The Savage Miss Saxon (41 page)

Virginia held out her hands as if to detain her sister, saying, “Don’t go yet, Myrtle. Just sit down a moment, and bear with me while I think aloud, all right? Please? I think I might be able to help.”

Myrtle set her chin at a belligerent angle and glared at her baby sister. “Why? I don’t love him, you know. Why should I need any help?”

“Then why are you running away?” Virginia countered, and knew she had won when Myrtle’s gaze slid away from hers and the woman sat herself down once more.

“All right, all right. Damn the man for a tinker—I love him. And he sees me as his friend, and no more.” She glared at Virginia. “Now what?”

Virginia was silent for some moments, wondering if it were more than her physical safety was worth to say what was on her mind. “I think,” she said slowly at last, “I think we should go see Letty, and Georgie—and Clara. It is time, Myrtle, that you were turned into a
woman
.”

Myrtle’s eyes grew wide with fear as her mouth dropped open and she began slowly shaking her head. “Oh, no,” she declared, burrowing back into the cushions of the chair. “Not that, Ginny. I know what you mean. You mean scented baths, and lace, and hair ribbons, and silly white gloves. Oh, no. Not me. Not Myrtle Noddenly.”

Virginia tipped her head to one side appealingly. “Even if it meant that Sir Wiley realized that his good friend Myrt was not only a great companion but also a lovely woman—a woman he could be proud to introduce to his Aunt Earlene as his wife?”

Myrtle began worrying the side of her rather dirty thumb. “Do you really think Wiley doesn’t know I’m a female?”

“I think he knows you’re great fun—the sort of friend a man such as he would never tire of,” Virginia said, sensing a victory. “Now it is up to you to show him that you are an attractive, desirable,
eligible
young lady. Men can be obtuse, Myrtle. It is up to us to show them the road best taken. You remember Mama telling us that, don’t you?”

Myrtle nodded, looking down at her roughened hands and threadbare riding skirt, then ran her fingers through her shortly cropped hair. “To be fair to Wiley, I’ve never gone out of my way to remind him I’m a female,” she said consideringly.

Then she slapped her hands down hard on the arms of the chair and stood. “All right. Let’s do it. Only no hair bows. I draw the line at hair bows, I swear it, even for Wiley!”

Chapter Five

I
t would be difficult for the casual observer to see that the lovely estate of Mayfield was in reality a hotbed of intrigue, the very air almost pulsating with plans and schemes and not a little unfulfilled love.

Lord Pitney Fox, his tail neatly between his legs (and bits of egg-white congealing behind his left ear) had departed within an hour of his unfortunate experience in the Mayfield breakfast room, leaving behind his “personal” physician and a terse note stating that “I shall be rusticating at my estate in Surrey until the fall, regaining control of my shattered nerves. It would be best, I believe, for all parties concerned if no mention of the goings-on of this past week were to be made public, if you take my meaning.”

Knox Bromley, fortunately, also was no longer a part of the scene. In a burst of inspiration, Jonathan had shunted the injured man straight from the turnpike to a local hostelry, happily paying down the blunt that would keep Mister Bromley, his broken leg, and his tiresome tongue in reasonable comfort until the bone knitted or the innkeeper decided no amount of Lord Mayfield’s money was worth the aggravation of having to deal with the plaguey man and sent Bromley off to London in a hired coach.

Either way, Jonathan believed he would be getting off cheaply.

That left Doctor Angus Fitzhugh still in residence, and still most solicitously attentive to Miss Georgette Noddenly, who had taken to the notion that good health just might be good sense—especially when one was being courted by such a handsome man as the doctor. And did anyone know that Doctor Fitzhugh’s great uncle in Edinburgh was something called a “laird,” and the dear doctor was his only heir?

Yes, there would be time and enough for Georgette to catalog her list of ailments
after
the wedding ceremony—if those ailments were to make a comeback. As it was, Miss Georgette Noddenly had been surprised to find herself feeling as fit as a fiddle these past three days, capable of long walks in the gardens, late evenings in the music room, and even a visit to the local village to purchase a few badly needed female fripperies for Myrtle—all these exertions taking place with the good doctor at her side.

