Andrews entered then, and the first footman, Joseph, with him. His Lordship’s beefsteak was set before him, and his ale. Andrews cut the steak while Jessica, who had wanted to perform that small service, sat uselessly in her chair, pretending to eat a breakfast that tasted like sawdust and was about as easily swallowed.
She—the expert on interpreting men—scarcely understood her husband at all. Even last night, when she’d discovered he was not vain, as she’d believed, and that the love of women had not come easily to him, as she’d supposed, she had not guessed the extent of the trouble.
She had merely reminded herself that many men couldn’t see themselves clearly. When Bertie, for instance, looked into a mirror, he thought a man with a brain looked back. When Dain looked into his, he somehow missed the full extent of his physical beauty. Odd in a connoisseur, but then, men were not altogether consistent creatures.
As to the love of women, Jessica had never been exactly thrilled at the prospect of falling in love with him herself. It was understandable, then, that other women—even hardened professionals—might decide he was more than they cared to tackle.
She should have also realized, though, that the difficulty lay deeper. She should have put the clues together: his acute sensibility, his mistrust of women, his edginess in his family home, his bitterness toward his mother, the portrait of his forbidding father, and Dain’s contradictory behavior toward Jessica herself.
She’d known—hadn’t every instinct told her?—he badly needed her, needed something from her.
He needed what every human being needed: love.
But he needed it far more than many, because, apparently, he hadn’t had so much as a whiff of it since he was a babe.
…he takes it all for granted: her smiles and reassurance, her patience, forgiveness.
Jessica knew she should have laughed, as he had, and kept matters light, no matter what she’d felt. She should not have spoken of mamas and little boys they loved. Then Dain wouldn’t have looked up at her as he had, and she wouldn’t have seen the lonely little boy in him. She would not have grieved for that child, and Dain would not have seen the grief in her eyes.
Now he would think she felt sorry for him—or worse, that she’d deliberately lured him into betraying himself.
He was probably furious with her.
Don’t, she prayed silently. Be angry if you must, but don’t turn your back and walk away.
Dain didn’t leave.
All the same, if Jessica had been a fraction less accustomed to male irrationality, his behavior during the next few days would have destroyed every hope she’d cherished of building anything remotely like a proper marriage. She would have decided he was Beelzebub in truth, and had never been a little boy at all—let alone a heartbroken and lonely one—but had sprung fully grown from the skull of the Prince of Darkness, much as Athena had popped out of Zeus’ head.
But that, she soon understood, was what Dain wanted her to believe: that he was a heartless debauchee whose primary interest in her was lascivious, and who viewed her as an amusing toy, no more.
By Friday, he had debauched her in the window seat of his bedroom, an alcove off the portrait gallery, under the pianoforte in the music room, and against the door of her sitting room—in front of his mother’s portrait, no less. And that was only the daytime depravity.
At least when they were making love he was consistently passionate. Whatever he might be able to pretend when cool and rational, he could not pretend he didn’t want her—badly—or that making her equally lust-crazed wasn’t crucial element of the business.
The rest of the time, however, he was the Dain everyone believed he was. For hours at a stretch he could be amiable, even charming. Then, for no ascertainable reason, he’d turn on her, trickling sarcasm over her like acid, or patronizing her, or casually uttering a handful of words nicely calculated to turn her mind black with rage.
The message, in other words, was that Jessica was permitted to desire him; she was not, however, to insult him with any softer emotions, such as affection or compassion. She was not, in short, to try to get under his skin or—heaven forfend!—weasel her way into his black, rotten heart.
This was not in the least fair, considering that the beast had already crept under her skin and was rapidly fastening like a pernicious parasite upon her heart. He didn’t even have to work at it. She was falling in love with him—in spite of everything and against her better judgment—more slowly, yes, but just as inexorably as she’d fallen in lust with him.
That didn’t mean, however, that she wasn’t strongly tempted to do him a violent injury. When it came to being exasperating, Dain was a genius. By Friday, she was debating the relative merits of putting another bullet through him and trying to decide which portion of his anatomy she could most easily live without.
