LEXANDRA WAS AWAKENED by the sound of footsteps rushing ceaselessly up and down the hall outside her bedchamber and the muted, excited voices of servants hurrying about their duties. Sleepily, she rolled onto her back and looked at the clock in surprised confusion. It was not yet nine o'clock, much too early for the staff to be working on this floor, where during the Season the inhabitants often slept until eleven o'clock after staying out until dawn.

No doubt they were preparing for their illustrious master's arrival later on, she thought with disgust.

Without bothering to ring for her maid, Alexandra climbed out of bed and went about her normal morning routine, her ears attuned to the unprecedented activity that seemed to be taking place outside her bedchamber.

Dressed in a pretty lavender morning gown with short puffed sleeves, she opened her door, then had to jump back as four footmen marched past, bound for what had been the master bedchamber, their view obstructed by towering armloads of boxes bearing the names of London's best tailors and bootmakers.

From the foyer below came the sounds of the doorknocker being lifted and lowered, followed by repeated openings and closings of the front door and deep, cultured masculine voices. The commotion today was much, much worse than what she had heard last night. Callers were evidently arriving in incredible numbers—hoping to see "Hawk," Alexandra had no doubt. In the past, Alexandra and the duchess normally received a gratifying number of callers every day, but nowhere near so many and never, ever at such an early hour.

Curious, she walked along the hall to the balcony and looked down into the foyer where Higgins, not Penrose, was opening the door to admit three men whom Alexandra knew only by title. Two more, who had evidently also just arrived, were waiting politely to be shown to an appropriate salon, while all around them servants in immaculate uniforms were performing their duties with suppressed excitement and energetic fervor.

As Higgins guided the last of the newly arrived guests down a hall that led to the library, Alexandra stopped one of the maids who were scurrying down the hall carrying stacks of fresh linen. "Lucy?"

The maid bobbed a quick curtsy. "Yes, my lady?"

"Why are the servants all about so early?"

The little maid squared her shoulders and proudly proclaimed, "The Duke of Hawthorne has come home at last!"

Alexandra clutched the banister for support, her shocked gaze flying to the foyer "He's already here?"

"Yes, my lady. Indeed."

Alexandra's shocked gaze flew to the floor below just as Jordan himself emerged from a salon, his tall frame clad in impeccably tailored dark blue trousers and a white shirt, casually open at the throat. With him was the unmistakable figure of George, the Prince Regent himself, decked out in rich peacock-bright satins and velvet, beaming up at Jordan while proclaiming in the royal plural, "It was a dark day for Us when you disappeared, Hawthorne. We command you to take better care of yourself in future. Your family has been plagued with too many tragic accidents. We shall expect you to take every precaution in future. Moreover," he decreed, "We should like you to attend to the business of producing heirs to properly secure the succession."

Jordan responded to that royal edict with nothing more than an amused grin, and then said something inaudible that made the prince throw back his head and guffaw.

Clapping Jordan on the shoulder, the prince apologized for having arrived unannounced this morning, then stepped aside just as Higgins glided into the foyer in time to open the door with a flourish. It took a moment for Alexandra to recover from the shock of seeing Britain's regent in the very same house with her and to see Jordan treating said monarch in a manner so casual it verged on amused geniality.

When the foyer was empty of all but the butler, Alexandra gave herself a hard mental shake and walked slowly down the stairs, struggling to find some sort of mental equilibrium. Firmly setting aside the awesome spectacle of the regent, she turned her thoughts to an even more awesome event—her forthcoming confrontation with Jordan.

"Good morning, Higgins," she said politely as she stepped into the foyer. "Where are Penrose and Filbert this morning?" she inquired, looking up and down the hall.

"His grace sent them down to the kitchens when he arrived this morning. He did not think they… ah… belonged here where they would… or could… that is…"

"He wanted them out of sight, is that it?" Alexandra said tautly. "So he banished them to the kitchens?"

"Quite."

Alexandra froze. "Did you happen to tell his grace that Penrose and Filbert were my fr—" She checked the automatic impulse to describe them as friends and said instead "servants."

"I mentioned that, yes."

With a superhuman effort, Alexandra fought down a disproportionate surge of rage. Obviously the two gentle old men were not capable of dealing with the Prince Regent, or even this increased barrage of callers, and she had no quarrel with Hawk in that regard. But to humiliate them in front of the rest of the staff by banishing them to the kitchens—instead of sending them to another part of the house to help out—that was grossly unjust and unkind. It was also, Alexandra suspected, an act of petty vindictiveness on Hawk's part.

"Kindly tell his grace that I wish to see him today," Alexandra said, careful not to take her anger out on Higgins. "As early as possible."

"His grace also wishes to see you—at one-thirty in his study."

