The Savage Miss Saxon (22 page)

Alix knew Jeremy was right. Mrs. Anselm had her own cap firmly set on Helene’s marrying Nicholas, and a little thing like a threatened elopement would serve to put only a temporary crimp in her plans. Helene’s happiness meant next to nothing to that horrid, scheming woman, who was on the lookout for a nice, deep gravy boat to swim in the rest of her life, and Helene’s marriage to Lord Linton would serve her purposes to a cow’s thumb. Once she knew Helene and her Reginald were on their way to Gretna, Mrs. Anselm would move heaven and earth to hie them back to Linton Hall. “We will have to throw a rub in her way then, won’t we, boys?” she winked at the trio, their smiles telling her that they trusted her to find a way to solve this last problem.

Sir Alexander entered the Great Hall, and feeling magnanimous—thanks to a goblet or five of gin provided by that turncoat Harold (who was just then snoozing off a snootful under a table in Nutter’s buttery)—invited the boys to share a potluck lunch with them.

“We’ve got brawn today, boys, a real treat,” he told them.

“What’s brawn?” Cuffy hissed in an undertone to Alix.

“It’s the meat of a pig’s head, cooked up in a sharp sauce that will set your eyeballs to sweating,” she whispered back, adding, “I’ve made myself some soup, which I shall eat in the privacy of my chamber. I don’t have enough for all of us, but Grandfather has plenty of brawn, I assure you. I do believe there’s also some white curd and beef cooked in almonds Nutter was working over this morning, as well as some pig stuffed with spiced forcemeat.”

Master Cuthbert, looking suspiciously green about the gills, made an eloquent, if hasty, excuse to Sir Alexander and, pushing Jeremy and the confused Billy before him, quickly made to quit the premises.

“You’ll keep our—er—conversation confidential, boys, won’t you?” Alix called after them.

“Mum’s the word, missus,” Billy yelled over his shoulder as Jeremy, suddenly remembering Nick’s vivid description of the lone meal he had ever eaten at Saxon Hall, tugged at his friend’s arm. “I can keep my chaffer closed when I want to!” Billy shouted as he was pulled out the door.

Once the boys had departed, Sir Alexander asked Alix, “Just what in Jupiter has those loonies in such a twitter?”—which earned him a quick kiss on the forehead and no explanation whatsoever as Alix skipped off upstairs, humming under her breath.

Nicholas had been out riding for some time, lost in thought, before he at last dragged his mind away from his problems to realize that he was in the same clearing where—when was it? a week ago? a lifetime ago?—he had given Alix his family betrothal ring. Remembering the heated kisses they had exchanged, kisses he knew would burn in his memory forever, he dismounted, tied his horse to a nearby tree, and walked in the direction of Harold’s peculiar sweat house.

Once seated on a fallen log at the top of the hill, he noticed that once again a thin stream of steam was rising from the structure. “Harold must be employing his Indian sweat box to rid himself of yet another blue-ruin-induced headache,” he ruminated aloud, shaking his head. “Poor Alix. Instead of reforming her grandfather, she has lost her stalwart Harold to demon gin.”

He watched the steam awhile, lazily tracing its path toward the sky, and gave his mind over to remembering the curious excitement his brother and his two friends had shown at luncheon. Something was afoot again—as usual, considering the trio’s larcenous proclivities—but he was at a loss to understand what they were about this time. Perhaps he should have withheld his consent to have them go off visiting this school chum of theirs they seemed so bent on burdening with their presence. But the mere thought of having them out from underfoot for several days was so heady that he eventually gave in to their outrageous pleadings (They had been packed and gone within the hour).

Mannering could understand their wanting to be shed of Linton Hall, his own bad temper, and the depressing presence of the Anselms—Lord knew Nicholas himself would have appreciated a bit of time away—but something, some slight suspicion, persisted in niggling at his brain. That niggling told him the boys would not so easily abandon their search for the highwaymen unless something better—even more exhilarating—had come along to set their mischief-making instincts a-tingling.

