Dismissing the estate manager with a nod, Jordan laid aside the report he was reading, and finally shrugged into the jacket Mathison was still holding out to him, then he turned to the mirror and ran a hand over his jaw to verify the closeness of his shave. "I don't think of it as getting married," he said dryly. "I think of it as adopting a child."

Anthony smiled at the joke and Jordan continued more seriously, "Alexandra will make no demands on my life, nor will my marriage to her require any real changes. After stopping in London to see Elise, I'll take Alexandra down to Portsmouth and we'll sail along the coast so that I can see how the new passenger ship we've designed handles, then I'll drop her off at my house in Devon. She'll like Devon. The house there isn't so large as to completely overwhelm her. Naturally, I'll return there to see her from time to time."

"Naturally," Anthony said wryly.

Without bothering to answer that, Jordan picked up the report he'd been reading and continued scanning it.

"Your beauteous ballerina is not going to like this, Hawk," Tony put in after a few minutes.

"She'll be reasonable," Jordan said absently.

"So!" the duchess said tautly, sweeping into the room wearing an elegant brown satin gown trimmed in cream lace. "You truly mean to go through with this mockery of a marriage. You actually intend to try to pass that countrified chit off on Society as a young lady of breeding and culture."

"On the contrary," Jordan said blandly. "I mean to install her in Devon and leave the last part of that to you. There's no rush, however. Take a year or two to teach her what she needs to know in order to take her place as my duchess."

"I couldn't accomplish that feat in a decade," his grandmother snapped.

Until then, he had tolerated her objections without rancor, but that remark seemed to push him too far, and his voice took on the cutting edge that intimidated servants and socialites alike. "How difficult can it be to teach an intelligent girl to act like a vapid, vain henwit!"

The indomitable old woman maintained her stony dignity, but she studied her grandson's steely features with something akin to surprise. "That is how you see females of your own class, then? Vapid and vain?"

"No," Jordan said curtly. "That is how I see them when they are Alexandra's age. Later, most of them become much less appealing."

Like your mother, she thought.

Like my mother, he thought.

"That is not true of all females."

"No," Jordan agreed without conviction or interest. "Possibly not."

The grooming and dressing preparations for her wedding had taken Alexandra and two maids three hours. The wedding took less than ten minutes.

An hour later, self-consciously holding a crystal glass of bubbling golden champagne in her hand, Alexandra stood alone with her groom in the center of the huge blue and gold salon, as Jordan poured champagne for himself.

Despite her determination to ignore it, her wedding had a distinct aura of unreality, of strain. Her mother and Uncle Monty had attended and been barely tolerated by the duke and his grandmother, even though Uncle Monty was on his very best behavior and had scrupulously refrained from eyeing the derrière of any female in the room, even the duchess'. Lord Anthony Townsende and Mary Ellen had also been here, but now everyone was already on the way home.

Surrounded by the stifling elegance of the gilt salon and garbed in Jordan's mother's fabulous wedding gown of ivory satin encrusted with pearls, Alex felt more like an interloper than she had at any time since coming to Rosemeade. The feeling that she was a trespasser, who had invaded a world where she was no more welcome than her relatives, was nearly choking her.

It was odd that she felt so insecure and uneasy now, Alexandra mused, for she was wearing a gown more glorious than any she had ever imagined, and she looked far prettier than she had ever believed she could. Craddock, the duchess' dresser, had personally supervised Alexandra's toilette this morning. Under her exacting ministrations, Alexandra's riotous curls had been brushed until they gleamed, then swept into a mass at the crown and held in place at the sides with a beautiful pair of pearl combs that matched the pearls at her small ears.

Alexandra had looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror in her room and been privately overjoyed. Even Craddock had stood back and announced that she looked "very well indeed, considering—" But Jordan had said nothing about her appearance. He had smiled reassuringly at her when Uncle Monty placed her hand in his, and that had been enough to sustain her during the hour since the ceremony had taken place. Now, however, they were alone together as husband and wife for the first time, and the only sound was that of servants carrying their heavy trunks down the stairs and out to the traveling chaise, where they were being loaded for the wedding journey.

Uncertain of what to do with the champagne, Alexandra chose the path of least resistance and drank some of it, then she put it down on an elaborately carved gilt table.

When she turned, Jordan was studying her as if seeing her for the first time. Not once all morning had he commented on her appearance, but now, as his gaze drifted from the top of her shining hair to the hem of her gleaming satin gown, she sensed that he was finally going to comment, and she held her breath expectantly.

"You're taller than I originally thought."

The unexpected observation, added to his genuinely puzzled expression, wrung a startled laugh from Alexandra. "I don't think I've grown more than a few inches in the last week."

He smiled absently at her quip and then continued thoughtfully, "In the beginning, I mistook you for a boy, and you would be small for a boy."

Determined to inject gaiety into their relationship at every possible opportunity from this day forward, Alexandra said teasingly, "I am not, however, a boy."

Despite his intention to treat her impersonally after yesterday's kiss, Jordan was not proof against her sunny, entrancing smile. It even dispelled the gloom of his marriage ceremony from his heart. "You are not a boy," he agreed, smiling back at her. "Nor are you a young girl exactly. But then, neither are you a woman."

"I seem to be at an awkward age, don't I?" she agreed, her eyes aglow with gentle mockery of his fixation with her age.

"Evidently," he chuckled. "How do you describe a young lady who is not quite eighteen?"

"I am already eighteen," Alexandra said seriously. "Today is my birthday."

"I had no idea today was your birthday," he said, truly apologetic. "I'll buy you a present on our trip. What do girls your age like?"