The Savage Miss Saxon (40 page)

Once more Virginia and Jonathan exchanged looks, but this time they smiled. If Lettice Ann were to be compromised into marriage, and if Myrtle and Sir Wiley (still thought of by Virginia and Jonathan as a pair matched by the stars) were to be considered all but engaged, why, that would leave only Georgette-Vinaigrette still to be settled!

It would appear Jonathan would have to import another possible suitor for the girl, however, as Lord Fox was most definitely out of the running. Ah, well. That was a simple matter. London was clotted with men who could be depended upon to look hopefully upon marriage to a pretty, if pale, blonde lass of reasonable dowry.

But then Virginia and Jonathan both frowned, for they were basically good-hearted people, and knew that they could not in good conscience sacrifice Lettice Ann’s happiness for the sake of their own.

“We must go after them at once,” Virginia and Jonathan said as one, rising to quit the dining room.

“Well, Lord Fox?” Georgette asked, her tone stinging. “Are you going to be a gentleman and accompany them, or have you just remembered that you are highly allergic to good deeds?”

“Good girl!” Myrtle chortled, giving her sister an affectionate clap on the back that nearly sent Miss Georgette reeling head first across the width of the table. “It is a miracle! Georgette is turning human. I’m impressed, I tell you. Who’d ever have believed it? Come on, Georgie—ride with us. It will be a grand lark.”

“I—I,” Georgette began, suddenly looking faint, as if all her exertions of the morning were beginning to take their toll on what she still believed might be her faint constitution, even if exposure to Lord Fox’s constant complaints had served to make her realize that she was not garnering attention with her avowals of fragility, but most probably only making everyone around her nauseous with listening to her.

“I shall be happy to bear Miss Georgette company while everyone rides to the rescue.”

Six heads turned as one at this short speech, for every one had forgotten that Angus Fitzhugh, physician, was in the room, and had been for some time.

Virginia tilted her head to one side, her green eyes narrowed as she looked to the doctor assessingly. Really, all things considered, she was beginning to feel distressingly close to a race track tout, and wondered if she should ask the good doctor to open his mouth so that she could inspect his teeth.

But the doctor did seem to be a good enough sort, quiet, almost taciturn, yet rather handsome behind his unusually full mustache; his eyes a lively blue, his thick sandy hair falling forward over a smooth brow. Papa would approve of a doctor. They already had one in the family—Hope’s husband, Joseph—but, as Papa was wont to say, another “couldn’t hurt.”

“Why, thank you, Doctor Fitzhugh,” Virginia said quickly, as Lord Fox had already opened his mouth to protest—for although he had already decided to quit Mayfield this very morning and return to London, where his nerves would not be so put upon by screeching ladies of indifferent looks, only mild fortune, and unexpectedly volatile temperament—he hadn’t counted upon making such an exhausting journey without his personal physician.

“That settles it then,” Myrtle stated, slapping her thighs as she rose without Sir Wiley’s assistance even though he was standing directly beside her chair. Sir Wiley was like that, never going out of his way to treat her like some helpless infant just because she’d been born a female. She liked that. By and large, Sir Wiley’s lack of consideration for her was one of his most shining attributes. “Yoiks, tally-ho and away, and all that bilge! We’re off for the hunt. Wiley, would you like to share a quick stirrup cup before we ride out?”

Jonathan, not believing being female equated with being helpless, but a firm devotee of the good manners his late mother had drummed into his head during the course of his formative years, hesitated in order to offer his beloved his arm, then passed by Lord Fox to whisper, “Have a good journey back to London, Pitney, old man. Oh, and by the way—good riddance to you.”

“Well!” Lord Fox exclaimed as he watched his host leave the room, Miss Virginia hanging on his arm, her face turned into his sleeve as she gave way to a fit of giggles. “I have never been so insulted in my life.”

“Oh, no? Then this is a day of revelations, for you’ll be even more insulted in just a moment!” Miss Georgette pointed out, lifting his lordship’s bowl of eggs (“they must be runny, no lumps”) and dumping it over his head, bowl and all.

“My goodness gracious sakes,” she then commented, smiling broadly as rivulets of unlumpy eggs ran down Lord Fox’s thin cheeks and long nose, “I do believe I have not felt so robust in ages. Doctor Fitzhugh—Angus—might I avail myself of your arm as we remove to the morning room for a second cup of tea?”

“It would be my very great pleasure, Miss Georgie,” Angus Fitzhugh said, and they, too, departed the breakfast room, leaving Lord Pitney Fox behind to contemplate the dilemma of either allowing the remaining coddled eggs to ooze out slowly from beneath the upturned bowl now snugly seated on his head or to lift that bowl and have his unpleasant bath over with all at once.

Virginia had always enjoyed riding, even if her mare, Plum Pudding, was a three-time, hand-me-down sixteen-year-old from her sisters and well past anything save a wheezing trot, so that sitting sidesaddle aboard one of Jonathan’s prime mares was a real treat. Almost as much of a treat as riding alongside her beloved, who cut a most dashing figure up on his huge red stallion.

They were clipping along the main turnpike leading away from Mayfield at a brisk but safe pace, Sir Wiley and Myrtle having long ago outstripped them on their own mounts, Myrtle not being one to hide her light beneath a bushel in her blatant attempt to outride Sir Wiley.

“Are you sure we will be able to catch up with Lettice Ann, Jonathan?” Virginia asked nervously as they rounded a turn in the road only to see it empty in front of them, “I believe I’d like less to see her wed to Knox Bromley than I would if she were to marry Bad Bertie. But she is compromised, isn’t she?”

“Not if we can reach them soon,” Jonathan told her. “After all, none of us is going to bruit it about London that Lettice Ann has gone off alone with Knox. Unless Lord Fox takes it into his head to run his mouth off once he’s back in London.”

