Lord of Scoundrels (5 page)

“Speaking on behalf of virgins everywhere, my lord,” she said, leaning toward him a bit, “I can tell you there are a host of jolly experiences. One of them is owning a rare work of religious art worth, at the very minimum, five hundred pounds.”

He laughed. “There’s no need to inform me you’re a virgin,” he said. “I can spot one at fifty paces.”

“Fortunately, I’m not so inexperienced in other matters,” she said, unruffled. “I have no doubt Le Feuvre’s mad Russian will pay me five hundred. I’m also aware that the Russian must be a good client for whom he wishes to make a shrewd purchase. Which means I should do considerably better at auction.” She smoothed her gloves. “I have observed many times how men’s wits utterly desert them once auction fever takes hold. There’s no telling what outrageous bids will result.”

Dain’s eyes narrowed.

At that moment, their host sallied forth with their refreshments. With him were four lesser minions who bustled about, arranging linens, silver, and crockery with painful precision. Not a stray crumb was allowed to mar a plate, not a trace of tarnish smudged the flawless sheen of the silver. Even the sugar had been sawed into perfect half-inch cubes—no small feat, when the average sugar loaf was somewhere between granite and diamonds on the hardness scale. Jessica had always wondered how the kitchen help managed to break it up without using explosives.

She accepted a small slice of yellow cake with frothy white icing.

Dain let the fawning proprietor adorn his plate with a large assortment of fruit tarts, artistically arranged in concentric circles.

They ate their sweets in silence until Dain, having decimated enough tarts to set every tooth in his mouth throbbing, set down his fork and frowned at her hands.

“Have
all
the rules changed since I’ve been away from England?” he asked. “I’m aware ladies do not carelessly expose their naked hands to public view. I did understand, though, that they were permitted to remove their gloves to eat.”

“It is permitted,” she said. “But it isn’t possible.” She raised her hand to show him the long row of tiny pearl buttons. “I should be all afternoon undoing them without my maid’s help.”

“Why the devil wear such pestilentially bother-some things?” he demanded.

“Genevieve bought them especially for this pelisse,” she said. “If I didn’t wear them, she’d be dreadfully hurt.”

He was still staring at the gloves.

“Genevieve is my grandmother,” she explained. He hadn’t met her. He’d arrived just as Genevieve had lain down for her nap—though Jessica had no doubt her grandmother had promptly risen and peeped through the door the moment she’d heard the deep, masculine voice.

The voice’s owner now looked up, his black eyes glinting. “Ah, yes. The watch.”

“That, too, was a wise choice,” Jessica said, setting down her own fork and settling back into her business mode. “She was enchanted.”

“I am not your little white-haired grandmother,” he said, instantly taking her meaning. “I am not so enchanted with icons—even Stroganovs—to pay a farthing more than they’re worth. To me, it’s worth no more than a thousand. But if you’ll promise not to bore me to distraction by haggling and trying to slay me with your eyes in between, I shall gladly pay fifteen hundred.”

She had hoped to work him round by degrees. His tone told her he had no intention of being worked upon. Straight to the point, then—the point she’d decided upon hours ago, after catching the expression in his eyes when she’d let him examine her remarkable find.

“I shall gladly give it to you, my lord,” she said.

“No one
gives
me anything,” he said coldly. “Play your game—whatever it is—with someone else. Fifteen hundred is my offer. My only offer.”

“If you would send Bertie home, the icon is yours,” she said. “If you will not, it goes to auction at Christie’s.”

If Jessica Trent had comprehended the state Dain was in, she would have stopped at the first sentence. No, if she had
truly
comprehended, she would have taken to her heels and run as fast and as far as she could. But she couldn’t understand what Lord Dain barely understood himself. He wanted the gentle Russian Madonna, with her half-smiling, half-wistful face and the scowling Baby Jesus nestled to her bosom, as he had not wanted anything in all his life. He had wanted to weep when he saw it, and he didn’t know why.

