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On the surface, she had partially adopted the attitude of languid nonchalance that was de rigueur among Select Society—and particularly Jordan's lofty friends—but neither the strictures of Society, nor Alexandra herself, could completely repress her natural ebullience or her innate common sense. She could not prevent her eyes from glowing with laughter when someone paid her outrageously flowery compliments, nor could she stop the animated glow that leapt to her cheeks when she was challenged to a race in Hyde Park; nor completely hide her fascination with the tales a noted explorer told of his recent jaunt through the wild jungles of a distant continent, where, he said, the natives carried spears that had been dipped in deadly poison.

The world, and the people who inhabited it, had again become as exciting and interesting to her as they had been when she was a girl sitting at her grandfather's knee.

Beside her, one of Alexandra's swains handed her a glass of sparkling champagne, and she accepted it with a soft smile, raising the glass to her lips as she watched the swirling dancers waltzing before her. Across the room, Roddy raised his glass to her in a silent toast, and she lifted hers in answer. Roddy Carstairs, in many ways, was still a puzzle to her, but she was oddly fond of him and extremely grateful.

Only once in all these weeks had Roddy given Alexandra cause to dislike him and that was when he repeated the story of her original meeting with Jordan, which she had told him in confidence after obtaining his word not to spread the story.

Within twenty-four hours, London was on fire with the gossip that Alexandra Townsende, as a seventeen-year-old girl, had saved Hawk's life.

Within forty-eight more hours, the "mystery" surrounding Alexandra multiplied tenfold. So did her popularity and the number of her suitors.

When Alexandra confronted Roddy with his perfidy, he had looked at her as if she were a complete fool. "My dear girl," he had drawled, "I gave my word not to tell anyone that you shot a man to save dear Jordan, and I have not done so. I did not, however, promise not to tell anyone you saved his life—that tasty morsel was entirely too delicious to keep to myself. Your deceased husband, you see," he had explained with a derisive smile, "was purported to be a rather dangerous man when crossed. He was a crack shot and an expert swordsman, as several husbands, including Lady Whitmore's and Lady Grangerfield's, ascertained for themselves."

Inwardly, Alexandra was disgusted by the husbands' hypocritical attitudes, but she tried not to judge them too harshly. She tried not to judge anyone too harshly, for that matter, because she remembered with painful clarity how it had felt to be ostracized.

As a result, shy young men flocked to her side because they knew the beautiful young Duchess of Hawthorne would never humiliate them with a disdainful glance or a joke at their expense. Older, intelligent men jostled one another for the right to take her down to dinner or dance with her, because she did not require them to mouth absurd, prescribed platitudes. Instead, they could speak to her on a variety of interesting subjects.

The Corinthian set admired not only her abundant beauty, but her famous skill with a rapier, and they flocked to the house on Upper Brook Street in hopes of seeing her fence, which they were rarely permitted to do—or, better yet, to fence with Hawthorne and thus impress her with their own skill, so they might win her undivided notice.

In that last regard, young Lord Sevely, who was too clumsy to fence and too shy to ask her to dance with him, outdid them all. After noting that Lady Melanie Camden and the elderly under-butler at the house on Brook Street (who seemed to be quite deaf) called Alexandra by a special nickname, he wrote a poem to her and had it published. He called it "Ode to Alex."

Not to be outdone by a mere "weanling" like Sevely, the elderly Sir Dilbeck, whose hobby was botany, named a new variety of rose he'd grafted in her honor, calling it "Glorious Alex."

The rest of Alexandra's suitors, annoyed by the implied liberties taken by the other two, followed suit. They, too, began calling her Alex.

Chapter Eighteen

In answer to his grandmother's summons, Anthony strolled into the drawing room and found her standing at the window, gazing down at the fashionable carriages returning to Upper Brook Street from the ritual afternoon promenade in the park.

"Come here a moment, Anthony," she said in her most regal voice. "Look out at the street and tell me what you see."

Anthony peered out the window. "Carriages coming back from the park—the same thing I see every day."

"And what else do you see?"

"I see Alexandra arriving in one of them with John Holliday. The phaeton drawing up behind them is Peter Weslyn's—and Gordon Bradford is with him. The carriage in front of Holliday's belongs to Lord Tinsdale, who is already in the salon, cooling his heels with Jimmy Montfort. Poor Holliday," Anthony chuckled. "He sent word he wishes to speak privately with me this afternoon. So did Weslyn, Bradford, and Tinsdale. They mean to offer for her, of course."

"Of course," the duchess repeated grimly, "and that is exactly my point. Today is exactly like all the others for nearly a month—suitors arriving in pairs and trios, jamming up traffic in the streets and cluttering up the salons downstairs, but Alexandra has no wish to wed, and she's made that clear to the lot of them. Even so, they keep parading into this house with bouquets in their hands, and marching back out of it with murder in their eyes."

"Now, Grandmama," Anthony soothed.

"Don't 'Now, Grandmama' me," she said, startling Anthony with her vehemence. "I may be old, but I am not a fool. I can see that something very unpleasant, very dangerous, is happening before my own eyes! Alexandra has come to represent some sort of challenge to your foolish sex. Once Alexandra discovered how Jordan had felt about her, and Carstairs took her under his wing, she began to change and shine almost overnight. When that happened, her connections to this family, along with the huge dowry you and I decided she should have, created a uniquely desirable package to any bachelor needful or wishful of acquiring a wife."

The duchess paused, waiting for an argument from her grandson, but Tony merely regarded her in noncommittal silence. "Had Alexandra shown the slightest partiality for one man, or even a preference for one type of man at that point," the duchess continued, "the others might have given up and gone away, but she did not. And that is what has brought us to the untenable pass for which I blame your entire sex."

"My sex?" he echoed blankly. "What do you mean?"