The Savage Miss Saxon (3 page)

When Cuffy Simpson and his cousin Billy Bingham, Jeremy’s best cronies, immediately followed their friend’s lead by tossing their own suppers at two of their tablemates who were unfortunate enough to be sitting-duck targets, a veritable free-for-all of vegetable flinging and mutton tossing broke out throughout the dining hall—with predictable results.

Since Billy was an orphan and lived with Cuffy’s parents, and since those parents were visiting in Ireland until after the Christmas holidays, Jeremy decided there was nothing for it but to bring his friends home with him.

That was three weeks ago—three long, trying weeks for Nicholas and, it now seemed more than obvious, Poole as well. It was now November 1, 1815, and before the first day of 1816 dawned some two months hence, Nicholas was sure he would be able to look back on June and the horrors of Waterloo as only a pale reflection of the epic battle that was bound to burst around his ears if he could not find a way to control the three hellions now under his roof before they set the whole of the neighborhood at war against them.

Now, just to add to his problems, there was this business of some unknown female barging into his home, badgering his butler, and then barricading herself inside his late mother’s bedchamber, some black-faced wild man—her husband perhaps—with her.

He stepped back to allow Poole to push the serving cart in front of the sofa, took the steaming cup of coffee the butler offered him, and then went to stand at the window embrasure, sipping from his cup while conjuring up and then discarding several theories about the unknown female.

He had been standing there for some minutes when his thoughts, which had been remarkable for their lack of profundity or productivity, were interrupted by an aggrieved voice coming from the doorway. “Do you know what time it is? It’s 8:30!”

Mannering turned slowly to face the newcomer to the room. “My congratulations, Jeremy. Whoever said you don’t pay attention to your lessons? Why you’ve only been at school this last decade or more and already you have learned how to read a clock. I cannot help but feel your enormous school fees have not been paid in vain. Tell me, have you learned anything else of import you wish to impress me with this morning? For instance, a snappy recitation of your sums, or perhaps a short dissertation on the rule of Charles I? Or shall we dispense with these edifying transports of wisdom and discuss more mundane matters? Such as—where did you and your madcap partners in crime go last night? Which of my neighbors is to come calling today carrying either a bill for damages or a horsewhip he wishes to take to your hide? Or last but most certainly not least, do you by any chance have even the foggiest notion what a strange woman and her hulking male companion are doing in our mother’s bedchamber?”

Throughout this long, deceptively soft-spoken diatribe, young Jeremy Mannering had been visibly shrinking before his brother’s sharp-eyed gaze, but at Nicholas’s last words the boy straightened up, looking momentarily blank, then seemed to become suddenly enlightened. A vivid red flush ran up his neck and into his cheeks.

His brother saw all these easily read clues to Jeremy’s probable guilt and ventured, “Do you wish to tell me the whole of it now, or do you choose to wait for reinforcements?”

Instead of giving an immediate answer, Jeremy lurched across the room to pour himself a cup of coffee, his badly shaking hands putting him in danger of scalding himself. He took several quick small sips of the steaming liquid in an effort to gain some control over his baser instincts (which were telling him to take to his heels just as fast as he could), and in the hope the coffee would have the double-barreled effect of easing the pounding in his head while making his mouth feel less like it was lined in uncombed wool.

The entrance of his two friends caused him to sigh in relief. Surely Nicholas wouldn’t cut up too stiff with guests in the house.

Cuffy Simpson was the first to enter the room, his trim figure and blond good looks seemingly unaffected by his night of cheerful debauchery. His cousin, however, was another matter. Billy Bingham, blessed with neither his relative’s physique or looks, had also missed out on the family strong stomach. His chubby body fairly dragged itself across the carpet, striving to reach the restorative coffee in an effort to stave off a complete collapse, and his normally sallow complexion looked positively green beneath his thatch of muddy brown hair.

While Billy kept a two-handed death grip on his cup, drinking from it noisily like a large dog lapping up water, Cuffy, already reclining on the sofa, meticulously spread a napkin over one knee, took one or two delicate sips of his own coffee, and said amicably, “Beautiful morning, isn’t it? Sunshine, a blue sky, what more could one ask for in a morning? Does anyone care to go for a ride?”