The work was exquisite—an art sublime and human at once—and he’d been moved, before, by artistry. What he felt at this moment wasn’t remotely like those pleasant sensations. What he felt was the old monster howling within. He couldn’t name the feelings any better than he could when he’d been eight years old. He’d never bothered to name them, simply shoved and beaten them out of his way, repeatedly, until, like his schoolmates of long ago, they’d stopped tormenting him.

Having never been allowed to mature, those feelings remained at the primitive childlike level. Now, caught unexpectedly in their grip, Lord Dain could not reason as an adult would. He could not tell himself Bertie Trent was an infernal nuisance whom Dain should have sent packing ages ago. It never occurred to the marquess to be delighted at present, when the nitwit’s sister was prepared to pay—or bribe was more like it—him generously to do so.

All Dain could see was an exceedingly pretty girl teasing him with a toy he wanted very badly. He had offered her his biggest and very best toy in trade. And she had laughed and threatened to throw her toy into a privy, just to make him beg.

Much later, Lord Dain would understand that this—or something equally idiotic—had been raging through his brain.

But that would be much later, when it was far too late.

At this moment, he was about eight years old on the inside and nearly three and thirty on the outside, and thus, beside himself.

He leaned toward her. “Miss Trent, there are no other terms,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “I pay you fifteen hundred quid and you say, ‘Done,’ and everyone goes away happy.”

“No, they don’t.” Her chin jutted up stubbornly. “If you will not send Bertie home, there is no business on earth I would do with you. You are destroying his life. No amount of money in the world will compensate. I should not sell the icon to you if I were in the last stages of starvation.”

“Easy enough to say when your stomach is full,” he said. Then, in Latin, he mockingly quoted Publilius Syrus. “‘Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.’”

In the same language she quoted the same sage, “‘You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.’”

His countenance betrayed nothing of his astonishment. “It would appear that you have dipped into Publilius,” he said. “How very odd, then, that so clever a female cannot see what is before her eyes. I am not a dead language to play in, Miss Trent. You are treading perilously close to dangerous waters.”

“Because my brother is drowning there,” she said. “Because you are holding his head under. I am not large enough or powerful enough to pull your hand away. All I have is something you want, which even you cannot take away.” Her silver eyes flashed. “There is only one way for you to get it, my lord Beelzebub.
You throw him back
.”

Had he been capable of reasoning in an adult fashion, Dain would have acknowledged that her reasoning was excellent—that, moreover, it was precisely as he would have done had he found himself in her predicament. He might even have appreciated the fact that she told him plainly and precisely what she was about, rather than using feminine guiles and wiles to manipulate.

He was not capable of adult reasoning.

The flash of temper in her eyes should have glanced harmlessly off him. Instead, it shot fast and deep and ignited an inner fuse. He thought the fuse was anger. He thought that if she had been a man, he would have thrown
her
—straight against the wall. He thought that, since she was a woman, he would have to find an equally effective way of teaching her a lesson.

He didn’t know that throwing her was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. He didn’t know that the lessons he wanted to teach her were those of Venus, not Mars, Ovid’s
Ars Armatoria
, not Caesar’s
De Bello Gallico
.

Consequently, he made a mistake.

“No, you do not see clearly at all,” he said. “There is always another way, Miss Trent. You think there isn’t because you assume I will play by all the dear little rules Society dotes upon. You think, for instance, that because we’re in a public place and you’re a lady, I’ll mind my manners. Perhaps you even think I have a regard for your reputation.” He smiled evilly. “Miss Trent, perhaps you would like to take a moment to think again.”

Her grey eyes narrowed. “I think you are threatening me,” she said.

“Let me make it as clear as you did your own threat.” He leaned toward her. “I can crack your reputation in under thirty seconds. In three minutes I can reduce it to dust. We both know, don’t we, that being who I am, I need not exert myself overmuch to accomplish this. You have already become an object of speculation simply by being seen in my company.” He paused briefly to let the words sink in.

She said nothing. Her slitted eyes were glinting furious sparks.

“Here is how it works,” he went on. “If you accept my offer of fifteen hundred, I shall behave myself, escort you to a cabriolet, and see that you are taken safely home.”

