It was said angrily, yes, but with a hint of admiration. Sax and his grandmother had been waging war for fifteen years, ever since she’d taken over the raising of him. It was a war for power between two of the most stubborn, arrogant people Owain had ever met.
And two of the fiercest tempers.
He should have known the storm would come, especially since Brak was already wriggling backward under the bed.
Sax wrapped a gold curtain around his hand and pulled, bringing the rail half off the wall. Another fierce tug had it down in a shower of plaster dust.
Owain sighed and tugged the bell rope again. Then he picked up his friend’s gold and black banjan and threw it to him. Sax put in on without comment, still pacing and almost growling.
“I think she’s got you this time.”
Sax casually backhanded a squat, purple vase to shatter on the floor. “Devil take her, she has not. I promised to marry by my twenty-fifth birthday, and I will. A Torrance breaks many things, but never his word.”
“By tomorrow?” Owain said, trying desperately to keep some sanity in the room. “Can’t be done. Why the devil did you make such a knuckleheaded promise?”
“Because at twenty I was a knucklehead, like most men. And twenty-five seemed a dim and distant future!” The matching vase shattered. “Back then I was sure I’d soon fall in love with the perfect, pretty maiden.” He impatiently kicked a shard from his path. “I’ve certainly done my best to find her.”
“I thought you avoided maidens like the plague.”
“Only since I discovered that they’re after one thing: a coronet.”
After a moment’s thought, Sax plucked a yellow china cow off the mantel and threw it to shatter on the floor at the feet of the bunch of servants who had burst through the door armed with brushes, cloths, mops, and expectant expressions.
One maid started to sweep up pottery fragments. Men-servants hurried to deal with the curtain. Owain noted wryly that all the indoor servants except the cooks had felt called to the tasks. No one liked to miss a Saxonhurst rage. He’d never grown accustomed to the way Sax let his strange bunch of servants intrude on his private affairs like meddling relatives.
“She planned it, you know,” Sax said, ignoring his staff and still pacing. He was also ignoring the fact that his loosely tied robe was scarcely decent, but then all the servants had seen everything before. That didn’t stop the maids from casting appreciative glances.
One—Babs, who made no attempt to pretend shame about her previous profession—pulled a sprig of mistletoe from her pocket and tucked it optimistically into the deep fringe hanging around the tester bed.
“She deliberately sent that letter to arrive today to give me a day of anguish before the hour of doom.” Sax picked up the matching orange bull from the other end of the mantelpiece. “Susie. Catch!” He tossed it to the one-eyed maid, who wore a patch. She shrieked and grabbed for it. Then, quite deliberately, she let it fall. With a cheeky grin, she said, “I had a crown on that one.”
“That’s cheating, my girl.”
“You must have caught me on my blind side, milord. But watch where you’re marching.” She set to brushing the sharp fragments out of the way of his bare feet.
Sax duly stalked through the cleared path, seized a very real saber from the wall, unsheathed it, and impaled a pink satin cushion with the point. He then tossed it up and sliced it in two as it fell so that downy feathers burst out to fill the room.
Laughing, Owain leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the bed, and surrendered. It was a performance, really, and they all knew their parts.
Sax only ever allowed himself tantrums in this room, so they didn’t keep any of the good stuff here. In fact, the servants scoured London for pieces worthy of destruction and placed them there, ready. As Susie implied, they had a lottery going below-stairs on which piece would be next for destruction.
The whole household regarded Sax’s occasional fiery outbursts with a kind of proprietal pride. Owain rather enjoyed them himself. He had a guinea riding on his belief that a simpering shepherdess on a small bamboo table would survive till Easter. Sax was generally very kind to women.
His grandmother being the notable exception.
Cook had bet an equal amount that the table itself would go. It was an unfortunate piece lacquered in lurid green and pink. Owain watched his friend eye it and his sword. Could he destroy it without smashing the shepherdess?
Perhaps that’s why Sax dropped the sword on the bed and turned instead to a large portrait of a very ugly, sour-faced monk. Would he . . . ?
He jerked it off the wall so the hook flew through the air, then smashed it over the back of a ponderous chair.
