Jo Beverley (21 page)

“It's nothing to do with the duchess.” She said it in a choked whisper, and he realized he had his arm tight around her throat. Appalled, he let her go.

She staggered away and turned, pale with shock, to face him. Her hand went up to her throat. “Why should it be? To do with the duchess?”

Dear God in heaven, he'd hurt her. He'd almost throttled her! The least he could give was honesty. “Because I couldn't hate anything as I hate anything to do with her.”

She shook her head. “You can't hate an old woman, Saxonhurst. And hate hurts most the ones who hate.”

He laughed at that, turning to seize his brandy glass and refill it. “Oh no, my dear. My hate hurts the dragon, despite her tough scales.” He drained the glass, feeling the rich, burning liquid scour away some of the dross.

It brought back sanity. She'd told the truth. Every sense and instinct said that. He put down his glass and walked toward her, smiling his relief. “If your secret has nothing to do with her, we can be happy.” He reached gently for her. “I'm sorry if I frightened you.”

She went stiff. “No.”

He drew her in for a kiss. “Forgive me. Come, let me—”

She twisted free. “No.”

Laughing, he caught her and pulled her back. “Remember earlier. Let's—”

She hit him on the shoulder hard enough to shock.
“No!”

Dazed, he read certainty in her fierce lips and eyes.

“No,” she said again. “Not like this. Not with distrust between us. Not with you hating your family so!”

He let her go and rubbed where she'd hit. “Devil take you, woman, this all started with your secrets. Don't throw distrust at me!”

“But you're the one who hates!”

He moved away before he lost control of his raging body. “You've known since the beginning that I hate the duchess. Why throw it up now? An excuse for cold feet, my nervous little chicken? Or are you just a tease?”

She turned as sallow as her dreadful dress. “I didn't see how deep it went.”

“You expect me to believe that you're refusing me your bed just because I don't get along with a relative?”

“Because you hate your grandmother. It poisons everything!”

He stared at her set chin and fierce eyes. Pure Ardent Reformer, damn her to Hades.

He picked up the brandy again. “Well, Minerva, if you're going to deny me your bed until I'm a sweet and loving grandson, this is going to be one hell of a marriage. Good night.”

After a moment, she whirled out and slammed the door.

Sax almost threw the crystal decanter, but had control enough to put it carefully down. It was a beautifully made piece of Waterford.

Brak whined and disappeared back under the bed, wise dog.

Sax chose the revolting maggot-white, sneering clock-figure and hurled it at the howling Amazons.

Meg fled into her bedchamber and turned the key in the lock. A moment later she felt foolish. Her husband certainly wasn't coming after her.

Then, in the distance, she heard something shatter. She ran back to the door, thinking to offer help. But the noise was followed by another crash, then another. . . .

Oh, dear lord! The children!

Shaking with shock and fear, she opened the door to peer into the corridor. Deserted. Taking the opposite direction to her husband's room and the terrifying racket, she picked up her skirts and raced up to the higher floor and her family.

She hurtled into the schoolroom. All her family sat at the schoolroom table, finishing their supper and chattering.

At her arrival, Jeremy shot to his feet. “What's the matter?” A moment later, he asked, “What's that noise?”

“Don't ask.” Meg closed the door, and the sounds were muted. But they could still be heard. She gathered the twins into her arms. “And don't go downstairs! Any of you.”

Jeremy halted by the door, staring at her.

She realized almost at once that she was making them frightened, and that she was hugging the twins for her own comfort, not for theirs. She let them go and forced a smile.

“I'm afraid the earl is a little bit upset.”

“He's breaking things?” Laura asked, wide-eyed.

“Yes.”

Rachel suddenly pressed back into Meg's side. “I'm scared.”

Meg made herself calm, and stroked her sister's silky hair. “Don't be. He won't hurt you. He's just smashing things.” She hoped that was true. She was beginning to have morbid imaginings about Clarence's crippled leg, and Susie's blind eye.

“Why?” Rachel asked. “What's made him angry? Us?”

