Something Wonderful (Sequels 2)

"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.