The Savage Miss Saxon (39 page)

“Lord, if my mares were as long-winded I should enter both of them in the Derby,” Myrtle said, rolling her eyes in disgust.

“You did bring up the subject, you know,” Sir Wiley told her, handing her a glass of sherry, which the irrepressible young woman threw back in one swallow.

“Well, I think Mister Bromley has had a wonderful idea,” Lettice Ann said firmly, so that Virginia quickly glanced in Miss Noddenly’s direction, amazed to see a hint of color in her sister’s cheeks.

“Thank you, Miss Noddenly,” Knox said, bowing over her hand so that his crown slipped from his balding head and landed in her lap. “Whoops! Sorry about that. Perhaps we should leave the others to choose first, as I know I shall have no trouble taking whatever is left. Would you care to stroll in the gardens?”

“I should like that above all things—Knox,” Lettice Arm answered, blistering Myrtle with a withering stare that dared her not to say a thing, not a single
thing
, before taking Mister Bromley’s hand and walking with him out the already open French doors.

“Did you see that, Ginny?” Georgette exclaimed, shifting about on her chair to watch as Lettice Ann and Knox disappeared down the flagstone steps and into the garden. “I vow to you, I’d rather she eloped with Bad Bertie than to marry that odious man.” She then sat back in her chair, fanning her cheeks in the afternoon heat. “Ah, well, perhaps they’ll
bore
each other to death, and take our perennial spinster, Myrtle, with them. Then, perhaps,
I
shall be allowed to think of marriage.”

“What? And give up your invalid status?” Myrtle scoffed, walking past Georgette and giving her a light tap on the top of her head. “Wives must be prepared to sacrifice, Georgie. Give her husband children. Drag herself away from her vials and potions long enough to attend the odd dinner party now and then. Recover from her third fatal illness of the week to hostess a ball every second season. You don’t have it in you.”

Lord Fox, who, still with his handkerchief to his nostrils, had been rummaging about in one of the trunks, using a poker from the fireplace so as not to contaminate himself, dropped his hand and came to Georgette’s rescue. “I know, I know,” he said, shaking his head. “Life puts such unbearable strains on the frail constitution. But a loving, caring, understanding husband could be a supporting prop to a delicate female, delighting in her mere presence, reclined on her own drawing room couch, and not wishing for more. Especially when he knows that she will likewise be solicitous of
his
uncertain constitution.”

“I think I might be ill,” Jonathan whispered in Virginia’s ear.

“Don’t tell me,” she whispered back to him. “Just go describe your symptoms to Georgette or Pitney. I’ll wager both of them have suffered the same sort of upset—only twice as often and three times as badly.”

“Well, I’ve had about as much of this as I can take,” Myrtle announced suddenly if not unexpectedly, slapping down her empty glass and rising. “Wiley? You up for a gallop before dinner?”

“Naturally. Shall we outrun the groom again, Myrt?” Sir Wiley asked, taking her arm. “Then we can stop at that inn we saw, and have a meal in the common room. Perhaps even fleece a farmer or two at cards?”

Virginia hit Jonathan on the forearm, wordlessly telling him that he must put a halt to such wanton behavior, but she might just as well not have bothered, for Jonathan merely covered her hand with his own and wished Sir Wiley and Myrtle a pleasant evening.

“Why didn’t you stop them?” she asked as Georgette and Lord Fox began an earnest discussion of the merits of a few drops of laudanum mixed up in a tooth glass with a measure of water over that of a dish of warmed milk when trying to ward off insomnia.

“Why?” Jonathan responded, lifting her hand to his lips. “I don’t know if Lettice Ann has been smitten by Knox or is merely doing us all a favor by taking him into the gardens, intending to conk him over the head with a shovel to shut him up, but I do know blossoming love when I see it. Dear heart, Wiley and Myrtle will be posting banns within the week!”

