While she dressed, Jordan turned back to the windows and gazed dispassionately at the elegant guests who had gathered on the lawns at Hawthorne to celebrate his mother's birthday. To an outsider on that day, Hawthorne doubtless looked like a fascinating, lush paradise populated by beautiful, carefree, tropical birds parading in all their gorgeous finery. To eighteen-year-old Jordan Townsende, the scene held little interest and no beauty, he knew too well what went on within the walls of this house when the guests were gone.
At eighteen, he did not believe in the inherent goodness of anyone, including himself. He had breeding, looks, and wealth; he was also world-weary, restrained, and guarded.
With her small chin propped upon her fists, Miss Alexandra Lawrence watched the yellow butterfly perched upon the windowsill of her grandfather's cottage, then she turned her attention back to the beloved white-haired man seated across the desk from her. "What did you say, Grandfather? I didn't hear you."
"I asked why that butterfly is more interesting than Socrates today," the kindly old man said, smiling his gentle scholar's smile at the petite thirteen-year-old who possessed her mother's glossy chestnut curls and his own blue-green eyes. Amused, he tapped the volume of Socrates' works from which he had been instructing her.
Alexandra sent him a melting, apologetic smile, but she didn't deny that she was distracted, for as her gentle, scholarly grandfather oft said, "A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one lies." And Alexandra would have done anything rather than insult this gentle man who had instilled her with his own philosophy of life, as well as educating her in mathematics, philosophy, history, and Latin.
"I was wondering," she admitted with a wistful sigh, "if there's the slightest chance that I'm only in the 'caterpillar stage' just now, and someday soon I'll change into a butterfly and be beautiful?"
"What's wrong with being a caterpillar? After all," he quoted, teasing," 'Nothing is beautiful from every point of view.' " His eyes twinkled as he waited to see if she could recognize the quotation's source.
"Horace," Alexandra provided promptly, smiling back at him.
He nodded, pleased, then he said, "You needn't worry about your appearance, my dear, because true beauty springs from the heart and dwells in the eyes."
Alexandra tipped her head to the side, thinking, but she could not recall any philosopher, ancient or modern, who had said such a thing. "Who said that?"
Her grandfather chuckled. "I did."
Her answering laughter tinkled like bells, filling the sunny room with her musical gaiety, then she abruptly sobered. "Papa is disappointed I'm not pretty, I can see it whenever he comes to visit. He has every reason to expect me to turn out better, for Mama is beautiful and, besides being handsome, Papa is also fourth cousin to an earl, by marriage."
Barely able to conceal distaste for his son-in-law and for his dubious claim to an obscure connection to an obscure earl, Mr. Gimble quoted meaningfully, "Birth is nothing where virtue is not."
"Molière." Alexandra automatically named the source of the quotation. "But," she continued glumly, reverting to her original concern, "you must admit it is excessively unkind of fate to give him a daughter who is so very common-looking. Why," she went on morosely, "could I not be tall and blond? That would be so much nicer than looking like a little gypsy, which Papa says I do."
She turned her head to contemplate the butterfly again, and Mr. Gimble's eyes shone with fondness and delight, for his granddaughter was anything but common. When she was a child of four, he had begun instructing Alexandra in the fundamentals of reading and writing, exactly as he'd instructed the village children entrusted to his tutelage, but Alex's mind was more fertile than theirs, quicker and more able to grasp concepts. The children of the peasants were indifferent students who came to him for only a few years and then went out into the fields of their fathers to labor, to wed, to reproduce, and begin the life cycle all over again. But Alex had been born with his own fascination for learning.
The elderly man smiled at his granddaughter; the "cycle" was not such a bad thing, he thought.
Had he followed his own youthful inclinations and remained a bachelor, devoting all his life to study, rather than marrying, Alexandra Lawrence would never have existed. And Alex was a gift to the world. His gift. The thought uplifted and then embarrassed him because it reeked of pride. Still, he couldn't stem the rush of pleasure that flowed through him as he looked at the curly-haired child seated across from him. She was everything he hoped she'd be, and more. She was gentleness and laughter, intelligence and indomitable spirit. Too much spirit, perhaps, and too much sensitivity as well—for she repeatedly turned herself inside out, trying to please her shallow father during his occasional visits.
He wondered what sort of man she would marry—not such a one as his own daughter had wed, he devoutly hoped. His own daughter lacked Alexandra's depth of character; he had spoiled her, Mr. Gimble thought sadly. Alexandra's mother was weak and selfish. She had married a man exactly like herself, but Alex would need, and deserve, a far better man.
With her usual sensitivity, Alexandra noticed the sudden darkening of her grandfather's mood and strove immediately to lighten it. "Are you feeling unwell, Grandpapa? The headache again? Shall I rub your neck?"
"I do have a bit of the headache," Mr. Gimble said, and as he dipped his quill in the inkpot, forming the words that would someday become "A Complete Dissertation on the Life of Voltaire," she came around behind him and began with her child's hands to soothe away the tension in his shoulders and neck.
No sooner had her hands stilled than he felt the tickle of something brush against his cheek. Absorbed in his work, he reached up and absently rubbed his cheek where it tickled. A moment later, his neck tickled and he rubbed it there. The tickle switched to his right ear and he bit back an exasperated smile as he finally realized his granddaughter was brushing a feather quill against his skin. "Alex, my dear," he said, "I fear there's a mischievous little bird in here, diverting me from my labors."
"Because you work too hard," she said, but she pressed a kiss against his parchment cheek and returned to her seat to study Socrates. A few moments later, her lagging attention was diverted by a worm inching its way past the open door of the thatched cottage. "If everything in the universe serves God's special purpose, why do you suppose He created snakes? They're ever so ugly. Quite gruesome, actually."