The Savage Miss Saxon (35 page)

Jonathan had been nonplused, or so he had told Virginia when next they met—which had been their first truly secret meeting, for Sir Roderick had refused to allow his youngest daughter back into society for fear a lovesick Lord Mayfield might attempt something rash, like a moonlight elopement to Gretna Green.

“You’ve a look in your eye I find most disconcerting, young man,” Sir Roderick had proclaimed. “A fierce determination I cannot like, much as I admire your promise not to ask for a dowry and the offer of an allowance the size of which my Virginia wouldn’t have the faintest notion of how to spend, her being a simple lass, and not the sort to squander my blunt on silly fripperies the way her sister Georgette does. Therefore, until my other girls are bracketed, I forbid you to see Virginia. If you still want her once those three are popped off, come see me again. I would very much enjoy you as a son-in-law. Have one earl in the family already, you know, but two wouldn’t hurt.”

Virginia surreptitiously raised a hand to wipe at a single tear that threatened to reveal to her maid, Clara—a motherly woman shared by all four Noddenly girls—that she was breaking her heart over “his beautiful lordship again, knowin’ full well it won’t do a lick a’ good to weep buckets, for Sir Roddy won’t budge.”

And, Virginia knew, taking a deep breath and steeling herself for her coming meeting with Jonathan tonight after everyone was in bed, Clara was right. Papa would never allow a breach of his plan to marry off his daughters according to their order of birth.

Why, the man wouldn’t even accept change in his personal routine now that they were living in this rented town house on Half Moon Street. He still rose each morning at dawn, just as if he were going to ride out and inspect his fields, and he still retired each night at ten, after evening prayers, in preparation of another early morning.

Which was very convenient, Virginia concluded, smiling, for it did make it so much easier for her to slip down the servants’ stairs and out into the mews for those stolen moments with Jonathan.

But even those moments were an anguish to her now. For Jonathan came to her from his nightly rounds of parties and routs and visits to the theater, his fine clothes seeming to mock her as she stood before him in her old dressing gown (just in case Clara or another servant happened to see her and she could plead sleeplessness, saying she was on her way to the kitchens for warmed milk).

He was going on with his life, mixing with the beauties of the
ton
who all gushed over him and pursued him and had a much better chance of marrying him now that the notion of marriage had entered his mind, while she could do nothing but sit back, gnashing her teeth, and wait for her sisters to wed one, by one, by one.

It wasn’t fair. That’s what it wasn’t—it simply was not fair!

And, apparently, Clara didn’t think so either.

“Here, Miss Ginny, wipe those eyes,” Clara said in her gruff country way, jarring Virginia back to attention by shoving a lace-edged handkerchief in front of her mistress’s face.

“And stop lookin’ like the end of the world is comin’ tomorrow and you have an engagement to go ridin’ out with the prince next Friday. Your young lordship is coolin’ his heels in cook’s sittin’ room, and you’d best pin a smile on that pretty face before you set him runnin’ for shelter.”

“Jonathan? He’s here?” Virginia asked, not knowing if she was more surprised by her beloved’s appearance in the middle of the day or Clara’s seeming compassion for the tribulations of true love.

But as the maid turned away, and Virginia saw the glint from a shiny gold piece Clara slipped into her pocket, the younger woman only smiled, knowing that, once again, her dearest Jonathan had found a way for them to be together.

She ran to the mirror and hastily inspected her simple sprigged muslin gown for wrinkles, then pushed at her curls which were, as she was not dressed for company, held back from her smooth brow only by a satin band and allowed to fall freely past her shoulders.

Did she look too young? Too much the country miss? Jonathan had said he adored her simplicity after being forced to endure the artificially enhanced beauty of the endless crops of debutantes at Almack’s. Was he only being kind? No. Jonathan wouldn’t lie to her. He would never lie to her. He didn’t have a malicious bone in his body!

“Where’s Papa?” Virginia asked, her hand on the door latch, as the firm common sense she had possessed in abundance until meeting Jonathan belatedly prodded at her lovelorn brain. “Is he anywhere about?”