Alexandra glanced at the stately clock in the hall. Her appointment with her husband was three hours and fifteen minutes from now. Three hours and fifteen minutes to wait until she could tell the man she had mistakenly married that she wished to remedy the mistake. In the meantime, she would see the duchess and Tony.

"Alex—" Tony called from the opposite end of the upper hall, just as Alexandra was lifting her hand to knock upon the duchess' door. "How are you feeling this morning?" he asked as he walked toward her.

Alexandra smiled at him with sisterly affection. "I'm fine. I slept away the afternoon and night. And you?"

"I scarcely closed my eyes," Tony admitted, chuckling. "Have you seen this yet?" he asked as he handed her the newspaper.

Alexandra shook her head, her gaze scanning the page which was covered with news of Jordan's abduction and his escape, including a glowing report of his bravery contributed by a fellow prisoner, the American whom Jordan had rescued—at the repeated risk of his own life, according to the articles.

The door to the duchess' bedchamber swung open, and two footmen came out carrying a pair of heavy trunks on their shoulders. The duchess was standing in the middle of the room, directing three maids who were packing all her belongings into trunks and portmanteaux. Good morning, my dears," she called to Tony and Alexandra, motioning them inside. Dismissing her maids, she sank down into a chair and beamed her general approval at the disorderly room and the two young people who sat down across from her.

"Why are you packing?" Alexandra asked anxiously.

"Anthony and I are repairing to my town house," she said as if Alexandra should have expected that. "After all, you've no need of me to chaperone you with your own husband."

The words "your husband" made Alexandra's heart shriek in protest and her stomach twist into knots.

"You poor child," said the duchess, astutely observing Alexandra's sudden tension. "What a series of shocks you have suffered in your short life, culminating in the one yesterday. The house is under siege by every gossip in London. Still, the furor will soon die down. In a day or two, we shall resume our activities and engagements as if nothing has happened that is of concern to anyone—except to us. Society will naturally assume Anthony had intended to marry you out of a sense of duty to his 'deceased' cousin, and now that his cousin has returned, everything has worked out to our complete satisfaction."

Alexandra could not believe Society would think any such thing and she said so.

"They will, my dear," said the duchess with an expression of amused hauteur, "because I said exactly that to certain of my friends who came trotting over here while you were resting yesterday. Moreover, Anthony was quite desperately in love with Sally Farnsworth last year, which lends credibility to the idea that he was marrying you out of duty. My friends will whisper all that into the right ears, and word will spread as it always does."

"How can you be so certain?" Alexandra asked.

The duchess lifted her brows and smiled. "Because my friends have much to lose if they fail to direct the gossip as I asked them to do. You see, my dear, the old adage which says that it is 'whom you know that counts' is far off the mark. It is what you know about whom you know that truly makes the difference. And I know enough to make things very uncomfortable for most of my friends."

Tony laughed. "You are utterly unscrupulous, Grandmama."

"True," she admitted baldly. "Alexandra, why do you still look doubtful?"

"For one thing, because your plan seems to hinge on all of us going out in public right away. Your other grandson," Alexandra said, referring to Jordan in deliberately impersonal terms that clearly indicated she did not wish to acknowledge him by name, title, or temporary legal relationship to herself, "ordered me yesterday to remain in this house. An order, by the by, which I have no intention of following," she finished rebelliously.

The duchess' forehead furrowed into a brief frown. "He wasn't thinking clearly," she said after a moment's thought. "Doing so would indicate to everyone that you are ashamed of your attempted marriage to Tony. Moreover, it would imply an estrangement between your husband and yourself. No, my dear," she finished, brightening. "Jordan could not have thought the matter through when he ordered you thus. We shall all go out into society in another day or two. He cannot object to that. I will speak to him in your behalf."

"No, Grandmama," Alexandra said gently, "please don't. I'm a grown woman now, and I don't need anyone to speak for me. Moreover, I have no intention of letting him order me about. He has no right."

The duchess started at this undutiful, unwifely statement. "What fustian! A husband has the legal right to govern his wife's activities. And while we're on the subject, my dear, will you let me give you some advice about dealing with your husband in the future?"

Each time the dowager referred to Jordan as Alexandra's husband, Alex mentally ground her teeth, but all she said was a polite "Yes, of course."

"Good. You were understandably upset yesterday when you insisted he speak with you at once, but you provoked him, and that is most unwise. You do not know him as I do. Jordan can be a harsh man when angered, and it was obvious he was already annoyed with you yesterday about your attempted marriage to Anthony."

Alexandra was indignant and hurt that the elderly duchess, whom she had come to love, apparently was wholly biased in Jordan's favor. "He was inexcusably rude yesterday," she said tightly. "And I'm sorry if it makes you despise me, ma'am, but I can't pretend to be happy I'm married to him. You have obviously forgotten how he felt about me and our marriage. Moreover, he has done things I cannot abide, and his character is—is flawed!" she finished lamely.

