The Savage Miss Saxon (9 page)

“You must be stark, staring mad,” she told him before she turned her back on him entirely.

“What ho!” came Sir Alexander’s exclamation from the doorway to the treasury. “Have I tripped across a case of April and May amid the wine bottles? Well, no matter. After all, you are betrothed now, aren’t you.”

Alexandra could have cheerfully strangled her grinning grandfather, but at Nicholas’s next words, her anger became redirected.

“Ah, Sir Alexander, you’ve well and truly caught us out, haven’t you. But never fear, the arrangements for the marriage are already well in train. I promise you, I have been nothing if not thorough. The ceremony takes place just after the new year—any more haste would be unseemly, don’t you think?”

“How enterprising of you,” Alexandra gritted while inwardly jumping up and down with glee. Not until after the new year, was it? she thought happily. Little do these two jolly connivers know I reach my twenty-first birthday New Year’s Day. What a fine pair of fools they’ll look when they find I am come of age and not bound to obey any man!

While Alexandra had been thinking her private thoughts, the Earl had been telling Sir Alexander that, since the weather had cleared so nicely after the gloom of the morning, he had had the happy notion of taking Alexandra out for a ride in his curricle. Knowing her absence from the Hall for a few hours would make any search for gin bottles that much easier, Sir Alexander hastily gave his blessing to the outing, and before she knew how it had happened, Alexandra found herself changed into her driving outfit and up alongside Linton as he tooled his matched pair of greys down the hill outside Saxon Hall.

“Congratulations,” he said by way of opening the conversation. “I could not help but notice that the drawbridge now operates with nary a squeak.”

Alexandra only shrugged.

“The whole castle, as a matter of fact, already reflects your good housekeeping,” he pressed her, refusing to succumb to her bad mood.

“It was no great feat, I assure you,” was all she answered.

This was not going well, Lord Linton told himself. Pinning on his most winning smile, he said, “The boys all send their best. They have been champing at the bit to come pay you a visit—or should I say, pay friend Harold a visit. I believe they mentioned something about viewing what they sincerely hope is his extensive collection of scalps.”

Alexandra could not hide her smile. “They seemed to be nice boys.”

Nicholas gave a bark of laughter. “Nice, is it? They’re all next door to yahoos, that’s what they are. Cuffy, that Master Jackanapes, was born to be hanged, while friend Billy has an attic that positively crawls with maggots. Jeremy, my dear brother, like Billy is not remarkable for his quick wit, but he is at heart a good boy. I guess all three of them are, but sometimes their antics tend to make me question that fact. I’m happy, though, to hear you don’t bear them any ill will. After all, it was their prank that landed you in this muddle.”

“It’s not them I blame for this ‘muddle,’ ” she told him now. “It was you who made such a fuss and then dragged me off to tell my grandfather the whole. I still say the whole thing could have been neatly brushed under the rug with none the wiser.”

“Then obviously you do not know England, Alix,” he returned with maddening calm. “Besides, now that the deed is done, I’ve my own reputation to consider, you know. I don’t wish it bruited about that Lord Linton has been jilted
twice
.”

Alexandra couldn’t help noticing a touch of bitter self-mockery in Nicholas’s voice. “So that’s it,” she accused him, turning in her seat to face him head-on. “Already left at the gate once, your pride can’t stand the thought of another bride getting away. Well, you should have thought of that before you dragged me into your plans. I’ll not be used to revenge yourself on some wayward fiancée.”

“Is that what you think? That I’m using you?”

Alexandra took the time to look—really look—at Nicholas. What a handsome specimen he was, with his dark hair and dangerously romantic eyepatch. Certainly if it were only a bride he was seeking, he would have had no trouble finding one. So why had he picked on her? Could it be that he had not been planning to beat his erstwhile bride to the altar and that he truly believed her compromised and was just doing the honorable thing? Yes, she mused, it was possible.

Or perhaps he was suffering from an incurable wound of the heart and looked upon marriage to a near stranger as a fitting way to continue his line without running the risk of having some love-struck bride disturbing his mourning for his lost fiancée? If so, she had certainly fallen into his hands like a ripe plum.

“Why did she jilt you?” she round herself asking.

Now it was Nicholas’s turn to be silent. This girl was no milk and water miss to be turned off with some farradiddle or other. No, she was devilishly acute, Miss Alexandra Saxon was, and none but the truth would satisfy her.

“It was the eyepatch,” he told her at last. “I went off to Waterloo without the patch and came back without the eye. She took one look and went screaming from the room in high hysterics.” There, see what she makes of that! he thought, daring her to look him in his remaining eye.

Alexandra swallowed hard once or twice before saying, “Well if that isn’t above all things stupid! You’re well rid of her, Nicholas.”

Mannering could have chosen from among a dozen rejoinders she might have given him, but her actual answer truly jolted him. He opened his mouth to—was it to thank her?—when suddenly three riders broke from the trees, sending his greys to plunging and dancing as he worked to get them under control. “
Stand and deliver!
” one of the highwaymen yelled over the din.

“
Like bloody hell I will!
” Mannering hollered back, controlling his pair with superhuman effort before snaking the whip out over their backs, urging them into an immediate gallop.

Alexandra held onto the side rail with one hand as with her other she squashed her hat firmly down on her head. “
Go it!
” she shouted in Mannering’s ear, obviously enjoying herself immensely, earning herself a wide grin from his lordship.

They were on a fairly flat stretch of countryside, luckily, and Nicholas knew there was little fear of the curricle hitting a rut and overturning. Later, once he had had a chance to reflect on his actions, he would probably be amazed that he had dared such a potentially dangerous maneuver with Alexandra up beside him, but for the moment he was too full of the thrill of the chase to think of anything but the sport of the thing.