By Saturday, she’d decided that his brain was probably the most dispensable.
He had awakened in the wee hours, randy, and wakened her to remedy the ailment. Which, it turned out, required two treatments. Consequently, they’d overslept.
As a result of their late start for Devonport, they arrived at the wrestling match minutes after it began, and failed to get a suitable place in the crowd. And everything was Jessica’s fault—because he wouldn’t have become randy, Dain had complained, if she hadn’t been sleeping with her hindquarters squashed against his privates.
“We’re too close,” he complained now, his arm protectively about her shoulders. “In another few rounds, you’ll be spattered with sweat—and very possibly blood, if Sawyer doesn’t stop kicking Keast in the knees.”
Jessica did not remind him that he was the one who’d insisted on elbowing his way to the front.
“That’s how Cann dealt with Polkinhorne,” she said. “I understood kicking was permissible in west country wrestling.”
“I wish that someone in this crowd believed soap and water were permissible,” he muttered, glancing about him. “I’ll wager fifty quid there isn’t a human being within a mile who’s had a bath in the last twelvemonth.”
All Jessica noticed were the usual male odors of spirits, tobacco, and musk—and she had to concentrate hard to notice, because she was pressed against her husband’s side, and his distinctive scent was making her toes curl. It took considerable effort to remain focused on the match, when his warm body was conjuring heated recollections of feverish lovemaking in the small hours of the morning. His big hand dangled but a few inches from her breast. She wondered whether anyone in the crowd pressing about them would notice if she shifted to close the distance.
She hated herself for wishing to close it.
“This match is pathetic,” Dain grumbled. “I could bring Sawyer down with both hands tied and one leg broken. Gad, even you could do it, Jess. I cannot believe Sherburne traveled two hundred miles to witness this abysmal spectacle, when he might have stayed comfortably at home and pumped his wife. One might understand if the girl were bracket-faced or spotty—but she’s well enough, if one has a taste for those China doll creatures. And if she isn’t to his taste, then why in blazes did the fool marry her? It wasn’t as though she had a bun in the oven—nor is she like to have, when he’s never home to do the business.”
The speech was typical of Dain’s mood this day: All the world was in conspiracy to annoy him. Even Sherburne, because he had not…stayed comfortably home with his wife.
Comfortably? Jessica blinked once in astonishment. Good grief, had she actually made progress with her thickheaded husband after all?
Suppressing a smile, she looked up into his cross countenance. “My lord, you do not seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“The stench is intolerable,” he said, glaring past her. “And that sodding swine Ainswood is leering at you. I vow, the man is begging to have his sotted head separated from his shoulders.”
“Ainswood?” She craned her neck, but she could not recognize any faces in the mob.
“You needn’t look back at him,” Dain said. “He is such an idiot, he’ll take it for encouragement. Oh, lovely, now Tolliver’s at it. And Vawtry, too.”
“I’m sure it’s you they’re looking at,” Jessica said mollifyingly, while her spirits soared. The brute was actually jealous. “They probably had wagers going as to whether you’d come, and Ainswood is not leering, but gloating, because he’s won.”
“Then I wish I’d stayed at home. In bed.” Dain frowned down at her. “But no, my wife’s existence will be rendered meaningless if she cannot see a wrestling match, and so—”
“And so you sacrificed your comfort to indulge me. Then, after all the bother, it turns out not to be a proper match at all. You are vexed because you meant this to be a treat for me, and you think it’s spoiled.”
His frown deepened. “Jessica, you are humoring me. I am not a child. I have a strong aversion to being humored.”
“If you do not wish to be humored, then you should stop fussing about everything in the world and say plainly what the matter is.” She returned her attention to the wrestlers. “I am not a mind reader.”
“Fussing?” he echoed, his hand falling away from her. “Fussing?”
“Like a two-year-old who’s missed his nap,” she said.
“A two-year-old?”
She nodded, her eyes ostensibly upon the match, her consciousness riveted upon the outraged male beside her.
He took one—two—three furious breaths. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Back to the carriage. Now.”