Unexpectedly, the old duchess grinned. "I cannot possibly hate you, my child. You are the granddaughter I never had." Putting her arm around Alexandra's shoulders, she smilingly added, "I would be the last to pretend that Jordan's dealings with women have been anything to boast about. I shall leave it up to you, however, to change all that. And remember this, my dear: Reformed rakes often make the best husbands."

"When and if they do reform," Alexandra said bitterly, "and I don't want to be married to him."

"Of course you don't. At least not at present. But you have no choice, you know, because you're already married to him. I'll confess that I am looking forward, with considerable glee, to watching you bring him to heel."

Alexandra's mouth dropped open at that announcement, which paralleled Tony's and Melanie's feelings exactly. "I can't, and even if I—"

"You can and you will," the duchess declared in a flat no-nonsense tone, and then her eyes softened as she pointedly said, "You'll do it, Alexandra, if only to even the score with him. You have pride and spirit and courage." Alexandra opened her mouth to argue, but the duchess had already turned to Tony.

"Anthony, I've no doubt Hawthorne will expect some sort of explanation from you about why you decided to marry Alexandra, and we ought to consider carefully what you say."

"You're too late, my dear. Hawk had me on the carpet in his library at the uncivilized hour of eight o'clock this morning, and that was the first thing he wanted to know."

The duchess looked slightly alarmed for the first time. "I hope you told him it was an—an 'expedient' measure. That explanation has a nice ring to it. Or you could have told him it was nothing more than a whim, or—"

"I told him no such thing," Tony grinned devilishly. "I told him I had to marry her because London's most eligibles were making damned nuisances of themselves offering for her hand, quarreling over her, and hatching schemes to abduct her."

The duchess' hand flew to her throat. "You didn't!"

"I did."

"Why, for heaven's sake?"

"Because it's the truth," Anthony said with a chuckle, "And because he'd have found out in a matter of days anyway."

"Some future time would have been far more propitious!"

"But not nearly so satisfying," Anthony joked (and Alexandra thought he was the dearest, kindest man alive), "because he'd have heard it from someone else, and I wouldn't have been there to see his reaction."

"How did he react?" Alexandra asked, because she couldn't stop herself.

"He didn't," Anthony said and shrugged. "But that's Hawk for you. He never shows how he feels. He's better known for his composure than his flir—"

"That will be enough, Anthony," said the duchess, going over to tug on the bellrope and summon her maids.

Alexandra and Tony also arose. "Do you feel up to some fencing this morning?" he asked.

Alexandra nodded. Fencing would be the perfect thing to help the time before her interview with Jordan pass more quickly.

Shortly before twelve-thirty, Higgins appeared in Jordan's study to deliver a note from a gentleman with offices in Bow Street, which explained that the sender was unwell and wished to postpone their confidential meeting until tomorrow.

Jordan glanced at the butler, deciding to move up his meeting with Alexandra. "Where is your mistress, Higgins?"

"In the ballroom, your grace, fencing with Lord Anthony."

Jordan opened the doors of the huge ballroom on the third floor and walked inside, unnoticed by the pair of skilled duelists moving ceaselessly about the floor, their rapiers clashing, then breaking free as they parried and thrust with grace and expertise.

Propping his shoulder against the wall, Jordan watched them, his unswerving gaze on the lithesome female figure clad in revealing men's breeches that clung to the graceful lines of her slim hips and long legs. She was, Jordan realized, not merely talented with the rapier as he had long ago supposed; she was, in fact, a brilliant swordsman with faultless timing, lightning-quick reflexes, and stunningly executed moves.

Still unaware of his presence, Alexandra suddenly called out that it was time to stop. Breathless and laughing, she reached behind her head, pulled off her face mask and gave her head a hard shake that sent her long, heavy hair falling over her shoulders in a riotous tumble of rich mahogany waves threaded with gold. "Tony, you're getting slow," she teased, her laughing face beguilingly flushed as she removed the protective padded chestplate and knelt on one knee to put it against the wall. Anthony said something to her and she looked over her shoulder at him, smiling… Suddenly Jordan felt himself catapulted backward through time while the image of the lush beauty before him abruptly blended into another image—that of an enchanting, curly-haired girl who had brandished a makeshift saber at him in a woodland glade and knelt down among the flowers, looking up at him with a puppy squirming in her arms and unconcealed love glowing in her eyes.

Within him, Jordan felt a pang of nostalgia, mingled with a sharp sense of loss because the girl in the glade was gone now.

Tony finally saw him standing there. "Hawk," he jokingly asked, "do you think I'm slowing down, because I'm getting old?" On the opposite side of the room, Alexandra lurched around and her face froze.

"I hope not," Jordan replied dryly. "I'm older than you are." Turning to Alexandra, he said, "Since I'm free earlier than I expected to be, I thought we could have our meeting now, rather than later."

