Lady Savage

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “You cannot end our engagement!” the earl bellowed. “Everyone knows we are to be married. What will they say?”

  “That you have had a fortunate escape.” She moved to the door, but stopped and turned back to face the fuming and sputtering earl. “Give my best to Lady Venture. And tell her by jilting you, I hope that it takes some of the attention away from her own failed engagement.”

  “Savina! Savina Roxeter!” the earl hollered as she left the room, but she ignored him.

  She met Zazu, who awaited her in the hall, and left.

  • • •

  Tony closed his traveling desk and folded the letter he had written. Glancing about the narrow room that had been his home for the three years he had worked for Lord Gaston-Reade, barring the time they had spent at the earl’s plantation in Jamaica and the estate in Oxfordshire, he felt ready for the task at hand. There was nothing left for him there. It was time for his life to take a new direction. He picked up his greatcoat and opened the door. “Jem,” he called out to the young stable lad sitting on a hard chair in the hallway, waiting there at his behest. He waved at his valise and said, “Take this bag down to the front hall for me, will you? And see if that stiff-rumped old butler will find a carriage for me.”

  The fair-haired lad darted into the room, hefting the bag easily for such a slender sprig. He hauled it out and headed for the back stairs, the servants’ stairs.

  Tony, his traveling desk under one arm, greatcoat over the other and hat in hand, descended the front staircase for the last time, pausing to gaze up at the portraits on the wall, each more grim and long-nosed than the last. They all bore an unfortunate resemblance to Lady Venture even more than Lord Gaston-Reade in their long hooked noses and prominent eyes. As he turned to descend the rest of the way, that lady was standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him.

  “I have an idea that you are about to leave us, Mr. Heywood. Is that so?”

  Her eyes glittered strangely in the dim hallway, and Tony wondered if she was drinking again, a habit she had taken to since William Barker’s defection. He descended the last few steps and said, “Why do you ask, my lady?”

  “I was wondering.” She caressed the balustrade and smiled hugely, her teeth bared.

  He circled her warily, laid the desk on a table, placed his greatcoat and hat on top, and headed toward the library. “Is Lord Gaston-Reade still entertaining Miss Roxeter?”

  “Oh, ‘Miss Roxeter’ is it now, and not ‘Savina’?” She leaned against the balustrade and stared at him. “No. No, Savina has gone home, I do believe.”

  He watched the lady a moment, trying to decipher her odd behavior, but shook his head finally, at a loss. “Good. I will have a private conversation with his lordship, then.”

  “Do so,” Lady Venture said with a giggle. “You do so, Mr. Tony Heywood.” She danced away, humming a tune under her breath.

  The woman was utterly unfathomable, far too much like the black depths of the sea to comprehend. In the first months of his employment as the earl’s secretary, she had often cornered him and let him know, in terms far from uncertain, that if he chose to pay her court and dared to think he might climb to so elevated a position as her husband, he would be most welcome. He had soon disabused her of any notion that he would be so bold, and she had retreated with some resentment. Since then they had found an uneasy truce, but this behavior . . . he shook his head. Unfathomable. Tony took in a deep breath and entered the library, not sure if the earl would be there or in the parlor, but he found him at his large desk.

  The earl looked up, his expression cross, his brows beetling over his humorless gray eyes. “Are you over your filthy temper yet, Tony?”

  “My filthy temper? I think, sir, you have mistaken my behavior for your own.”

  His erstwhile employer glared at him. “You are treading the line, Tony . . . beware.”

  Tony strolled across the room and laid the letter in front of the earl. “That is my notice, and the direction where you may send my last quarter pay, minus, of course, two weeks for lack of notice. I am leaving your employ, my lord, and I feel free now to tell you that though your good qualities are there, they are so buried under your haughty, arrogant, unpleasant manner and your conceit that they pale in comparison.” A weight lifted from him and Tony felt free. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.