Nicholas, who had been watching all this little play with varying degrees of interest, humor, and disbelief, questioned Cuffy: “Tell me, if you were to ride out this morning, oh, let’s say as far as the crossroads, and then momentarily lose your way—in which direction would the fmgerpost for Linton Hall be pointing?”

Billy looked at Jeremy, whose face was just then a very painful red, nudged his cousin in the ribs, pointed to their friend, and pronounced, “The cull is leaky, and cackles.”

“Translate, Cuffy,” the Earl ordered, well accustomed to Billy’s propensity toward cant language.

“A cull is a man—Jeremy—and Billy says he’s leaky, apt to blab, which,” Cuffy’s eyes turned accusingly on Jeremy, “he obviously has done, cackling just like a barnyard hen.”

“I did not!” Jeremy protested hotly. “I never said a word, Nicholas guessed it, that’s all. I don’t know how, but he did.”

His brother came over and draped a commiserating arm about his shoulder. “You aren’t ‘leaky,’ Jeremy,” he soothed him, “but then again I shouldn’t play at cards if I had your face—it speaks for you without your ever saying a word. Besides, do you think you three invented changing fingerposts as a lark? It was only a lucky guess on my part.”

“Devilish acute, ain’t he?” Billy stage-whispered to his cousin, who hissed back at him to shut his trap and give his tongue a holiday.

Nicholas was on the verge of forgiving the three boys, all now looking suitably repentant—even Cuffy—when Billy, who was still harboring the fear his drink induced miseries might yet prove fatal, felt his heart drop to his toes as he realized he was nearing the final stages of the death throes—he had begun to hallucinate!

It had to be an hallucination. There could be no other explanation for the sight he now saw framed in the doorway. The apparition was, first of all,
huge
, being at least six and a half feet tall (though it could have been twelve and a half feet, Billy wasn’t sure), all of it made up of very solid-looking muscle for a figment of one’s imagination.

There were beaded slippers of some sort on the creature’s feet, five-inch-long fringe hung from the outer side seams for the entire length of a pair of buckskin leggings, and a huge cape constructed of some dark brown animal fur was slung about a fine set of brawny bare shoulders. Atop the large head, a mop of long, coarse, black hair was banded about the forehead with a thin leather thong. But it was the apparition’s face that took and held Billy’s incredulous eyes. The face was painted coal black!

“I’ll never touch another drop, Lord, I swear it,” Billy babbled, completely forgetting his stylish slang in his agitation. “Just, please Lord,
make it go away!
”

At Billy’s exclamation the other occupants turned toward the door.

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Cuffy, for once nonplussed.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jeremy added forlornly.

Only Lord Linton appeared unmoved by the presence of a demon in his library, as he took three paces forward and said, “Good morning, sir. Care for a cup of coffee?”

The demon spread his feet more firmly apart, folded his massive arms across his equally massive chest, and replied, “
N’gattósomi
.”

By now Cuffy had recovered his composure. Grinning wickedly, he turned to Billy and asked, “Care to translate, coz? No? Well then, at least close your mouth—or as you’d prefer to say—dub yer mummer.”

Jeremy began to dance around the room, one finger pointing at the man in the doorway. “I know what he is, Nick—he’s a wild
Indian
!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“So it would seem,” his brother returned. “Now all we have to do is ascertain whether that gibberish he was spouting means he’s thirsty or that he intends to remove all our scalps with that wicked-looking rib sticker hanging on his belt before going merrily off on his way.”

“It means he’s thirsty,” a feminine voice announced from behind the Indian. “If it was your scalps he was after I’d currently be addressing a roomful of hairless corpses.” With that, the owner of the voice stepped out from behind her companion and strode confidently to the center of the room, thereby allowing everyone to get a good look at her.

And look they did, drinking in the sight of a tall, slimly built young female of about nineteen or twenty, dressed in clothing that had been out of style in England for at least five years. But, as clothes never quite made the man, her clothes could not unmake her, for she was undeniably one of the most strikingly beautiful women this part of the country had ever seen.