Dain did not make it to the carriage. He barely made it to the outer edge of the spectators, and the carriage was a good distance beyond, thanks to their late arrival and the mass of vehicles that had preceded them. Crested coaches were jammed against lowly farm wagons, and the disgruntled beings left to mind the cattle were relieving their vexations by quarreling loudly among themselves.
Having vexations of his own to relieve, and convinced he’d explode long before he found the carriage, Dain hurried his wife to the first unoccupied area he spotted.
It was a burial ground, attached to a tiny, crumbling church in which Dain doubted any services had been conducted since the Armada. The grave-stones, their inscriptions long since eroded by salt air, listed drunkenly in every direction but upright. Those, that is, making any pretense of standing. Nearly half had given up the attempt ages ago, and sprawled where they’d fallen, with the tall weeds huddled about them like pickpockets about a gin-sotted sailor.
“It’s as though the place didn’t exist,” Jessica said, looking about her and apparently oblivious to the big, angry hand clutching her arm as he relentlessly marched her along. “As though no one has noticed or cared that it’s here. How odd.”
“You won’t find it so odd in a moment,” he said. “You’ll wish you didn’t exist.”
“Where are we going, Dain?” she asked. “I’m sure this isn’t a shortcut to the carriage.”
“You’ll be very lucky if it isn’t a shortcut to your funeral.”
“Oh, look!” she cried. “What splendid rhododendrons.”
Dain did not have to follow her pointing finger. He’d already spotted the gigantic shrubs, with their masses of white, pink, and purple blooms. He’d also discerned the pillared gateway in their midst. He supposed a wall had once been attached to the gateway, either enclosing the church property or the property beyond. For all he knew, the wall might still be there, or parts of it, hidden by the thick mass of rhododendrons. All he cared about was the “hidden” part. The shrubs formed an impenetrable screen from passersby.
He marched his wife to the gateway and hauled her to the right pillar, which was better concealed, and backed her up against it.
“A two-year-old, am I, my lady?” He tore off his right glove with his teeth. “I’ll teach you how old I am.” He stripped off the other glove.
He reached for his trouser buttons.
Her glance shot to his hand.
He swiftly undid the three buttons of his small falls, and the flap fell open.
He heard her suck in her breath.
His rapidly swelling shaft was pushing against the fabric of his French bearer. It took him nine seconds to release the nine buttons. His rod sprang out, throbbing hotly at attention.
Jessica sank back against the pillar, her eyes closed.
He dragged up her skirts. “I’ve wanted you the whole curst day, drat you,” he growled.
He had waited too long to bother with drawer strings or anything like finesse. He found the slit of her drawers and thrust his fingers inside and tangled them in the silky curls.
He had but to touch her—a few impatient caresses—and she was ready, pushing against his fingers, her breathing quick and shallow.
He thrust into her, and scorching joy bolted through him at the slick, hot welcome he found, and the low moan of pleasure he heard. He grasped her bottom and lifted her up.
She wrapped her legs round him and, clutching his shoulders, threw back her head and gave a throaty laugh. “I’ve wanted you, too, Dain. I thought I’d go mad.”
“Fool,” he said. Mad she was, to want such an animal.
“Your fool,” she said.
“Stop it, Jess.” She was nobody’s fool, least of all his.
“I love you.”
The words shot through him and beat upon his heart. He couldn’t let them in.
He withdrew almost completely, only to drive again, harder this time.
“You can’t stop me,” she gasped. “I love you.”
Again and again he stormed into her in hard, fierce thrusts.
But he couldn’t stop her.
“I love you,” she told him, repeating it at every thrust, as though she would drive the words into him, as he drove his body into hers.
“I love you,” she said, even as the earth shook, and the heavens opened up and rapture blasted through him like lightning.
He covered her mouth to shut out the three fatal words, but they were spilling into his parched heart even while his seed spilled into her. He couldn’t stop his heart from drinking in those words, couldn’t keep it from believing them. He had tried to keep her out, just as he’d tried not to need more from her than was safe. Futile.
