The Savage Miss Saxon (37 page)

“And now I have presented you with the ultimate challenge, haven’t I, Jonathan?” Virginia asked, sighing as she thought of her three incorrigible, uncontrollable, depressingly single sisters. It appeared she was not going to be kissed, so she might as well talk about Lettice Ann, and Myrtle, and Georgette-Vinaigrette. “Do you consider it merely another challenge, trying to marry off three such sad specimens?”

“Ha! If you think they’re bad, my love, wait until you see the sad specimens I’m carting down from London to match with them. We may have to yet import Lettice Ann’s gardener and risk your papa’s wrath.”

“Or we could elope, as Myrtle has suggested,” Virginia said, her gaze sliding away from his.

“And have you suffer the whispers and snide remarks of society? Never, my sweet. We will go about this as your papa has decreed it, and we shall triumph. If not with the three loobys I’ve invited here, then with three others. No matter what, I have promised myself that we shall be married before the month of June is out.”

Virginia so adored it when Jonathan was masterful. His delightfully kissable square jaw seemed even stronger, his dark eyes shone, and his expression became almost that of Wellington as one portrait depicted him on the eve of Waterloo. Impulsively—or not, as Virginia was not by nature an impulsive miss—she stood up on tiptoe and kissed Jonathan squarely on the mouth.

Once again all conversation, inane or otherwise, ceased, as Jonathan’s better self instantly succumbed to his baser, more physical self. He slanted his mouth against hers, gripping her tightly with both arms, crushing her enticing body against his own from chest to hip.

No kiss from any daring debutante or willing courtesan had ever shaken him like this, to the very soles of his Hessians. And when Virginia opened her mouth slightly on a sweet sigh, he readily deepened the kiss, sending new rockets firing deep inside him, lighting fireworks of passion no mere mortal should have to endure, knowing that there could be no explosive climax, but only the damp rain of frustration as a finale.

“I say, Mayfield,” came a voice from somewhere behind the Earl, “who are you mauling in that way? Have I come at a bad time? I had thought to travel down with Wiley and Pitney, but as there was nothing on in Mayfair save another crushingly boring night at my club, I rethought the matter and decided to toddle on down today. Lovely trip, too, except for the fact that my leader threw a shoe partway here and I was forced to twiddle my thumbs for two hours while my man went off to secure another horse. Do you know the cost of rented carriage horses these days? Shocking, that’s what it is. Absolutely shocking. Not that you won’t reimburse me totally, for, after all, it was your idea that I come down here. Not that I’m not delighted—truly ecstatic—to have been asked.”

The entire time the man was speaking Jonathan had kept Virginia’s face pressed firmly against his chest, feeling her shoulders shake in ever increasing mirth as the man’s droning, monotone voice went on, and on, and on. At last, when sweet silence reigned once more, Jonathan turned Virginia about, carefully keeping her features out of sight of his newly arrived guest as he shooed her down the path and back toward the house.

Only after she was gone did, he steel his shoulders and turn about, his hand extended. “Knox, my good fellow, how pleased I am you’ve agreed to grace my humble home with your presence.”

“Yes, well,” Knox Bromley countered, attempting to peek past the earl’s wide shoulders to catch a glimpse of the fleeing Virginia, “you did ask, didn’t you? About that money for the horse—”

“You have only to present the bill to my man of business.” Jonathan flung an arm around Knox’s shoulders, deliberately steering him away from the house. “Shall we walk while we speak?” he asked the man, an unforgettable figure of rather short stature, a premature pot of a belly already in evidence, his gold-rimmed spectacles owlishly enlarging his pale blue eyes.

“You’re not going to tell me who that gel was, are you, Johnny?” Knox asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pushed on. “Pitney is bruiting it all over London that you’ve taken a dart straight to the heart. I said it ain’t true, that good old Johnny would never marry until he had to, but now that I’m here—”

“You say Pitney and Wiley will arrive in the morning as planned?” Jonathan interrupted, wishing the man would take the hint and allow him to change the subject. “Are they aware that you won’t be traveling with them?”

