The Savage Miss Saxon (13 page)

“I have my own reasons for helping you to dislodge your ex-fiancée from her bolt-hole upstairs, and pity for your physical and emotional states certainly isn’t one of them.

“Oh no, Nicholas,” she laughed rather menacingly, “you have no reason to fear I won’t play my part well. But then you’ll also have little time for rejoicing once I have got you shed of the so encroaching Anselms, for then I shall have cleared the field and will feel free to wage war in my own defense. And you will not like it, Nicholas; you will not like it one little bit.”

Turning to Sir Alexander (who had been hard pressed to follow the conversation these last minutes and who was just then looking about him for some liquid refreshment), Alexandra said, “Come, Grandfather, we mustn’t outstay our welcome.”

“But—but I don’t understand. Did you talk to Nicholas about whatever it was that was so all-fired urgent that you dragged me away from my card game to come over here with you?” her grandfather asked in confusion just before his temper finally got the best of him. “Plague take you, gel, don’t shake your head ‘no’ at me! You’re enough to drive a man to drink, do you know that? What in blue blazes was I supposed to hear once we got to Linton Hall?”

“Yes,” Nicholas prompted, belatedly realizing that Alexandra would never pay him a purely social call and she must have had some definite mission in mind, “why did you come, Alix—not that you and Sir Alexander aren’t always welcome.”

Alexandra looked back and forth between the two men before telling them with a smile, “It’ll keep, gentlemen, it’ll keep. Now come on, Grandfather, before the Widow Anselm comes to her senses and realizes there’s another eligible bachelor down here for her to try to scoop up into her net.”

“Who’d that be?” he asked blankly before raising his bushy eyebrows in alarm. “
Me?
Oh no! She’ll not get this sly old dog, by thunder! Come on, gel,” he shouted, already bounding heavily toward the door, “it’s back to Saxon Hall for us—and we’ll have Nutter lock up the drawbridge once we’re safe inside.”

Alexandra’s ploy had safely diverted her grandfather, who soon forgot everything else as he wiled away the rest of the afternoon happily fleecing Harold of twelve shillings, three arrowheads, and a small string of discolored beads—royally cheating at cards as the two stole surreptitious swigs from the bottle he had badgered Nutter into fetching behind his granddaughter’s back.

Alexandra allowed Sir Alexander to believe he had hoodwinked her for two reasons. One, she had a lot on her mind, and at least her grandfather was keeping occupied and unlikely to badger her about her pretend engagement or ask her yet again exactly what was written on the piece of parchment she had waved under his nose so triumphantly that morning. And two, she had liberally watered the bottle of gin before placing it in the open where Nutter could find it and carry it to his master.

While Alexandra walked back and forth in the courtyard of the inner bailey, her breath making little clouds in the cold air as she paced and thought, Nicholas was out riding his fields on his favorite stallion, mulling over Alix’s last words.

“Wage a war on me, will she, Saber,” he remarked to his only audience—his horse. “It would seem the arrival of the Anselms has brought about only a temporary truce as, unless I am mightily mistaken, Alix’s opening salvo was to have been fired upon me today. ‘It’ll keep,’ she said. It must be a formidable weapon she has, Saber, but for the life of me I cannot come up with a single clue as to what it is. Whatever it is, though, it is obvious she wants a clear field in front of her before she attacks, and that is the main reason she has offered to participate in this engagement—much as I’d like to believe my playacting alone convinced her.”

He shrugged his shoulders and dismissed Alexandra’s strategy from his mind. “No matter. Whatever it is, I shall soon spike her guns with my impassioned assault on her tender affections. With any luck I shall have her head over ears in love with me well within the specified week. After all, my patch don’t put her off—she said as much, and more than once too. My Alix may be a pigheaded little savage, Saber, but she’s an
honest
little savage. As for disliking the rest of me—she likes my kisses tolerably well, and that’s enough to go on with for now.

“Besides, women are not cut out to be soldiers, Saber my friend—their emotions tend to get in the way of their already lopsided logic. Miss Alexandra Saxon is no exception to that rule, no matter what she believes.

