T DUSK the following evening, Alexandra was standing at the windows of her bedchamber, looking out across the drive, when she saw a stately coach drawing up, its lanterns twinkling in the dusky light. "Mary Ellen!" she breathed and ran from her room, hurrying down the long hall on the third floor.

Ramsey opened the door just as Mary Ellen erupted from the coach and ran up the front steps of the huge house, her long red hair streaming out behind her, her arms laden with oddly shaped parcels, the brim of her bonnet clutched in a fist. Skidding to a halt in the foyer, Mary Ellen curtsied to the astonished butler, whom she judged from his haughty demeanor to be An Important Personage, and then demanded in an agonized voice, "Please, milord, where is Alexandra? Is she still alive?"

When the butler merely gaped at her, Mary Ellen whirled around and confronted a footman, executed another curtsy, and then implored, "Where is Alexandra, sir? Please tell me!"

Alexandra plummeted down the staircase and into the foyer, throwing her arms around Mary Ellen, packages, bonnet, and all. "Mary Ellen!" she burst out joyously. "I'm so happy you've come—"

In the normal tomblike silence of the duchess' stately home, this noisy greeting ranked as an uproar and therefore drew not only three more servants into the foyer, but the dowager duchess and her eldest grandson as well.

In Morsham, Mary Ellen came from a simple, straightforward farm family which neither knew nor cared about refined manners, genteel behavior, or the opinions of their betters, whom they never came into contact with anyway. And so Mary Ellen was blessedly unaware of, and supremely unconcerned with, the fact that she was being judged on sight and found wanting by the inhabitants of Rosemeade, including the butler and footmen.

She cared naught for their opinions; all that mattered to her loyal heart was that Alexandra was apparently in some sort of trouble. "Oh, Alex!" Mary Ellen exclaimed in an agitated, disjointed rush. "I thought you were dying! And here you are looking almost as well as ever, except a little pale, which probably comes from inhabiting thisgloomy house with these gloomy people." Scarcely pausing for breath, she continued anxiously, "Your note sounded so grim, and Mama was going to come too, but she couldn't, because my papa's not well again. And that dreadful coachman wouldn't tell me a thing about what was wrong with you, although I pleaded with him to do so. All he would do was look down his huge nose at me and say, 'I'm sure it isn't my place to know.' Now tell me at once before I burst! Why are you 'desolate' and what is the 'horrible disaster' you wrote about and—and whoever are these people!"

Behind them the duchess' voice snapped like a whip, "I believe Miss Lawrence is 'desolate' because she is about to be married to the owner of this 'gloomy' house, who happens to be my grandson."

Mary Ellen's mouth dropped open and she whirled on Alexandra. "Oh, no!" she wailed, her horrified gaze flying to Ramsey, whom she erroneously deduced from his fine black suit to be the owner of the house. "Alex, you aren't going to marry that man! I won't let you! Alex, he's fat!"

Seeing the electrified wrath which was beginning to emanate from his grandmother, Jordan cleared his throat from the doorway across the hall, where he had been observing the scene with mingled irritation and amusement. "Alexandra, perhaps your friend would like to be relieved of her parcels and then properly introduced?"

Alexandra jumped at the unexpected sound of his deep voice. "Yes. Yes, of course," she said hastily as Ramsey stepped forward and took a bundle from each of Mary Ellen's arms. "Whatever is in that large one?" Alexandra asked in an underbreath as Ramsey turned and started down the hall.

"Remedies made from entrails and mold," Mary Ellen lied loudly, "which Mama made for whatever might have ailed you."

Ramsey's arm shot straight out, and both girls choked back their laughter, but Alexandra's amusement vanished as quickly as it had come. Grasping Mary Ellen's elbow and giving it a warning squeeze, she turned her friend around so they faced Jordan and his grandmother. Mary Ellen took one look at the duchess' granite features and took an alarmed step back, while Alexandra stumbled nervously through the introductions.

Ignoring Mary Ellen's stammered greeting, the duchess snapped a question at the girl: "Irish?" she demanded in an awful voice.

More confused than intimidated, Mary Ellen nodded.

"I should have expected that," her grace replied bitterly. "And Catholic, too, no doubt?"

Mary Ellen nodded again.

"Naturally." With a long-suffering look at Jordan, the duchess turned on her heel and marched into the salon—a queen unable to endure the offensive presence of such lowly, repulsive mortals.

Mary Ellen watched her leave, a perplexed expression on her pretty face as she peered after her, then she turned while Alex introduced the tall man as the Duke of Hawthorne.

Too thunderstruck to say a word to the man, Mary Ellen looked to Alex, her eyes wide. "A duke?" she whispered, ignoring the holder of that title, who was waiting for her curtsy.

Alexandra nodded, already realizing that having Mary Ellen come here had been impossibly unfair to the simple country girl.

"A real, genuine, honest-to-goodness duke?" Mary Ellen persisted in an underbreath, so intimidated she could not bear to look upon his face.