“Sir Roddy’s at his club, boring everyone there to flinders with his stories about his girls, I have no doubt,” Clara informed her, beating at the cushions on the window seat to plump them. “Miss Lettice Ann is pinin’ in her room for her dirt-digger, in case you’ll be askin’, Miss Myrtle is polishin’ tack in the stables half way down the mews—made friends with one of Lord Chesterton’s grooms, or so I’ve heard—and Miss Georgette is in the sittin’ room, checkin’ her pulse to make certain she ain’t dead yet. Go on, Miss Ginny. Shoo! It’s not a good thing to keep such a pretty man waitin’!”

Virginia gave a quick bob of her head, grinned at the maid, and ran hotfoot for the servants’ stairs that led directly to the kitchens. Once there, she hesitated only a moment as Cook winked and pointed with a wooden ladle toward a narrow corridor, then deliberately slowed her gait to a ladylike stroll as she approached the small private sitting room.

She stepped inside the dim room, for it was on the ground floor and the high walls of the surrounding houses literally blocked the afternoon sun, and nervously looked around for Jonathan.

“Surprise!”

Suddenly a bouquet of yellow rosebuds was in front of her and Jonathan stepped from behind the door, grinning with such unmitigated glee that she instantly knew he had done something wonderful.

“Jonathan!” she cried happily, taking the bouquet from him and burying her face in the fragrant blooms for a moment before smiling up at him, her heart in her eyes. “They’re beautiful!”

“No, my sweet love.
You’re
beautiful. Why, if you listen closely, you will hear these poor roses weeping in despair, knowing how you outshine them.” He took her hand and led her to the shabby couch, pulling her down beside him. “I have news.”

She gloried in his closeness, daring to squeeze his hand as she worshiped him with her eyes.

“Tell me, Jonathan,” she whispered, wishing he would kiss her again as he had done that special day in the park, even though he had sworn on his honor that he would never betray her trust in him by taking undue advantage of her.

Until they were wed, of course. At that point, he had informed her, grinning boyishly, he would take great delight in introducing her to enchantments the likes of which her maidenly heart could not dream!

“I’ve just left your father at his club,” he told her, his eyes so bright she now knew for certain that he had accomplished a brilliant feat. “I couldn’t tease you with my idea without first gaining his seal of approval, for that would be too cruel, for both of us, dear heart. But Sir Roderick has agreed. Darling, sweet Ginny—I am going to marry off your sisters!”

She looked at him, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “How? Who? Georgette-Vinaigrette? My heavens—
Myrtle?
”

“Never fear, I have it all in train. I only wonder why it took me so long to see it. We marry them off, and then we are free to begin our own life together. I’m even giving them each a dowry, an expense that would be cheap at twice the cost. Listen,” he said earnestly, leaning closer as he told her his plan.

Virginia listened, slowly beginning to smile. She had been wrong. Her Jonathan did have a few malicious bones in his body after all. And she couldn’t be happier for them!

Chapter Two

“T
here’s a
dreadful
draft in my rooms, of course,” Georgette announced fatalistically as she wearily toddled into the drawing room at Mayfield after hounding Clara for a solid hour as to the whereabouts of all her medicines, which had been carefully loaded in a large trunk specially fitted to hold the dozens of vials and papers of powders, then temporarily misplaced. “I shall most probably take a
dreadful
chill.”

The young lady dropped tragically into the nearest chair, pressing the back of one hand against her brow. Georgette Noddenly would have made a tolerable actress, for she was a most convincing invalid, with her slight frame, halo of blonde hair, and pale cheeks; although the fact that her abilities were confined to playing die-away consumptives would, of course, have somewhat limited her roles.