“Actually, it is all working out quite famously,” he reflected immodestly. “I’m rather pleased with myself over the way I’m handling the entire situation if I must say so myself. By the time the New Year has arrived,” he projected optimistically, “I shall have gotten shed of the Anselms once and for all.” (Nicholas was not, as he might well have done, seeking revenge—he only wanted them
gone
.) “Jeremy,” he glibly prophesied further, “will be safely back at school, happy in the knowledge that I am cured of my depression and no longer in need of his companionship—and taking with him his ramshackle friends, thus giving all the countryside around Linton cause for rejoicing. And lastly, of course, but by no means less importantly, Miss Alexandra Saxon will be my bride—my
willing
bride—satisfying Sir Alexander, preserving my honor, and,” he paused to chuckle at his own wit, “warming my bed.

“Ah, Saber,” he shouted joyously into the raw November wind, “isn’t it wonderful when a plan executes so flawlessly? Come on, boy, let’s have us a gallop!”

As Saber took off across the fields, his hooves throwing up mighty clumps of dirt behind him, his master gave himself over to the heady exhilaration that comes from believing oneself to be totally in charge of one’s own life, in complete control of one’s own future, and absolutely certain of one’s own destiny.

While it was true, as Nicholas had quoted to himself earlier, that Shakespeare had written that a fish would bite a well-baited hook, perhaps Lord Nicholas Mannering, Earl of Linton, should have spent some little time pondering another of the immortal Bard’s observations: “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Chapter Five

“V
isitors, miss.”

Alexandra raised her chin from its resting place in her cupped right hand and regarded Nutter absently. She had, ever since arising that morning, been reading and rereading the parchment she had found the day before in the treasury and it still had her feeling a bit bemused.

“Visitors, Nutter?” she queried. “As in more than one?” After Nicholas’s warning—which was how she thought of his spoken intention to outwardly court her—she would not have been surprised to have him show his face at Saxon Hall today. But to have brought along
witnesses
—most probably in the form of one or more of the Anselms—was doing it just a little too brown, even for him.

Rising from her seat in the deep window embrasure of the solar, she shook out her skirts and motioned for Nutter to lead the way into the Great Hall. “Raise the curtain, Nutter,” she whispered angrily under her breath, “the play is about to begin.”

But when Alexandra entered the Great Hall, it was not to see Nicholas and Company, but rather, to her immeasurable relief, to greet Jeremy and his two friends.

“Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise!” she exclaimed, holding out her hands in greeting.

“See, Cuffy,” Billy whispered loudly, “told you she was a prime ’un. Glad to see us, she is, even tippin’ us her daddies.”

“Just because a woman offers you her hands don’t mean she’s happy to see you—just shows she’s polite, you dashed clothhead,” hissed Cuffy in return before he took one of Alexandra’s hands and gallantly raised it to his lips. “How condescending of you to see us, Miss Saxon,” he said smoothly, looking at Billy out of the corners of his eyes and daring him to say anything.

“Of course I’m glad to see you all,” she contradicted Cuffy happily. “Nutter—bring us some refreshments, won’t you, please?” Taking Jeremy’s hand, she guided them all over toward one of the trestle tables, past the miniature wigwam where Harold sat stoically staring into the middle distance—completely ignoring the curiously gaping boys.

“Oh, dear,” Alexandra smiled as she saw the direction of her young friends’ stares. “And I thought you had come to see me. Obviously I am only a means to an end.
Leheléche fli nítis, Sachema Harold?
” she called. “
Pennó wullíh! Auween knéwa?
”

The Indian reluctantly turned his head in the direction of Alexandra’s company, ran his eyes over the young men just then grinning like complete idiots (Billy shyly waving as he stood half behind Cuffy), and then rose slowly to his feet to bow to Alexandra. In a deep rumbling monotone he replied, “
N’leheléche. Geptschátschik, Yengees. N’dellemúske
.” Then, without so much as a nod in their direction, he turned on his heel and trod soundlessly away from the boys, heading in the direction of the kitchens.