  The earl stood, his face red and his cheeks puffing in and out. “Now see here . . . you can’t . . . I won’t . . .” He babbled incoherently for a moment, then abruptly sat down. “Get out,” he said, spittle flying from his mouth. “Get out of my home! And you can forget your pay. I won’t give it to you.”

  “Then I will see your solicitor,” Tony said, calm in the face of such vented spleen. Though Lord Gaston-Reade had nothing of which to complain, his irritable reaction was to be expected, given his disposition. “Mr. Hemmings is a most gracious and fair gentleman and will not see me without payment for work brilliantly done.”

  “Brilliantly done?” The earl leaned over his desk and glared at Tony. “What have you ever . . . just get out!”

  With that Tony walked to the hallway, shrugged on his greatcoat, placed his hat on top of his head as he picked up his desk and exited, with the earl hurling imprecations after him and blustering that there would be no doors open when Tony looked for another position, for he would make sure every last man jack left in London would hear about such despicable, traitorous—

  The rest was lost as Tony strode out the front door to find his bag on the step and a carriage waiting. The blustery wind cut into him and he pulled his greatcoat closer, but as he looked back up at the earl’s gloomy town house, he felt deeply that he had done the right thing. He couldn’t stay there any longer being humiliated by the earl in front of the only woman he could ever love, dwindling every day in her eyes into some buffoon of a man.

  • • •

  Savina paced and fussed for two days, not knowing what to do. Was she willing to live without Tony, or was there any possibility, even despite his cold behavior toward her, that his feelings could be reanimated and he could be made to feel again what she had thought he felt on the island? She didn’t know. How could she? She’d never had any experience of mind reading, and his reception of her certainly gave the impression of one who regretted his foolishness in the heat of the moment. And yet she loved him; what if he was her only love? What if this feeling, this wholehearted devotion to one man, was her only chance at happiness of that kind?

  Even if she had the chance to make Tony feel again what he felt on the island, what different ending did she expect? She had only a modest dowry, not enough to keep them both, and he depended on his job for a living, a job he could not keep and marry her. There seemed no solution to her dilemma, and perhaps, if he had decided he didn’t care for her, it was what he needed to feel to be able to go on with his job and his life.

  Since she was now not going to be marrying the earl, Savina would be living with her father and his new wife in the rented house he had leased for an additional year, and if that lady had not seemed overjoyed at the prospect, Savina supposed she couldn’t blame her soon-to-be stepmother for not wanting a grown daughter living with them.

  On the third day, the day after her announcement of the broken engagement had been delivered to the paper, she was called in to the library by her father, who was sitting with his solicitor, papers spread all around them.

  “Savina, dear, the most extraordinary thing,” her father said, looking up over his magnifying glasses from a long paper he held in his hand. “Come in, sit down. You know Mr. Chandler, I suppose.”

  “No. How do you do, Mr. Chandler?” she said, crossing and taking his hand. She examined him with interest, noticing his bald head and red-veined cheeks. They had been in Jamaica so long that she had no memory of meeting Mr. Chandler, though she had heard his name often enough. He was solicitor for many in the family, and had some connection, she thought, to the maternal side. He had hand
led her father’s affairs in England during his long absence in Jamaica.

  The elderly man nodded. “How d’ye do, Miss Roxeter,” he said, his tone businesslike.

  “What’s going on, Papa?”

  “Well, for one thing, it seems I am a wealthier man than I expected! Our Mr. Chandler, here, has invested my savings wisely, and we’ve a tidy sum to begin with, Maude and I.”

  “That’s wonderful, Papa,” Savina said.

  “Ah, but there is more, young lady, and it concerns you,” Mr. Chandler said. “This little item in your father’s hands . . . have you ever heard tell of a lady by the name of Miss Lydia Ponceforth Harpington?”

  Savina sat in the other chair across the desk from her father and next to Mr. Chandler. “No, I can’t say that I . . . wait . . . Mama’s maiden name was Harpington.”

  “Yes,” her father said. “Good girl. See, told you, Chandler, quite sharp, she is.”