Jonathan, at the behest of his beloved, had convinced Sir Wiley Hambleton to stay on in the country for another week, pointing out that marriage proposals were nothing to rush into, even with a pot of gold (Aunt Earlene’s fortune) awaiting him at the end of the aisle of Saint George’s.

Sir Wiley had agreed, but only reluctantly, for Myrtle Noddenly had been curiously unavailable to him these past three days, “indisposed,” or so he had been told, although she was sure to be up and about in time for dinner this evening.

And it was about time, too, Sir Wiley had told anyone who would listen, for he was bored to flinders without his boon companion “Myrt” about; to go riding with across country, to regale with his jokes, to slip away with in the evenings for a visit to the village taproom—Myrtle laughingly done up in her old breeches and acting so rough as to fool any but the most trained eye as to her sex.

Little did Sir Wiley know that tonight, after three long days spent in seclusion—her face and hands being treated with freckle creams made of sweet cream and crushed strawberries, her body repeatedly dunked in rose water, her hair snipped and curled into something vaguely resembling the popular
Titus
, her mind assaulted with the do’s and don’ts of polite manners, her body subjected to pinches and pulls as she learned how to sit, stand, and eat correctly—Miss Myrtle Noddenly,
female
, was about to make her debut.

“This will never work,” Myrtle said as Georgette tucked a vial of vinaigrette into her sister’s reticule and placed the slim gold chain over her sister’s arm. “Look at me, will you! I look ridiculous!”

They were all gathered together in Virginia’s bedchamber, where they had remained almost exclusively for the past three afternoons, working more in tandem than any of Wellington’s crack artillery units in planning their strategy to bring down Sir Wiley Hambleton—known in the bedchamber only as “our target.”

“No more than usual, Myrtle,” Lettice Ann said in answer to her sister’s wailing lament. As Miss Noddenly was still smarting from the regular ear-banging lecture delivered by a terse Lord Mayfield upon being ignominiously returned to the estate, a virtual verbal tour de force on the folly of trying to fool a fool (meaning her sad tale of her love of the “country gentleman, Bertram,” related to Knox Bromley in order to gain his sympathy), her pettiness might be excused.

“Letty, don’t be cutting,” Virginia said around a mouth full of pins for, even if it was almost dinner time, she and Clara were still making last minute adjustments to the hem of the simple gray and blue batiste gown.

It had been nearly impossible to coax Myrtle to remain still for fittings on the new gown, with the young woman alternating between rebellious threats of bolting from the estate and entirely female histrionics concerning her unrequited love for Sir Wiley, both of which invariably ended in tears and stomping exits from the bedchamber.

“I’m prodigiously sorry, Myrtle,” Lettice Ann said now, sighing. “It’s just that although Georgie and her doctor seem so happy, and you and Sir Wiley will be settled before the week is out—for I have no doubt this plan will work—in Papa’s mind I will still be left firmly on the shelf. You do all realize that none of you may marry until I am settled, don’t you?”

Lettice Ann immediately became the center of attention as three sets of female eyes turned on her as if measuring her up for possible suitors.

“Knox Bromley is still in the neighborhood,” Virginia told her, not with any great hopes that this already known information would thrill her sister, who had called the man “an impossibly obtuse, verbose, stultifyingly
boring
ignoramus” before leaving him lying at the side of the ditch and threatening to walk back to Mayfield if she would otherwise have to ride in the same vehicle with Bromley.

“Oh,
please
, Ginny,” Lettice Ann groaned, rolling her eyes. “I’d rather take myself off to a nunnery!” She frowned. “Do they take non-Catholics, do you suppose, not that it matters? You see—”

“How about Lord Fox?” Georgette questioned her sister, giggling. “I think he could be made to forget what I did to him if you were to ask about his rash and cluck your tongue a time or two as he told you it was much better, but now his liver might be spotty due to eating five slices of rum cake the other night at dinner.”