“And if I do not accept, you will attempt to destroy my reputation,” she said.

“It will not be an
attempt
,” he said.

She sat up very straight and folded her dainty gloved hands upon the table. “I should like to see you try,” she said.

D
ain had given Miss Trent more than enough opportunity to see her error. His warnings could not have been clearer.

In any case, to hesitate in such a situation was to indicate doubt, or worse, weakness. To do so with a man was dangerous. To do so with a woman was fatal.

And so Lord Dain smiled and leaned nearer yet, until his great Usignuolo nose was but an inch from hers. “Say your prayers, Miss Trent,” he told her very softly.

Then he slid his hand—his big, dark,
bare
hand, for he had removed his gloves to eat and hadn’t put them back on—down the sleeve of her pelisse until he came to the first button of her frivolous pearl grey gloves.

He popped the tiny pearl from the buttonhole.

She glanced down at his hand, but didn’t move a muscle.

Then, aware that every eye in the place was fastened upon them, and the noisy conversations had sunk to whispers, he began to talk to her in Italian. In the tones of a lover, he described the weather, a grey gelding he was thinking of selling, and the condition of Parisian drains. Though he had never tried or needed to seduce a woman, he’d seen and heard other poor sods at that game, and he reproduced their ludicrous tones to a nicety. Everyone about them would think they were lovers. And all the while, he was working his way swiftly down toward her wrist.

She never made a murmur, only glanced now and then from his face to his hands with a frozen expression he interpreted as speechless horror.

He might have interpreted more accurately had he felt inwardly as self-possessed as he seemed outwardly. Outwardly, his expression remained sensuously intent, his voice low and seductive. Inwardly, he was disturbingly aware that his pulse had begun to accelerate at about Button Number Six. By Number Twelve, it was racing. By Number Fifteen, he had to concentrate hard to keep his breathing steady.

He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He’d never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He had committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never once felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed.

He was too busy searching Dain’s Dictionary for a definition of his state—and too confused by what he read there—to realize that Miss Jessica Trent’s grey eyes had taken on the drunkenly be-wildered expression of a respectable spinster being seduced in spite of herself.

Even if he had comprehended her expression, he wouldn’t have believed it, any more than he could believe his untoward state of excitement—over a damned glove and a bit of feminine flesh. Not even one of the good bits, either—the ones a man didn’t have—but an inch or so of her
wrist
, plague take her.

The worst was that he couldn’t stop. The worst was that his passionately intent expression had somehow become genuine, and he was no longer talking in Italian about drains, but about how he wanted to unbutton, unhook, untie every button, hook, and string…and slip off her garments, one by one, and drag his monstrous blackamoor’s hands over her white virgin’s flesh.

And while in Italian he detailed his heated fantasies, he was slowly peeling the glove back, exposing a delicately voluptuous palm. Then he gave one small tug toward her knuckles. And paused. Then another tug. And paused. Then another tug…and the glove was off. He let it fall to the table, and took her small, cool, white hand in his great, warm one. She gave a tiny gasp. That was all. No struggle. Not that it would have made the least difference to him.

He was overwarm and short of breath, and his heart pounded as though he’d been running very hard after something. And just as though he had done so and got it at last, he was not about to let it go. His fingers closed around her hand and he gave her a fierce look, daring her to try—just
try
—to get away.

He found she was still wearing the same wide-eyed expression. Then she blinked and, dropping her gaze to their joined hands, she said in a small, breathless voice, “I’m
very
sorry, my lord.”

Though still not properly in control of his own respiration, Dain managed to get the words out. “I have no doubt you are. But it’s too late, you see.”

“I do.” She shook her head sadly. “I fear your reputation will never recover.”

He felt a prickle of uneasiness. He ignored it and, with a laugh, glanced about him at their fascinated audience. “
Cara mia
, it is your own rep—”

“The Marquess of Dain has been seen in the company of a
lady
,” she said. “He has been seen and heard wooing her.” She looked up, her silver eyes gleaming. “It was lovely. I had no idea Italian was so…moving.”