  “And I seem to remember . . . Papa,” Savina continued, looking over to her father. “Is she not my aunt who gave you the money for my little coral cross?” She fingered the cross; it was her good luck charm, she had always felt, and had kept her safe even during their island adventure. Though she didn’t really believe in such things, the cross had always given her comfort, and still did. “I seem to remember before we left for Jamaica . . . did she not come to see us?”

  “She did,” her father said, an encouraging smile on his face.

  “She was very old, and our housekeeper said she was very rich.” Savina looked back into the solicitor’s eyes. “And she patted me on the head and said I was a fine girl. She said that she was my old aunty, and she hoped I would remember her when I was all grown up.”

  “Yes,” the man said. “That would have been the lady herself; actually, Miss Lydia Ponceforth Harpington was your mother’s aunt, your great-aunt. I was her solicitor, too, as I was for a great many of the older generation. All that grand old generation’s dying off now, sad to say.” He shook his head and made a clicking sound between his yellowing teeth. “She left an extraordinary will when she expired earlier this year. All her possessions are bequeathed to one young lady in the family, and that young lady must have achieved her twenty-first birthday.”

  “Oh,” Savina said. “I turned twenty-one several weeks ago while we were stranded on the island. With all of the excitement I quite forgot about it myself until a week ago when I attended the earl’s birthday celebration. It was a bit of a shock, but we were all occupied with other worries on the island, you know.”

  “Quite right. Well, she did not make the bequest known—for reasons that will be clear in one more moment—but it was for the first young woman in her family of your generation to achieve her twenty-first birthday unmarried. You have cousins,” he said, looking at another paper and glancing down it, “but of them several are already married, or reached the age of twenty-one before Miss Harpington’s passing, or have some years yet to go. Miss Harpington did not make her bequest known, for she did not want it to influence the young ladies’ behavior, you see. It has become clear after exhaustive examination of the extant family that you are the one.” He looked up and into her eyes. “I do not approve of such conditional bequests, but then Miss Harpington was a very hard lady to cross, you know.”

  “What does it mean?” Savina asked, confused.

  The solicitor took off his glasses and polished them on a white linen cloth as Savina’s father shifted in his chair.

  “Come, Chandler, out with it,” her father finally said. “What is it all about? What is the bequest?”

  “In good time, Mr. Roxeter. As I was saying, she had something against early marriages for girls; she spouted some rubbishy nonsense about females not knowing their own mind ’til they turned that age. As if young ladies ever know their own mind until it is decided for them.” He sniffed. “But that is neither here nor there. The bequest is yours, Miss Roxeter.”

  “Oh,” Savina said, not sure how to feel or what to think at such an unexpected turn of luck. It was quite like something out of a romance; the forlorn young maiden is bequeathed an old manor house and must go to see it, thereby placing herself into a perilous situation and meeting a brooding, dangerous man. If that was the case, she didn’t think she would take the bequest. She had no taste for brooding, dangerous men and wouldn’t want an old English manor house . . . far too expensive to keep up, she had always thought, if they were falling into ruins as they so often were in that kind of tale. But perhaps she could sell the house, the one possibility that never seemed open to the young ladies in the novels. “Is the legacy a house?” she asked, her curiosity piqued. She leaned over and tried to see the paper, but the solicitor snatched it from her father’s hands.

  “Oh, no, Miss Roxeter,” Mr. Chandler said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “It is money. Rather a lot.”

  He named a sum, and Savina, feeling faint, sat back in her chair. “And it is all mine?”

  “Until you marry. Then it becomes your husband’s of course.” He shuffled the paper together with some other documents. “I will be your trustee until such a time as you decide what to do.”

  “Oh, but I already know what I’m going to do with the money,” she said in a most unromantic way. She should have fainted, or at least needed smelling salts, but the brief dizzy spell had passed quickly and she felt stronger than she had in weeks. With a happy sigh, she said, “I’m going back to Jamaica.”

