The Savage Miss Saxon (8 page)

Mannering, now fully recovered, had made a deep bow from his waist in Sir Alexander’s direction. “On the contrary, sir, I need no arm-twisting to make me realize that a marriage between your granddaughter and myself should take place as soon as may be contrived. It is that compromised granddaughter who seems ready to back out of our agreement.”

“What agreement? I made no such agreement,” Alexandra had interrupted.

Alix wriggled and squirmed in her bed as she recalled Nicholas’s next words. Turning to pierce her armor of bravado with one cutting look, he had returned in a voice coated in ice, “Of course you did not, my dear. This is a
gentleman’s agreement
, your wishes on the matter being neither sought nor relevant. However, if you wish to be disobliging—”

“I do,” Alexandra had cut in nastily, before her grandfather put a stop to all argument by ordering Linton to withdraw and present himself at Saxon Hall in seven days to report on his progress in arranging the nuptials.

The week that followed this truly inauspicious beginning of their acquaintance had been fraught with arguments and minor confrontations as grandfather and granddaughter vied for supremacy in their battle of wills. The marriage was not discussed at all, both thinking they had settled that particular matter to their satisfaction (and both of them wrong, but then who was around to set them straight—Nutter? Harold?—Not likely).

High on the list of subjects upon which they disagreed stood the black-faced Harold. Alexandra wanted him treated like one of the family. Sir Alexander wanted him transported posthaste to Botany Bay. The Indian, oblivious to the furor, spent most of his time sitting cross-legged in front of a rude wigwam he had set up near the open hearth in the Great Hall, smoking his pipe and muttering a lot.

Alexandra squirmed again in her bed as she recalled her grandfather’s reaction to her statement one day that she was only in England because Chas had made her promise to take care of the “old man.”

“By Jupiter!” he had exploded. “If it was revenge Charles was after, he certainly chose his weapon well. I can think of no worse fate than to allow another managing female inside Saxon Hall, rest your sainted grandmother. Confound it! Why was I so cursed? My firstborn a flaming muckworm of a son—a total milksop, girl, I tell you—and my second the most ungrateful puppy ever whelped. I wanted him to have it all—nothing’s entailed you see—but would Charles hear of it? No, he wouldn’t do that to his older brother—as if that bluestocking would have cared, for such a bookworm twit you’ve yet to meet.”

Sir Alexander had downed a half-goblet of Geneva in one angry gulp. “And what did all my generosity get me, I ask you? The muckworm turns up his toes—walked straight into the roadway reading a flaming book and got knocked into horsetails by a carter’s wagon, you know—and the runaway sends me a female
keeper
! Oh, I’ve been paid out in full, I have.
Nutter!
Bring me more Heart’s Ease!”

At least Alexandra now knew the real reason Chas had bolted. He didn’t want to usurp his brother at Saxon Hall. It sounded very noble, she mused, until one thought about how totally unsuited Chas would have been to becoming lord of the manor. With his hey-go-mad schemes and bizarre interests, he would have had Saxon Hall mortgaged all the way up to the top of its battlements within a fortnight—if he hadn’t turned the whole place into a home for a passel of wayward young females, that is.

But no matter how Sir Alexander fussed and fumed, and no matter how uncomfortable she was under his roof, Alexandra had made a promise to Chas and she was darned well going to keep it. Twenty-four hours after setting foot inside Saxon Hall she had begun a one-woman campaign to bring some semblance of order into her grandfather’s household.

Sir Alexander had admitted that the place “could do with a wash and a brush-up,” as Nutter and the rest were getting “a bit beyond it.”

Sniffing disdainfully, Alexandra had replied, “A wash and brush-up?
Hummph
, I should just about think so. And as for your ‘vassals’ as you call them, Nutter is two years older than the flood, and he’s naught but a boy beside the rest. What do you do with them at night, Grandfather—roll them up like the ancient pieces of parchment they are and stack them on shelves in the dungeon? In round words, Grandfather, your vassals are a shag-bag lot and your castle is an uninhabitable mess. But it’s not to worry, I promise to set it to rights.”

For six days Alexandra had done just that—working her fingers to the bone all the day long just trying to make a small dent in the grime that had taken decades to accumulate over every surface in the Great Hall and adjoining rooms. The servants helped as much as they could, Nutter being the best of the bunch, but between their creaking joints and poor eyesight they were more of a hindrance than a help.

Yet already she had turned out the solar—Sir Alexander’s private hideaway—as well as a small chamber that was located behind it. Today had seen the completion of her work in the Great Hall itself, except for the small room cut right into the thickness of the wall of the Hall, a vaultlike room called the treasury, and this she would tackle first thing in the morning. So thinking, she closed her eyes and was soon fast asleep.

When she awoke, it was to see the dawn of what seemed to be another damp, rainy English day. Sorely tempted to tug the covers back up over her head, she nevertheless rose from her comfortable haven and began plaiting her hair into a long ebony rope that would keep it out of her way as she cleaned. “No sense glooming all day in my chamber,” she told her distorted reflection in the rusted, and spotty slice of metal that served as her mirror, before she made her way first to the hated garderobe and then on to the Great Hall.

“Oh ho! There she is, Nutter,” her grandfather exclaimed when he caught sight of her. “All right, girl, give over,” he demanded, advancing on her, his great expanse of belly swinging before him with every step. “Where is it? By Jupiter, girl, I’ll not be having this. I want it—give it back, I say!”

