The Savage Miss Saxon (21 page)

“He probably thinks he’ll rust,” Nicholas commented in an aside to the now giggling Alix, before saying more loudly, “Exactly, sir. It is always good to have a rear guard.” Again under his breath he whispered to Alix, “Although some of us have a bit more ‘rear’ than others.” As Nicholas watched Alix’s face turn slightly red in her efforts to keep from bursting into laughter, he told himself ruefully, “If you can’t beat ’em, Mannering, you may as well join ’em.”

They walked along in single file following Harold’s lead, since he already knew the way, until they reached the spot where Harold had been wounded, whereupon they halted for a moment while the Indian mumbled a few well-chosen Lenape curses Alix did not bother to translate for the Earl’s edification.

Then it was on to the cottage, Nicholas now in the forefront, creeping stealthily toward one of the gaping windows to ascertain whether or not the place was still inhabited. He was sure the thieves had deserted the place long since, but perhaps Harold could pick up a few clues by examining the area. Once assured there was no one inside, Mannering motioned for Alix and Harold to follow and stepped through the door ahead of them.

“What a mess!” Alix exclaimed once she had joined him. “Though,” she continued, one finger pressed to her chin, “it’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a little bit of work.”

Now it was Nicholas’s turn to chuckle. “Leave it to my little housekeeper. Given enough pails of water and sufficient dustcloths, I do believe you could set this entire island to rights.”

Alix merely glared at him and moved toward the slanting wooden table, suppressing the impulse to right the overturned mug she saw lying there. “Harold,” she said looking at the Indian, “why are you just standing about? Don’t you want to look for—”

“
Wulli to pépannik!
” the Indian hissed, motioning to Alix to drop to the floor. Quickly Alix did as he ordered, hissing to Nicholas, “Harold says they are coming. Get down!”

Within the space of a heartbeat the three were on their knees on the filthy floor (the same floor where the thieves had stabled their horses), and Nicholas was scrambling on hands and knees to the window to peer out into the woods.

Harold, he soon saw, had been correct. The thieves were indeed coming toward the cottage, leading their mounts behind them. They were not as yet close enough to make them out, but Nicholas primed his pistols, ready to take two of them out quickly before throwing himself bodily at the last one.

They were almost in his sights now, and he took a steadying breath before he took aim. His finger was just beginning to squeeze the trigger when all at once Harold threw a body block on him, tumbling the both of them to the grimy floor. “What in bloody hell—” Mannering shouted, struggling to regain his feet.

“
La kella geptschátschik, geptschat!
” Harold spat, clutching one pistol to his chest and out of Mannering’s reach.

“What?”

Alix, who had been more than a little frightened, released her breath in a rush and said, “To translate, Lord Linton, Harold said, ‘It is the fools,
fool!
’ ”

Sure enough, just then Jeremy stuck his head in the cottage door, gulped, “Crikey, the jig is up!” and quickly pulled his head out again.

Now it was Alix’s turn to physically hold Nicholas back from committing mayhem on his sibling. “Now, now, Nicholas, don’t fly into a pet. They are only boys, you know.”

“Boys, is it? Well let me tell you this, missy. If I have my way about it, they’ll never make it to full manhood!” he bellowed back in exasperation as hasty hoofbeats faded off into the distance.

The great thief-catching expedition, fizzling as it did so soon in the day, then came to a complete halt as the skies opened, sending down heavy sheets of rain that soon dampened their already sagging spirits. The small party hastily rejoined its, “rear guard,” then returned to Saxon Hall, where Sir Alexander and Harold sat down in their wet clothes to drink a bumper or two to their adventures, while Alix went off to her chamber to change out of her wet, foul-smelling buckskins, and Nicholas, his temper still not of the best, rode hell-bent for Linton Hall, growling his brother’s name once or twice and, in general, muttering a lot.

“I imagine you’re wondering why I have sent for you this morning.”

Alix, looking quite regal seated as she was in Sir Alexander’s huge, thronelike chair, looked over the nervously shuffling trio standing before her and suppressed a smile. If ever she had seen a crestfallen, chastened group, Jeremy, Cuffy, and Billy were it.