In place of the cold animosity that had marked his mood yesterday, his tone today was impeccably polite, impersonal, and businesslike. Relieved but wary, Alexandra glanced down at her snug-fitting pants, erroneously thinking that she would be at a distinct disadvantage if she met with him dressed like this, with her face flushed and her hair in disarray. "I'd like to change first."

"It isn't necessary."

Unwilling to antagonize him by caviling over trifles, when she in fact had a matter of great import to negotiate with him, Alexandra acquiesced with a coolly polite inclination of her head. In tense silence she accompanied him downstairs to his study, mentally rehearsing for the last time what she intended to say.

Closing the double doors behind them, Jordan waited for Alexandra to be seated in one of the chairs arranged in a semicircle in front of his massive, intricately carved oaken desk. Instead of sitting behind it, he perched a hip on the edge of it, crossed his arms over his chest and studied her impassively, his leg swinging lazily to and fro, so close to her own leg that the fabric of his trousers whispered against hers.

It seemed like an eternity before he finally spoke. When he did, his voice was calm and authoritative: "We have had two 'beginnings,' you and I—that first one at my grandmother's house a year ago, and the one here in this house yesterday. Because of the circumstances, neither of them has been particularly auspicious. Today is the third—and last—beginning for us. In a few minutes, I will decide what the course of our future will be. In order to do that, I'd first like to hear what you have to say about this…" Reaching behind him, he picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and calmly handed it to her.

Curious, Alexandra took the sheet, glanced at it, then nearly shot out of her chair as fury boiled up inside her, exploding through her body with the force of a holocaust. On the sheet, Jordan had listed more than a dozen "questionable activities" including her dueling practice with Roddy, her race in Hyde Park, her brush with disgrace when Lord Marbly tried to lure her off to Wilton, and several other escapades that had been relatively harmless, but when catalogued in this fashion read like an indictment.

"Before I decide on the course of our future," Jordan continued dispassionately, immune to the wrathful expression on her beautiful face, "I thought it only fair to give you a chance to deny any item on the list that isn't true, as well as to offer any explanations you may wish to give."

Rage, full-bodied and fortifying, sent Alexandra slowly to her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Never in her wildest dreams had she expected he would have the gall to criticize her behavior. Why, next to the life he had led, she was as innocent as a babe.

"Of all the loathsome, hypocritical, arrogant—!" she burst out furiously, and then with a superhuman effort, she took control of her rampaging ire. Lifting her chin, she looked straight into his enigmatic eyes and took infuriated pleasure in baldly admitting to the entire—grossly exaggerated—list. "I'm guilty," she wrathfully declared. "Guilty of every single meaningless, harmless, innocuous incident on that list."

Jordan gazed at the tempestuous beauty standing before him, her eyes flashing like angry jewels, her breasts rising and falling with suppressed fury, and his anger gave way to a reluctant admiration for her honesty and courage in admitting her guilt.

Alexandra, however, was not finished. "How dare you confront me with a list of accusations and give me ultimatums about my future!" she raged, and before he could react, she moved sideways out of his reach, turned on her heel, and headed for the door.

"Come back here!" Jordan ordered.

Alexandra spun around so swiftly that her shining hair came spilling over her left shoulder in a riotous waterfall of gleaming waves and curls. "I'll be back!" she assured wrathfully. "Just give me ten minutes."

Jordan let her go, his brow furrowed in a thoughtful frown as he stared at the door she had slammed behind her. He hadn't expected her to react quite so violently to the items on the list. In fact, he wasn't entirely certain what he'd hoped to achieve by showing her the list, other than to somehow discover from her reaction if that wasall she'd been up to while he was gone. The only thing he wanted, needed to know, was the one question he couldn't possibly ask her—and that was who had shared her bed and her body while he was gone.

Reaching over to the stack of papers on his desk, he picked up a shipping contract and began absently reading it while he waited for her to return.

The list, he admitted to himself, had not been a sterling idea.

That conclusion was emphatically borne out a few minutes later, when Alexandra rapped upon the door, stalked into his study without waiting for him to invite her to do so, and slapped a sheet of paper on the desk beside his hip. "Since you want to exchange accusations and offer opportunities for denial," she told him furiously, "I'll give you the same 'courtesy' before I hand you an ultimatum about our future."

Jordan's curious glance shifted from her flushed, beautiful face to the sheet of paper lying on his desk. Laying aside the contract he'd been reviewing, he nodded toward the chair where she had been seated earlier, and waited until she sat down, then he picked up the list.

It consisted of only sixteen words. Eight names. Of his former paramours. Setting the list aside, he quirked a speculative brow at her and said nothing.

"Well?" she demanded finally. "Are there any inaccuracies on that list?"

"One inaccuracy," he stated with infuriating calm, "and several omissions."

"Inaccuracy?" Alexandra demanded, distracted by the glint of amusement in his eyes.