Virginia sat back against the cushions, considering Jonathan’s declaration. It did seem possible. She couldn’t ever remember Myrtle being so happy unless she was in the process of teasing Georgette to death, and Sir Wiley did seem to enjoy her company, even calling her “Myrt” in a most affectionate manner. “But if Lettice Ann doesn’t marry first—”

“Then I’ll import Bad Bertie, bribe him with the offer of his own set of green houses in New South Wales or some such distant place if he marries Lettice Ann—and hang the consequences,” he answered, feeling more lighthearted than he had in several days as he observed that someone besides Lord Fox (who was busy at the moment in pressing a hand against his forehead and testing himself for a fever), someone who had barely spoken these past five days, was sitting unnoticed in a corner and looking at Georgette Noddenly with something more than polite interest in his eyes.

Chapter Four

I
n the end, the idea of a Christmas in May masquerade was discarded and the Mayfield servants found themselves grumbling as they carried the boxes and trunks up to the attics once more.

But there was nothing else for it, because almost overnight Mayfield had become the uncomfortable setting of a “delicate situation,” and there could be no time for mindless frivolity when Miss Lettice Ann Noddenly and Mister Knox Bromley had disappeared.

Not that they hadn’t left a note. A rather long, prodigiously boring note, obviously penned by Knox, who had not stinted in his use of the earl’s best stationery in his efforts to explain the reasons behind his departure just before dawn, Lettice Ann at his side.

Jonathan, upon waking early that morning, had discovered the informative missive that had been slipped under his door sometime during the night.

Knox, or so he had written, had been surveying the Noddenly females these past days and had come to the conclusion that Georgette’s vaporish disposition would drive him to distraction within a fortnight, Myrtle was so outré in her manner that he was left speechless as to describe her shortcomings (and with the man’s overusage of words, that was saying something!), and Lettice Ann was too old, too plain, and too much in love with a quite unexceptional young country gentleman named Bertram to be considered as reasonable wife material.

“You couldn’t have known that, Johnny,” Knox had written, “or else you would have had this Bertram fellow as one of your party.”

However, Bromley’s letter continued, considering the fact that Miss Noddenly was the eldest of the three (Miss Virginia being already taken by dear Johnny), it had become “clear as crystal” to him that she must be married off at once. And that, Knox related, his crabbed handwriting now suffering badly in his agitation, was when he had been “struck by a mutually beneficial inspiration!”

Dear Johnny did remember that thousand pounds he, Knox, would receive if he took one of the Noddenlys off his hands, didn’t he? And shouldn’t that sum be doubled, seeing as how Miss Noddenly didn’t want to marry anyone other than this Bertram gentleman, and considering that it had been he, Knox Bromley, who had ferreted out this important information and taken it into his mind to help the lady on her way?

What Knox meant by all this, “in short” (Lord, how Jonathan, now reading the fifth page of Knox’s letter, had wished the man could mean it), was that Knox and Lettice Ann were even now on their way across country to the Noddenly estate in “the pursuit of true love. After all, Johnny, you didn’t say I had to
marry
one of ’em. You didn’t say anything at all on the subject, come to think of it—not outright. But we all three of us, Wiley, Pitney, and myself, know what you want. I’m just helping you to get it. You can forward the two thousand to my solicitor by way of thanks.”

“He’s not eloping with Lettice Arm,” a horrified Virginia exclaimed as Jonathan finished reading the letter aloud to the assembled company prematurely roused from their beds and now gathered in the breakfast room. “He’s only helping her to elope with Bad Bertie—who doesn’t want her in the first place. And they’ll have to spend a night on the road before they reach our estate! Oh, poor Lettice Ann. She’ll be crushed when she realizes she has gone and ruined herself with Knox Bromley—and all for nothing!”

“Never mind that. What’s this about two thousand pounds?” Lord Fox asked, meticulously picking at his heaping bowlful of coddled eggs with his fork, in search of any vagrant sliver of shell that might impale his tongue. “You made no such promise to me—or to Wiley here, for that matter, not that either Wiley or I needs the blunt. Wiley just needs a wife to parade past his Aunt Earlene. Ain’t that the right of it, Wiley?”

