The spectacle literally "stopped the show." For a full minute, five hundred of the ton's most illustrious, languid, and sophisticated personages stopped talking to gape at England's most respected, most dour, and most influential noblewoman, who seemed to be hovering solicitously over a young lady no one recognized. Whispers broke out among the guests and monocles were raised to eyes as attention shifted from the dowager to the ravishing young beauty at her elbow, who no longer bore any resemblance to the gaunt, pale girl who had appeared briefly at Jordan's memorial service.
Beside Anthony, Sir Roderick Carstairs lifted his arrogant brows and drawled, "Hawthorne, I trust you'll enlighten us about the identity of the dark-haired beauty with your grandmother?"
Anthony regarded Carstairs with a bland expression. "My late cousin's widow, the current Duchess of Hawthorne."
"You're joking!" Carstairs said with the closest thing to surprise that Anthony had ever seen displayed on Roddy's eternally bored face. "You can't mean this entrancing creature is the same plain, pathetic, bedraggled little sparrow I saw at Hawk's memorial service!"
Fighting to suppress his annoyance, Tony said, "She was in shock and still very young when you last saw her."
"She's improved with age," Roddy observed dryly, raising his quizzing glass to his eye and leveling it at Alexandra, "like wine. Your cousin was always a connoisseur of wine and women. She lives up to his reputation. Did you know," he continued in a bored drawl, his quizzing glass still aimed straight at Alexandra, "that Hawk's beauteous ballerina has not admitted any other man into her bed in all this time? It boggles the mind, does it not, to think that the day is here when a man's mistress is more faithful to him than his own wife."
"What is that supposed to imply?" Anthony demanded.
"Imply?" Roddy said, turning his sardonic gaze on Anthony. "Why, nothing. But if you don't wish Society to reach the same conclusion I'm drawing, I suggest you cease watching Jordan's widow with that possessive look in your eye. She does reside with you, does she not?"
"Shut up!" Anthony snapped.
In one of his typical mercurial changes of mood, Sir Roderick Carstairs grinned without rancor. "They're about to begin the dancing. Come introduce me to the girl. I claim the right of her first dance."
Anthony hesitated, mentally grinding his teeth. He had no justification to refuse the introduction; moreover, if he did demur, he knew perfectly well Carstairs could and would retaliate by cutting Alexandra dead or—worse—repeating the innuendo he'd just made. And Roddy was the most influential member of Tony's set.
Tony had inherited Jordan's title, but he was well aware he did not possess Jordan's bland arrogance and the unnerving self-assurance that had made Jordan the most influential member of the haute ton. The dowager, Anthony knew, could force the entire ton not to cut Alexandra, and she could guarantee Alexandra's acceptance by her own age group, but she could not force Tony's generation to fully accept her. Neither could Tony. But Roddy Carstairs could. The younger set lived in terror of Roddy's biting tongue, and not even Tony's own set had any wish to become the object of Carstairs' scorching ridicule. "Of course," Tony agreed finally.
With much foreboding, he introduced Carstairs to Alexandra, then stood back and watched as Roddy made her a gallant bow and requested the honor of a dance.
It took Alexandra most of the waltz before she began to relax and stop counting off the steps in her head. In fact, she had just decided that she was not likely to miss a step and tread on the well-shod feet of her elegant, bored-looking dancing partner when he said something that nearly made her do exactly that. "Tell me, my dear," he said in a sardonic drawl, "how have you managed to blossom as you have in the frigid company of the Dowager Duchess of Hawthorne?"
The music was building to a crescendo as the waltz neared its end, and Alexandra was certain she must have misunderstood him. "I—I beg your pardon?"
"I was expressing my admiration for your courage in having survived a full year with our most esteemed icicle—the dowager duchess. I daresay you have my sympathy for what you must have endured this past year."
Alexandra, who had no experience with this sort of sophisticated, brittle repartee, did not know it was considered fashionable, and so she reacted with shocked loyalty to the woman she had come to love. "Obviously you are not well-acquainted with her grace."
"Oh, but I am. And you have my deepest sympathy."
"I do not need your sympathy, my lord, and you cannot know her well and still speak of her thus."
Roddy Carstairs stared at her with cold displeasure. "I daresay I'm well enough acquainted with her to have suffered frostbite on several occasions. The old woman is a dragon."
"She is generous and kind!"
"You," he said with a jeering smile, "are either afraid to speak the truth, or you are the most naive chit alive."
"And you," Alexandra retorted with a look of glacial scorn that would have done credit to the dowager herself, "are either too blind to see the truth, or you are extremely vicious." At that moment the waltz came to an end, and Alexandra delivered the unforgivable—and unmistakable —insult of turning her back on him and walking away.
Unaware that anyone had been watching them, she returned to Tony and the duchess, but her actions had indeed been noted by many of the guests, several of whom lost no time in chiding the proud knight for his lack of success with the young duchess. In return, Sir Roderick retaliated by becoming her most vocal detractor that same night and expressing to his acquaintances his discovery, during their brief dance, that the Duchess of Hawthorne was a vapid, foolish, vain chit and a dead bore without conversation, polish, or wit.
Within one hour, Alexandra innocently verified to the guests that she was certainly excruciatingly foolish. She was standing amidst a huge group of elegantly attired people in their twenties and early thirties. Several of the guests were enthusiastically discussing the ballet they'd attended the night before and the dazzling performance given by a ballerina named Elise Grandeaux. Turning to Anthony, Alexandra raised her voice slightly in order to be heard over the din, and had innocently asked if Jordan had enjoyed the ballet. Two dozen people seemed to stop talking and gape at her with expressions that ranged from embarrassment to derision.
The second incident occurred shortly thereafter. Anthony had left her with a group of people, including two young dandies who were discussing the acceptable height of shirt-points, when Alexandra's gaze was drawn to two of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. They were standing close together, but with their backs to one another, and they were both minutely scrutinizing Alexandra's features over their shoulders. One was a coolly beautiful blonde in her late twenties, the other a lush brunette a few years younger.