Young Master Cuthbert was the first to locate, his voice. “I wager it is to ring a peal over our heads for that little fracas in the woods yesterday,” Cuffy piped up bravely. “If it isn’t, you’re the only person this side of the channel not to have something nasty to say on the subject.”

“If you are referring to Lord Linton in particular,” Alix responded more soberly, “I don’t believe anything he could say would be too harsh. After all, coming within Ame’s Ace of shooting one’s own brother is bound to be an unsettling experience.”

Cuffy, mentally reliving the scene the day before with the eloquently irate Nicholas Mannering, and still chafing under the effects of that same tongue-lashing, nevertheless objected. “Well, I for one think he was out-of-reason cross. After all, there was no real harm done.”

“Sure was in one of his crotchets,” Billy added quietly. “Glimflashy, he was, saying we was all dicked in the nob or else we should be bummed, laced up in darbies, and tossed in the bilboes. Oh, gloomy hour—what a brangle.”

“Anyone care to tell me what Billy here just said?” Alix asked, her humor greatly restored by the young boy’s tangled speech and woebegone expression.

Jeremy, who had been nervously running a hand through his red hair in expectation of yet another sermon, gladly interpreted. “Nick was very angry; so angry his glims, or eyes—although in Nick’s case that means one eye, which is more than enough, let me tell you—seemed to flash. He swore we were either crazy—dicked in the nob—or else we should be arrested, put in fetters, and carried off to gaol. All in all, Alix, Billy says it is a terrible mess.” Jeremy’s head hung as he ended, “He’s right too. We just wanted to help and all we’ve done is cause more trouble. Poor Nick—he’s certainly had his hands full lately, hasn’t he?”

Sensing that Jeremy’s words had given him an opening, Cuffy quickly put in, “And that’s it exactly, ma’am, Nick did his possible, all that could be asked of him in such a tangled situation, but we sensed that it was all getting to be a little too much for him. What with us tripping over Anselms morn ’til night, and you telling him you were going to catch the highwaymen, poor Nick just had too much on his plate. We just decided to lend him a little bit of a hand, so to speak. That’s why we were in the woods—to catch the highwaymen for him and ease his mind a bit.”

“I see,” Alix replied straight-faced, hoping she looked suitably impressed. “I imagine you believe you all deserve medals for what you attempted to do—or a commendation at the very least! Such a devoted, concerned brother. Such altruistic sacrifice from that brother’s two bosom chums.” She shook her head in wonder. “My goodness, I do believe I might cry.”

“Burn it, ma’am, if you ain’t a card!” Cuffy exclaimed, dropping his sophisticated pose. “You see through us like we were all panes of glass, don’t you? We was just out cutting a rig, as usual, right, boys?” he admitted, turning to his friends. “I told you she was a right ’un, though, didn’t I?”

Billy sighed in relief, seconding Cuffy’s endorsement of Alix as being really “tip-top,” but Jeremy still couldn’t seem to shake off his fit of the sullens. “Nick’s in bed with the devil’s own headache, you know, and it’s all our fault. It’s his war wound, Alix; sometimes it pains him something awful.”

As Jeremy again pushed his hand through his hair, locks that Cuffy had taken great pains to arrange in a flattering Brutus for the boy just an hour earlier, Master Simpson felt he had to put Nicholas’s headache into its proper perspective. “Ease up on yourself, friend. That was no war-wound headache. I have it directly from his valet that your brother was well over the oar last night when Bates found him in his study. He’s just got a banger of a hangover this morning, that’s all. Though I guess he
might
have got cupshot thinking over how he almost parted your hair with a bullet.” Cuffy sighed in exasperation. “Which is how it looks now. Really, Jeremy, how do you ever expect to go to London as a top-of-the-trees fellow if you insist on raking through your hair like some backwater chawbacon?”