“Don’t be wasting our time with such nonsense, Georgie,” Myrtle admonished, stepping off the low stool, nearly dragging Clara across the room along with her as the maid attempted to put another stitch in the hem of the blue and gray gown. “Come on, Letty. Speak up. If Georgie gets her sawbones, and if Wiley comes up to snuff over this ruse we’re pulling, trying to make a silk purse from this sow’s ear, and with Ginny’s earl already so arsy varsy over her that he’s willing to put up with settling us—it only seems fair that you give it a try. We all know you want to get spliced to someone before you’re too old for anyone to care. Counting out Bad Bertie—which you must do—who else have you seen in London who interests you?”

Lettice Ann lowered her eyes and concentrated on pleating the fabric of her skirt. “I thought the Earl of Royston to be rather pleasing when I saw him dancing at Almack’s,” she said quietly, wishing she could snap her fingers and have all her nosy sisters disappear—or
listen
to her. Didn’t they realize she was laboring under a great strain, trying to tell them something?

“Royston, huh?” Myrtle considered, knowing herself to be desperate, but not
that
desperate. “I suppose we could kill off his wife for you, Letty,” she teased. “Samantha—ain’t that her name?” She looked to her sisters as if for assistance. “Anyone here know of any good, quick-acting poisons?”

“This is no time to be joking,” Georgette said, dabbing at her eyes, for she had been walking with Angus again this afternoon and he had hinted, only slightly, of course, for he was a gentleman, that her cherry lips rivaled the famous Mayfield roses for purity of color. “Letty—isn’t there somebody else? There
must
be somebody else. You’ve been going out in society since April.”

Lettice Ann said something, but spoke so quietly no one could understand her.

“What?” Myrtle fairly exploded, taking hold of her sister’s shoulders and giving them a mighty shake. “A name, Letty! Give us a name!”

As Lettice Ann broke into loud sobs, Georgette so forgot herself as to scrabble in Myrtle’s reticule for the vinaigrette; Clara, still on her knees, took several quick stitches before biting off the thread and quitting the room (still on her knees); and Myrtle glared with those intimidating too close-set eyes. Virginia saw herself as the sole repository of sanity.

“That will be enough, Myrtle,” she said decisively, pulling Myrtle back and kneeling in front of Lettice Ann. “Forgive us, Letty. We’ve become no better than a gaggle of quarrelsome cats. You do not have to marry just so that the way may be cleared for the rest of us to approach the altar. We’ll go to Papa—all of us, together—and explain how unfair his rule is. He’ll see the sense of suspending the rule if it will allow him to marry off three daughters within a single season.”

“ ‘My girls will marry in the order of their birth. First Faith, then Hope, then Charity—good names all, but then—’ ”

“Oh, stifle yourself, Georgie,” Myrtle ordered as Georgette began reciting the well-known rule. “We all remember how it goes. Besides, Ginny might have a point. Getting himself shed of three out of four in a single season might just strike Papa as a good trade. And he’d be getting another earl, another doctor, and even a sir—a
rich
sir, and a Noddenly first, as we have none to date.”

“I’m already married,” Lettice Ann mumbled so quietly that none save Virginia, who was still kneeling in front of her, heard.

Virginia wet suddenly dry lips and looked up at her older sister. “What—what did you say, Letty?” she questioned her carefully.

“I’m already married,” Lettice Ann repeated, more firmly this time. “There!” she said, sitting up straight and smiling, as if someone had just removed a particularly weighty rock from between her shoulder blades. “I’m already married. I didn’t elope, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m past twenty-one, so I could marry whenever and wherever I so wished, without Papa’s permission. And I so wished—I mean, I did. Six months ago tomorrow. So there!”

Virginia batted her eyelids, desperately trying to comprehend the enormity of what Lettice Ann had said while doing her best to banish the sudden image of her father—his face an angry red as he placed them all in their rooms, on bread and water for a month.