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Alexandra swallowed and looked at her, but she could not drag her voice past the lump of tears in her throat. Melanie's husband had been Jordan's closest friend, she knew, and now she wondered where Melanie's loyalties would lie. She shook her head and took the handkerchief from Melanie.

"Alex!" Melanie cried in mounting alarm. "Talk to me, please! I'm your friend, and I'll always be," she said, correctly interpreting the reason for Alexandra's wary expression. "You can't keep this bottled up inside you—you're as white as a ghost and you look ready to faint."

Alexandra had briefly confided to Melanie that she had been an utter blind fool about Jordan, but she had never mentioned his complete lack of feeling for her, and had also concealed her shame behind a facade of amused self-mockery. Now, however, it was there in all its naked, mute misery for Melanie to see, as Alexandra haltingly related all the humiliating details of her relationship with Hawk, leaving nothing out. Throughout the tale, Melanie frequently shook her head in sympathetic amusement at Alexandra's naive outpouring of her heart to Jordan, but she did not smile when Alexandra told her of Hawk's intention to pack her off to Devon.

Alexandra finished by relating Jordan's explanation for his disappearance, and when she was done Melanie patted her hand. "All that's in the past. What about the future—do you have any sort of plan?"

"Yes," Alexandra said with quiet force. "I want a divorce!"

"What?" Melanie gasped. "You can't be serious!"

Alexandra was deadly serious and said so.

"A divorce is unthinkable," Melanie said, dismissing that alternative in a few short sentences. "You would be an outcast, Alex. Even my husband, who gives me my head in nearly everything, would forbid me to be in your company. You'd be barred from decent society everywhere, shut off from everyone."

"That is still preferable to being married to him and shut away somewhere in Devon."

"Perhaps it seems so to you now, but in any case it doesn't matter how you feel. I'm quite certain your husband would have to agree to a divorce, and I can't imagine that he will. Even so, they must be very difficult to obtain, and you'd need grounds, as well as Hawk's consent."

"I was thinking about that when you came in, and it seems to me I already have grounds, and I may not need his consent at all. In the first place, I was coerced into this marriage by—by circumstances. Secondly, at our wedding, he vowed to love and honor me, but he had no intention of ever doing either—that surely must be grounds enough to get either an annulment or a divorce, with or without his consent. However, I don't see why he'll refuse his consent," Alexandra added with a flash of anger. "He never wished to marry me in the first place."

"Well," Melanie shot back, "that doesn't mean he'll like having everyone know you don't want him anymore."

"When he has time to consider the plan, he'll be bound to feel relieved to have me off his hands."

Melanie shook her head. "I'm not so certain he wants you off his hands. I saw the way he looked at Lord Anthony in church today—he did not look relieved, he looked furious!"

"He is ill-tempered by nature," Alexandra said with disgust, recalling their interview downstairs. "He has no reason whatsoever to be angry with Anthony or me."

"No reason!" Melanie repeated in disbelief. "Why, you were about to marry another man!"

"I can't see what difference that should make. As I just said, he didn't want to marry me in the first place."

"But that doesn't mean he'll want anyone else to marry you," Melanie wisely replied. "In any case it doesn't matter. A divorce is simply out of the question. There has to be some other solution. My husband returned from Scotland today," she said enthusiastically. "I shall ask John for advice. He is very wise." Her face fell. "Unfortunately, he also considers Hawk his closest friend, so his advice will be somewhat colored by that. However," she said with absolute finality, "a divorce is positively beyond considering. There must be an alternative."

She fell silent for several long moments, lost in her own thoughts, her forehead furrowed. "It's little wonder you fell like a rock for him," she said with a small, compassionate smile. "Dozens of the most sophisticated flirts in England tumbled head over heels for him," she continued thoughtfully. "But except for indulging in an occasional fling with one of them, he never showed any sign of reciprocating their feelings. Naturally, now that he is back, everyone will expect you to tumble straight into his arms—particularly because Society is, at this very moment, recollecting how blindly infatuated with him you were when you first came to town."

The realization that Melanie was perfectly correct made Alexandra feel quite violently ill. Leaning her head against the back of the sofa, she swallowed and closed her eyes in sublime misery. "I hadn't thought of that, but you're absolutely right."

"Of course I am," Melanie absently agreed. "On the other hand," she declared, her eyes beginning to shine, "wouldn't it be delightful if the opposite happens!"

"What do you mean?"

"The ideal solution to the entire problem is for him to fall in love with you. That would enable you to keep your pride and your husband."

"Melanie," Alexandra said dampingly. "First of all, I don't think anyone could make that man fall in love, because he doesn't have a heart. Secondly, even if he does have one, it's certainly immune to me. Thirdly…"

Laughing, Melanie caught Alexandra's arm, hauled her off the sofa and pulled her to the mirror. "That was before. Look into the mirror, Alex. The female looking back at you right now has London at her feet! Men are quarreling over you—"

Alexandra sighed, looking at Melanie in the mirror rather than her own image. "Only because I've become a sort of absurd, fashionable rage—like damping one's skirts. It's fashionable for the moment for men to fancy themselves in love with me."

"How delightful," said Melanie, more pleased than before. "Hawthorne is in for the shock of his life when he realizes it."

A brief flare of amusement stirred in Alexandra's eyes, then abruptly dimmed. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh, yes, it does!" Melanie laughed. "Only consider this: For the first time in his life, Hawthorne has competition—and for his own wife! Think how Society will relish the spectacle of England's most practiced libertine, trying without early success to seduce and subdue his own wife."