Knox rolled his eyes as if to comment on the absurdity of Jonathan’s question. “I sent round a note to Pitney in Berkeley Square early this morning. You know, Johnny,” he went on, “I gave this whole matter a great deal of thought on the ride down here—and most especially whilst I was waiting for the new nag. Did I tell you how much that horse cost me to hire?—and I started thinking, what does Johnny want of me? He doesn’t like me, not above half, and never did, even when we were lads at school. It was you what put that dead chicken in my bed, wasn’t it? Had my toes on it before I realized there was a lump under my blankets. Had nightmares for weeks, full of feathers and beaks. So, I asked myself, remembering the chicken, and remembering how you barely bow to me in passing on Bond Street, why do you think, Knox, my good man, Johnny has gone out of his way to bring you to Mayfield? And do you know what, Johnny? I think it has something to do with those Noddenly girls. I’ve heard it rumored you’re arsy varsy in love with one of them, but can’t marry her until her sisters are wed. Now, I asked myself, I asked, Knox, do you think Johnny wants to matchmake in order to grease his own way to the altar?”

Listening to Knox’s monotone whine, and hearing him call him “Johnny” in that hateful way, Jonathan found it easy to smile convincingly and say, “Knox, old man, you constantly amaze me. In a fit of nostalgia for my salad days I ask three of my schoolboy friends to a small party and I am immediately become the subject of question as one of those three men—the
best
of those three men—accuses me of ulterior motives. I’m aghast, Knox, aghast and, well, to be truthful about the thing—hurt.”

Knox Bromley flushed a deep, unflattering red to the top of his rapidly balding head. “Johnny, good friend, please accept my most profound apologies. But the Noddenly females are here, ain’t they? That was one of them I saw you kissing just a few minutes ago, wasn’t it? I don’t care, truly I don’t, for I’ve heard you keep a tolerable cellar, and I could use a few days away from the crush of London, and the importunings of my creditors. Just tell me which of the ladies I’m to court—for a fee, naturally. Five hundred pounds, perhaps? Make it an even thousand, and I’ll go so far as to marry the chit, for it’s time I settled down and your thousand and a dowry from Sir Roderick would do my pockets a world of good. Just so long as she don’t talk too much. I never could abide a female what talks too much...”

Chapter Three

S
ir Wiley Hambleton had never been so thrilled to arrive at the end of a journey as he was this sunny May afternoon, hopeful as he was to be shed of Lord Pitney Fox before he was constrained to shoot the man and put them both out of their misery.

“This coach is too stuffy by half, Wiley. Pray put down the window before I aggravate my rash,” Pitney had complained upon entering the vehicle in London.

“I detest being a bother, Wiley, but could you raise the window? The country air stuffs up my head most abominably this early in the morning,” he had said not five miles out of the city.

“Do you think me overly cautious in bringing Doctor Fitzhugh with me, Wiley? Johnny said I was free to do so, and the man is a jewel, a positive jewel! But I wouldn’t wish to appear to be hanging from the last swinging hinge of death’s door, now would I?”

“No one could possibly think such a thing, Pitney,” Sir Wiley had assured the man through clenched teeth. “I imagine most gentlemen of three and thirty tote their own quack with them wherever they wander. I must be the exception. I only ask that you forgive me my health.”

Sir Wiley had held his famous temper firmly in check for the first leg of the journey, only wishing to strangle Pitney twice: when that man had complained that the bouncing of the coach was making him nauseous and, a scant fifteen minutes later, when the man had proved himself to be truthful—all over the shiny black paint on the outside of Sir Wiley’s treasured traveling coach.

But when his lordship had insisted upon sending his meal of roast pigeon back to the traveling inn’s kitchens because “pink meat serves as a purgative for the bowels, you know, Wiley, and as I have been most regular in my habits this past week or more I should not like to risk an upset,” Hambleton had lost his temper, threatening to dunk the man head and ears in the horse trough in the stable yard.