“I was talking about drains,” he said tightly.

“I didn’t know. Neither did anyone else, I’m sure. They all think you were making love.” She smiled. “To nitwit Bertie Trent’s spinster sister.”

Then, too late, he saw the flaw in his reasoning. Then he recalled Esmond’s remark about the legendary Genevieve. Everyone here would believe the chit followed in her grandmother’s foot-steps—a
femme fatale
—and the curst Parisians would believe he’d fallen under her spell.

“Dain,” she said in a low, hard voice, “if you do not release my hand this instant, I shall kiss you. In front of everybody.”

He had a ghastly suspicion he’d kiss her back—in front of witnesses—Dain, Beelzebub himself, kissing a lady—a
virgin
. He crushed his panic.

“Miss Trent,” he said, his own tones equally low and hard, “I should like to see you try.”

“By gad,” came an obnoxiously familiar voice from behind Dain. “I had to go nearly to that blasted Bwy Bullion—and it ain’t exactly what you wanted, I know, but I tried one myself first, and I daresay you won’t be disappointed.”

Oblivious to the tension throbbing about him, Bertie Trent set a small cigar box down upon the table one inch from Dain’s hand. The hand still clasping Miss Trent’s.

Bertie’s gaze fell there and his blue eyes widened. “Deuce take you, Jess,” he said crossly. “Can’t a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?”

Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.

Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. “Don’t pay it any mind, Dain. She does that to all the chaps. I don’t know why she does it, when she don’t want ’em. Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa’s. Go to all the bother of catching a mouse, and then the confounded things won’t eat ’em. Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up.”

Miss Trent’s lips quivered.

The hint of laughter was all that was needed to shrivel and crush and beat the tumultuous mixture inside Lord Dain into frigid fury.

He had commenced his formal education by having his head thrust into a privy. He had been mocked and tormented before. But not for long.

“Fortunately, Trent, you have the knack of arriving in the very nick of time,” he said. “Since words cannot express my relief and gratitude, actions must speak louder. Why don’t you toddle round to my place after you take your irresistible sister home? Vawtry and a few others are coming by for a bottle or two and a private game of hazard.”

After enduring Trent’s incoherent expressions of delight, Lord Dain took his cool leave of the pair and sauntered out of the shop, grimly determined to hold Bertie Trent’s head under until he
drowned
.

Even before Lord Dain arrived home, the eye-witness reports of his tête-à-tête with Miss Trent were moving swiftly through the streets of Paris.

By the time, close to dawn, his private orgy of drinking and gambling had broken up—and Bertie, a few hundred pounds the poorer, was being carried by a brace of servants to his bed—wagers were being made regarding the Marquess of Dain’s intentions toward Miss Trent.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, Francis Beaumont, encountering Roland Vawtry at Tortoni’s, bet him one hundred fifty pounds that Dain would be shackled to Miss Trent before the King’s Birthday in June.

“Dain?” Vawtry repeated, his hazel eyes widening. “
Wed?
To a gentry spinster? Trent’s
sister?
”

Ten minutes later, when Vawtry had stopped laughing and was beginning to breathe normally again, Beaumont repeated his offer.

“It’s too easy,” said Vawtry. “I can’t take your money. It wouldn’t be fair. I’ve known Dain since we were at Oxford. That business in the coffee shop was one of his jokes. To get everyone in an uproar. This very minute, he’s probably laughing himself sick about what a lot of fools he’s made of everybody.”

“Two hundred,” said Beaumont. “Two hundred says he stops laughing inside a week.”

“I see,” said Vawtry. “You want to throw your money down another rathole. Very well, my lad. Define the terms.”

“Inside a week, someone sees him go after her,” said Beaumont. “He follows her out of a room. Down a street. Takes her hand. Gad, I don’t care—grabs her by the hair—That’s more in his style, isn’t it?”

“Beaumont, going
after
women isn’t in Dain’s style,” Vawtry said patiently. “Dain says, ‘I’ll take this one.’ Then he lays down the money and the female goes.”

