuade her to eat."

"That woman doesn't need food," Alexandra gulped, listlessly getting up. "She isn't like mortal people."

Ramsey's chilly demeanor became positively glacial at the indirect criticism of his employer. "I have been with the Duchess of Hawthorne for forty years. My deep concern for her led me to presume incorrectly that you might also feel some concern for her, since you are now part of the family. I apologize for my error in judgment."

He bowed stiffly out of the room, leaving Alexandra feeling thoroughly obnoxious and completely bewildered. Ramsey was apparently devoted to the duchess, yet Alexandra well knew the duchess' attitude toward her servants: Twice at Rosemeade, she had sternly reprimanded Alexandra for "gossiping with the servants," when all Alexandra had done was ask Ramsey if he was married and a parlormaid if she had children. From the duchess' lofty view, talking to a servant consistituted gossiping with them, which in turn constituted treating them as equals—and that, Alexandra remembered from the duchess' blistering remarks, was not done. Despite all that, Ramsey was apparently devoted to her. Which meant there had to be more to the elderly woman than pride and hauteur, Alexandra decided.

That possibility led to another, and Alexandra gazed at the tea tray in blank confusion, wondering if the duchess could possibly have meant it as a "peace offering." Until five minutes ago, the duchess had never shown the slightest interest in whether Alexandra ate or not. On the other hand, the tray could just as easily have been intended as a sharp reminder to Alexandra to get control of herself.