The Savage Miss Saxon (6 page)

The carriage had once again been set in motion, its wheels bumping heavily as they rattled across the drawbridge, and soon the coachman had halted the horses in the courtyard. Alexandra had the door open before Nicholas could move, and Harold had lifted her lightly down on the flagstones before the coachman could lower the steps. It was left to the Earl to follow as conventionally or unconventionally as he cared to do, and nodding his servant away, he vaulted to the ground without aid of the steps, landing lightly just inches from Alexandra.

“Quaint American custom—this being lifted down from carriages. I really can’t see why we English ever bothered to invent carriage steps. But then not all of us have giant Indians to assist us to the ground or ankles strong enough to take the pressure of leaping about like demented frogs.”

Alexandra was too nervous to reply to Mannering’s teasing. Now that she was actually here, within shouting distance of her grandfather, she was more nervous about the meeting than she cared to let the Earl know. There had to be a good reason why Chas left home more than a quarter of a century before and never once made a move to return. Had he really left of his own volition, or had he been tossed out on his ear by his father?

She wiped her suddenly moist palms on her grey traveling cloak, a movement that did not go unobserved by Nicholas. She straightened her collar, pushed a time or two at her hair—just now blowing about her face in the wind—and took one or two deep, steadying breaths. “Let’s get it over with, shall we?” she said, her voice cracking just a little bit.

Mannering looked down at her, for although she was fairly tall, he towered over her by a good head and a half, and suddenly his emotions were touched by her plight. She really had been having a hard time of it lately, he thought to himself. First her father dies, then she travels halfway across the world to keep a deathbed promise, not knowing what sort of reception she will receive at the end of her long journey. And then, just as though she hadn’t already enough on her plate, there was the final blow—her compromise under his roof last night.

The Earl held out his arm to her and said, almost gently, “Let’s have at it then. And remember, barking dogs rarely bite. Just keep that adorable chin tilted in precisely that confident manner, let me do the talking, and perhaps we shall just brush through this without any permanent injuries.”

Alexandra lifted her face and gifted Lord Linton with an absolutely dazzling smile—a smile that did something very strange to a small area somewhere near the pit of his stomach. “Thank you, my lord,” she told him earnestly.

The Earl swallowed hard before replying, “Please, as we are soon to be married, I believe you may call me Nicholas.”

The smile that had so nearly bewitched him disappeared, leaving him with the feeling that the sun had suddenly slipped behind a cloud. “We are not soon—or ever, for that matter—going to be married, Nicholas. I maintain that I fail to see the harm of spending a night in one of your bedchambers while Harold was on the scene as chaperone,” she shot back testily before just a small bit of the smile returned and she ended more softly, “but you may call me Alix.” Once more the Earl’s insides were sent topsy-turvy.

Heedless of Mannering’s emotional ups and downs, Alexandra began looking around the courtyard where they were now standing. Nicholas explained that this was called the inner bailey, the carriage having already passed through the outer bailey—which was the name given to the courtyard that lay just inside the high curtain wall that surrounded the whole of the castle grounds. Along this curtain wall were placed several round towers with turretlike roofs—once employed as lookouts—he continued as she murmured her approval.

Within these walls, he went on, and surrounded by the lower stone wall that made up the inner bailey, lay the donjon—or castle keep. What had from a distance looked to her to be a grand, sprawling pile was, in reality, she now saw, just a lot of stone and empty spaces surrounded by more stone. The donjon itself was not nearly so romantic a sight when viewed head-on. Oh yes, it did rise a majestic seventy feet or more into the air, but its ancient blackened stone and scarcity of windows made it much more opposing than welcoming. It did not even have a door on its ground floor! Chas’s birthplace could scarcely be called cozy.

While Alexandra looked vainly about for an entrance, Nicholas instructed the coachman to walk the horses and motioned to Harold to follow him as he walked round the corner to where a wizened-looking old man dressed in green velvet livery was laboriously limping his way toward them. “Nutter, old fellow,” the Earl called out in way of greeting, “don’t exert yourself so. We would have made our way to you in time. Rest a moment, won’t you, and then be so good as to take my friend here to the kitchens and give him something to gnaw on. As far as I know, he hasn’t broken his fast yet from last night, and with a body that size, I’d hate to be anywhere around if he decides to swoon.”