On and on they raced, the horsemen slowly fading, for their broken-in-the-wind plugs were no match for the Earl of Linton’s matched greys. Looking over her shoulder at the thieves, Alexandra laughed at the trio bouncing up and down on their horses’ backs like bobbing corks—obviously none of them great riders.

Just then an imp of mischief tapped her on the shoulder, and she quite readily gave in to impulse. Releasing her hold on her hat she cupped her fingers around her mouth, took a deep breath, and gave out with a remarkable imitation of the spine-tingling, high-pitched Lenape alarm whoop Harold had taught her long ago. “
Y-i-i-i-i-e-e-e-e-e-i-i-e-e-y-ip-yip-yip!
”

It was a good thing Lord Linton was such a top-o’-the-trees sawyer, for not only did Alexandra’s yell send the thieves’ horses to bucking and shying, it also served to nearly unstring the high-blooded greys, who laid back their ears and ran like the wind in an effort to remove themselves from the vicinity as well as from the dying echoes of that blood-curdling scream.

They had covered almost another full mile before Mannering could draw the curricle to a halt, pulling the horses off the path and directing them to a spot under a tree in the meadow. Only then did he turn to look at Alexandra, taking in her high color and glittering eyes and acknowledging to himself that she was far and away the most handsome woman he had ever clapped eyes—eye, he amended mentally—on.

She was also, he soon recollected, thinking of her recently demonstrated propensity for hoydenism, probably the most infuriating, provoking, unsettling—
interesting
—woman he could ever meet, should he live five lifetimes.

Slowly, oh, so slowly, one side of his chiseled mouth slid upward in a closemouthed smile, causing the skin around his good eye to crinkle up in laugh lines and setting off a deep, slashing dimple in his cheek. Obviously he was still caught up in the spirit of the chase. “Come here, woman,” he commanded huskily, slipping an arm around Alexandra’s waist.

He pulled her to within an inch of his face, their mouths almost touching, before his grin faded. Then he whispered, “My little savage,” and closed the gap.

Alexandra hung there, her arms hanging bonelessly at her sides, while Nicholas’s hand held her unresistingly against his chest. She was incapable of pulling away, incapable of protest, incapable of anything, in fact, but feeling—feeling the warm firmness of his lips as they moved against hers.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been kissed before; after all, she wasn’t that young. But this kiss was whole universes away from the quick, clumsy kisses her swains had pressed on her occasionally at some party or other. This kiss was a revelation. No one had told her how the mere meeting of two pairs of lips could make her feel as if her entire body had just been plunged into warm, scented rose water—her limbs going all soft and mushy while a white-hot heat burned in the pit of her stomach..

She moaned, she couldn’t help herself, and Nicholas took advantage of her parted lips to deepen the kiss, a move that succeeded in setting her entire body aflame. Her hands crept up to grasp his shoulders, as she was suddenly desperately in need of something solid to hold on to, and nothing could have been more solid than Nicholas’s broad shoulders.

Yet they weren’t solid, although they had been until he felt the touch of her hands, at which time they shuddered involuntarily, and his heart, which had been pounding heavily in his chest, skipped a beat or two before setting off again at a pace that would have far outdistanced his fastest horse. He indulged himself in these unaccustomed glorious feelings for a moment longer—as he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb—before firmly putting Alexandra from him.

“You will,” he paused to take a deep, steadying breath, “you will permit me to say that any further disclaimers of my compromising you into marriage shall be unnecessary.”

Alexandra had been looking at him from behind a rosy haze of utter contentment, all animosity quite forgotten, but at his words she blinked hard, dispelling the fog and suddenly seeing everything with, his lordship was to think later, rather a bit too much clarity.

“
Kiluwa mamalachgook!
” Alexandra gritted, her eyes narrowed into angry slits. And then she hit him.

Now, Nicholas would have been the first to say that perhaps he deserved a slap on the cheek. Indeed, he had already begun mentally preparing for the feel of Alexandra’s open palm on the side of his face. It was only to be expected after what he had said—what he had done. What he was not prepared for was the solid thump of Alexandra’s balled fist landing smack in his midsection, and he doubled over, all his wind knocked out of him.

When he could at last raise his head, it was to see his attacker once more facing front on the seat, every hair in place, her gown and pelisse returned to their former order, and the girl herself looking remarkably unlike the scintillating creature he had so lately felt come alive in his arms. In fact, if anything, she looked prim, almost plain.

“Who—who taught you that?” he was forced to ask, still tenderly massaging his sore ribs.

“Harold,” she returned calmly, smoothing down a crease in the skirt of her gown. “He always said the best way to defeat the enemy is to do the unexpected, catch him off his guard. You expected a slap, don’t deny it. Next time, if I should ever be so unfortunate as to cross paths with you again, you will expect a punch in the stomach. You will, alas, be disappointed. That too Harold taught me—never try the same trick twice on the same person.”

“Bully for Harold,” Mannering grumbled into his cravat as he turned the horses toward Saxon Hall. “I suppose you were also cursing at me in his heathen tongue?”

Lifting her chin and looking off to the side of the road away from the Earl, she sniffed disdainfully, “Indians don’t curse, at least not in the vulgar way you
Yengees
—English—do. When you’ve been cursed by a Lenape, you’ll know it, for I shall be happy to translate. I merely called you a spotted snake. It seemed to fit at the time.” She turned her head to look him up and down, a sneer in her eyes. “It still does.”

Mannering made no further attempts at conversation, feeling himself best served by keeping his thoughts to himself. Within a quarter of an hour he had deposited Alexandra just inside the outer bailey and driven off toward Linton Hall. This journey was not so silent, although Linton rode alone, for he passed the time by calling himself every kind of fool he could think of and inventing new ones as he went along.

Harold would have been very proud of him.

Chapter Four