AWTHORNE, 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.

"A bathing room, your grace," the footman replied and bowed again.

"A bathing room?" Alexandra repeated, staring in wonder at the gold faucets and graceful marble pillars that stood at the perimeter of the bathing pool, then soared to the ceiling beneath a round skylight.

"Master Jordan believed in modern-i-zations, your grace," the footman put in and Alexandra turned at the sound of pride and fondness in the old servant's voice.

"I'd rather be called simply 'Miss Alexandra,' " she explained with a warm smile. He looked so appalled that she conceded," 'Lady Alexandra' then. Did you know my husband well?"

"Better'n any of the staff, 'cept Mr. Smarth, the head groom." Sensing that he had an avid audience in Lady Alexandra, Gibbons promptly volunteered to give her a tour of the house and grounds, which lasted all of three hours and included visits to Jordan's favorite boyhood haunts, as well as introductions to Smarth, the head groom, who offered to tell her "all about Master Jordan," whenever she came down to the stables.

Late in the afternoon, Gibbons finished the tour by taking Alexandra to two places, one of which instantly became her favorite. It was the long gallery where a double row of life-size portraits of the previous eleven dukes of Hawthorne were displayed in identical gilt frames upon the long walls, along with other portraits of their wives and children.

"My husband was the handsomest of them all," she declared after studying each portrait.

"Me and Mr. Higgins have said that very thing ourselves."

"But his portrait isn't here with the other dukes."

"I heard him tell Master Anthony that he had better things to do with his time than stand about looking important and dignified." He nodded toward two of the portraits on the upper row. "That's him, right there—as a young boy, and then when he was sixteen. His papa insisted he stand for that last one, and Master Jordan was mad as fire about it."

A smile dawned across. Alexandra's pale features as she looked up at the little boy with the dark curly hair standing solemnly beside a beautiful blond lady with sultry grey eyes. Standing on the other side of her thronelike red velvet chair was a handsome, unsmiling man with broad shoulders and the proudest features Alexandra had ever seen.

The last place Gibbons took her was to a rather small room on the third floor that smelled as if it had been closed for a very long time. Three small desks faced a much larger desk at the front of the room, and an old globe stood on a brass stand.

"This here's the schoolroom," Gibbons said. "Young Master Jordan spent more time tryin' to git out o' it than he spent inside it. Then Master Jordan felt the side of Mr. Rigly's cane more than once for neglectin' his studyin'. Still, he learnt what-all he needed to know. Smart as a whip he was."

Alexandra's gaze scanned the austere little room, then came to an abrupt stop at the desk right beside her. Carved into the top of it were the initials J-A-M-T. Jordan's initials. She touched them tenderly while glancing around with a mixture of pleasure and uneasiness. How very unlike her grandfather's cheerful, disorderly study where she had eagerly learned her own lessons this gloomy, austere place seemed. How unthinkable it was to be caned by one's teacher, instead of fascinated by him.

When the footman finally bade her goodbye, Alexandra stopped once more at the gallery to gaze upon the likeness of her husband as a sixteen-year-old. Looking up at him, she whispered solemnly, "I'll make you proud of me, my love, I promise."

In the days that followed, Alexandra embarked on that task with all the determination and intelligence she possessed, memorizing entire pages of Debrett's Peerage, and poring over volumes on conduct, convention, and protocol which the duchess gave her. Her diligence quickly earned the duchess' approval, as did everything else Alexandra did—with two significant exceptions, both of which led the duchess to summon Anthony to her drawing room a week after the family had arrived at Hawthorne.

"Alexandra is fraternizing with Gibbons and Smarth," she declared in tones of bewilderment and grave concern. "She's already conversed more with them than I have in the last forty years."

Anthony lifted his brows and said blandly, "She regards servants as family. That was evident when she asked us if her butler and footman might come here. It's a harmless attitude."

"You won't think Filbert and Penrose are 'harmless' when you see them," the duchess shot back darkly. "They arrived this morning."

Anthony recalled Alexandra had described her two servants as elderly, and started to say it. "They're—"

"Deaf and blind!" the indignant dowager declared. "The butler can't hear a word that isn't roared into his ear and the footman walks into doors and into the butler! Regardless of Alexandra's tender feelings, we shall have to keep them out of sight when we are receiving callers. We can't allow guests to see them crashing into each other in the front hall and shouting the walls down.

When Anthony looked amused rather than alarmed, she glowered at him. "If you will not see that as objectionable, I've little hope of persuading you to discontinue your fencing matches with Alexandra each morning. It is an entirely unacceptable endeavor for any young lady, besides requiring the wearing of—of breeches!"

Anthony was no more inclined to see his grandmother's side on this matter than he'd been on the subject of fraternization with servants. "For my sake and for Alexandra's I hope you won't forbid her to fence with me. It's harmless enough and she enjoys it. She says it keeps her fit."

"And for your sake?" the duchess said irritably.

Anthony grinned. "She's a formidable opponent, and she keeps me in top form. Jordan and I were considered two of the best swordsmen in England, but I have to work to hold my own with Alexandra, and she still bests me about half the time."