"Maryanne Winthrop spells her first name with a y rather than an'i.' "

"Thank you for that edifying piece of information," Alexandra retorted. "If I ever decide to give her a gaudy diamond bracelet to match the necklace everyone says you gave her, I shall be sure to spell her name correctly on the card."

This time there was no doubting the humor tugging at the corner of his mouth and she came to her feet—a proudly enraged goddess dwarfed by a dark, arrogant giant of a man. "Now that you've admitted your guilt, I will tell you what the course of our future will be." Pausing to draw an infuriated breath, Alexandra announced triumphantly, "I am going to get an annulment."

The harsh words rebounded through the room, ricocheting off the walls, reverberating in the deafening silence. But not a flicker of emotion registered on Jordan's impassive features. "An annulment," he finally repeated. With the patience of a teacher discussing an absurd rhetorical issue with an inferior student, he said mildly, "Would you care to tell me how you intend to accomplish that?"

His damnable calm made Alexandra long to kick him in the shin. "I'll do nothing of the sort. You can discover what my legal grounds are from—from whoever it is that handles these things."

"Solicitors," Jordan provided helpfully, "handle these things.' "

Her ire at his condescending superiority was almost more than Alexandra could contain as he smoothly added, "I can recommend several excellent solicitors for you to consult. I keep them on retainer."

That outrageous suggestion was such an insult to her intelligence that Alexandra felt tears sting her eyes. "Was I such a gullible fool over you two years ago?" she demanded in a pain-edged whisper. "Was I so gullible that you honestly think I'd ask your solicitor to give me advice?"

Jordan's brows pulled together as several astonishing realizations struck him at once: First, despite her magnificent show of courage and unconcern, Alexandra was apparently on the brink of tears; second, the brave, innocent, engaging girl he had married had become a gorgeous creature of exotic beauty and spirit, but along the way she had also acquired an undesirable streak of fiery rebellion; last—and most disconcerting—was the discovery that he was as physically attracted to her now as he had been a year ago. More so. Much more.

Calmly he said, "I was merely trying to spare you what will be a very embarrassing and completely futile ordeal in the office of some unknown—and possibly indiscreet—solicitor."

"It will not be futile!"

"It will," he stated with certainty. "The marriage was consummated, or have you forgotten?"

The bold reminder of the night she had lain naked and willing in his arms was more than Alexandra's taut nerves could withstand. "I'm not senile," she retorted, and the spark of laughter in his eyes made her so desperate to demolish his damnable calm that she informed him how she intended to get an annulment, after all. "Our marriage is invalid because I didn't choose to marry you of my own free will!"

Instead of reacting with alarm, Hawk looked more amused than ever. "Tell that to a solicitor and he may laugh himself into a seizure. If a marriage was invalid merely because the bride felt obliged to marry a groom not of her choosing, then most of Society's couples are—at this very moment—living in sin."

"I wasn't merely 'obliged,' " Alexandra flung back. "I was coerced, cajoled, connived, and seduced into doing it!"

"Then find a solicitor and tell him that, but bring your smelling salts because you're going to have to revive him."

Alex was horribly certain he was right, and her heart plummeted sickeningly. In the last fifteen minutes, she had already vented all her pent-up resentment and fury on Jordan—without seeing a single gratifying scrap of reaction from him—and now she suddenly felt devoid of everything including hope and hate. Empty. Raising her eyes to his, she looked at him as if he were a stranger, an unfamiliar specimen of humanity for whom she felt… nothing. "If I can't get an annulment, I'll get a divorce."

Jordan's jaw hardened as he suddenly realized Tony had apparently lied about their "familial" feelings for each other. "Not without my consent, you won't," he clipped. "So you can forget the idea of marrying Tony."

"I haven't any intention of marrying Tony!" She blazed with such feeling that Jordan relaxed slightly. "And I haven't any intention of living as your wife, either."

His mood vastly improved by her denial of any wish to marry Tony, Jordan studied her without anger. "Forgive me if I'm being dense, but I'm rather surprised you want an annulment."

"No doubt you're amazed to discover there's a female on earth who finds you resistible," she retorted bitterly.

"And that's why you want an annulment? Because you find me 'resistible.' "

"I want an annulment," Alex replied, looking him right in the eye and speaking in a polite voice that completely belied her words, "because I don't like you."

Unbelievably, he smiled at that. "You don't know me well enough to dislike me," he teased.

"Oh, yes, I do!" Alex replied darkly. "And I refuse to be your wife."

"You have no choice, sweetheart."

The casual, empty endearment made her cheeks flame with ire. It was exactly the sort of thing she would have expected from a notorious flirt; no doubt she was supposed to melt at his feet now. "Don't call me 'sweetheart'! Whatever it takes, I'll be free of you. And I do have a choice," she decided on the spur of the moment. "I—I can go home to Morsham and buy a cottage there."