By now Alexandra, her neck already stiff from craning it up at the donjon looking for some sort of entrance, had joined their little group and she added, “Something for me too, Nicholas, if you please. I can’t remember when last I ate. Your English food—at least that offered at the posting inns where we stopped—is so bland as to put me almost totally off my feed. Tell me, do you English boil
everything
?”

At Nutter’s offended look, Nicholas turned to Alexandra and observed mildly, “You certainly do know how to make a good first impression, Miss Saxon. You’ll have Nutter here fairly eating out of your hand if you keep up this flattery.”

Alexandra turned to apologize to the servant, but the old man was already limping away, muttering under his breath. Harold walked at his side, leaning down and nodding as if in full agreement with everything the man had to say.

“It would seem your Harold is a bit of a diplomat,” Mannering observed dryly. “It would be a pity to tell Nutter his companion doesn’t understand a word he’s saying.”

Alexandra’s mouth opened as if she were about to say something, but suddenly thinking better of it, she hesitated before finally saying, “Nutter seems singularly unimpressed with Harold. You’d think he saw Indians every day of the week.”

“Nutter sees barely anything, Alix,” Nicholas informed her. “To him Harold is nothing but a large shape. That’s why I was so quick to approach him—he knows me by voice, and I wanted to assure him as to who I was. But never fear—he is a capable servant for all his nearsightedness. He knows every stone in this great pile, having lived here with your grandfather for all his life.”

Mention of her grandfather brought Alexandra back to the business at hand. “How do we get inside this ‘pile of stones’?” she asked, hands on hips as if she were formulating a plan of attack.

Mannering captured one of those hands in his, noticed how chilled it was, whether from cold or fear he did not know, and led her around the corner behind which Nutter and Harold had disappeared. There, abutting one entire side of the donjon, was a stone building much shorter and squarer than the tower. “This is the forebuilding,” he told her. “It is the only way you can enter the donjon, and even this way is secured by means of visitors having to climb this great staircase before really being able to say they have at last arrived safely inside.”

The top of the steps finally reached, Mannering opened a heavy oak door and stood back to let Alexandra enter before him. She was met by yet another green-liveried old man, who bowed creakily as she approached. The servant was kept from toppling over onto his face only by clinging desperately to the large, painted lance he was employing as a cane. “Who wishes to see the Master?” the old man croaked.

“It is I, Nicholas Mannering, Earl of Linton, who begs audience with your master,” Nicholas intoned solemnly, evoking a quick glance from Alexandra, who was astounded at his formality with this servant after his familiarity with Nutter minutes before. “Also,” the Earl went on, “I have with me this lowly female, who, if your master pleases, craves to plead her case before him, asking only that he not judge her too harshly for her sins.”

That did it! “What in bloody blue blazes are you spouting about? I never heard such drivel. Lowly female, indeed! Judged for my sins! What sins?”

The servant took no heed of Alexandra’s outburst but merely bowed again before plodding out of the room. Once he was gone, Nicholas let out his pent-up breath and began to laugh. “Whew!” he said once he could breathe normally. “As often as I do this I never fail to feel like the world’s greatest fool the entire time.”

“
That
I can understand,” Alexandra threw back cuttingly. “But how dare you call me a lowly female? I’m beginning to feel like stepping through that door has catapulted me backward in time a century or two.”

“Oh, further back than that, my dear, I assure you. Look, if you think you can’t go through with this, just let me know and you can stay out here while I go in alone to talk to your grandfather. After all, if you think outbursts like the one you treated that servant to will be condoned once we’re inside the Great Hall, you have another thought or two coming. You’d be out on your ear before you knew what hit you—if the old man didn’t decide to have you flogged on the spot.”

Before Alexandra had a chance to reply, the servant took two steps back into the room, banged the heel of his lance on the stone floor three times, and announced that an audience had been granted. This time, instead of preceding Nicholas, Alexandra hung back a few paces, hiding a bit behind his large form as they entered the Great Hall.