He never had been, never would be, safe from her.
Femme fatale.
Still, there were worse ways to die.
And Carpe diem, he told himself, as he collapsed against her.
As he might have expected, Dain emerged from paradise and walked straight into a nightmare.
By the time they’d left the churchyard and begun hunting for their carriage, the ludicrous match had ended, ludicrously, in a technical dispute. The spectators were streaming out in all directions, a part of the mob heading toward the town proper and another part away toward the mass of vehicles.
A short distance from the carriage, Vawtry hailed him.
“I’ll wait in the carriage,” Jessica said, slipping her hand from Dain’s arm. “I cannot possibly be expected to conduct a rational conversation at present.”
Though he doubted he could, either, Dain managed a knowing chuckle. Letting her go on to the vehicle, he joined Vawtry.
They were soon joined by several others, Ainswood included, and in a moment Dain was caught up in the general indignation about the grievously disappointing wrestlers.
Vawtry was in the midst of reviewing the disputed throw when Dain noticed that Ainswood was not attending at all, but staring past him.
Sure the man was gawking at Jessica again, Dain bent a warning frown upon him.
Ainswood didn’t notice. Turning back, grinning, to Dain, he said, “Looks like your footman’s got himself a bit more than a handful.”
Dain followed the duke’s amused glance. Jessica was in the carriage, out of reach of His Grace’s leering gaze.
Meanwhile, though, Joseph—who, as first footman, danced attendance upon Lady Dain—was struggling with a ragged, filthy urchin. A pickpocket, by the looks of it. Sporting events attracted them, like the whores, in droves.
Joseph managed to get the ragamuffin by the collar, but the brat twisted about and kicked him. Joseph bellowed. The guttersnipe answered with a stream of profanity that would have done a marine credit.
At that moment, the carriage door opened, and Jessica started out. “Joseph! What in blazes are you about?”
Though well aware she could handle the contretemps—whatever it was—Dain was also aware that he was supposed to be the authority figure…and his friends were watching.
He hurried over to intercept her.
A bloodcurdling scream came from behind him.
It startled Joseph, loosening his grasp. The ragamuffin broke free, and was off like a shot.
But Dain charged at the same moment and, catching the shoulder of his filthy jacket, hauled the brat to a stop. “See here, you little—”
Then he broke off, because the boy had looked up, and Dain was looking down…into sullen black eyes, narrowed above a monstrous beak of a nose, in a dark, scowling face.
Dain’s hand jerked away.
The boy didn’t move. The sullen eyes widened and the scowling mouth fell open.
“Yes, lovely,” came a strident female voice at the edges of the waking nightmare. “That’s your pa, just like I said. Just like you. Aren’t you, my lord? And isn’t he just like you?”
Hideously like. As though the space between them were not air, but five and twenty years, and the face below his own, looking back from some devil’s mirror.
And it was the voice of Satan’s own whore he’d heard, Dain knew, even before he met Charity Graves’ malevolent gaze—just as, when he saw that malevolence, he knew she’d done this on purpose, as she’d done everything, including bringing this monstrous child into the world.
He opened his mouth to laugh, because he must, because it was the only way.
Then he remembered they were not alone upon a nightmare island in Hell, but upon a public stage, enacting this ghastly farce before an audience.
And one of the spectators was his wife.
Though a lifetime seemed to have passed, it was but a moment, and Dain was already moving, instinctively, to block Jessica’s view of the boy. But the brat had also come out of his daze and, in the same instant, darted away into the crowd.
“Dominick!” his accursed mother screamed. “Come back, lovey.”
Dain’s gaze shot to his wife, who stood about twenty feet away, looking from the woman to him—then beyond, to the mob into which the boy had disappeared. Dain started toward her, sending a glance in Ainswood’s direction.
Drunk he may be, as usual, but the duke got the message. “By gad, is that you, Charity, my flower?” he called.
Charity was hurrying toward the carriage—toward Jessica—but Ainswood had moved quickly. He caught the bitch by the arm and firmly drew her back. “By heaven, it is you,” he loudly announced. “And here I thought you were still locked up in the asylum.”