He drew a thin cheroot from his pocket, lit it, and leaned back to lose himself in the enjoyment of a good cigar. What was he so worried about, anyway? Having the boys a few counties away would certainly make his chances of catching the highwaymen that much easier. At least he wouldn’t have to worry that he might run the chance of blowing a hole in one of the youths while aiming at the highwaymen.

He also, he grimaced ruefully, then might be able to banish from his memory the thought of the boys catching any more glimpses of Alix in that indecent buckskin dress. Not that Jeremy or Billy had really taken too much notice of the expanse of shapely leg Alix had shown when she’d run outside the cottage, but he did not at all like the gleam that had appeared in Cuffy’s eyes. That boy was too observant by half, and even now Nicholas’s hands clenched into fists as he recalled Cuffy looking back at the cottage as he rode away. The scamp had shouted delightedly, “Oh, I say, ma’am. Good
show!
” before giving Alix a smart salute and proceeding to make good his getaway. If he wouldn’t have felt so much a fool for doing so, Linton would have taken Cuffy to task over the incident, but he knew he had been wiser to leave the subject alone. Cuffy would probably just have said something else even more provocative, and Nicholas would have been left to either rant with impotent rage or call the youth out—the latter thought being almost too ridiculous to contemplate.

“Ah, well,” he told himself, “at least they are already on their way. I do believe going home today shall be that much easier. Between Jeremy’s mother-hen hovering, Billy’s inane cant, and Cuffy’s knowing looks, I might soon have been driven to Heart’s Ease m’self. Now if I could just see my way clear to blasting the Anselms to kingdom come without running afoul of the local constable, I might be able to find life reasonably tolerable.”

Just as he was about to rise to his feet and make his way back to his mount, he caught a bit of activity at the entrance to the sweat house and decided to stay and watch Harold at his ablutions. If the Indian seemed much restored by the procedure, he might just give the sweat house a try himself.

However, it was not the tall warrior that Nicholas saw emerging from behind the flung-back flap, but a near-to-naked girl. Wearing naught but a small tan breechclout, Alix rose to her full height outside the sweat house and, her back to the hill and her dumbstruck audience of one, lifted her hands to free her hair from its prison beneath a towel wrapped turbanlike around her head.

The sun slanting through the trees lent a glow to her perspiration-slicked body, and as Nicholas’s gaze took in the straight perfection of her legs below the breechclout and the concave sculpting of her smooth back above it, he felt a sheen of perspiration dampening his own skin. Every movement of Alix’s lifted arms took the form of sweet torture for the man who sat tensely on the hillside, and his sigh of disappointment was almost audible as her long black hair, once freed from its prison, cascaded down the length of her back, covering her past her waist like a dense cloak.

Nicholas knew that, as a gentleman, he should just then be rapidly making himself scarce. But he also knew that—where Alix was concerned at least—he was no gentleman. He did stand up—more to ease his sudden discomfort and at the same time gain for himself a better view of his betrothed—but he made no move to leave the area. Holding his breath lest she somehow hear his painful, labored breathing, he watched as Alix daintily picked her way through the stones to the edge of the water.

She did not dip a tentative toe into the cold stream, but walked into the water without hesitation, not stopping until she was covered to her middle. Then she stopped, spread her arms wide, and quickly submerged herself three times, lifting her head to the sun each time she emerged from beneath the surface.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Nicholas murmured to himself. Then, “Oh, God, she’s coming out!” He felt the need to hold on to something solid as Alix turned and began making her way back toward the bank. “Her dratted hair is in the way,” he hissed under his breath. “Come on, Alix, sweetings, push your hair out of the way.”

As if in compliance with his impassioned plea, Alix raised her hands to gather her hair above her head. “Ah,” Mannering sighed, lost in the rapture of the moment, “there’s a love!”

