The Savage Miss Saxon (20 page)

Seating himself beside Alix on the wide windowseat, Nicholas pressed her to tell him what had gone on while he remained at table with his male guests. “She started on me the moment we came in here,” Alix told him heatedly. “I sat down on the sofa over there, and she eyed me like I was some wet cat someone inadvertently let in and told me, talking down her nose, you know, ‘girl’s don’t cross their legs.’ ”

Not being able to bring himself to believe that Alix had let this insult pass, Nicholas pressed her to tell him how she responded to this obvious dig.

“I just looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘this girl does,’ ” Alix confided, a bit of a grin hovering about the corners of her generous mouth.

Mrs. Anselm had then become more subtle with her digs, pretending to start a conversation with Helene about the latest fashions and then neatly slipping in, looking at Alexandra’s gown, “Didn’t you have a frock like that once, dear? About five years ago, I believe?” But Alix didn’t bother repeating that little bit of feminine poison to Nicholas, whom she was sure wouldn’t understand just how very much the woman’s remark had hurt her. Crossed legs were one thing, but a reference, no matter how veiled, to her straitened economic circumstances was just the pinprick to draw blood.

Instead, she told him how Mrs. Anselm had tried to ferret out Alexandra’s lineage. “She asked me who my mother was, and I told her she was simply the daughter of a Philadelphia shopkeeper. ‘Oh,’ the old cat purred at me, ‘then you’re—’ She let her words die away while she looked me up and down and I told her, ‘I’m as common as gooseberries, ma’am.’ ”

“But you’re the granddaughter of a baron, Alix; surely you reminded her of that,” Nicholas offered.

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t have to remind her,” she went on, beginning to smile in earnest. “
She
told me—even said I could now be proud of my name.” Even now, several minutes after the incident, Alexandra sat up very straight in her seat as she ended, “I told her, ‘fool that I am, madam, I had never thought to be ashamed of it
before
I knew a drop or two of blue blood flowed through my veins.’ ”

“Good for you!” Linton complimented her sincerely. “You did just right, love. Don’t let the Anselms of this world make you believe everyone judges you by your ancestors. And pity us if everyone should! Lord, look at mine—one of the bloody idiots may even have gambled away my inheritance, or so says your piece of parchment.”

Nicholas hadn’t noticed that Helene had come up beside him (being ordered by her mama to go over to the window embrasure and break those two up”), and she looked back and forth between the two of them before saying in her breathless way, “Nicholas, I could not help but overhear you. Are you in some sort of trouble?”

Just then the Earl had an inspiration. If Mrs. Anselm got wind of the possibility that her daughter had made a lucky escape by breaking her engagement with a penniless man—a man who did not even own the roof under which that same woman was now housed—she would gather up her offspring and depart. So thinking, he quickly sketched in the details of Alexandra’s find, carefully swearing Helene to secrecy concerning Jeremy, but deliberately not forbidding her to tell her mother.

Helene sat quietly for some moments, her childlike face screwed up in concentration before a hand flew to her mouth and she gasped, “Nicholas! Does this mean you could lose all?”

Alix leaned over and whispered in Linton’s ear, “Devilish acute, ain’t she?” and Nicholas only preserved his countenance with difficulty while he whispered back, “Minx!”

This byplay passing completely over Helene’s head, the girl was left to her own thoughts for a few more moments, and she used this time to show that, if her intelligence wasn’t of the highest, she at least possessed that most basic of instincts—the talent for using information for her own best interests.

“Nicholas, Alexandra,” she began, looking from one of them to the other, “since you have confided in me, I feel it only fair, in my turn, to confide in you.” Seeing she had their undivided attention, she leaned more closely to them and whispered passionately, “I’m in love!”

Alexandra was the first to recover. Folding her hands in her lap, she sat back and said, “Now why do I get the feeling it is not friend Nicholas here who has set your little heart a-tapping?”

“Oh, Alexandra—may I call you Alix?—I just knew you’d understand,” Helene replied, blushing hotly under her auburn hair. “Of course it isn’t Nicholas—it never was.” Looking toward Mannering, she shrugged her shoulders nervously and apologized, “I’m sorry, Nicholas, but it was Mama’s idea to encourage you. Not that I don’t think you are a fine gentleman. I don’t mind the patch either—that too was Mama’s idea. You see, I had heard you had died at Waterloo, and I believed Fate had allowed me a second chance with my Reginald. That’s why I fainted when you appeared at the door that day.”

“Reginald?” Nicholas interjected calmly. “I take it Reginald was on the scene before you and I ever met?”

Now Helene spoke rapidly, all her shyness forgotten at the mention of her beloved’s name. “Oh yes, Nicholas. I have known Reginald for ever so long. His papa’s estate is just next door to ours in Kent, you know, and we have played together since we were in leading strings.” Then her smile faded. “But Reginald’s father lost everything due to rash investments and then promptly hung himself up by his cravat in the herb garden. Reginald is now near penniless, and Mama says I must forget him.” Her large, round eyes filled with tears as she ended, tragically, “But I can’t forget Reginald. He is the love of my life!”

“Oh, brother,” Nicholas heard Alix mutter under her breath, and he jabbed her pointedly in the ribs.