“No! No, of course not.” Meg sat and pressed her sister close. She needed another lie. Well, perhaps just a half-truth. “It's to do with his grandmother, dear.”

“He doesn't like her, does he?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know, love. But it's nothing to do with us, you see, so nothing will harm you.” Then the faint noises stopped. That should be reassuring, but Meg tensed, listening for angry footsteps pounding up the stairs.

The door opened.

She clutched Rachel closer, but it was only an enormously fat maid, with three chins and a merry smile. “Ready for bed, Miss Rachel?” she asked as if nothing was amiss.

Rachel looked up at Meg, who remembered to let her go. A part of her wanted to keep all her family in this room and barricade the door.

She kissed her sister. “Good night, love. It's all over now.”

Laura took Rachel's hand. “I'll go, too. It's been a long day.” Meg silently blessed her.

They all had to look out for each other. They were all they had. But who would look out for her if her husband came, as was his right, to get her?

Now the maid had left, she saw a manservant hovering, clearly for Richard.

“Peter,” Jeremy said to him, “did you hear breaking noises just now?”

“Just the earl in one of his states, Master Jeremy. Not
to worry.” But he did give Meg a funny look, clearly having some ideas about the reason for the state.

Jeremy, bless him, asked the question Meg wanted to ask. “Does the earl do this often?”

The man shrugged. “Depends, it does. But it's only ever in his room, see. So you don't ever need fear he'll bust up anything outside. You ready, Master Richard?”

Already soothed by the man's cheerful acceptance of it all, Richard said his good nights and left. Meg had to wonder, however, how much she should trust servants who took all this in their stride.

Jeremy eyed Meg. “I don't think this is any of my business.”

“Or you hope it isn't.”

He shrugged, and went over to where his books lay open, waiting.

“Don't your books provide anything useful in these cases?”

He gave her a wry grin. “Fathers eating sons. Mothers sacrificing children. Men driven mad by songs.”

“And they call it education.” Meg sat, and sighed. “You're right. It won't affect you. I hope.”

“It's bound to. A bit.”

She wished he were older, that she could shift some of the burden onto him. She didn't know anyone, however, who could help her in this. For a brief time she'd thought she'd found a colleague in the earl, but not now.

Perhaps she had been right in her first macabre suspicions. Despite his charm and generosity, her husband was probably not quite sane. It was tragic, but she didn't know what to do about it.

She pushed wearily out of her chair. “I'll leave you to your studies.”

“Are you sure you should go back down?”

“You heard what the servant said. Only in his room. I'll make sure to keep out of there.”

“Don't you sleep together as Mama and Papa used to?”

Meg knew she was red-faced. “No. We have separate suites.”

“Strange.” But then he plunged back into infanticide and cannibalism.

Meg would like to stay up here, but she knew any sense of safety was illusory. She was married to the earl. For life. Her family couldn't protect her from him, and by lurking up here she might put them in danger.

“Don't forget to make sure the candle's dead,” she said to her brother.

“I always do.”

With a sigh, she left the schoolroom, closing the door quietly. She knocked, then looked in on her sisters, who were both in their nightgowns. The maid was brushing Laura's hair, while Laura brushed Rachel's. Meg remembered how often she and Laura had brushed and plaited each other's hair and longed for simpler times.

“Sleep well,” she said, and they both turned to wish her good night. Only Laura looked a little concerned.

Bracing herself, Meg made herself return to the main floor. She crept down the stairs, every sense alert for danger. Was that another crash? A cry? What was he
doing
?

When she was near the bottom, however, the faint noises clarified into chattering. And laughter? It almost sounded like a party in the corridor. Perhaps
she
was going mad!

Peering around the corner, she saw a parade of servants with brushes, dust pans, and buckets, filing through a door and down narrow stairs. One maid carried bits of the spotted camel, another mangled works of that ugly clock. Clarence, the limping footman, bore a twisted, ruined, pink stand like a trophy. “Five guineas from the kitty for this, mates! Thought I'd never see the day.”

Meg pressed back. They were all mad! What had she done to bring her family here?

“Like to know what set him off this time,” said one voice, receding.