And so it was that, although he had begun his journey with misgivings (still confused as to why Lord Mayfield should wish to assist him in his search for a bride), Sir Wiley was hard put not to drop to his knees once the coach had reached Mayfield and kiss the crushed-stone drive.

Instead, he comforted himself with curtly informing Lord Fox that he would be detained at the stables for a few minutes, settling the bay gelding he had only recently purchased at Tattersall’s and brought with him from London in hopes of a few good workouts across open fields, and would join his host later.

“Once I can unclench my teeth long enough to say hello to Johnny, that is,” Sir Wiley muttered to himself as he lightly hopped back into the coach, the bay gelding still tied up behind it, most happily leaving Lord Fox, Doctor Fitzhugh, and his lordship’s mountain of baggage behind at the front door to Mayfield.

Sir Wiley still could not believe the cruel twist Dame Fate had served up to him in Aunt Earlene’s ultimatum that he either marry or lose her fortune. The fact that his embarrassment had become common knowledge within the
ton
seemingly within moments of his aunt’s declaration had only served to depress him sufficiently so that he had leapt at Lord Mayfield’s backhanded invitation.

A wife? What on earth could he possibly do with a wife? One woman, a single woman in his bed night, after night, after night. The same face. The same voice. The same body. He’d perish of boredom within a month—a week!

For Sir Wiley Hambleton was a rake, and delighted in his reputation as a “bad, dangerous man.”

Watching society’s clucking hens hastily tucking their innocent chicks beneath their wings at his approach was a balm to his soul.

He gambled deep, played high, rode hard, fought bravely, and bedded whom he chose—although tumbling the wife of any of the stodgier peers was a particular pleasure.

Green as grass lads from the country idolized him, his tailor discounted his purchases because his lordship’s broad shoulders and straight legs showed his creations to such advantage, and if he was sometimes shunned by the “nicer” people in society, he could never say he didn’t enjoy himself at his many outlandish pursuits.

After all, if a straight-speaking man who openly gloried in life’s pleasures was to be condemned by such morally upright, boring high sticklers, he must be doing something right!

But marry he must, and marry he would. He didn’t particularly care who was to become Lady Wiley Hambleton. He just needed a warm female body on his arm when next he visited Aunt Earlene in Wimbledon, may the old dear suffer a hard, lingering death.

Sir Wiley popped open the door to the traveling coach and hopped down before the vehicle had come to a full halt in front of the enormous, whitewashed stable.

“You, there—boy!” he called out imperiously as he made for the open door, to pick out a fitting stall for his prize gelding. “See to untying my mount. There’s a copper in it for you.”

“Stuff your copper straight up your nose, why don’t you,” the tall, carrot-haired groom, who was in reality Miss Myrtle Noddenly dressed in her favorite old shirt and breeches, called out, turning away from him.

She knew Sir Wiley, of course, having seen him riding that same bay gelding in the park just the other day—not remembering the man, precisely, but never forgetting a fine bit of horseflesh. And she wasn’t insulted that he had mistaken her for one of the Mayfield grooms. Myrtle simply didn’t care for men. Not at all. Not a jot.

She was supposed to be in the drawing room at the moment, sitting side by side with her two thimble-brained sisters, all decked out in ruffles and lace, awaiting the gentlemen who were on their way down from London.

She was supposed to be smiling politely while Mister Knox Bromley sat across from her and droned on and on about every boring subject under the sun, the man seeming to have an unnatural interest in the cost of everything from tallow candles to chamber pots.

She was supposed to be being, as she and her sisters had agreed late last night, “cooperative, if just for poor Ginny’s sake.”

Yes, well. The world was also “supposed” to be a place where a reasonably intelligent person should not have to willingly sit in the company of idiots!

And so she had deserted her sisters within an hour, discarded her hated gown on the floor of her bed chamber, and come out to the stables, where she could be assured of some peace and quiet.