“Let me go!” she screeched. “I got something to say to Her Ladyship.”
But Dain had reached his wife’s side by this time. “Into the carriage,” he told Jessica.
Her eyes were very wide, very grave. She threw a look toward Charity, whom Ainswood was hustling away, with the assistance of several comrades who’d also grasped the situation.
“She isn’t right in the head,” said Dain. “It’s not important. Into the carriage, my dear.”
Jessica sat rigidly in the carriage, her hands tightly folded in her lap. She remained so, her mouth compressed in a taut line, while the vehicle lurched into motion, and she did not utter a syllable or change her frigid posture thereafter.
After twenty minutes of riding with a marble statue, Dain could bear it no longer. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I promised you would not be embarrassed in public, I know. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I should think that was obvious.”
“I know very well you didn’t sire the child on purpose,” she said icily. “That is rarely the first thing a male thinks of when he’s tumbling a trollop.”
So much for hoping she hadn’t been able to see the boy’s face.
He might have known. Her keen eyes missed nothing. If she could discern a priceless icon under inches of mold and dirt, she could easily spot a bastard at twenty paces.
She had seen, beyond a doubt. Jessica would not have judged the matter on a tart’s words alone. If she hadn’t seen, she would have given Dain a chance to defend himself. And he would have denied Charity’s accusation.
But now there would be no denying the blackamoor skin and the monstrous nose—visible, easily identifiable for miles. No hope of denying, when Jessica had observed as well that the mother was fair, green-eyed and auburn-haired.
“And it is no good trying to pretend you didn’t know the child was yours,” Jessica went on. “Your friend Ainswood knew, and he moved quickly enough to get the woman out of the way—as though I were a half-wit, and could not see what was before me. ‘Asylum,’ indeed. It’s the lot of you who belong in Bedlam. Running about like overwrought hens—and meanwhile the boy gets away. You had him.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing angry reproach. “But you let him go. How could you, Dain? I could not believe my eyes. Where the devil were your wits?”
He stared at her.
She turned back to the window. “Now we’ve lost him, and heaven only knows how long it will take to find him again. I could just scream. If I had not gone with you to the churchyard, I might have been able to catch him. But I could scarcely walk, let alone run—and I must not contradict you in public, so I could hardly shout, ‘After him, idiot!’ in front of your friends—even if it had not been too late, anyhow. I cannot recollect when I’ve seen a little boy take off so fast. One moment he was there. The next, he’d vanished.”
His heart was a fist, beating mercilessly against his ribs.
Find him. Catch him.
She wanted him to go after the hideous thing he’d made with that greedy, vengeful slut. She wanted him to look at it and touch it and…
“No!” The word exploded from him, a roar of denial, and with it, Dain’s mind turned black and cold.
The small, dark face he’d looked into had turned his insides into a seething pit of emotion it had wanted every iota of his will to contain. His wife’s words had sent the lava spilling through the crevices.
But the frigid darkness had come, as it always did, to preserve him, and it smothered feeling, as it always did.
“No,” he repeated quietly, his voice cold and controlled. “There will be no finding. She had no business having him in the first place. Charity Graves knew well enough how to get rid of such ‘inconveniences.’ She’d done it countless times thereafter, I don’t doubt.”
His wife was staring at him now, her face pale and shocked, just as she’d looked when he told her about his mother.
“But wealthy aristocrats don’t come Charity’s way very often,” he went on, telling this tale in the same coldly brutal way he’d related his mother’s. “And when she found she was breeding, she knew the brat was either mine or Ainswood’s. Either way, she imagined she had a ripe pigeon to pluck. When the brat turned out to be mine, she didn’t waste a minute finding out the name of my solicitor. She wrote to him promptly enough, proposing an allowance of five hundred a year.”
“Five hundred?” Jessica’s color returned. “To a professional? And not even your mistress, either, but a common trollop you shared with your friend?” she added indignantly. “And one who had the babe on purpose—not a respectable girl got in the family way—”
“Respectable? Did you imagine, even for an instant, Jess, that I—gad, what? I seduced—lured an innocent—and left her breeding?”
