All Mouth and No Trousers: Icebound Tales

By Xina Marie Uhl

Behold dogsleds and penguins.

Howling winds and cold, pitiless wastes.

This is Antarctica, where the intrepid inhabitants of the frozen ends of the earth battle the terrain, and each other, to find love—in a past much like that of the early 1900s.

Amidst the scientists and explorers at the British Antarctic base in 1900 there are a few women who serve as maids, cooks, and nurses.

Then there's Electa Yellowsmith.

The beautiful blonde secretary has no problem attracting male attention, but she's got her eye set on Commander Gorge Elderbatch. He may yell like a longshoreman and drink like a fish, but Electa likes the cut of his jib, and the idea of being an officer's wife.

Gorge has enough trouble with ice crevasses, blizzard forecasts, and upcoming polar expeditions without his smart-mouthed secretary defying him at every turn. What could a looker like her want with a grump like him, anyhow? Especially since he's sworn off women after his disastrous divorce.

Gorge may be as dense as an iceberg, but Electa hasn't yet met a man she couldn't charm. Though if that doesn't work she has plenty of schemes that just might. The result is a comedy of errors and explosions in a frostbitten frontier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xina Marie Uhl
• Release date: Jun 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393607052

Book preview

All Mouth and No Trousers

An Icebound Tale

Xina Marie Uhl

XCPublishing.net

Other XC Publishing.net titles by Xina Marie Uhl

Lady Law and the Texas DeRangers

Whiter Pastures

The King’s Champion, Book 1 of the Land

The Cat’s Guide to Human Behavior

Necropolis

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ISBN-10:1-930805-92-6

ISBN-13:978-1-930805-92-7

(c) Copyright 2017 Xina Marie Uhl

Cover art by Cormar Covers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names. Any resemblance to individuals known or unknown to the author are purely coincidental.

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Hope Bay, Antarctica, 1900

Of all the foes Commandant Gorge Elderbatch had fought in his thirty-odd years as a British naval officer—enemy combatants, pirates, insubordinates, pestilence, penury, and probably some other terrors he couldn't recall on the fly—one stood out above all others. One who was the most difficult, the most intractable, and the most infuriating—his secretary, Miss Electa Yellowsmith.

Oh, she looked harmless. Young enough to be his daughter, twenty or twenty-five at the most, all of 105 pounds soaking wet, slender and willowy, doll-like with her perfect blonde hair and clear, wide blue eyes, her long and delicate fingers tapping away on the Smith Premier typewriter, and completely unfazed by his rather imposing (if he did say so himself) presence.

You will most certainly retype that order, Miss Yellowsmith, he instructed, jabbing his finger like a bayonet at the trash bin. She had taken one look at the order for two boxes of premium cigars and six tins of grade-A snuff and ripped it down the center before depositing it in the waste bin.

Electa continued typing for several excruciating moments, posture erect, crisp lace collar shockingly white and open slightly to reveal the unblemished skin of her pale neck. Her eyes flicked to his scribbled notes at her right, and her smooth, painted red fingernails created an efficient, discordant staccato on the keys.

Miss Yellowsmith, do me the honor of looking me in the eye when you commit mutiny!

That got her attention. She froze, then took a measured breath before doing as he demanded.

This can hardly be considered mutiny, Commandant Elderbatch. Eyebrows raised, she looked up at him, lashes dark and thick, her gaze unwavering and unflinching.

It is, instead, an act of mercy. A moral objection, not to mention a most rational personal decision to keep my superior officer in the best possible health that he might continue to serve the Crown now and in years to come. Need I remind you of the spectacle you made of yourself the last time you enjoyed Mr. Smithson's Most Excellent Tobacco Blend Cigars while at the same time consuming Bowmore Whiskey?

Nonsense, he spluttered. I remember nothing of the sort. He ignored the little niggle of doubt that wormed around the edges of his memory. He had been delighting himself with Saturday evening scotch and cigars since his early thirties, whenever circumstances permitted, and now that he was commandant and in charge of the supply roster—a supply roster that would sail out to Chile two days hence to be fulfilled at some future date—he was damn well going to fill it with some indulgences every now and again.

Well, let me help you recall, sir. I was party to the whole sordid affair. Let me assure you, there was hacking and choking and phlegm. Vomiting accompanied this. Volumes of vomit, mixed with snot and tears and seasoned by general blubbering. All of this is burned upon my memory like a smoking black brand upon the behind of a sheep.

Gorge felt the blood rise in his cheeks. Great Scott, woman! Have you no decency? Bringing up such details!

She seemed untroubled. You insisted.

A man must have his celebrations. Why, it is a well-known maxim, old even in the days of the ancients. Democritus himself says, 'Life without celebrations is a long road without an inn.'

Good for Democritus. However, what you call celebrating I call debauchery and worse, self-injury. I won't have it. It does not agree with you, and if you won't accept that, I will see that you are kept free of such vices. Make do with regular snuff and hooch like everyone else.

But the regular snuff and hooch are foul pretenders! Which is the precise reason I am ordering the special blend!