Hair that resembled shimmering blue-black silk hung in an unbroken fall down to her waist and a little beyond, with not a single tendril or wisp of curl cluttering up the purity of her strong high cheekbones, smooth rounded forehead, classically aristocratic straight nose, or finely carved chin. Framed by a thick fringe of long black curled lashes, her huge black eyes appeared to slant upward at the outer edges, like a cat’s, and although there was a slight pinkish bloom to her cheeks and her full wide mouth was enchantingly rose-kissed, her clear complexion was colored by a golden-all-over tan. She was, in a word, exotic.

“
Two
Indians!” Jeremy shouted before Nicholas could quell him with a stern look.

The Earl could see the girl was trying to suppress a grin. Obviously the chit was enjoying herself hugely at their expense.

“
Mattapewíwak nik schwannakwak
,” she told her companion, causing him to grunt and nod his head.

“What did you say to him?” Cuffy dared to ask.

The woman turned to the lad, smiled (thereby showing off a full set of startlingly white, even teeth), and informed him demurely, “I said, loosely interpreting, of course, ‘The white people are a rascally set of beings.’ ”

The young men stared at her in awe, but Mannering had reached the limit of his endurance. Their unwelcome overnight guest and her black-faced shadow had some explaining to do and it was time and enough to make a beginning. So thinking, he approached the female and asked baldly, “By what right, madam, did you come barging into this house last night, bully a valued family retainer, and then take up residence for the night?”

The Indian growled something evil-sounding under his breath but a motion from the girl silenced him.

With unhurried movements the girl poured herself a cup of coffee, laced it liberally with sugar, and sat herself down, of all places, in Nicholas’s own chair behind his desk.

“I see I have some explaining to do,” she said, eyeing the other occupants of the room one by one. “I’m here in answer to Chas’s—that’s my father—dying wish. Frankly, left to my own devices I wouldn’t come to England if I were to be offered the throne. For all Chas was English,
I
was born an American and I’m proud of it, but there’s no denying deathbed promises, now is there?”

She took a gulp of coffee, grimaced at its sweetness, and went on, “Chas told me the whole sordid tale before he passed on, you see—how he ran afoul of my grandfather and was cast out of house and home. Not that it mattered much, as he was a younger son anyway, but I could tell his pride was still hurt even at the end. Anyway, once he was sure I was to be left alone in the world, he made me promise to come here to see my grandfather. I guess Chas hoped the old curmudgeon, or Chas’s older brother if the old man was already dead, would take me in.”

She stopped for breath and looked Nicholas in the eye. “Now, who are
you
? You’re too young to be my uncle, and it’s certain you’re nobody’s grandfather. How do you fit in the family?”

The Earl rubbed absently at his left temple, which was beginning to throb. “Young lady, I have not understood a single word you have said. However, I do believe we can begin to unravel this muddle once I tell you that these three over here,” he pointed an accusing finger at the trio, “amused themselves last night by rearranging all the fingerposts at the crossroads outside Linton. You may think you know where you are at, but you are probably several miles distant from your intended destination.

“
This
, madam, is Linton Hall. I am Nicholas Mannering, Earl of Linton, and that shamefaced redhead is my brother Jeremy.”

“So sorry, ma’am,” Jeremy muttered weakly.

Mannering continued, “The other two are friends of Jeremy. The aspiring dandy over there, the despair of his afflicted parents I might add, is Cuffy Simpson, while that humble, slightly vacuous-looking youth is his cousin, Billy Simpson. Now,” he prompted, “if we could know your name...”

The girl did not, as Nicholas had assumed, nay, even hoped, look the least disconcerted to learn that she had spent last night, not in the bosom of her family, as she had supposed, but in a house full of strangers—and male strangers at that.

“Certainly, my lord,” she responded readily enough. “As I was named for my grandfather—Chas’s way of hoping some soft spot in his papa’s heart over that bit of sentimentality would assure me a place at the old man’s table—telling you my name may assist you in directing me to my intended destination. My name, gentlemen, is Alexandra Saxon.”

The silence in the Linton library once Miss Saxon had finished speaking was positively deafening.

“
That’s impossible!
” the Earl exploded, at last breaking the uncomfortable silence.