“We all know
what,
” said the woman's voice. “Silly titty. Just not why.”

The door clicked shut, cutting off all sound.

Weak-kneed, Meg slithered down to sit on the stairs. Was she going to have to live here, with everyone speculating on everything she did, thinking her silly for not
rushing into bed with him? And with her husband hurled into a fit of destruction whenever crossed?

The answer of course, was yes. As the old saying went, she'd made her bed and must now lie in it. The only thing to do was to try and work some of the lumps out of the mattress.

Hugging herself against the chill, she contemplated her problems.

The biggest one was the rift between the earl and his grandmother. She'd have to find a way to heal it. True enough, the duchess seemed to be a tartar, and family wounds could linger, but the duchess was just an old woman. She couldn't do her grandson any harm.

She pulled a wry face at that. The duchess had tried to marry him off to that walking nose-drip. But that was the sort of thing parents and grandparents did—tried to push the younger ones into marriage, not always wisely. It wasn't ground for unremitting hatred.

Nothing was, short of murder.

Or rape. Or threatened rape. She hated Sir Arthur. But she wouldn't fly into a rage at the mere thought of him.

She made herself consider whether the earl really was unbalanced. Irrational.

Mad was the word she was dancing around.

That might explain this obsession.

And what did that offer for their future?

She sat there in the dim light provided by a wall lamp in the corridor, pondering the past couple of days. She stayed there because she was too scared—she was honest with herself—to go into her bedroom where he might find her. Yet he hadn't behaved like a mad man most of the time. Despite his teasing, she'd never been afraid of him until now.

Perhaps he was just irrational on this one point, like someone afraid of spiders, or sickened by the color blue. He'd said that he could only hate something to do with his grandmother, though why he'd think there was any connection between herself and a dowager duchess she couldn't imagine.

Clearly she was caught in one of these vicious family feuds one read about in books. The earl and his grandmother likely hadn't spoken calmly in years, and family quarrels did have a way of getting out of hand. Look at her mother and her Aunt Maira.

Perhaps if she arranged for Saxonhurst and the dowager to meet. For tea. In some unalarming, neutral spot. . . .

She was still sitting there, chin on hands, planning her strategy when a candle flame shone into her eyes.

She started, and saw Mr. Chancellor looking up the stairs. “There you are!”

Meg straightened, alarm darting back. “If he's sent you to fetch me, I'm not going.”

His eyes widened slightly, but he said, “Not at all. I . . . er just wondered where you were.” After a moment, he added, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I didn't seem quite right to discuss these matters, but Meg certainly needed someone to talk to. Mr.
Chancellor gave every impression of being sane, and must know more of his employer than she did. “In the drawing room?”

“It'll be icy now the fires have died. Why not your boudoir?”

Meg rose. “Won't it look . . . strange? If . . . if my husband . . .”

“Sax knows I'd never offend in that way.”

He sounded so calmly certain that she wondered if it was just another aspect of endemic madness. But she needed some insights here, and Mr. Chancellor was her only hope. A boudoir, after all, was just a fancy name for a parlor. The fact that it adjoined her bedroom was surely irrelevant.

Once there, she sat in one chair by the fireside, while he took the other, crossing his legs, and looking so very normal, she could have hugged him.

“So, Mr. Chancellor,” she said, “explain the earl.”

“Lord, Lady Saxonhurst, never in a lifetime! Sax is Sax.”

“Is he mad?”

Humor faded. “Do you think he is?”

“I don't know. I don't even know what madness is. I can understand, I think, why he became upset, but not the extent of his disturbance. And it is not normal to destroy things when thwarted.”

He cocked his head. “Haven't you ever wanted to? Wanted to express your feelings in a very direct way?”

Meg thought about it. “No, I don't think I have. I can't imagine breaking something in a fit of temper. I'm not highly emotional, I'm afraid.”

“Perhaps as well. Two in one house might be a bit much.”

She considered the man opposite, the one with calm manner and kind eyes. The man she'd thought as normal as she. “You've felt the urge to violence, Mr. Chancellor?”

“Certainly, my lady.”

“Oh, please. Call me Meg.”