“How
dreadful
. Oh, stifle yourself, Georgie,” Lettice Ann Noddenly grumbled offhandedly, still perusing the map she had somehow already secured from the Mayfield library. The sunlight pouring through the bank of windows facing west did nothing to enhance her meager beauty, but only highlighted her unfortunate resemblance to her long-nosed sire. “I knew it. I just
knew
it! We are even farther from home now than when we were in London. However will Bertram find me?”

“That’s Bert, Lettice Ann,” Myrtle Noddenly pronounced flatly as she strode long-leggedly into the drawing room, smelling slightly of horse, as she had been at the stables, personally supervising the placement of her mares in the stalls.

“Or Bad Bertie,” she continued, “if you want to call him by the name the chambermaids have given him. He’s only a gardener, but he has plowed many a field with our female servants, if you take my meaning,” she continued, winking at Georgette, whose immediate high-pitched giggle signaled that she had gotten the joke.

“How dare you, Myrtle?” Lettice Ann protested, her sallow complexion paling rather than flushing prettily at this insult to the love of her life—her unrequited love, but then no one had asked that, had they? “Bertram has always been a perfect gentleman to me.”

Myrtle unconcernedly inspected the broken and rather dirty nails of her left hand. She never wore gloves when she rode, liking the feel of horseflesh under her fingers, and rarely wore a hat either, which explained the badly freckled face beneath her mop of shortly cropped, carrot-orange hair, Yet, for all of it, she was a handsome enough female, if sometimes off-puttingly mannish in her manners.

“That’s because he don’t favor you, you widgeon,” Myrtle answered, her penchant for manly, blunt speech now woefully in evidence. “Otherwise he would have tumbled you long since. Give it up, Letty. Papa wouldn’t let you have him even if Bad Bertie wanted you, which he don’t. Maybe he has half a head on his shoulders after all, and doesn’t live entirely between his legs.”

“Oh, how I loathe and detest you,” Lettice Ann declared from between clenched teeth. “Just because you have no notion of marrying, you feel free to poke fun at my devotion to Bertram. Or do you plan to mate with one of those filthy nags you favor? I can see your child now. He’d be even more horsy-faced than you!”

“Oh, the noise, the noise! I feel the headache coming on!” Georgette-Vinaigrette moaned, her hands cupped over her ears. “How I am made to suffer! What I would not do to be shed of the pair of you.”

“You could die of one of your half-dozen ailments, Georgie. That would get you free of us,” Myrtle supplied helpfully. “Although the worst of your ills, that of having bats in your belfry, is rarely fatal.”

Georgette immediately began searching in her ever present reticule for her vinaigrette, weeping softly, for she was surrounded by heartless, persecuting creatures, no one save her late mother ever having truly appreciated her delicate constitution.

Perhaps if she coughed a time or two, Virginia would notice her distress and say something kind, for Virginia was the best of her sisters. Never Myrtle. Why, Georgette was convinced that if she were to swoon at this moment and topple onto the floor, Myrtle would only step over her on her way to dinner.

Virginia Noddenly, who at the moment was rather wishing Georgette
would
faint, if just to shut her up, and who had been hoping for better from her three older sisters while knowing she had doomed herself to disappointment, sighed and said, “Please, girls. Don’t quarrel. His lordship will be joining us at any moment, and I wouldn’t wish for him to take a poor opinion of my dearest sisters.”

“And that’s another thing,” Myrtle said accusingly, wiping at a brownish stain on her skirts, which Virginia passionately hoped had been deposited there by some spilled stringy beef and greasy gravy they’d had for luncheon at their hasty stop at an indifferent inn along the roadway, and not garnered from contact with any vile thing her sister had brushed up against while in the stables.

“Another thing?” Virginia asked, avoiding her sister’s penetrating stare. Myrtle’s eyes were most unfortunately close set on either side of her thin, aquiline nose, and her gaze could be fierce, and unnerving. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“She doesn’t know what I mean,” Myrtle responded, singsong. “Oh, the feigned innocence of the young. How thoroughly unconvincing. All right, Ginny, I’ll ask again, and this time don’t fib or try to fob me off, or your nose will grow as I tweak it.”