When Tony left, the dowager gazed helplessly at the empty chair across from her, knowing full well why she had not been willing to speak to Alexandra about the issues she'd just discussed with Anthony: She simply could not bear to dampen Alexandra's spirits, not when she knew how valiantly Alexandra was trying to be cheerful. For nearly a week, Alexandra's heartwarming smile and musical laughter had brightened the entire atmosphere at Hawthorne. And as the duchess well knew, Alexandra was smiling, not because she felt like it, but because she was desperately trying to buoy up everyone's spirits—including her own. She was, the duchess thought, a unique combination of candor, gentleness, determination, and courage.

Unaware that she had done aught to distress the duchess, Alexandra adjusted herself to the rigid routine of formal living in a ducal mansion. As spring drifted into summer, she continued with her studies and spent her free time wandering about the beautiful grounds or visiting the vast Hawthorne stables where Smarth told her wonderful stories about Jordan as a boy and a young man. Like Gibbons the footman, Smarth was a great fan of Master Jordan, and, within a few weeks, Smarth was completely won over by the charming girl Master Jordan had married.

For Alexandra, the days were busy ones, but Jordan was never out of her mind. A month after his death, at Alexandra's request, a small marble plaque, bearing Jordan's name and dates of birth and death, had been placed—not in the family cemetery, as was usual, but at the far side of the lake at the edge of the woods near the pavilion.

Alexandra thought the setting near the pavilion pretty—particularly in contrast to the lonely cemetery beyond the crest of a hill behind the mansion. Yet when the plaque had been placed, she was not entirely satisfied. She visited the head gardener, who gave her a few bulbs that she planted just inside the woods. Every few days, she returned to obtain more flowers. But not until she was finished did Alexandra realize she had unconsciously duplicated the little glade where Jordan had once told her she looked like a Gainsborough portrait.

She loved the place more when she realized it, and spent hundreds of happy hours seated in the pavilion, gazing into the miniature glade and recalling every moment they had spent together.

Alone in the pavilion, she dwelled with tenderness upon every kindness Jordan had shown her—from buying her a puppy he obviously hadn't liked, to marrying her to save her from ruin. But mostly she relived the heady sweetness and hungry insistence of Jordan's kisses, the torturous pleasure of his caressing, wandering hands. When she tired of recalling their real kisses, she imagined more of them in different settings—wonderful kisses that ended in Jordan dropping to his knee, with his hand over his heart, and pledging his undying love to her. The longer she thought of their time together, the more certain she became that he had begun to love her before he died.

Aided and encouraged by Gibbons' and Smarth's exaggerated versions of Jordan's most minor boyhood braveries and manly skills, Alexandra enshrined Jordan in her heart, endowing him with the virtues of a saint, the courage of a warrior, and the beauty of an archangel. In the rosy glow of her memory, every gentle word he'd spoken, every warm smile, each stirring kiss, was immortalized—and then improved upon.

It did not occur to her that Smarth and Gibbons might have been blind to his faults or that they would, by unspoken mutual consent, carefully censor from their conversation any activities of his which might have put him in a less saintly light in the eyes of his legal wife. Never once did they mention a certain lovely ballerina or her many predecessors, or the governess who had shared his bed in this very house.

Based on the glowing stories that Smarth and Gibbons told her, Alexandra naturally assumed her husband had been noted for his bravery, daring, and honor. She had no way of knowing that he was equally well known for his flagrant flirtations, amatory conquests, and scandalous liaisons with women who possessed only one significant social asset in common: Beauty.

And so, with all the fervor of her eighteen years, Alexandra spent each day practicing at the pianoforte, memorizing tomes on social protocol, rehearsing polite conversation with her tutor, and emulating the manners of the only duchess she had available to use as an example—Jordan's grandmother. She did it all so that when she went to London, Society would look upon her and find her worthy of Jordan Townsende's name and reputation.

And while Alexandra was diligently applying herself to mastering all manner of accomplishments that would have bored a living Jordan to distraction, Nature—as if amused by her needless efforts—casually showered upon her in lavish bounty the one required social asset that would guarantee Society would truly find her "worthy" of Jordan Townsende: Beauty.

Standing at the windows, watching Alexandra gallop down the drive in a bright-blue riding habit, Anthony glanced at his grandmother beside him. "It's astonishing," he said wryly. "In one year, she's blossomed into a beautiful young woman."

"It's not in the least astonishing," the duchess said with gruff loyalty. "She always had good bones and excellent features, she was simply much too thin and too young. She had not filled out yet—I myself was just such a late bloomer."

"Really?" Anthony said, grinning.

"Indeed," she primly replied, and then she became somber. "She still brings flowers to lay on Jordan's plaque every day. Last winter, I thought I'd cry when I saw her wading through the snow with flowers from the conservatory in her arms."

"I know," Tony said somberly. His gaze shifted back to the window as Alexandra waved at them and handed Satan over to a groom. Her glossy, wind-tossed hair was long now, tumbling in waves and curls partway down her back; her complexion was rosy, and her sooty-lashed eyes were glowing like enormous aquamarines.

Jordan had once mistaken her for a boy, but now her bright-blue riding habit revealed an alluring female form with ripened curves in all the right places. Anthony's eyes followed the gentle sway of her hips as she walked up the front steps, admiring the easy, long-legged grace of her stride. Everything about her drew a man's gaze and held it.

"In a few weeks, when she makes her bow," Tony thought aloud, "we're going to have to beat off her suitors with a club."