Something Wonderful

by Judith McNaught

  “What the bloody hell are we waitin’ for,” the second shadow demanded of his cohort as they waited in the darkness under the eaves of the tavern, where their prey had disappeared. “We was supposed ter hit him over the head and dump him into the water, which we coulda done better while he was on the ship.”

  The first man smiled sardonically. “I got a better idea—it ain’t more work, and it’ll get us more blunt.”

  Jordan emerged from the tavern with three fat, unappealing cigars stuck in the inside pocket of his coat. Now that he had them, he doubted he’d want to light them. Behind him, shadows shifted suddenly, a board creaked, and Jordan tensed. Without changing his pace, he reached inside his coat for the pistol, but before his hand ever touched it, his skull had already exploded into shards of agonizing pain, sending him sliding into a black tunnel of oblivion. And then he was floating, drifting, moving toward a welcoming light at the end of the tunnel that seemed to beckon him.

  * * *

  Alexandra awoke at dawn to the shouts of seamen moving above her, getting the ship ready to put out to sea. Despite the fact that her head felt as if it was stuffed with wool, she was still eager to be up on deck when the lines were cast off and the ship set sail. Her husband must have had a similar idea in mind, she thought as she pulled on a fresh gown and wrapped herself in a matching cloak of soft lavender wool. He had already arisen and left the cabin.

  A band of grey and pink was streaking the horizon when Alexandra arrived on deck. Seamen hurried about their tasks, sidestepping her as they uncoiled ropes and scrambled up the rigging. In front of her, the first mate stood with his feet braced wide apart, his back to her, calling out orders to the men climbing the masts. She looked about for her husband, but she seemed to be the only passenger on deck. At supper last night, she’d heard Jordan tell Captain Farraday that he always enjoyed being on deck when the lines were cast off and the ship set sail. Picking up her skirts, Alexandra walked over to the captain as he came on deck. “Captain Farraday, by any chance have you seen my husband?”

  Seeing the impatience on his face, she quickly explained her reason for detaining him. “He isn’t in our cabin and he’s not on deck. Is there anywhere else on this ship he might be?”

  “It’s not likely, your grace,” he said absently, his gaze on the lightening sky, assessing the amount of time before it was fully dawn. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  Puzzled, trying to ignore the tingles of alarm dancing up and down her spine, Alexandra went down to their cabin and stood in the center of it, looking uncertainly about. Deciding Jordan had probably gone for a stroll on the docks, she walked over and picked up the tan coat he’d tossed over the back of the chair after they boarded the ship last night. Carrying it over to the wardrobe to hang it inside, she rubbed her cheek against the soft superfine fabric, inhaling the faint scent of Jordan’s spicy cologne, then she put it away. He was accustomed to having a valet picking up after him, she realized with a fond smile, as she reached for his tan trousers and took them to the wardrobe. Turning, she looked for the dark blue coat he’d been wearing when he went up on deck late last night. The blue coat was nowhere in the cabin; neither was the rest of the clothing he’d had on last night when she last saw him.

  Captain Farraday sympathized with her concern, but he did not intend to let the tide go out without his ship, and he said so. A terrible premonition of calamity was raging through Alexandra, making her tremble, but she knew instinctively that pleading would have no effect on the man in front of her. “Captain Farraday,” she said, drawing herself up and speaking in what she hoped was a good imitation of Jordan’s grandmother’s imperious voice, “if my husband is lying injured somewhere on this ship, the blame will be on your head, not only for his injury, but for putting out to sea instead of getting him off this ship and into the hands of a proper doctor. Furthermore,” she said, struggling to keep her voice from shaking, “unless I misunderstood what my husband told me yesterday, he owns part of the company that owns this ship.”

  Chapter Twelve

  IN FULL-DRESS UNIFORM. Captain Farraday and his first mate stood at military attention on the deserted deck of the impounded Fair Winds, watching the black traveling chaise draw to a stop directly in front of their gangplank. “That’s her?” the first mate said in disbelief, staring at the slender, ramrod-straight figure who was walking slowly up the gangplank, her hand on the arm of Sir George Bradburn, one of the most influential men in the Admiralty. “You mean to tell me that white-haired old woman has enough influence to make the Minister impound our ship and have both of us quarantined on it? Just so she can get here and listen to what we have to say?”

  Alexandra jumped up at the sound of the knock upon her cabin door, her heart hammering with fear and hope as it had for the last five days, whenever there was a sound outside, but it was not the duke who stood in her doorway, it was his grandmother whom she hadn’t seen since her wedding day. “Has there been any word?” Alexandra whispered desperately, too distraught to greet the woman.

  “The captain and first mate know nothing,” her grace said shortly. “Come with me.”

  “No!” Teetering on the brink of hysteria, where she had hovered for more than two days and nights, Alexandra shook her head wildly and backed away. “He’d want me to stay—”

  The duchess drew herself up and regarded the pale, stricken girl down the full length of her aristocratic nose. “My grandson,” she said in her coldest voice, “would expect you to behave with the dignity and self-control that befits his wife, the Duchess of Hawthorne.”