"And just how," he asked dryly, "do you intend to pay for that cottage? You have no money."

"But—when we were married you said you'd settled a large sum of money on me."

"Which is yours to use," Jordan clarified, "so long as I approve of the way you spend it."

"How very convenient for you," Alex said with stinging scorn. "You gave yourself money."

Seen in that light, it was close enough to the truth that Jordan almost chuckled. He stared down into her stormy blue eyes and flushed face, wondering why, from the very first, she had always been able to make him laugh—wondering why he felt this consuming, unquenchable need now to possess and gentle her without breaking her spirit. She had changed tremendously during the past year, but she still suited him better than any other woman he could ever hope to find. "All this discussion of legalities has reminded me rather forcibly that I have several legal rights I haven't claimed in more than a year," he said, and caught her firmly by the arms, pulling her between his thighs.

"Have you no decency—" Alex burst out, squirming in mindless panic. "I'm still legally betrothed to your cousin!"

His chuckle was rich and deep. "Now there's a persuasive argument."

"I don't want you to kiss me!" Alexandra warned furiously, pushing hard against his chest with her flattened hands and straining backward.

"That's too bad," he softly replied, and hauled her up against the solid wall of his chest, wrapping his arm around her back and effectively trapping her hands and forearms between their bodies, "because I intend to see if I can still make you feel 'overheated.' "

"You're wasting your time!" Alexandra cried, turning her head aside, drowning in humiliation at the brutal reminder of how openly besotted with him she had been when she told him his kisses had warmed her heart and body. According to all she'd heard, Jordan Townsende's kisses were responsible for raising the temperatures of half the female population of England. "I was a naive child. I'm a grown woman now and I've been kissed by other men who do it every bit as well as you! Better in fact!"

Jordan retaliated by plunging the fingers of his free hand into the heavy hair at her nape and tugging sharply, forcing her head back. "How many have there been?" he asked, a muscle leaping in his taut jaw.

"Dozens! A hundred!" she choked.

"In that case," he drawled in a soft, savage voice, "you ought to have learned enough to be able to make meburn."

Before she could reply his mouth swooped down and captured hers with angry possessiveness, his lips moving back and forth in a ruthless, punishing kiss that was nothing like Tony's gentle ones or the few stolen by the occasional overamorous gentlemen eager to see whether or not she would permit him some liberties. This kiss was unlike any other because, beneath the ruthlessness of it, there was flowing a demanding persuasion, an insistence that she kiss him back that was almost beyond denial—a promise that if she yielded, the kiss might gentle and become something quite different.

Alexandra felt the silent promise, understood it without knowing how she did, and her whole body began to shake with terror and shock as his mouth gentled imperceptibly and began molding itself to the contours of hers, exploring her lips with slow, searching intensity, urging her to participate in the kiss.

A gasp behind them made Jordan loosen his grip and Alexandra whirl around, only to have his arm tighten, clamping her firmly to his side as they both looked at a horrified Higgins, who was in the act of escorting three men, including Lord Camden, into the library.

The butler and the three men all stopped short. "I—I beg your pardon, your grace!" Higgins burst out, losing his composure for the first time since Alexandra had known him. "I understood you to say that when the earl arrived—"

"I'll join you in a quarter of an hour," Jordan told his three friends.

They left, but not before Alexandra had noted the amused expressions on all the men's faces, and she turned on Jordan in humiliated outrage. "They're going to think we mean to continue kissing for another quarter of an hour!" she burst out. "I hope you're satisfied, you—"

"Satisfied?" he interrupted with amusement as he studied this tempestuous, unfamiliar, wildly desirable young woman who had once regarded him with childlike admiration in her glowing blue eyes. Gone were her unruly curls. Gone was the admiration in her eyes. Gone was the ingenuous hoyden he had married. In her place was this ravishing young beauty of uncertain temperament whom he felt an uncontrollable, irrational need to tame and to make respond to him as she once had. "Satisfied?" he asked again. "With that pitiful excuse for a kiss? Hardly."

"I didn't mean that!" Alexandra cried miserably. "Three days ago I was marrying another man. Have you no idea how odd those men must have thought it was when they saw you kissing me?"

"I doubt if anything we do will ever seem 'odd' to anyone," Jordan answered with equal parts of amusement and irony, "not when they've already witnessed the entertaining spectacle of me barging in on your wedding to put a stop to it."

For the first time, it occurred to her how comical that must have looked to Society—and how embarrassing it must have been to him—and Alexandra felt a tiny bubble of satisfied mirth.

"Go ahead and laugh," he invited dryly, watching her visibly struggling to remain coldly aloof. "It was funny as hell."

"Not," Alexandra corrected, keeping her face scrupulously straight, "at the time, however."