  Eighteen

  Tony, now resident of a dingy coffeehouse, bought a newspaper from the lad outside, then sat and ordered coffee from the landlord. He needed to find another position. He had already jotted down a list of names, his valuable contacts. He had gone many places with many people over the years since his sixteenth birthday. A personal secretary, he had decided when he was very young, was a much better position for a man of his desires than an estate agent or land steward. He liked to see places, not be mired in England, and he had been further than most young men of his acquaintance. He had been to Canada, and had seen Persia and Greece and Italy, parts of the Orient and finally the West Indies.

  Even if employment with the earl had not become intolerable due to the fatheaded idiot’s treatment and his continuing engagement with Savina, Tony would have left. He wouldn’t stay in cold, damp, dreary England, not after he had seen Jamaica. His goal now was to find work that would take him back there and allow him the opportunity to build his life in the one place he had found that offered everything he could want.

  Almost everything he could want, he corrected himself. One chapter of his life was closed forever. Love was something he had thought was unnecessary for a man, but he had found that strange, feverish emotion came over one and once beset, a man was permanently altered. It was so with him, anyhow. If he had had money, or power, or prestige he would have fought for Savina Roxeter, but he could offer her nothing but penury. His pride would not allow him to beg for her love when he had nothing of any value to lay at her feet but his own heart.

  If, one day after he made his fortune, she was still unmarried—unlikely given her engagement to Lord Gaston-Reade—then he would approach her, but she would probably refuse him anyway. He had no reason to think her as enamored of him as he was of her.

  The landlord set a thick earthenware mug down in front of him and Tony took a deep gulp of scorching coffee to warm the freezing temperature of his own body after spending another night in his damp attic room, the cheapest in the house. He shook open the paper. He wanted the page where positions were listed, but the society page was first and a familiar name caught his eye. He read the piece once, twice, thrice. And then once more.

  The meaning did not change. Miss Savina Roxeter had ended her engagement to Lord Gaston-Reade . . . of her own volition, it seemed, for it was simply a statement of the dissolving of the attachment. His heart thumped and hope blossomed, only to be squashed by common sense. Well, good for her. But it didn’t change anything, did it? It meant that she had come to he
r senses, and it left her free to find a man who could make her love him. And a man who could afford to marry.

  A harsh but familiar voice pulled him from his reverie and he looked up to see Lady Venture at the doorway to the coffeehouse arguing with the landlord and waving a paper in front of his nose. Tony bolted from his chair and approached the embattled two as people tried to push past her.

  “May I be of some assistance, Lady Venture?” Tony said.

  “There you are,” she said with a harrumph. She glared down her beaky nose at the landlord and said, her voice loud and her hand waving, “This idiot claimed you were not resident here, even though I saw your direction that you sent Albert.”

  “Pardon, milady,” the landlord said with a deep bow, “but you was askin’ after a Mr. Hayward, an’ this here gent is Mr. Heywood, y’see.”

  Tony smelled the spirits on the lady’s breath, just as the unhappy landlord clearly had. He took Lady Venture’s arm and guided her back to his table by the window, meeting the curious stares with a stony one of his own. Each coffeehouse resident turned their gaze back down to their paper. He sat her down and took the chair opposite her. “What is it, my lady? Is something wrong? Can I help you?” Though he and Lady Venture had been distant, their relationship chilly because of his adamant rejection of her advances, he knew how badly William Barker’s defection had hurt if not her heart then her pride, and he felt for her.

  “No, but p’raps I can help you,” she said with a look intended, he thought, to be full of mystery and intrigue.

  “Oh?” He waited, not sure how to proceed.

  With a triumphant flourish she handed him the paper she had been waving at the landlord, and he glanced down at it. The writing was a lady’s, and he took in the address and signature. It was to him from Savina.

  “Bertie read it and discarded it, you know . . . wasn’t even going to forward it. He is an overstuffed ninny,” she said, her voice rising in volume. “Been intolerable to me lately, blaming me for William’s defection. Deserves whatever he gets.”