Owain offered a prayer of thanks. He’d been ready to smash the thing himself. How anyone could sleep, never mind make love, with that warty, scowling face looking down, he didn’t know.
“A Torrance,” repeated Sax, slightly out of breath, sweeping blond hair off his forehead, “breaks a great many things, but never his word.”
“So it’s said.”
Sax turned on him. “So it
is
.” He scanned the audience of servants. “Where’s Nims?
Nims!
” he bellowed. “Come and shave me, you damned idler!”
Since most of the show was clearly over, the servants set to cleaning up properly. But slowly, in case there might be an encore.
Sax’s stocky valet backed in from the next room, agile despite a wooden leg, steaming water jug in hand, cloth over arm. “I’m coming. I’m coming! How could I be expected to be ready for you at this hour, then?” He looked around and rolled his eyes. “That much trouble, eh? Sit down. Sit down. You want shaving, or you want your throat cut?”
A grey-blue parrot flew in behind him and landed on Sax’s shoulder. “
Hello, my lovely
,” it said in Sax’s voice exactly.
Sax relaxed and smiled, letting the adoring bird nuzzle his ear. “Hello, my lovely.” Then he sobered. “Devil take it. Knox will throw a fit.”
Indeed, Knox the parrot was glaring at the servants.
“Women! Women! Road to hell.”
As Sax sat in a chair so he could be shaved, Babs sashayed over, taking a hazelnut out of her pocket. “Go on, Knox—you love me, really.”
The bird eyed her, swaying.
“Eve. Delilah.”
She offered the nut, just out of reach. “Be nice, Knox.”
“
Delilah!”
She waited, and when the bird muttered, “
Pretty lady
,” she gave him the treat and blew him a kiss. He turned his back to enjoy it.
“See?” she said to everyone. “You can handle any male if you find out what he really wants.”
“Babs,” said Sax, “you’re a walking warning to the males of any species. But how, I wonder, did you find time with Knox to train him?”
Babs didn’t answer, but she winked at the valet. To Owain’s astonishment, Nims blushed. Jupiter, but this place would drive him crazy if he wasn’t already beyond hope.
“Shift yourself, Knox,” said the valet, flapping a snowy cloth. When the parrot was safe on the back of the chair, Nims wrapped the cloth around his employer’s shoulders and started to shave him.
“Start naming names,” Sax said to Owain.
“Names?”
“Potential brides.”
Knox jumped.
“Marry not! Marry not!”
Sax rolled his eyes. “Names. And for heaven’s sake, try not to use words that’ll set him off.”
With a familiar feeling of being stuck in a madhouse, Owain took out his notebook. Knox’s previous owner had trained him to warn against involvement with women, particularly marital involvement. Sax was right. A bride in the house was likely to give the bird a fit.
“What kind of names?” he asked.
“Potential . . . partners in connubial bliss.”
“What sort?”
Nims was stroking the sharp blade over Sax’s cheek, so Sax spoke calmly. “One who’ll go through the ceremony with me tomorrow. Which means just about any of ’em.”
Knox must have heard Sax’s tension, for he hopped onto his shoulder and rubbed soothingly against his ear. Sax relaxed and stroked the bird. “Who was the one who sprained her ankle outside the door a couple of weeks ago?”
“Miss Cathcart. You said you wanted to throttle her.”
“I just wanted to twist her ankle properly for her.”
Owain wrote on a clean page. “You want me to send a note to say you will call on Miss Cathcart’s father? I’m not even sure they’re still in town.”
“Probably few of them are. Oh, ’struth.”
He snapped his left hand and Brak slithered hesitantly out from under the bed, teeth still bared as if ready for the kill, but eyes anxious. The poor hound couldn’t help it. He’d been born with a deformity of the mouth that made him look fearsome. Unfortunately, he was an abject coward, and even now was hesitating, sniffing the air for trouble.
“It’s all right, Brak,” Sax said. “Come on.”
The dog shook his massive bulk and walked over to sit nobly by Sax, as if he’d never known a moment’s fear in his life. He and the parrot eyed each other, companionable rivals for the attention of their adored owner. Owain wondered whether Sax ever felt strain at satisfying their demands, and the demands of all the other loving charity cases around him.
