Jo Beverley Read Online Free

love with the perfect, pretty maiden.” Heimpatiently kicked a shard from his path. “I’ve certainly done my best to find her.”
    â€œI thought you avoided maidens like the plague.”
    â€œOnly since I discovered that they’re after one thing. A coronet.”
    After a moment’s thought, he 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. Menservants 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.
    â€œShe 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.
    â€œShe 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.”
    â€œThat’s cheating, my girl.”
    â€œYou 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 on the point. He then tossed it upand sliced it in two as it fell so downy feathers burst out to fill the room.
    Laughing, Owain leaned back in his chair, propped his feet 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 here at the ready. As Susie implied, they had a lottery going belowstairs 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.
    â€œA Torrance,” repeated Sax, slightly out of breath, sweeping blond hair off his forehead, “breaks a great many things, but never his word.”
    â€œSo it’s said.”
    Sax turned on him. “So it is. ” He