Jo Beverley by Forbidden Magic Page B

You pain her most terribly.”
    â€œYou mean you don’t lust for my body? Not even after all our merry cradle games?”
    â€œYou disgust me!”
    â€œI think it’s rather unfair to hold my infant technique against me. I assure you that now—”
    â€œI will never darken your door again!” She would have stormed forward, but the earl put a hand out to stop her, and stepped closer to the sedan chair.
    â€œMay I hope that goes for you, too, Your Grace?”
    The dowager looked up with the expression of an early martyr—of the sterner sort. “You are my sacred trust, Frederick. I will never wash my hands of you.”
    Saxonhurst suddenly looked around, seized Meg’s hand, and dragged her to his side. “You were never properly introduced, were you? Minerva, Lady Saxonhurst, make the acquaintance of my mother’s mother, the Dowager Duchess of Daingerfield, and my cousin, Lady Daphne Grigg.”
    The duchess looked up at Meg and truly did seem long-suffering. Meg could understand. The earl’s behavior was completely beyond the line. Though not deranged, he was distinctly unbalanced and intolerably rude.
    â€œI cannot in honesty welcome you to the family.” The duchess’s hawk’s eyes swept over Meg’s clothes, assessing and dismissing. “You are clearly unsuited for such high station and unlikely to bring Saxonhurst to any sense of his failings. But I cannot abandon my family. When you need advice, come to me. I will stay in town until Twelfth Night, apparently at Quiller’s Hotel. Now, Frederick, if you will permit it, we will do as you wish and leave your disorderly house.”
    The earl stepped back sharply. The chair—which Meg now saw had a ducal coronet on the roof and a rampant lion on the door—was raised again by its attendants and carried out of the door.
The lion and the unicorn, fighting for the crown. Upstairs and downstairs, and all around the town. . . .
    She certainly felt as if she had tumbled into a war between mighty predators. What on earth was going on?
    Daphne was no bride for the earl, and the duchess must know it. Susie had been right to suggest that the earl’s grandmother would find him an unsuitable wife. It was especially horrid that the woman had seen him as a case to be reformed.
    But then, he clearly was. No matter what lay between them, it was wrong to refuse hospitality to relatives, especially at this time of year. With a chill, Meg realized he had never once addressed the duchess as grandmother.
    â€œShe’s upset you.”
    She searched him for signs of madness and saw only suave gloss. “I am unsuited to be an earl’s bride.”
    He tucked away his quizzing glass. “What you need to know you can learn.” With the closing of the door on the departing women, the angry, vicious man had faded like hoarfrost under the sun. “The staff here, though rascals one and all, know their business and will take care of you.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œDon’t pay the duchess any heed. In particular, don’t scurry off to Quiller’s asking for advice. That, I absolutely forbid.”
    And he meant that word, she saw.
    â€œNow,” he said, smile flashing, eyes brightening, “let’s eat our luncheon before the twins starve to death!”
    Servants came forward to ease them out of their outdoor clothing and carry it away as if every item was of silk and velvet.
    â€œWhere’s Brak?” he suddenly demanded, making Meg tense, wondering what might appear next.
    â€œWe removed him in case of unpleasantness, milord,” the butler said, and the next moment a huge, snarling beast raced into the hall.
    â€œSit!” the earl said sharply, and the dog skidded to a halt and onto its haunches. It still snarled, however, as if it, too, was starving to death, and it was the ugliest dog Meg had ever seen. Shaggy and a mottled gray-brown.
    To her