Sax stroked the dog’s head. “Most people will be at their country estates for Christmas. Why the devil was I born at this time of year? I can’t see how the dragon could have planned it, but it’s typical. Anyway, there must be better than Miss Cathcart. She giggles. All the time. Start listing names, Owain. Would-be countesses in the home counties. If I have to, I’ll ride out into the country to settle it.”
“I know you feel strongly about your given word, but—”
“I will not break it.”
Owain shook his head. He suspected that this time the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield had won a round. Sax wouldn’t find a bride in a day, or not one he wanted. He’d have to either marry poorly or admit to the duchess that he could not keep his word.
He’d never do that.
So he was about to make a disastrous marriage.
Owain began to take the situation seriously. “Lady Mary Derby,” he said, writing the name down. “Lady Caroline Northern. Lady Frances Holmes. Lady Georgina Pitt-Stanley ...”
A few pages later, his scrabbling memory could come up with only, “Miss Witherton?”
“Plague take it, Owain, she’s forty if she’s a day.”
“Age doesn’t matter if you just want to keep your word and thwart your grandmother. You like her company.”
“If I’m going to do this, I’ll have one who can at least produce a brat or two.” Nims took off the cloth, and Sax rose. “I know my duty. Go over them again.”
With little hope, Owain decided to try reason. “Sax, perhaps this time you should just let the old besom score a hit. She’ll gloat a bit, but at least you won’t be shackled for life to a woman you dislike.”
Careless of the crowded room, Sax dropped the banjan and pulled on the drawers and shirt Nims held out. “You didn’t read the whole letter, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“You’re my secretary, Owain. Reading my letters is permissible.”
“Not your personal ones.”
“You should break this bad habit of propriety. If you’d read the whole thing, you’d know there was a second part to my promise. I was to be shackled for life by my twenty-fifth birthday, or I was to allow my grandmother to choose the leg-iron.”
Owain snatched the letter from Knox’s inquisitive beak. After a quick read through, he said, “What a damned fool promise to make!”
Sax was tucking in his shirt. “Oh, quite. But I gave my word and I will keep it. I will not, however, let my grandmother choose my”—he turned deliberately toward the parrot—“bride.”
“A bride is a bridle!”
“Quite. Therefore, I will choose my own bridle, and by tomorrow.”
Owain paced the room himself. “It can’t be done, Sax! Even if you decide on one of these young women, she won’t consent to do it in such a scrambling way.”
“You think not?”
Owain halted. “I suppose some of them would. But imagine the talk.”
“To the devil with the talk.”
“Then imagine putting the matter to the young lady and her family.”
“That,” Sax admitted, “is not a pleasant prospect. But it is immensely preferable to putting myself in the dragon’s claws. The only question is, which lady receives this dubious honor?” He turned suddenly to the grinning audience of servants. “Well? I’m sure you have opinions.”
“Aye, milord,” said Monkey. “Choose the one wot brings the most money.”
“Such a pragmatist. Do you plan to choose the woman with the most money?”
“I would if I could find one, milord, even if she ’ad a crooked back and warts.”
Susie, who definitely lacked those features, kicked Monkey in the shin. He cursed and hopped, but he was grinning at the same time.
“But I don’t need money.”
Susie spoke up. “Beggin’ your pardon, milord ...”
Both Owain and Sax looked at her in surprise, not because she’d spoken—in this household the servants seemed to feel at liberty to say whatever they pleased—but because she sounded nervous about it.
“Yes?”
The plump maid tangled her fingers in her apron. “Beggin’ your pardon, milord, but if you really don’t care who you m—”—she rolled her eye at the bird—“go to the altar with—”
“I didn’t quite say that.”
“But ...”
Sax smiled at her quite gently. “If this is a proposal, Susie, the answer is no. You wouldn’t like it.”
She went bright red and giggled. “Go on with you! As if I would. And anyway ...” She flashed a coy look at Monkey, who turned as red as she. “Be that as it may,” she continued rather stiffly, “I just thought you might better choose a young lady who has need of a husband.”
His cravat arranged to perfection, Sax stood, easing his feet out from under the dog. “Bring a cuckoo into the nest? On no account.”