Alexandra was under no misapprehension as to just what her grandfather was referring. During the course of the last week her housecleaning had succeeded in ferreting out more than two dozen well-hidden bottles of Hollands secreted around the donjon. Having put the kitchen supply of gin under lock and key the very first day she was in residence, she had been more than a little surprised at the old man’s resourcefulness, but she now imagined that he had checked all his hidey-holes without finding a single bottle of his cache.

“And a good morrow to you too, Grandfather,” she said now, adding pleasantly enough, “You’re looking quite oppressed, you know, you old fidget. Could be it’s nothing but a natural bit of early morning crustiness, but then I could be mistaken, couldn’t I?”

“I’ll give you early morning crustiness, you child of the devil!” Sir Alexander flung back at her. “Look’ee here, girl, I know what you’re about. You think you’ve got me, but I’m up to all your rigs. Give me back my Geneva, I’m telling you!”

Alexandra lifted her determined chin. “You’re not telling me anything of the kind, old man. Left on your own you’d drink yourself right into the grave, but you’ll not put that on my conscience. I promised Chas—”

“Damn Charles! Damn your conscience and damn your promises!” Sir Alexander ranted, waving his arms excitedly as he charged back and forth in front of her in high dudgeon. Then suddenly his tactics changed. He sank onto a nearby bench and raised one pudgy, beringed hand to his chest. “It’s sick I am, sick as a horse. I need my Heart’s Ease, girl,” he whined piteously. “Have pity on an old man.”

It almost worked. Alexandra had opened her mouth to tell Nutter to bring a small goblet before she saw her grandfather peeking up at her from under his supposedly closed lids, a fleeting smirk of satisfaction turning up the corners of his mouth. “That was very good, Grandfather,” she crooned silkily. “You nearly had me fooled. Too bad you let me see the triumph on your face. Forget it,” she warned as he began once more to moan, now both hands clasped to his breast. “You’ll get your normal ration of gripe water at luncheon and again at dinner and that’s the end of it.”

“Just like your grandmother, that’s what you are,” her grandfather groaned. “Flaming tartar she was too.” Yet he did not push the matter, much to Alexandra’s surprise, but only shook his head and retired to the privacy of his solar. Well, she thought smugly, he’d find no gin there either—she had taken care of that yesterday. So thinking, she followed Nutter down to the kitchens, where she greeted Harold and ate a quick breakfast.

Alexandra had been off target when she thought Sir Alexander was heading for another cache of gin—not that he wouldn’t have welcomed a dram or two at the moment. On the contrary though, he had retired in order to wipe a tear from the corner of his eye—a show of emotion he did not choose to let his granddaughter see. It had been a long time since anyone had cared enough about him to see that he didn’t drink himself senseless—not since his beloved wife had passed away some thirty years earlier as a matter of fact, and he found he rather liked it. It was a shame she’d be leaving his castle soon to become Lady Linton, but he knew his reward would come in the form of the great-grandson he was already looking forward to with greedy anticipation. Besides, Nutter was no match for him—he’d then have his gin supply back up to full measure or he wasn’t half the man he thought himself to be!

Alexandra had just closed the lid on yet another great chest stuffed to the top with silver cups, dishes, and candlesticks—all now neatly polished—when she was called from her task by Nutter.

“Lord Linton to see you, miss,” he told her as she rose from her knees on the dusty stones of the treasury and wiped a none-too-clean hand across her brow, leaving a smudge behind.

“Indeed,” Alexandra replied testily, upset with herself over the slight fluttering the mention of his lordship’s name had set up in her stomach. “Then don’t keep him standing about needlessly, Nutter. Tell him I’m not receiving visitors this morning.”

How dare he call on her uninvited, she thought angrily. Yes, the seven days her grandfather had mentioned were up this morning, but who would have thought the man would be so obtuse as to think she actually expected him to put his nose back in her business after she had so flatly told him to take it out? Besides, she looked a fright, and there was no way for her to get to her room and put herself to rights without first passing through the Great Hall and exposing herself to Linton’s bound to be supercilious scrutiny.

Thinking herself safe from further interruption, she turned to the cabinet that held Sir Alexander’s best wine, her intention being to wipe the bottles free of the dust that lay over them in thick coats. As she reached for the first one, she was halted by a voice that warned, “If you’re planning on disturbing those bottles, I’d think twice if I were you. They don’t rest on their sides in those racks by accident you know.”

Nicholas! Anger fought with the undeniable thrill of hearing his slightly amused drawl as Alexandra struggled to remain calm. Anger won. “How dare you barge in here after I told Nutter to send you away?” she demanded, her dark eyes sparkling in the dim light.

“If it’s being alone with me in here that bothers you, Alix, I must say it’s a little late for you to become so moral—seeing as how we’ve already slept together,” he answered her.

“
Slept together?
” she shrieked, setting up an echo in the stone room. “Slept together!” she hissed again, carefully keeping her voice lowered so Nutter, whose hearing far outclassed his eyesight, could not overhear. “I did not sleep with you. I slept in one of your bedrooms. Besides, it was Harold who shared my chamber, not you.”

Nicholas’s head turned slightly as he peered at her provokingly with his good eye. “Harold, you say? Was it interesting?”

“You know darn well Harold is sixty if he’s a day, and that he slept on the floor just inside the chamber door,” said Alexandra tightly, hauling back mightily on the reins of her temper. “Oh, why must you be so provoking?”

Nicholas took a snow white handkerchief from his pocket and busied himself with wiping at the smudge on Alexandra’s forehead. “I don’t really know, my dear. Perhaps because it’s so lamentably easy to provoke you. Rather unsporting of me, d’ya think?” He finished wiping her forehead and replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. Stepping back a pace, he examined his work and declared, “There you are, all right and tight. Do you wish to give me a kiss in thanks?”