"No," he agreed, and a lazy, devastating smile suddenly swept across his tanned features. "You should have seen the look on your face when you turned around at that altar and saw me standing there. You looked as if you were seeing a ghost." For one brief moment, she had looked overjoyed—as if she were seeing someone infinitely dear to her, he remembered.

"You looked like the wrath of God," she said, uneasily aware of the magnetic charm he was suddenly exuding.

"I felt ridiculous."

Reluctant admiration for his ability to laugh at himself blossomed in Alexandra's heart, and for the moment she ignored the things she'd learned about him. Time rolled back and he was once again the smiling, compelling, achingly handsome man who had married her, teased her, and fought a mock duel in a glade with her. Unaware of the seconds ticking past, she stared up into his bold, mesmerizing grey eyes while her dazed mind finally accepted, fully and completely, that he was truly alive—that this was not a dream that would end as all her earlier ones had ended. He was alive. And he was, unbelievably, her husband. At least for the moment.

So lost was she in her own thoughts that it took a moment before she realized that his gaze had dropped to her lips and his arms were encircling her, drawing her against his hard frame.

"No! I—"

He smothered her objection with a hungry, wildly exciting kiss. Temporarily robbed of the anger that had fortified her resistance, Alexandra's traitorous body lost its rigidity, and the scream of warning issued by her mind was stifled by her pounding heart and the shocking pleasure of being held again in the strong arms of the husband she had believed dead. A large masculine hand curved round her nape, long fingers stroking and soothing, while his other hand slid up and down her back, moving her closer and tighter to his full length.

His warm lips moving on hers, the sensation of his hardening body pressing against hers—it was all so achingly, poignantly, vibrantly familiar to her, because she had lived it in her dreams a thousand times. Knowing she was playing with fire, she let him kiss her, permitting herself—just this once—the forbidden, fleeting joy of his mouth and hands and body. But she did not respond, dared not respond.

Pulling his mouth from hers, Jordan brushed a warm kiss against her temple. "Kiss me," he whispered, his breath sending vibrant warmth spilling through her veins. "Kiss me," he coaxed hotly, trailing his mouth across her cheek, brushing insistent kisses along the sensitive curve of her neck and ear. His hands slid into her heavy hair, tilting her face up to his and his eyes held hers, teasing, challenging. "Forgotten how to do it?"

Alex would have died rather than let him believe he'd been the only man to kiss her on the lips in the last fifteen months, and she could see he'd already sensed that was true.

"No," she said shakily. His parted lips came down on hers again, in another long, searching kiss. "Kiss me, princess," he urged hoarsely, kissing her temple, her ear, her cheek. "I want to see if it's as good as I remembered it."

The achingly poignant discovery that he, too, had dwelt on their few kisses was more than Alexandra could withstand. With a silent moan of despair, she turned her head and met his lips with her own while her hands crept up his chest Jordan's mouth slanted fiercely over hers, and this time her lips yielded to his rough, tender kiss, parting beneath the sensual pressure and, at that moment, his tongue slid between them, invading her mouth and taking possession of her.

Lost in a stormy sea of desire, confusion, and yearning, Alexandra felt his hand splay across her lower spine, forcing her closer to him, but instead of resisting she slid her hands up over his shoulders, unwittingly molding her melting body to the hardening contours of his. A shudder racked his muscular body as she fitted herself to him and Jordan's arms tightened, crushing her to him, while his hand lifted, cupping her breast, his thumb brushing back and form across her sensitized nipple while his tongue plunged into her mouth and withdrew, then plunged again and again in a wildly exciting, ever-increasing rhythm that drove her half mad with forbidden yearnings. The endless, drugging kiss, the provocative warmth of his hands moving ceaselessly over her back, then possessively cupping her breasts, the taut strength of his legs and thighs pressing intimately against hers worked their pagan magic on Alexandra; she kissed him back with all the helpless ardor she had felt so long ago, only this time her shy uncertainty was overwhelmed by the desire to clasp him to her, to pretend for a little while that he was all the things she had wanted him to be.

Jordan knew only that the woman in his arms was responding to his kiss with more ardor than ever before, and the effect was devastating on his starved body. When her tongue darted out to touch his lips, he crushed her to him, drawing her tongue into his mouth, while desire surged through his bloodstream like wildfire, pounding in his loins. Fighting back the wild urge to lay her down on the carpet and take her then and there, he dragged his lips from hers and drew a long, unsteady breath, slowly expelling it. Evidently, his wife had learned a great deal about kissing while he was rotting in prison, he realized grimly.

Surfacing slowly from the mists of desire, Alexandra stared into his hypnotic eyes, dazedly watching their color and mood change from the smoky darkness of passion to their usual enigmatic light silver, while she felt reality slowly return. Her hand still lay curved around his neck and it finally dawned on her that, beneath her fingers, his skin was fiery hot. Make me burn, he had coaxed…

Pride and satisfaction drifted through her as she realized she apparently had done exactly that, and her soft lips curved into an unconsciously provocative smile. Jordan's eyes narrowed on that satisfied smile, then lifted to her knowing blue eyes. His jaw tightened and he dropped his arms, stepping back from her.