Although watching the three boys tangle was almost as good as a play, Alix thought it was time she brought their little meeting to order. This she did by clapping her hands together briskly and then, when that failed to capture their attention, by inserting the little finger of each hand into the corners of her mouth and letting out with an ear-splitting whistle that successfully put a period to any further discussion of Mannering’s headache, proper grooming, or any other subject—save one.

Once Billy had elicited her promise to teach him how to whistle like that—“you’re as good as any coachie on the Mail!”—she had their undivided attention. She then presented her plan for their consideration.

“I say, Alix,” Jeremy jibed, once she had finished, “have you given up Billy’s book of cant and begun on Mrs. Radcliffe? Sounds like something out of some gothic novel.”

“A Penny-dreadful,” Billy added, giving his own interpretation of the idea’s source.

“No, no,” Cuffy objected. “Straight from the Minerva Press, I’m sure. M’sister reads that stuff all the time. Hides herself under the bedcovers at night devouring the drivel like sugarplums. Still,” he said, tipping his head to one side and placing a finger to his cheek, “it’s so outlandish it might just work.”

Once their leader had given the plan his approval, the other two boys began to see some merit in the idea.

Relieved that she had gotten so neatly over her first hurdle—convincing the boys to go along with her plan—Alix filled them in on the details of her scheme, which she dubbed “Save Helene from a Fate Worse than Death” (which was what Alix considered living under Mrs. Anselm’s domination to be).

The boys would, according to Alix’s plan, make some excuse or other to Nicholas—perhaps saying they were off for a few days to visit another chum who had been sent down early from school—and instead post themselves off to Reginald’s estate, which was just a stone’s toss from Dover. Once Helene’s swain was corralled, they would hie him back to Saxon Hall, where he would be reunited with Helene.

“It’ll have to be cap over the windmill, you know,” Cuffy put in reasonably. “Mrs. Anselm will never allow the match.”

Jeremy, the last of his melancholy banished under the excitement of this new chance for a lark, hopped up from his seat and did a fine impersonation of Helene’s simpering mama. “Oh, the shame, the
ab-so-lute mortification!
My own daughter—to bring such
ruin on us all
.” Clutching his chest, he trilled, “I have nurtured a snake at my bosom,” before he dissolved into laughter, taking two modest bows before resuming his seat.

“Cuffy,” Alix said, trying to bring the interview to a speedy conclusion before her grandfather, whom she had not yet apprised of her plan, heard the commotion and decided to investigate, “I am sure you will know just how the travel arrangements are to best be contrived. I’m putting you in charge of the expedition—and in charge of explaining the seriousness of the situation to friend Reginald. He must understand that Helene is totally beyond salvation if he should fail her now. From what Helene has told me, they are deeply in love.”

“Then they both have my
deepest
sympathies,” Cuffy shot back impishly before turning serious. “Helene isn’t a bad sort, even if her mind is filled with feathers. Brother’s a conceited fribble though, and the mother’s a mean cat I’d truly enjoy seeing thwarted.”

“I knew I could back you to get the thing done,” Alix said bracingly, while wisely not agreeing aloud with Cuffy’s sentiments even though she shared them totally.

Cuffy blushed, a habit he could have sworn he had outgrown, and preened, “Oh, I say, Alix—I mean ma’am—that’s mighty decent of you!”

“And if Nick objects once we tell him
all
—which will, of course, be
after
the fact—you may lay the idea for the whole thing in my dish,” she added, more than a little caught up in the excitement herself. “As you boys were astute enough to see for yourselves, Nick is so beleaguered with problems that it is left to us, as his—er—
friends
(and here Alix, who could count on the fingers of one hand the times in her life when
she
had blushed, suddenly felt her cheeks growing warm) to do our utmost to untangle at least this little bit of the coil he has innocently found himself caught up in. Don’t you agree?”

It was left to Jeremy to ask the most important question. “You know,” he pointed out reluctantly, “Cuffy’s right when he says it will have to be a cap over the windmill match. That means a trip to Gretna Green. That’s in Scotland,” he added for Alix’s benefit, “and I can’t see Mrs. Anselm not giving chase and catching them before they get there.”