by Jo Beverley
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.”
“No, milord. Of course not! But a young lady who’s fallen on hard times
, like. You wouldn’t have to beg her, then, would you? She’d be the one who’d be grateful.”
“A very neat point. I gather you have someone in mind, Susie.”
“Yes, milord.”
“A lady?”
“Yes, milord. At least, her father was a gentleman scholar.”
Nims held out an embroidered waistcoat and Sax put his arms into it. “Sounds promising. How has she come to be in straitened circumstances?”
“Her parents died, milord. Suddenly, a few months back. Turned out there wasn’t much money. So there’s poor Miss Gillingham, with her brothers and sisters to take care of, and no money to speak of.”
“A heart-wrenching tale. How do you come to know about it?” Nims was fastening the silver buttons, and Knox had flown to perch on Sax’s shoulder.
“My sister was a maid there, milord. She stayed on for a while without wages, she felt so sorry for them, but in the end she had to take another post. But I’m not saying you should . . . form a union with this Miss Gillingham. I really don’t know much about her. Just that there must be many others like her. Glad to go to the altar, even in a hurry, and grateful for the chance.”
Sax took Knox on his hand and made a contemplative circuit of the room. “She’d not expect false protestations of love,” he said to Owain. “She wouldn’t need to be sweet-talked into it. She’d be less likely to be extravagant or flighty ...”
“She could be ugly as sin.”
Sax looked at Susie.
“My sister never mentioned her looks, milord.”
“Where is your sister?”
“Out of town. Her family’s gone to their Shropshire estate for the season.”
After a moment, Sax put the parrot on his shoulder and turned to Owain, hand held out. “Coin.”
Not at all happy with the situation, Owain dug out a shilling and tossed it over.
Sax snared it out of the air. “Heads, it’s Miss Gillingham. Tails, it’s whichever of those other names I pull out of a hat.”
Before Owain could protest, the coin spun glittering through the air to be caught and slapped down on the back of Sax’s hand. “Heads!” he said, and flicked the two-shilling piece over to Susie. “Go and inform Miss Gillingham of the pleasures in store for her.”
“Me?” Susie squeaked.
“You. And to sweeten the pot, if she goes through with it tomorrow, I’ll give you and Monk enough to set up your own place.”
The two servants shared a dazed look. “Really, milord?” asked the footman.
“Word of a Torrance.”
Jo Beverley is widely regarded as one of the most talented romance writers today. She is a New York Times bestseller, five-time winner of Romance Writers of America’s cherished RITA Award and one of only a handful of members of the RWA Hall of Fame. She has also twice received the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in England. You can visit her Web site at www.jobev.com.