  The words hit Alexandra like a slap in the face—and with the same result—bringing her back to her senses. Her husband would expect that of her. Fighting for control of her wild panic, Alexandra picked up the puppy, straightened her spine, and walked woodenly beside the duchess and Sir George Bradburn to the coach, but when the coachman took her elbow to help her inside, Alexandra drew back sharply, her eyes making one last, frantic search of the fronts of the taverns and warehouses lining the bustling wharf. Her husband was here somewhere. Sick or hurt. He had to be . . . Her mind refused to consider any possibility beyond that.

  Hours later, the coach slowed, making its decorous way through the London streets, and Alexandra shifted her bleak gaze from the window to the duchess, who was seated across from, her back rigidly erect, her face so cold and emotionless that Alexandra wondered if the woman was capable of feeling anything. In the tomblike silence of the coach, Alexandra’s hoarse whisper sounded like a shout. “Where are we going?”

  After a deliberate, prolonged pause that made it eloquently clear the dowager resented having to explain her intentions to Alexandra, she said coldly, ‘To my town house. Ramsey will have already arrived there with a small staff who will keep the shades drawn and inform any callers that we are at Rosemeade. News of my grandson’s disappearance is all over the papers, and I have no wish to be badgered by callers and curiosity seekers.”

  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 ag
ainst 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.

  Alexandra bit her lip as Ramsey’s words rang ominously through her mind: Five days . . . the duchess had not eaten in five days. Alexandra had scarcely done so either, but she was young and healthy and strong. Alexandra’s attitude softened yet more as it occurred to her that if the duchess had been unable to eat, she must be a great deal more distressed over her grandson’s disappearance than she was letting on.

  With a sigh of determination, Alexandra raked her hair back off her forehead and decided the tea tray had been intended as a peace offering. She did so because she could not endure the thought of a seventy-year-old woman wasting away.

  Through the partially open door of the blue salon, Alexandra saw the duchess sitting in a high-backed chair, staring into the fire. Even in repose, the old woman presented a forbidding figure, yet there was something about her stiff, withdrawn features that reminded Alexandra poignantly of her own mother during the early days after her father’s death, before the arrival of his other wife turned Mrs. Lawrence’s grief to hatred.

  She stepped softly into the room, throwing a shadow across the duchess’ line of vision, and the old woman’s head snapped up. Just as swiftly, she looked away—but not before Alexandra had glimpsed the suspicious sheen of tears in the duchess’ pale eyes.

  “Your grace?” Alexandra said softly as she stepped forward.

  “I did not give you leave to interrupt me here,” the woman snapped, but for once Alexandra was unfooled by that harsh voice.

  In the same soothing tone she’d used with her mother, Alexandra said, “No, ma’am, you did not.”

  “Go away.”

  Deflated but determined, Alexandra said, “I shan’t stay long, but I must apologize for the things I said to you a few minutes ago. They were unforgivable.”

  “I accept your apology. Now go away.”

  Ignoring the duchess’ scathing glower, Alexandra walked forward. “I thought, since we both have to eat, it might be more tolerable if we shared a meal together. We—we could bear each other company.”

  Anger flared in the woman whose wishes were being ignored. “If you want company, you should go home to your mother, as I suggested to you not fifteen minutes past!”

  “I can’t.”
<
br />   “Why not?” the old woman snapped.

  “Because,” Alexandra said in a suffocated whisper, “I need to be near someone else who loves him.”

  Naked, uncontrollable pain slashed across the old duchess’ features before she brought herself under control, but in that instant, Alexandra saw the torment that lay beneath her facade of stiff dignity.

  Aching with pity, yet careful not to show it, Alexandra hastily sat down in the chair across from the duchess and uncovered one of the trays. Her stomach churned at the sight of food, but she smiled brightly. “Would you like a slice of this nice chicken—or would you prefer the beef?”

  The duchess hesitated, her eyes narrowed on Alexandra. “My grandson is still alive!” she stated, her expression daring Alexandra to deny it.

  “Of course he is,” Alexandra said fervently, aware she was being warned to get out if she doubted it. “I believe that with all my heart.”

  The duchess studied Alexandra’s face, assessing her sincerity, then she gave a small, hesitant nod and said gruffly, “I suppose I could eat a bit of chicken.”

  They ate in complete silence broken only by the occasional crackle from the little fire burning in the grate. Not until Alexandra arose and bade her goodnight did the old woman speak, as for the first time she addressed Alexandra by her given name:

  “Alexandra—” she whispered hoarsely.

  Alexandra turned. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Do you . . .” The duchess drew a ragged, pain-edged breath. “Do you . . . pray?”

  Tears swelled in Alexandra’s throat and burned the backs of her eyes for, as she instantly realized, the proud old woman was not interested in her personal religious habits. She was asking Alexandra to pray.

  Swallowing painfully, Alexandra nodded. “Very, very hard,” she whispered.

  * * *

  For the next three days, Alexandra and the duchess kept a quiet vigil in the blue salon, their sentences desultory, their voices unnaturally hushed—two strangers with little in common except the unspeakable terror that bound them together.