He stared. “Meg? Not Minerva?”

At his expression, Meg put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, dear! And he's doubtless heard the others calling
me Meg. But he wouldn't think . . . He wouldn't take
that
as a hurt, would he?”

Mr. Chancellor shrugged. “Hard to tell. But he wouldn't like it. Why lie to him?”

Meg let her hands fall, a kind of hopelessness pressing down on her. “I didn't mean it as a lie. It is my name. And he assumed . . . It's just that he is so very
forceful,
Mr. Chancellor. I wanted to keep a bit of myself in reserve.”

He smiled. “I can see that.” He uncrossed his legs, and touched his cravat in a clearly nervous way. “Was that why? I don't mean to pry. But earlier . . . everything seemed to be roses.”

Meg knew she was blushing, but met his eyes. “Yes. Indeed. I don't really know quite why. I did go to speak to Laura, but I can't see why that should throw him into such a state. Does he always go wild if thwarted?”

“No. In all truth, Sax is generally an easygoing man. Tolerates more than I would from his miscellany of servants, for example.”

“They are strange, aren't they?”

“He takes on needy cases.”

Meg would have liked to explore that more, but she must try to find her way through more crucial matters. “So why would my going for a few moments to speak to my sister create such problems?”

“I don't know. Generally, the only thing likely to truly upset Sax is his grandmother.”

“And that is silly.” But then she stopped herself from such a hasty judgment. “Perhaps not. Can you explain the situation?”

He leaned back, worrying his thumb with his teeth. Then he let his hand drop. “Some of it's public knowledge anyway. The earl's mother was Lady Helen Pyke-Marshall, daughter of the Duke of Daingerfield. She ran off, when only sixteen, with the second son of the Earl of Saxonhurst. Rupert Torrance was by all accounts a charming rogue with only a few feathers to fly with. The sort of man her parents, her mother in particular, would never let within a mile of her.”

“Oh dear.”

“Oh dear from the duchess's point of view, but
apparently they were delightfully happy. Despite the duchess's best efforts.”

“What could she do?”

“Blackened Rupert Torrance's name in society, for a start. He'd been something of a rascal and she used that to make sure no club would take him, no reputable hostess would let him over the threshold.”

“Are you sure it wasn't true?”

“You do like to use a cool head, don't you? This was when I was in the nursery, so I don't know. It didn't matter anyway. The happy couple settled on a small estate near Derby and never came near London or other fashionable spots.”

“Perhaps they had no choice.”

“Perhaps, but I've spoken with enough people who remember them to think they didn't suffer. I'm told Lady Helen tried repeatedly to reconcile with her mother, but was refused unless she left her husband and children and sought a divorce.”

That didn't seem to offer much hope for Meg's plans.

“The old . . . the duchess even managed to turn the Torrances against them, but then they're a funny lot. One great uncle still won't communicate with Sax. Of course, that just made it easier for the duchess to spread tales about mental instability in the family. When the old earl shot himself—”

“What?” Meg definitely didn't like what she was hearing about her husband's family.

“True, he did. And in one of the anterooms at White's stripped down to his underclothes. A notorious scandal twenty years ago. Anyway, the duchess convinced a lot of people that he'd done it because of the wicked behavior of his second son. And when the new earl—Rupert Torrance's older brother—broke his neck out hunting, she made that out to be suicide, too.”

“Well, it could have been.”

He quirked a brow. “No man of sense tries to put an end to it all by attempting a tricky oxer in the Shires. Failure rate would be high, and chance of ending a cripple even higher. And anyway, this was ten years after the marriage.”

“Mr. Chancellor, you can't claim that the Torrance family is noted for sensible, moderate behavior.”

“An understatement, dear lady. Sax's grandmother kept over a hundred cats, and nearly as many canaries. Though she may, I suppose, have kept the birds to amuse the cats. And one of his Torrance aunts clothed all the nude statues at Haverhall.”

“Mr. Chancellor, the duchess was clearly right to have misgivings about the match!”

“Perhaps. But what does a rational, moderate person do in that situation? I submit, make the best of it, not try to destroy people.”