His voice had begun to rise. Clenching his fist, he added levelly, “You know very well I had managed to avoid entanglements with respectable females until you exploded into my life.”
“Certainly I never imagined you would go to the bother of seducing an innocent,” she said crisply. “It simply hadn’t occurred to me that a trollop might have a babe through pure greed. Even now I have difficulty imagining a woman being so wrongheaded. Five hundred pounds.” She shook her head. “I doubt even the Royal Dukes support their by-blows in such luxury. No wonder you are so outraged. And no wonder, either, there is so much ill feeling between you and the boy’s mother. I had a suspicion she went out of her way to embarrass you. She must have heard—or seen—that you had your wife with you.”
“If she tries it again,” he said grimly, “I’ll have her and the guttersnipe she spawned transported. If she comes within twenty miles of you—”
“Dain, the woman is one matter,” she said. “The child is another. He did not ask to have her for a mother, any more than he asked to be born. She was exceedingly unkind to use him as she did today. No child should be subjected to such a scene. Still, I strongly doubt she considers anybody’s feelings but her own. I noticed that she was far better dressed than her so-called ‘lovey.’ Dirt is one thing—little boys cannot remain clean above two and a half minutes—but there is no excuse for the child to wear rags, when his mother is garbed like a London high-flyer.”
She looked up at him. “How much do you give her, by the way?”
“Fifty,” he said tightly. “More than enough to feed and clothe him—and let her spend all she makes on her back on herself. But I daresay the rags were all part of her game: to make me appear the villain of the piece. Too bad I’m accustomed to the role, and that what other fools think does not concern me in the least.”
“Fifty a year is more than generous. How old is he?” Jessica demanded. “Six, seven?”
“Eight, but it makes no—”
“Old enough to notice his appearance,” she said. “I cannot excuse his mother for dressing him so shabbily. She has the money, and ought to know how a boy of that age would feel. Mortified, I don’t doubt—which is why he annoyed Joseph. But she does not consider the child, as I said, and all you have told me only convinces me she is an unfit mother. I must ask you, Dain, to set aside your feelings toward her, and consider your son. He is yours by law. You can take him away from her.”
“No.” He had smothered feeling, but his head had begun to pound, and his useless arm was throbbing. He could not freeze and smother physical pain. He could scarcely think past it. Even if he could have reasoned coolly, there was no explanation he could give for his behavior that would satisfy her.
He shouldn’t have tried to explain, he told himself. He could never make her understand. Above all, he didn’t want her to comprehend, any more than he wanted to himself, what he’d felt when he’d looked down into that face, into the devil’s mirror.
“No,” he repeated. “And stop fussing about it, Jess. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on coming to the bedamned wrestling match. By gad, I cannot seem to stir a foot when you are by without”—he gestured wearily—“without things going off in my face. No wonder I have a headache. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Women. Everywhere. Wives and Madonnas and mothers and whores and—and you’re plaguing me to death, the lot of you.”
By this time, Roland Vawtry had relieved Ainswood and the others of responsibility for Charity Graves and was marching her into the inn where she claimed to be staying.
She was not supposed to be staying at an inn in Devonport. She was supposed to be where he’d left her two days earlier, in Ashburton, where she’d said nothing about Dain or Dain’s bastard. There, all she had done was sashay into the public room and settle at a table nearby with a fellow who seemed to know her. After a while, the fellow had left, and Vawtry’s comrades having departed for assignations of their own, he had found himself sharing the table with her and buying her a tankard of ale. After which they had adjourned for a few rollicking hours of what Beaumont had claimed Vawtry badly needed.
Beaumont had been right on that count, as he seemed to be on so many others.
But Beaumont didn’t have to be here now to point out that what Charity Graves badly needed was to be beaten within an inch of her life.