Her rounded hips pushing sinuously against the slight current, Alix continued to make her way slowly toward the shore and the blanket that waited for her there. Nicholas was suddenly beyond all rational thought. He began struggling with his neckcloth—unfortunately tied in the intricate knots of the Mathematical—convinced that Alix wouldn’t mind if he joined her. As he shrugged hastily out of his jacket, he cursed the coat’s tight tailoring, the need for clothing at all, and for the first time in a long time, the fact that he had but one eye with which to see the beauty before him.

Then the sun seemed to go behind a dark cloud, casting Nicholas in shadow. But it wasn’t a cloud that hid the sun, he soon discovered; it was the towering bulk of one highly indignant Lenape Indian. Abandoning his current project—he had just then been vainly trying to tug off one of his Hessians while hopping about on one foot like an indignant stork—Nicholas stood up straight and tried for a look of dignity as he stood before Harold, his neckcloth undone, and one shirttail hanging out over his riding breeches.

Harold was making low, growling sounds that, although he could not understand them, Nicholas was sure were not meant to be an exchange of simple pleasantries between gentlemen. “Don’t get your spleen in an uproar, Harold, my friend,” Mannering said placatingly. “Honestly, I meant no harm.” Seeing the dark scowl on Harold’s equally dark face, Nicholas was brought back to complete reality, belatedly facing the fact that the sight of Alix’s exquisite body had sent him—an educated, urbane man of the world—posthaste into the very depths of depravity.

“I’m truly sorry, Harold,” he apologized again, still wondering—in some dark corner of his mind—whether he was sorry for his actions or merely for the untimely
interruption
. But Harold was still talking, his throat working as he spat out his guttural condemnation of Linton, for even an affianced bride was not to be so abused by her betrothed.

As Nicholas retied his neckcloth and pushed his arms into the sleeves of his hacking jacket—taking his good, sweet time about it while more than once casting his eyes in Alix’s direction—Harold became impatient at the Earl’s dawdling and poked at him with one large hand. “All right, all right,” Nicholas responded testily, for truly he was upset, “stop cackling like a hen with one chick. I’m leaving.”

Sounds of the commotion at the top of the hill finally traveled down to Alix as she was reaching down to pick up her blanket and she raised her head to see what Harold—for who else could it be but her protector, who had stationed himself on the hillside while she took her sweat—was so upset about.

Her shock-widened eyes locked on Nicholas just as he was turning to take one last glimpse of her. She did not, as he fully expected, shriek, faint, or even fumble wildly in an effort to cover herself with either spread hands or the blanket. Another woman perhaps, but not Alix—not his sweet savage. Instead, she raised herself to her full height and stared him right in the eye—never flinching as he smiled, bowed deeply from the waist, and then threw her a kiss.

Enough was enough and too much was just too much. Harold spat an angry oath, placed his body between Mannering’s and Alix’s and pointedly put his hand on the hilt of his knife. “No need for violence, Harold, old boy. I’m leaving,” Nicholas said, beating a hasty retreat up the hillside.

Once a good twenty feet separated the two men, Nicholas turned one last time to see Alix still standing as she had been, a statue carved in living flesh, and more beautiful than any ancient Greek treasure. Suddenly a knife blade sank into the trunk of the tree just slightly to the left of Nicholas’s head. Clearly this was his final warning—Harold could easily have killed him. But even the Indian did not want to so permanently dispatch (in Harold’s mind) Alix’s last hope at escaping spinsterhood. “Spoilsport,” Nicholas told the Indian, raising one hand to finger the glittering blade, and then he saluted the angry warrior and departed without another backward glance.

Once back at Linton Hall, even the pudgy Poole’s whining complaints about Mrs. Anselm’s plans to refit the drawing room in red velvet could not erase the smile from his lordship’s face or remove the spring in his step. And once left alone in his study, he reached for a calendar and happily began marking off the days until January—and his wedding day.

Chapter Nine