Virginia drew in a quick breath. “Would he do that? Would any gentleman be so cruel?”

“First, dear heart, we have to consider whether or not we wish to consider Pitney a gentleman. No,” he added, shaking his head, “now that I’ve considered it—he’s
not
a gentleman. But he isn’t entirely blockheaded either. In the normal course of events modesty would make me refrain from saying this, pet, but it is worth more than Pitney Fox can spare to have him cross me.”

“You’re so socially powerful,” Virginia said, ashamed to find herself feeling slightly smug—for her beloved
was
the earl of Mayfield, and he wished to make her his countess. How lovely. How very, very lovely. Not that she was a mean sort, to wish ill upon Lord Fox, but if the man dared to lay his tongue on any of her sisters she could stand back, applauding, as he was run out of London on a donkey’s back. “Could you ruin him, Jonathan? Could you break him?”

Jonathan smiled at her, sending shivers of delight from her head to her toes. “I could
bend
him, dear heart,” he told her reassuringly. “So we won’t worry about Pitney. Instead, I think we should spend a moment thanking our lucky stars. Look, Ginny. Isn’t that your sister Myrtle coming toward us? Up there—peek between the branches of that small stand of trees just before the next bend.”

“Where? Oh, yes, yes, it is Myrtle! And look—there’s Sir Wiley.” She leaned forward over the mare’s neck, trying to peek around the bend in the road now that the two horses had hit the straightaway once more and were heading directly for them. “But where is Lettice Ann? I don’t see a carriage following after them.”

No sooner had she uttered the words than Myrtle spied them out shouting, “Yoo-hoo, fellow rescuers. No need to call out the hounds. All’s well.”

“Told you it wouldn’t take us long to ferret them out,” Sir Wiley called, reining in his mount ten feet ahead of Jonathan and Virginia. “They’re just a small stretch back the way we’ve come, stuck tight in a ditch. Always said Knox was a cowhanded driver.”

“Is Lettice Ann all right? She isn’t injured in any way, is she?” Virginia asked, all concern, for her sister would not have been put in such desperate straits if she, Virginia, hadn’t been so selfish as to wish all her sisters married.

“She’s fine as ninepence, Ginny,” Myrtle assured her, “although I can’t say the same for that gudgeon Knox Bromley. We’ll be heading to Mayfield for a wagon in order to fetch him back.”

“Broke his leg falling from the curricle,” Sir Wiley said, looking to Jonathan. “A curricle, Johnny! Did you ever hear such nonsense? The man can barely handle one in the park, yet alone on the highway. But a coach and driver would have cost him, cut into the two thousand he planned to cut out of you, so he decided to drive himself. That mountain of luggage didn’t do him a heap of good, setting off the balance, but he was bound to come to grief sooner or later. Well—Myrt and I will be off now that you’ve come to bear them company. You know, it’s too bad old Knox didn’t break his jaw. He’s moaning nineteen to the dozen about how he sees the whole debacle as your fault, Johnny, and how he intends that you should pay. And you will, I suppose, if only in being forced to have Knox kicking back his heels at Mayfield until he’s mended. We’ll send a wagon—in about an hour, I suppose. See you later, Johnny.”

And then Sir Wiley and Myrtle were off, spurring their horses into a gallop, leaving both Jonathan and Virginia behind in a shower of road dust as they breezed by.

“Tell me again how terrible it would be to take you to Gretna Green and have done with it, pet,” Jonathan pleaded from between clenched teeth. “I believe I need to be reminded that we have chosen the
easy
,
sensible
approach to our problem.”

“Oh, poor
Johnny
,” Virginia teased as their mounts rounded the bend, at last allowing them sight of the tilted curricle, Knox Bromley lying on a grassy bank, moaning, and Lettice Ann ministering to him. “Poor,
poor
Johnny!”

“I’m leaving.”

Virginia’s head jerked up in shock at this tersely uttered announcement. “Leaving, Myrtle? To go where? And why? I don’t understand. I thought you and Sir Wiley were getting on so famously?”

“Famously? That just goes to show what you know, Ginny.” Myrtle threw herself into a chair, her long legs, thankfully covered by her split riding skirt, flung out in front of her, her chin jammed down hard against her chest. At times like this, with Myrtle flinging herself about, Sir Roderick had been heard to say that Myrtle was the son he’d always wanted.

“Oh, yes, Ginny,” she went on, glaring at Virginia. “Let’s hear it again, shall we?
Famously
. We laugh, we joke, we ride, we even drink together. We’re the best of friends. I call him Wiley and he calls me Myrt. We’re bosom churns, actually—kindred spirits. So why is he going to return to London and propose to some little bit of frippery named Araminta Sedgewick? Answer me
that
, Ginny!”

Virginia bit her bottom lip as she saw tears standing bright in Myrtle’s pretty but close-set eyes. “He is?” she asked, her heart breaking for her sister. “And you love him, don’t you, Myrtle?”

Myrtle fairly leapt out of the chair and began furiously pacing the drawing room. “Love him? Are you daft, Ginny? I don’t love
anybody
. I don’t want to marry anybody—not now, and not
ever
. Haven’t I told you that often enough?”

“Yes,” Virginia answered consideringly. “You have told me that. You’ve told everybody. Have you said as much to Sir Wiley?”

Myrtle stopped her pacing and sliced her sister a curious look. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. We’ve had several discussions about marriage. He wants it as little as do I, and wouldn’t even be thinking about it if it weren’t for his Aunt Earlene. But you know all that. That’s why Jonathan invited him here in the first place. What of it? Oh,” she exploded, “why am I standing here talking? I should be upstairs right now, packing up my whips.”