"The real thing," Jordan drawled dryly. "A real, genuine, honest-to-goodness duke. Now that we've all decided who I am, why don't we guess who you are?"

Flushing to the roots of her flaming red hair, Mary Ellen curtsied, cleared her throat, and said, "Mary Ellen O'Toole, sir. My lord. Your highness." She curtsied again. "At your service, sir. Er—my lor—"

" 'Your grace' will do," Jordan interrupted.

"What?" Mary Ellen echoed blankly, her flush deepening.

"I'll explain upstairs," Alexandra whispered. Regathering her wits, she looked uncertainly at Jordan, who was looming in the doorway like a dark, giant god. Larger than life. Forbidding. Yet strangely compelling. "If you'll excuse us, your grace, I will take Mary Ellen upstairs."

"By all means," Jordan drawled, and Alexandra had the humiliating feeling that he found the pair of them as absurdly amusing as a pair of clumsy mongrel puppies tumbling about in a stableyard.

As they passed the salon, the duchess' voice rolled out like a muted clap of thunder: "Curtsy!" she snapped.

Both girls lurched around and curtsied in unison to the doorway of the salon.

"Is she demented?" Mary Ellen burst out the moment they had gained the privacy of Alexandra's bedchamber. Her eyes wide with fright and affront, she looked around the luxurious room as if she expected the duchess to materialize like an evil specter. "Does she always go about snapping single words at people—'Irish'? 'Catholic'? 'Curtsy'?" Mary Ellen mimicked.

"This is bedlam," Alexandra agreed, her spontaneous laugh choked off as her dire predicament reclaimed her thoughts. "And I'm marrying into it."

"But why?" Mary Ellen breathed, her open features a mask of alarm. "Alex, what has happened to you? Only four days ago, we were jousting and laughing together, and then you vanished, and now the whole village is talking about you. Mama says I mustn't pay any mind to anything I hear until we talk to you ourselves, but the squire's wife told Honor, who told me, that we mustn't ever speak to you again. We must cross the street if we see you coming and avoid you because you are soiled now."

Alexandra did not know it was possible to feel more alone and wretched than she already did, but this piece of news made her heart cry out in anguished protest. Everyone had believed the worst of her, after all. The people she had known since babyhood were willing to make her an outcast, without ever hearing her side of the story. Only Mary Ellen and her family believed in her enough to wait for explanations.

Sinking down on the gold coverlet, Alexandra raised her stricken eyes to her only friend. "I'll tell you what happened…"

For several long minutes after Alexandra finished explaining everything, Mary Ellen could only stare at her in amazed silence. Slowly though, Mary Ellen's blank expression faded and became more thoughtful, then it became positively luminous. "Alex!" Mary Ellen breathed, breaking into a broad smile as her mind conjured up a fresh vision of the tall man Alexandra was about to marry. "Your betrothed husband is not only a duke, he's positively gorgeous! He is—don't deny it. I thought so the moment I clapped eyes on him downstairs, only I was very distressed over you, and so I didn't really think about it."

Well aware of Mary Ellen's fascination with and for the opposite sex, Alexandra said a little self-consciously, "His appearance is—not entirely displeasing."

"Not displeasing?" Mary Ellen hooted in disbelief and plunked her hands on her hips, her eyes turning dreamy. "Why, I vow he's even better-looking than Henry Beechley, and Henry is the handsomest boy I know. Why, Henry quite takes away my breath!"

"Six months ago, you thought George Larson was the handsomest boy you knew," Alexandra pointed out, smiling. "And George took away your breath."

"Only because I hadn't really looked at Henry," replied Mary Ellen defensively.

"And six months before that, you thought Jack Sanders was the handsomest boy in the world and he took your breath away," Alexandra continued, her brows raised in amusement.

"But only because I hadn't really looked at George and Henry," replied Mary Ellen, genuinely bewildered by Alexandra's obvious amusement.

"I think," Alexandra teased, "your difficulty with breathing is the result of spending too much time sitting in one place, bent over romantic novels. I think they're ruining your eyesight and making every young man you see seem like a handsome, romantic hero."

Mary Ellen opened her mouth to vehemently protest this slur against her abiding love for dear Henry Beechley, then she changed her mind and smiled mischievously at Alexandra. "No doubt you are quite right," she said, sauntering over to the opposite side of the bed and sitting down. Sadly, she admitted, "Your duke is a man of barely passable looks."

"Barely passable!" Alexandra exclaimed defensively. "Why, his features are noble and manly and—and very nice!"

"Really?" Mary Ellen asked, hiding her laughter and pretending to study the tips of her short fingernails. "You don't find his hair too dark, or his face too tanned, or his eyes a very odd color?"

"They're grey! A beautiful, rare shade of grey!"

Looking directly into Alexandra's irate eyes, Mary Ellen said with sham innocence, "But surely, neither of us would go so far as to pretend he looks in any way like a Greek god?"

"Greek god, indeed," scoffed Alexandra. "I should say not."

"Then how would you describe him?" Mary Ellen said pointedly, unable to hide her amusement at her friend's obvious state of high infatuation any longer.