Meg slumped back in her chair. These stories were not increasing her comfort. “And she still holds a grudge after all these years, and is taking it out on their son? I suppose it's easy for her to spread scandal about him, too.”

“It's worse than that. Do you know that Sax's parents and his younger sister were killed when he was ten?”

She straightened. “How awful. Killed? How?”

“A carriage accident. The family were in London for some reason. Staying in this house. Sax's father was the earl by then and they'd had to change their quiet life and take up their responsibilities. His parents drove out to pay a visit, and they were held up. His father was shot and the horse bolted. Tipped the whole thing into a river, and his mother and sister drowned.”

Meg covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God! He was left alone.”

“Not entirely. I'm not sure who Sax's legal guardian was, but the duchess seized control. Her husband was dead by then, and her son—the present duke—always was an ineffectual nodkin. Sensible Torrances were thin on the ground.”

“Poor little boy.” Meg thought of the twins' grief over their parents' death. “To be orphaned so young has to be terrible for any child. I don't suppose the duchess provided much comfort.”

“An understatement.”

“But the earl is a grown man now, and free of her. It is folly to let his feelings toward her rule him.”

“Yet that is why you are married to him.”

“Which I am beginning to regret.”

Then Meg had to stifle shock. Could the
sheelagh,
with its bizarre disregard of time, have actually
caused
these tragic events? Therefore, had
she
? No, she couldn't think that way.

“I see you shake your head. So you should. You can't seriously regret your marriage in the light of your desperate situation.”

She had no answer, for he was completely correct.

He leaned forward. “Sax won't hurt you, my lady. My word on it. You or your family. Even in his anger, he only ever smashes things. But you can hurt him.”

“I?” Meg moved slightly back.

“You are his family now, you and your brothers and sisters. He feels strongly about such things. If you hold yourself aloof . . .”

“I don't
want
to.”

“But clearly you are. You must have done something to set him off! Are you really saying that your problems came all because you spent a few moments speaking with your sister? Sax isn't a man to be upset by foibles.”

“He did seem very upset by it. But it . . . it led to other things. He spoke of his grandmother with such
hate.
So I told him I could never . . . never be wife to someone who felt like that.”

“ 'Struth.” He looked stricken. “That does rather put you in a pickle.”

“You're as bad as he is! Whatever she's been in the past, the duchess is now a frail old woman with few years left to her. I don't require that the earl be doting, just that he treat her with the civility due a close relative.”

“Then it's an impasse. He won't.”

Meg sat up straight. “Then
I
won't! I don't see why I should make all the accommodations here.”

“Lord. You're as bad as one another.”

“Not at all, for I am willing to work toward a solution. I will act as mediator.”

He stiffened as if someone had rammed a rod up his spine. “No, my lady. Please! Trust me on this. If you approach the duchess, that will only make the situation intolerably worse.”

Meg shot to her feet. “Mr. Chancellor, this is ridiculous! It's like being trapped in a melodrama. Where is Christian charity and forgiveness?”

He rose, too. “Buried somewhere at Daingerfield Court.” He suddenly sighed. “I'm sorry things are happening this way. I hoped for better. You have only been married for days, however, and everything must still be very strange. But I beg you, Lady Saxonhurst, don't do anything impetuous.”

“Mr. Chancellor, I never do anything impetuous. I am known for my cool, rational behavior.”

“Indeed? Then what took you coolly and rationally to wander in the frosty winter garden a couple of mornings ago?”

Meg halted. “I suppose it did look a little strange.”

“And perhaps an indisposition that wasn't an indisposition?”

Meg blushed. “I assure you, sir, I am normally the most truthful of women. And I have confessed that lie to the earl.”

“That one but not the other ones?”

Meg felt as if she'd been slapped. “Yes, I have secrets, but none are too terrible. It's just that they might upset the earl a little. Therefore, I would rather keep them from him. I hope to soon have things sorted out—”

“You expect me to be reassured by that? Lady Saxonhurst, I have known Sax since we were boys, and I'm sure you can have no stain on your past that he could not overlook.”