"My compliments," he said curtly, and Alexandra watched his mercurial mood take an obvious, abrupt, bewildering turn for the worse. "You've learned a great deal in the past year."

A year ago, her sluggish mind reminded her, he had thought her a naive, pitiful nuisance. Fixing a bright, artificial smile on her face, she said lightly, "A year ago you found me excruciatingly naive. Now you're complaining because I'm not. There's simply no pleasing you."

To Alex's mortification, Jordan didn't deny he'd found her naive. "We can discuss how you can 'please' me when we're in bed tonight, after I return from White's. In the meantime," he continued in the implacable, authoritative tone of one issuing an edict, "I want a few things understood: First of all, an annulment is out of the question. So is divorce. Secondly, there will be no more mock duels, no more parading around in those trousers you are wearing, no racing in the parks, and no public appearances made by you with any man but me. Is that clear? You will not go out in company with any man but me."

Outrage exploded in Alexandra's brain. "Who do you think you are!" she demanded, her color rising with indignation. He hadn't changed one bit in two years. He still wanted to lock her away out of sight. No doubt he still had every intention of packing her off to Devon as well.

"I know who I am, Alexandra," he snapped cryptically. "I do not know who you are, however. Not anymore."

"I'm certain you do not," she bit out, wisely controlling the urge to warn him in advance that she intended to defy him. "You thought you married a complaisant, adoring female who would rush to do your tiniest bidding, didn't you?"

"Something like that," he admitted tightly.

"You didn't get one."

"I will."

Alexandra tossed her head and turned, pointedly refusing to curtsy to him. "You are wrong, your grace," she said, and started for the door.

"My name," he informed her bitingly, "is Jordan."

Alexandra stopped and half turned, her delicate brows arched in feigned surprise, her color gloriously high. Once, she had longed to have him ask her to use his given name, now she took greater pleasure in refusing. "I'm aware of that," she said and with calm defiance she added, "your grace." Having thus clearly informed him that she did not wish for the intimacy of using his given name, she turned and walked across the room, feeling his eyes boring holes through her shoulder blades, praying that her shaking knees would not buckle with the nervousness she was struggling to hide.

Not until she put her hand on the handle of the door did his low, ominous voice slash through the silence. "Alexandra!"

Despite herself she jumped. "Yes?" she said, looking at him over her shoulder.

"Think carefully before you make the mistake of defying my orders. You'll regret it, I promise you."

Despite the icy tingle of alarm his silken voice caused in her, Alexandra lifted her chin. "Are you finished?"

"Yes. Send Higgins in here when you leave."

The mention of the butler reminded Alex of her own servants' plight and she swung around, prepared to launch a final skirmish. "The next time you want to retaliate against me for some imagined slight against you, kindly leave my servants out of it. Those two gentle old men whom you banished to the kitchens this morning are the closest thing to a father I ever had. Penrose taught me to fish and swim. Filbert made a dolls' house for me with his own hands and later he built a raft for me and taught me how to sail it. I won't allow you to abuse them or humiliate—"

"Tell Higgins," he interrupted coolly, "to put them to work wherever it suits you—so long as it isn't in the front hall."

When the door closed behind her, Jordan sat down in his chair, dark brows pulled together in a black frown. He had accomplished what he had sent out to do, which was to make her understand the rules she would have to live by from now on, and he was certain she would obey those rules. The idea of being defied by a woman, particularly a young one who had once openly idolized him, was unthinkable. Moreover, his body's almost uncontrollable desire for her a few minutes ago had amazed, unnerved, and thoroughly displeased him—even though he realized his year of enforced abstinence was partially the cause.

Alexandra would never be the complaisant wife of his dreams, he realized, but in her fiery spirit he would find ample compensation. She would never bore him and she was not a liar or a coward. In the last half hour alone she had presented him with a list of his mistresses and openly admitted her behavior during the past two years; she had also angered, amused, and sexually aroused him. No, he would not be bored with her.

Picking up the quill from his desk, he rolled it absently between his fingers, a reluctant smile replacing his frown. God, she was lovely, with those stormy eyes flashing like angry green flames and her alabaster cheeks tinted with angry pink.

So long as she behaved herself, he was willing to let her enjoy the full benefits of her position as the Duchess of Hawthorne. So long as she behaved…

Higgins appeared in the doorway with John Camden in tow. "I gather," John said, grinning, "that you're making satisfactory progress with your wife?"

"She'll behave herself," Jordan replied with supreme confidence.

"In that case, perhaps you'll be in a mood to join us at White's tonight?"

"Fine," Jordan agreed, and the men began to discuss their joint venture with a mining company.