“What was that all about?” Jeremy asked Alexandra nervously. “We didn’t upset him, did we?”

“Uh—er, no,
no
, you didn’t upset him,” Alexandra stammered back at him, trying to think of some excuse for Harold’s rude behavior. In the end, however, the boys badgered her until she was forced to tell them the truth. “I asked Harold if he was well—did ‘my favorite friend still draw breath’—and then asked him to look and tell me what he saw. He then told me that he was well—‘I exist’—and then, er, and then he told me what he saw. He said, and I
am
truly sorry he said this, ‘I see English fools. I am leaving.’ ” At the sight of their crestfallen faces, she tried to cheer them up, saying that Harold just wasn’t very sociable, but Jeremy assured her that it was all right.

“You’ll talk him round, Alix, I’m sure,” he told her bracingly.

“Better. Dashed marplot if she don’t. Plan won’t fadge a’tal else, but I’ll back her to get the thing done. Mort’s as game as a pebble, I say,” interrupted Billy incomprehensibly.

Alexandra couldn’t help laughing as the two other boys clapped their hands over Billy’s mouth. “Now it’s I who need an interpreter. Tell me, please, whatever did Billy say—and in what language? Surely that can’t be English!”

“It’s English all right—at least it’s a form of English,” Cuffy supplied tersely. “Billy’s become enamored of St. Giles Greek, if you wish to call it by that title. It’s the language of cant and—Billy! Give Miss Alexandra the book and let her see for herself.”

Blushing to the roots of his hair at all this sudden attention, Billy reached inside his jacket, withdrew a badly bent and dog-eared volume, and handed it to Alexandra.

“
A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence
,” she read, her eyebrows raised in mock astonishment. “Oh, I say, Billy, this is interesting!” Opening it to the A’s, she read aloud the first entry: “ ‘Abbess, or Lady Abbess; a bawd, the mistress of a brothel.’ Jeremy?” she asked, looking up hurriedly. “Are you all right? You seem to be choking on something.”

Jeremy could only shake his head in the negative and appeal to his friends with his wildly rolling eyes. Mistaking his inarticulate sounds for physical rather than mental distress, Billy promptly pounded Jeremy on the back, saying, “That’s the ticket. You’ll be all right and tight.”

Keeping her humor hidden with near superhuman effort, Alexandra began to page through the book, looking, she said, for the definition of one of the words Billy had used. “Here it is, fadge. ‘It won’t fadge; it won’t do.’ Well, that makes proper sense. What else can I find in the F’s? Let’s see, here’s one. ‘To flash the hash. To vomit.’ Oh, that is good!”

By now Jeremy was almost beside himself. “Get that book, Cuffy,” he managed to gasp. “Lord only knows what all she’ll find—
especially
in the F’s!”

Cuffy went to do what he was bid, but Alexandra was too fast for him. Before he could grab the book, she had stuffed it down the bodice of her morning gown, saying, “I’ll give it back when I’m done with it—heaven only knows I could use the entertainment. Billy,” she continued, seeing the boy’s downcast expression, “I promise I won’t lose it if that’s what’s worrying you.”

Jeremy could see by the sparkle in Alexandra’s eyes that she was highly amused by the book, which was in direct opposition to everything he had ever witnessed of the way females reacted to such things. “Just don’t tell Nicholas,” he begged her.

“He’d have our guts for garters,” Billy expanded nervously, earning himself yet another quelling look from his companions.

Nutter arrived then with some refreshments, which, wisely, the boys politely refused. There were then a few moments of silence whilst Alexandra looked up the word
marplot
—discovering that it translated to mean “spoilsport.” Returning the book to its hiding place, she asked the boys why she would be a spoilsport if she didn’t “talk Harold round” to being more sociable.

“It’s just that we were thinking, ma’am,” Cuffy began when neither of his friends took up the slack, “and we decided it would be great good fun to catch the highwaymen causing all the trouble hereabouts.”