over to me, his widow, than to you, Lord Grant.” She looked at him. “You have no arts of persuasion, have you? You are more inclined to direct action, from what I have seen.”
“I can convince them to let me bring Nina home,” Alex said. His face was dark and unyielding. “I know the Bellsund Monastery. The monks trust me.” His dark gaze appraised her. “In truth I imagine that they will have considerable concerns about handing the child to you, Lady Joanna. A single woman, a widow, commands courtesy, but has little stature in their society, and a foreign one even less so.”
This was another stumbling block that Joanna had not anticipated. She did not doubt Alex’s assertion, for in the short time she had known him he had been brutally honest with her. David was another matter. Had he known that the monks would be reluctant to entrust Nina to her when he had written his extraordinary codicil? Was he trying to trick her, lead her on a wild-goose chase, tempting her with the promise of a child, her heart’s desire, and then snatching it from beneath her nose? Surely not even he could be so cruel. Yet she had no way of knowing, and thinking of a little girl left alone in the confines of a monastery, she knew she had no choice other than to go to try to fetch her back.
She sighed. “I am sorry,” she said. “I cannot permit you to act for me in this. And I do not see,” she added, “why you are so anxious to offer me your help. I would have thought that another responsibility, another tie, would be the last thing that you would wish for.” She looked at him. “And that I would be the last person you would help anyway.”
“I am not in the least bit anxious to help you,” Alex said with brutal candor. He sounded exasperated and angry. “The friendship I had for Ware means that I feel an obligation to the child, that is all. If I had known that he had left a daughter orphaned and in such dire straits—” He broke off. “Ware appointed me her guardian alongside you,” he added. “I wish he had not, but I take that duty seriously and as such will do what I can to help her. If that means assisting you, then, against my will, I shall try.”
“How very handsome of you!” Now Joanna felt exasperated, too. “Well, I do not require your unwilling assistance, Lord Grant! I am perfectly capable of traveling to Bellsund on my own.”
She tried to sound confident but was aware of feeling woefully inadequate. She shivered at the thought of everything she had to accomplish. She was no explorer, fearlessly seeking out new lands and new adventures. David had never wanted her to travel with him and she had heard the most terrible stories of hardship and sickness and shipwreck. If she had her way she would go no farther than the shops in Bond Street, but that was not an option.
Alex was watching her and she thought she could see pity as well as irritation in his gaze. It stiffened her backbone.
“If you have nothing pertinent to add to our conversation,” she said, “then I shall bid you good day. I have arrangements to make. I will contact you again when I return from Spitsbergen with Nina, so that we may make the financial arrangements for her upbringing. Though by then—” she allowed her gaze to travel over him “—I imagine that you will be long gone from London on your next adventure.”
Alex’s black gaze snapped at her. He ignored the jibe. “You are a complete fool even to think of doing this journey, Lady Joanna.”
“Thank you,” Joanna said. “I am aware of your opinion of me. And you are a boor.”
She made to rise, but his hand snaked out and caught her wrist. “Are you really prepared to go all that way into the unknown, Lady Joanna?” His gaze burned into her. “I do not think you have the courage to be so foolhardy.”
Joanna shook him off, incensed by both his taunts and even more by the incendiary power of his touch.
“You mistake, Lord Grant,” she said icily. “I know you think me shallow and silly, but I will go to Spitsbergen and prove you wrong. I have no intention of succumbing to seasickness, or fever, like David did, or. or scurvy, or whatever it is your sailors suffer from! I will take fruit with me to eat and I have plenty of warm clothes to protect against the cold climate—”
She broke off as Alex gave a crack of laughter. “Fruit will perish within a few days, and I doubt very much that your London fashions are designed to withstand a polar winter, Lady Joanna.”
“That is why I plan to set out at once,” Jo said. “How bad can it be? People travel every week to far-flung destinations like India and the Americas!”
“You have no idea what you are talking about,” Alex said brusquely, demolishing her optimism in one blow. “I’ll wager you have never even been abroad in your life!”
“I have been to Paris,” Joanna said defiantly. “I went after the Treaty of Amiens.”
“Paris is scarcely comparable with the Arctic!” Alex expelled his breath in an exasperated sigh. “I might have known you would have followed the fashionable crowds to France.”
“I did not follow,” Joanna said. “I led.”
Alex sighed again. He was rubbing his thigh in absentminded fashion, as though his leg was paining him.
“Lady Joanna, please.” He sounded frustrated, angry even. “You have absolutely no concept of the utter discomfort of such a trip.” His gaze considered her from saucy hat to stylish shoes, his disapproval, his utter contempt, quite plain. Joanna’s face burned under his scrutiny. “You would hate it,” he said. “You would not be able to maintain even a quarter of your style without hot water and clean clothes and servants to wait on you.”
Joanna’s face burned even hotter. “Do you really think such things weigh with me?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Alex said. “I do.” His shoulder lifted in half a shrug. “Oh, I do not blame you for it—”
“How magnanimous of you!”
“But a woman who has had nothing important to do with her life, whose whole existence centers upon frivolity and idleness, will never be able to survive in so inhospitable a climate …”
Joanna did not hear the rest of his words. She was too angry. Idle, superficial? She supposed she had never been a bluestocking, writing intellectual tracts or holding philosophical salons. That was Merryn’s interest. And it was also true that her existence in ton society was amusing and lighthearted for the most part. But that did not mean that she could be dismissed as no more than a giddy social butterfly, a woman with the emotional depth of a small puddle. How dare Alex Grant, with his juvenile bravado and high-handed manner, dismiss her as having no backbone? She felt a sheer, bloody-minded determination to prove him wrong.
“No,” she interrupted. “You may save your breath, Lord Grant. I am going.”
Alex got to his feet and took a few furious paces away from the bench. He was moving stiffly, as though once again his old injury was hurting. He turned back so sharply that Joanna almost flinched. He rested a hand on the arm of the seat, leaning in, trapping her against the hard wooden back. Once again, his physical presence engulfed her. She felt a tide of heat race through her body and retreat again to leave her shaking with a mixture of awareness and fear.
“You do not understand, Lady Joanna,” he said between his teeth. His eyes were blazing. Joanna could feel his anger like a living force. “Women have died on less demanding journeys.”
“And women have died at home,” Joanna argued hotly, “from sickness or in child bed