The inn, fortunately, was not a respectable one, and no one made a murmur when Vawtry stomped up after her to her room. As soon as he’d shut the door, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“You lying, sneaking, troublemaking little strumpet!” he burst out. Then he broke away, fearing he would kill her, and certain that he did not badly need to be hanged for murdering a tart.
“Oh, my,” she said with a laugh. “I fear you’re not happy to see me, Rolly, my love.”
“Don’t call me that—and I’m not your love, you stupid cow. You’re going to get me killed. If Dain finds out I was with you in Ashburton, he’s sure to think I put you up to that scene.”
He flung himself into a chair. “Then he’ll take me apart, piece by piece. And ask questions later.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “And it’s no use hoping he won’t find out, because nothing ever goes right when it comes to him. I vow, it must be a curse. Twenty thousand pounds—slipped through my hands—I didn’t even know it was there—and now this. Because I didn’t know you were there—here—either. And the brat—his bastard. Who knew he had one? But now everyone does—thanks to you—including her—and if he doesn’t kill me, the bitch will shoot me.”
Charity approached. “Did you say ‘twenty thousand,’ lovey?” She sat on his lap and drew his arm around her and pressed his hand against her ample breast.
“Leave me alone,” he grumbled. “I’m not in the mood.”
Roland Vawtry’s mood was one of black despair.
He was mired in debt, with no way of getting out, ever, because he was Dame Fortune’s dependent, and she was capricious, as Beaumont had so wisely warned. She gave a priceless icon to a man who already had more than he could spend in three lifetimes. She took away from a man who had next to nothing, and left him with less than nothing. She could not even give him a tart without making that female the author of his demise.
Mr. Vawtry truly believed himself to be at the last stages of desperation. The modest stock of common sense and self-confidence he’d once possessed had been ruthlessly vandalized in a matter of days by a man whose primary delight in life was making other people miserable.
Vawtry was incapable of recognizing that his situation wasn’t half so catastrophic as it appeared, any more than he recognized Francis Beaumont as the insidious agent destroying his peace of mind.
His mind poisoned, Vawtry believed that his friendship with Dain was the source of his troubles. “‘He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,’” Beaumont had quoted, and Roland Vawtry had promptly realized that his spoon had been too short for dining with the likes of Dain, and that his own case was the same as Bertie Trent’s. Association with Beelzebub had ruined them both.
Now, Vawtry was not only ruined, but—thanks to Charity—in imminent danger of a violent death. He needed to think—or better yet, run for his life. He knew he couldn’t do either of those things properly while his lap was filled with a buxom trollop.
All the same, angry as he was with her, he felt disinclined to push her off. Her luxurious bosom was warm and soft, and she was stroking his hair back, just as though he had not nearly killed her minutes earlier. A woman’s touch—even that of a brazen whore—was very comforting.
Under the comforting touch, Vawtry’s mind softened toward her. After all, Dain had done Charity an ill turn as well. At least she’d had the courage to confront him.
Besides, she was pretty—very pretty—and exceedingly jolly company in bed. Vawtry squeezed her breast and kissed her.
“There now, you see how naughty you’ve been,” she said. “As though I wouldn’t look after you. Silly boy.” She ruffled his hair. “He won’t think anything like what you say. All I have to do is tell people how Mr. Vawtry paid me…” She considered. “Paid me twenty pounds to keep out of the way and not bother his very dear friend, Lord Dain. I’ll tell ’em how you said I wasn’t to spoil the honeymoon.”
How clever she was. Vawtry buried his face in her plump, pretty bosom.
“But I come—came—anyhow, because I’m a wicked, lying whore,” she continued. “And you was—were—that vexed with me, you beat me.” She kissed the top of his head. “That’s what I’ll say.”
“I wish I had twenty pounds,” he mumbled to her bodice. “I’d give it to you. I would. Oh, Charity, what am I to do?”
She, possessing an innate skill for her profession, showed him what to do, and he, having a knack for misconstruing the obvious, interpreted professional skill as feeling for him. Before many hours had passed, he’d confided all his troubles to her, and for hours after, while he lay asleep in her arms, Charity Graves lay awake planning how to make all her dreams come true.