But Alix wasn’t as coldhearted as she appeared. She was truly touched by Helene’s story, even if she was at the same time convinced that matching Helene with her Reginald would be ensuring another generation of weak-chinned Englishmen the likes of which her own countrymen made the butt of countless jokes and cartoons. Even before Nicholas’s jab in the ribs she had decided to help the poor girl—although how this was to be done she had no idea. But help her she would—for many reasons. It would thrill Helene, yes. But it would also serve to remove Mrs. Anselm from Linton Hall so that she and Nicholas could put an end to this charade of an engagement and settle the matter of the parchment once and for all with no outside disturbances. And it would well and truly put a spoke in that same insulting Mrs. Anselm’s wheel—which could only be looked on as an added bonus.

Indeed, the idea of helping Helene and her Reginald held nothing but appeal for Alexandra. So why did the thought of ending her engagement to Nicholas seem to cast a shadow over the remainder of the evening? Refusing to think anymore about it, Alix drew Helene off into a corner, where they talked at some length about the absent Reginald and Alexandra stored away her newfound knowledge for later use.

Chapter Eight

T
o say that things were beginning to get somewhat complicated would be much like saying that Nutter, who still had not realized Harold was an Indian, was “just a tad” nearsighted.

First, take the problems besetting Nicholas Mannering, a gentleman who, through no fault of his own, suddenly found himself neck-deep in dilemmas. It had been bad enough when he was only trying to keep a tight rein on Jeremy and his two ramshackle friends while attempting to run his estate and recover from his war wound.

But to add—in descending order—a reluctant fiancée, an outraged grandfather, an old love, that old love’s managing mama and twit of a brother—not to mention some assorted highwaymen and one large Indian—was perhaps pushing credulity too far.

On the other hand, his reluctant fiancée’s life was no bed of roses either. Alexandra Saxon was simultaneously trying to juggle the needs of a cantankerous, tippling, gaming grandsire; a wounded, overprotective, overaged Lenape warrior; an odiously overbearing—not to mention
persistent
—fiancé; three hey-go-mad young adventurers bent on capturing three already proven violent highwaymen; and a trio of tiresome Anselms, two of whom inspired disgust and one who somehow engendered Alix’s compassion.

Not that Nicholas’s dilemmas could be said to vary perceptibly from Alix’s, but at least, on top of all his other problems,
he
did not have to contend with Saxon Hall’s ancient plumbing. But the major issue—the complication that could safely be said to dwarf all the others—was that damning piece of parchment that hung over
both
of them like the Sword of Damocles. For, much as they had not yet trusted each other with the confidence, Alix and Nicholas were more than a little in love with each other, and the matter of the parchment had to be settled before they would feel free to confess that love.

Each unaware of the other’s motives, Alix and Nicholas independently decided that the only way out of their separate dilemmas would be to resolve all the other, lesser complications so that they could concentrate on the one thing that really mattered.

So thinking, Alix was more than amenable to Nicholas’s suggestion that the next fine day should find her, Nicholas, Sir Alexander, and the recovered Harold out in the countryside in search of the highwaymen.

Ah yes, as the days moved swiftly on into December, the cauldron surely began to boil.

“This is a serious business,” Nicholas said tersely. He stopped to cast incredulous eyes over his little group of listeners. “A
dangerous
business,” he emphasized, then shook his head sadly. “I cannot believe you are approaching this thing with the degree of gravity it deserves.”

It was easy to see why Nicholas was concerned. Wellington may have ranted and raved a bit over his officers’ entertaining the thought of going into battle with unfurled umbrellas over their heads, but Mannering could not begin to imagine the Iron Duke’s reaction to the motley crew of warriors now standing before him.

Harold, it suddenly came to the Earl’s mind, actually seemed the most normal looking of the group. At least he only looked as he always did—black face and all.

Nicholas then cast his eyes up and down Sir Alexander’s ample form—complete to a shade in the battledress of his worthy ancestors—and suppressed a shudder. The only piece of equipment that seemed to serve any real purpose was the neat brace of dueling pistols tucked into the man’s wide leather girdle. As Jeremy had said, the man, for all his girth, could shoot the pips out of a playing card at twenty paces. However, the three-foot-long broadsword, as well as the evil-looking mace—strictly a Middle Ages weapon used mostly for cracking open an enemy’s skull—seemed somehow superfluous. The fact that the man also sported a face smeared with bright, greasy, beet-red paint (also the Lenape color for war) and had three red-smeared wampum belts strung around his neck did little to enhance the man aesthetically, although Nicholas declined to bring this to his attention. With any luck, Sir Alexander, like the Prince Regent, would not be able to mount his horse without the aid of a winch, and would, in the end, be left behind anyway.

But it was Alix’s appearance that most unsettled the leader of the little group. For some reason unknown to the Earl, Alexandra had at long last decided to wear the buckskin dress Harold had given her. Not that she didn’t look quite fetching, he admitted to himself, fidgeting a bit as his eyes took in the expanse of Alix’s smooth skin where it was exposed from knee to shapely ankle, but the thought of any eyes but his own seeing her in such a state of—his proprietary feelings were growing by the moment—
déshabillé
, caused him to absolutely
itch
to throw a blanket over her and carry her off—to where? Well, he thought with an evil half-smile, his bedroom might be as good a place as any.

Before his mind became so muddled as to seriously entertain the thought that Jeremy and his erstwhile friends might make a better hunting party (a truly ludicrous idea), Nicholas told the group to mount their horses so they could be on their way.

Their initial objective was to return to the cabin in the woods where the thieves had first been spotted, and then go on from there. However, when it came time to dismount and continue on foot, Sir Alexander balked, telling anyone who would listen that knights did not go tramping through the damp undergrowth like common folk.