“He goes after this one,” said Beaumont. “Just as I said. Before reliable witnesses. Two hundred says he does it within seven days.”

This would not be the first time Roland Vawtry’s profound understanding of Dain would make him money. Predicting Beelzebub’s behavior, in fact, was how Vawtry made at least half his income. He thought that Beaumont didn’t, and the smug, superior smile on his face was beginning to irritate Vawtry. Arranging his own fair features into an expression of profound pity—to irritate Beaumont—Vawtry accepted the bet.

Six days later, Jessica was standing at the window of her brother’s
appartement
, scowling down at the street below.

“I shall
kill
you, Dain,” she muttered. “I shall put a bullet precisely where that Italian nose of yours meets your black brows.”

It was nearly six o’clock. Bertie had promised he would be home by half past four to bathe and dress, in order to escort his sister and grandmother to Madame Vraisses’ party. Mrs. Beaumont’s portrait of their hostess was to be unveiled at eight o’clock. Since Bertie needed at least two and a half hours to perform his toilette, and the evening traffic was bound to be heavy, they were going to miss the unveiling.

And it was all Dain’s fault.

Since the encounter at the coffee shop, he could not bear to have Bertie out of his sight. Wherever Dain went, whatever he did, he could not enjoy himself unless Bertie was there.

Bertie, of course, believed he’d finally won Dain’s undying friendship. Gullible baconbrain that he was, Bertie had no idea the alleged friendship was Dain’s revenge on her.

Which only showed how despicable a villain Dain was. His quarrel was with Jessica, but no, he couldn’t fight fair and square with someone capable of fighting back. He had to punish her via her poor, stupid brother, who hadn’t the least idea how to defend himself.

Bertie didn’t know how
not
to drink himself unconscious, or quit a card game, or resist a wager he was bound to lose, or protest when a tart cost thrice what she ought to. If Dain drank, Bertie must, though he hadn’t the head for it. If Dain played or wagered or whored, Bertie must do exactly as he did.

Jessica did not, in principle, object to any of these practices. She had been tipsy more than once and, upon occasion, lost money on cards or a bet—but within discreet and reasonable bounds. As to the tarts, if she had been a man, she supposed she’d fancy one now and then, too—but she would certainly not pay a farthing above the going rate. She could scarcely believe Dain paid as much as Bertie claimed, but Bertie had sworn on his honor he’d seen the money change hands himself.

“If it’s true,” she’d told him exasperatedly, only last evening, “it can only be because his requirements are excessive—because the women have to work harder, don’t you see?”

All Bertie saw was that she was implying he wasn’t as lusty a stallion as his idol was. She had impugned her brother’s masculinity, and so he had stomped out and not come—or been carried, rather—home until seven o’clock this morning.

Meanwhile, she’d lain awake until nearly then, wondering what exactly Dain required of a bed partner.

Thanks to Genevieve, Jessica did understand the basics of what normal men required—or provided, depending upon how one looked at it. She had known, for example, what the bewigged gentleman hiding under the lady’s skirts had been doing, just as she’d known that such poses weren’t common in naughty watches. That was why she’d bought it.

But since Dain wasn’t normal, and he’d surely paid for a great deal more than mere basics, she had tossed feverishly in her bed in an agitated muddle of fear and curiosity and…well, if one was perfectly honest with oneself, which she generally was, there was some hankering, too, heaven help her.

She could not stop thinking about his hands. Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t contemplated every other part of him as well, but she’d had direct, simmering physical experience of those large, too adept hands.

At the mere thought of them, even now, furious as she was, she felt something hot and achy curl inside her, from her diaphragm to the pit of her belly.

Which only made her the more furious.

The mantel clock chimed the hour.

First she’d kill Dain, she told herself. Then she’d kill her brother.

Withers entered. “The porter has returned from the marquess’s establishment,” he said.

Bertie, following the custom of the Parisians, relied upon the building’s porter to perform the tasks normally assigned at home to footmen, maids, and errand boys. Half an hour earlier, the porter, Tesson, had been dispatched to Lord Dain’s.