“You know, I never did like you, Pitney,” Sir Wiley stated, his tone soft as velvet, so that Virginia felt a frisson of fear skip down her spine. Hadn’t she heard somewhere that Sir Wiley had once fought a duel? But who would have thought that he’d take umbrage at something that was common knowledge? Unless, of course, he was afraid her sister Myrtle might take offense at being seen as a bride of convenience? That was a comforting thought.

“He—Lord Mayfield—offered Knox Bromley
money
to court us?” Georgette asked, two spots of highly unhealthy looking color rising in her cheeks, as Lord Fox mumbled a quick apology and dropped his gaze to his bowl. She clasped her hands to her breasts, reeling in her chair. “Oh, why did I come here? Why did I allow this to happen? I shall die of this embarrassment. I shall most assuredly
die!
”

“There, there, Miss Georgette,” Lord Fox commiserated, abstractedly patting her hand, although he still didn’t look up, perhaps in fear Sir Wiley might still take it into his head to throttle him. “No one has ever perished of embarrassment. I have it on good authority. Now, eating bad shellfish is a different matter. Why, I remember the time—remember it as if it was yesterday—that I took a bite of some bad lobster. Well! You want to speak of
dying?
I was wishing for the sweet release of death, I tell you, lying upon my rack of pain, retching until I thought my—”

“Oh, shut up, Pitney, you ridiculous baboon! I don’t care a fig about your stupid shellfish!” Georgette fairly screeched as she pulled her hand free—any thought of her delicate lungs blown to the four winds by her sudden explosion of temper.

And she had thought Lord Fox to be a kindred spirit? Nonsense! He was nothing but a selfish old woman, intent upon his imagined ills—boring, and stupid into the bargain! “That’s all you do,” she told him hotly. “Prose on and
on
about your delicate constitution, your restorative tonics, your mustard plasters, until everyone is totally sick of listening to you. You’re the most depressing man I’ve ever met. Well, I’ll tell you this, Lord Pitney Fox. I only wish there were a whacking great bone in those eggs you’re pushing all around your bowl—and you
choked
on it!”

“God’s teeth, Wiley, do you hear this?” Myrtle asked, grinning from ear to ear. “I never would have believed it. The little twit has a spleen after all. Do you think she already realized she sounds just like him, or are we witness to some major breakthrough this morning?”

“Me? God’s waistcoat, Myrt, who cares? But I’ll tell you what I do think. I think I’m ready for a morning gallop,” Sir Wiley responded, rising and throwing down his serviette in the general direction of his now clean plate for, although no one else seemed disposed to eat after hearing about Knox and Lettice Ann’s flit, he hadn’t seen anything so terrible in the news that it should put a person off his feed. “You coming, or do you want to sit here and watch the second act of this ridiculous farce?”

While Lord Fox frowned—for he had thought his courtship of Miss Georgette to be going along famously, seeing as how they had so much in common, and Miss Georgette belatedly set to, tackling her own breakfast of fried eggs and country ham with a will, Virginia and Jonathan looked to each other, sighed, and reluctantly got on with “the second act of this ridiculous farce.”

“It has already gone nine, you know, and one of the grooms has told me Knox and Miss Noddenly left at a quarter to six—Lettice Ann being slightly tardy because she refused to leave without all of her luggage being securely tied down on the wagon for the trip to the nearest posting inn. It is more than time we go after them,” Jonathan announced fatalistically as a worried Virginia nodded in agreement.

“Oh, must we, Johnny?” Sir Wiley asked, looking pained. “I’d be the first to suggest it, if there were more sport in the thing. As it is, we’ll find them in less than an hour, if I know Knox—who has probably hired a ramshackle carriage and two broken in the wind nags for his flit, so that they are no more than five miles from here, being passed on the road by farm wagons and adventurous tortoises. Never saw a man with so tight a purse. Surely you can effect the rescue without me and Myrt here having to ruin a fine morning on such a sad chase.”

“Papa’s going to be prodigiously angry,” Georgette pointed out around a mouthful of ham (a sentiment Jonathan shared, but rather wished had remained unspoken), then added thoughtfully, “Why, when all is said and done, he might just make Lettice Ann marry Mister Bromley.”