Alexandra's shoulders drooped as she admitted the truth: "Oh, Mary Ellen," she breathed in an awed, unhappy whisper, "he looks exactly like Michelangelo's David!"

Mary Ellen nodded sagely. "You're in love with him. Don't deny it. It's written all over your face when you speak of him. Now tell me," she said eagerly, scooting forward and peering at Alexandra closely, "what does it feel like to you—loving a man, I mean?"

"Well," Alexandra said, warming to her subject despite her strongest wish to be sensible, "it's the queerest sort of feeling, but exciting too. When I see him in the hall, I feel rather like I used to feel when I saw my papa's carriage draw up in the drive—you know, happy, but worried that I look a fright, and sad too, because I'm afraid he'll leave if I'm not amusing and just right, and then I'll lose him."

So eager was she to hear more about being in love that Mary Ellen spoke without thinking. "Don't be silly. How can he possible leave you if you are married to him?"

"Exactly like my papa left my mama."

Sympathy flickered in Mary Ellen's green eyes, but she brightened almost immediately. "Never mind about that. It is all in the past after all, and besides, in four more days you'll be eighteen and that definitely makes you a woman—"

"I don't feel like a woman!" Alexandra said miserably, finally putting into words all that had been worrying her since she first met the man who had stolen her heart within an hour after he first looked at her. "Mary Ellen, I don't know what to say to him. I was never the least bit interested in boys and now, when he's near, I haven't a clue what to say or do. Either I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind—and make a complete cake of myself—or else I lose my wits entirely and stand there like a piece of mutton. What should I do?" she implored.

Mary Ellen's eyes shone with pride. Alexandra was the acknowledged scholar of the village, but no one thought she was pretty. Mary Ellen, on the other hand, was the acknowledged village beauty, but no one thought she housed a brain between her ears. In fact, her own dear papa consistently called her his "lovely little corkbrain."

"What do you discuss with the boys who come calling on you at home?" Alexandra begged earnestly.

Mary Ellen furrowed her brow, valiantly trying to use the fine mind Alexandra was finally giving her credit for having. "Well," she said slowly, "I observed long ago that boys love to talk about themselves and the things that interest them." She brightened as the matter resolved itself completely. "All you have to do is ask a boy the right question and he'll talk you into distraction. There, it's as simple as that."

Alexandra threw up her hands in frustrated panic. "How could I possibly know what interests him and, besides, he isn't a boy at all, he's a man of twenty-seven."

"True," Mary Ellen admitted, "but my mama has often remarked that men, even my papa, are all just boys at heart. Therefore, my scheme will still work. To engage him in conversation, merely ask him about something that interests him."

"But I don't know what interests him!" Alexandra sighed.

Mary Ellen lapsed into silence, thinking heavily on the problem. "I have it! He will be interested in much the same manly things as my papa speaks of. Ask him about—"

"About what?" Alexandra prodded, leaning forward in her eagerness when Mary Ellen seemed lost in thought.

Suddenly Mary Ellen snapped her fingers and beamed. "About bugs! Ask him how the crops on his estate are faring and if he's had problems with bugs! Bugs," she added informatively, "are an all-consuming interest of men who raise crops!"

Doubt wrinkled Alexandra's forehead into a thoughtful knot. "Insects don't seem a very pleasant topic."

"Oh, males don't enjoy pleasant or truly interesting topics at all. I mean if you try to tell them about a beautiful bonnet you saw in a shop window they positively wilt. And if you dare to discuss, at any length, the sort of gown you are longing to make someday, they are perfectly likely to doze off in the middle of your description of it!"

Alexandra stored this vital piece of information away, along with the advice about bugs.

"And do not, under any conditions," Mary Ellen warned severely, "discuss your fusty old Socrates and dull old Plato with him. Men despise a woman who is too smart. And another thing, Alex," Mary Ellen said, warming more and more to her subject. "You'll have to learn how to flirt."

Alexandra winced, but she knew better than to argue. Boys of all ages hung about Mary Ellen's skirts and cluttered up the family parlor, hoping for a moment with her, therefore, Mary Ellen's advice on the subject was definitely not to be taken lightly. "Very well," she said reluctantly, "how do I go about flirting?"

"Well, use your eyes, for one thing. You have excellent eyes."

"Use them to do what?"

"To look steadily into the eyes of the duke. And flutter your lashes a little to show how long they are—"

Alexandra experimentally "fluttered" her lashes, then collapsed onto the pillows, laughing. "I would look a perfect fool."

"Not to a man. They like that sort of thing."

Alexandra sobered and turned her head on the pillow to gaze thoughtfully at Mary Ellen. "You're quite certain?"

"Absolutely positive. And another thing—men like to know you like them. I mean, when you tell them they're oh so strong or brave or clever, they like that. It makes them feel special. Have you told the duke you love him?"

Silence.

"Have you?"

"Certainly not!"

"You should. Then he'll tell you he loves you!"

"Are you certain?"

"Of course."