At first sight the Hall seemed bare and gloomy. At second sight it seemed even more so. There were, Alexandra counted, only two deep-set windows to light the entire large room. There was no real fireplace at all, only a large hearth in the middle of the floor, the smoke coming from its fire swirling mistily about the room in its search to exit through the windows and chinks in the walls.

The walls themselves were whitewashed, although the grime hanging on them showed this bit of housekeeping to be a frequent necessity. As to furniture, that commodity was noticeable only for its absence. Except for a few rude trestle tables, a large iron-hinged cupboard, and several long wooden backless benches, the room was devoid of the stuff.

It was only after a few moments—once her eyes had adjusted to the dimness and the smoke—that Alexandra thought she could make out, standing atop a low platform against one wall, a pair of high-backed wooden chairs—one of them occupied by a reincarnation of Henry VIII!

Dressed in deep burgundy velvet interspliced with rusty-looking cloth of gold, his neck encircled by a sooty grey ruching of lace and his ample legs encased in faded red stockings that made it look like he had two fat sausages in place of the usual lower appendages, the man fairly sprawled in his chair, a greasy half-eaten chicken leg dangling from one beringed, dimpled hand. His fully bearded face was as big and round as a dinner plate, his two dark eyes looking like berries peeking out of a pastry tart. Topping all this off was a burgundy velvet many-pointed slouch hat that tipped precariously to one side, its lone ratty-looking feather curling rather desultorily in the air.

“Good God!” Alexandra hissed under her breath to Nicholas. “I don’t believe my own eyes. And you acted like Harold was an oddity—this character makes my black-faced Indian look like a sober Quaker! Why—”

Nicholas cut her off before her voice rose any higher. “Dub yer mummer,” he whispered, taking a leaf from Billy’s book of cant sayings. “Be quiet and let me do the talking.” Leaving Alexandra where she stood—and she stood like a statue frozen in marble—he approached the  raised platform and bowed deeply from the waist. “Good morrow, Sir Alexander. I regret the intrusion, but I have come on behalf of this damsel here—this damsel in distress, might I add.”

Sir Alexander nodded his head once in acknowledgment and then lifted the chicken leg to his mouth to take another satisfying bite. Suddenly the food fell from his hand and he leapt up—no mean feat for one of his girth—demanding in what could only be described as a bellow: “
Who in thunder are you?
”

Nicholas took an involuntary step backward at this unexpected happening, which was lucky for him, as Sir Alexander would have mowed him down in his haste to get a closer look at this female, who was just now drawing herself up in an attitude of belligerence.

“Answer me, girl!” Sir Alexander commanded yet again. “By Jupiter, I’ll have an answer if I have to wring it out of you!”

Alexandra’s momentary fright had soon given way to temper—after all, although it was only just gone noon she had already had a perfectly frightful day. Raising herself up to her full height—that “adorable” chin Mannering had remarked on tilted at a pugnacious angle—she replied steadily, “My name is Alexandra Saxon and I am Chas’s daughter. His
legal
daughter,” she added, making sure she was not to be treated to another barrage of questions as to which side of the blanket her mother had been lying on when she had conceived.

This speech halted Sir Alexander in his tracks and his florid face paled behind his beard. “Charles’s daughter. You’re the picture of your grandmother. The very picture.” His voice trailed off as he shook his head sadly. “Charles must be dead then. It’s the only reason you’re here now—he swore he’d never set foot in Saxon Hall again.”

Alexandra’s heart was touched, and she laid a hand on her grandfather’s shoulder, as he was not a tall man for all his commanding air. “Chas died more than six months ago in Philadelphia,” she informed him quietly.

Nicholas watched with some amazement as a variety of emotions flitted across Sir Alexander’s face, before finally settling itself into an angry mass. “Dead, is it—confound him, that profligate—”

“Have a care, old man,” Alexandra warned tightly, “that profligate was my father.”

Alexandra may have looked like her grandmother, Mannering thought randomly, but it was obvious where she got her sweet temper. Stepping in between the two Saxons he soothed, “Now, now, let’s not descend into old quarrels. Sir Alexander, your sons may both be dead now, but at least the Saxon name lives on through this girl here.”