Dain 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 bewildered 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. “mia Cara, 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 footsteps—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 eyewitness 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.
“Obviously he hasn’t brought Bertie back,” she said, “or I would have heard my brother hallooing in the hall by now.”
“Lord Dain’s servant refused to respond to Tesson’s enquiry,” said Withers. “When Tesson loyally persisted, the insolent footman ejected him bodily from the front step. The servants, Miss Trent, are abominably well suited, in point of character, to the master.”
It was one thing, Jessica thought angrily, for Dain to exploit her brother’s weaknesses. It was altogether another matter to allow his lackeys to abuse an overworked porter for trying to deliver a message.
“Pardon one offense,” Publilius had said, “and you encourage the commission of many.”
Jessica was not about to pardon this. Fists clenched, she marched to the door. “I do not care if the servant is Mephistopheles himself,” she said. “I should like to see him try to eject me.”
A very short time later, while her terrified maid, Flora, cowered in a dirty Parisian hackney, Jessica was plying the knocker of Lord Dain’s street door.
A liveried English footman opened it. He was close to six feet tall. As he insolently eyed her up and down, Jessica had no trouble deducing what was going through his mind. Any servant with a pennyweight of intelligence would see that she was a lady. On the other hand, no lady would ever come knocking on the door of an unwed gentleman. The trouble was, Dain wasn’t a gentleman. She did not wait for the footman to work out the conundrum.
“The name is Trent,” she said briskly. “And I am not accustomed to being kept standing on a door-step while an idle lout of a lackey gawks at me. You have exactly three seconds to step out of the way. One. Two—”
He backed away and she strode past him into the vestibule.
“Get my brother,” she said.
He was staring at her in numb disbelief. “Miss—Miss—”
“Trent,” she said. “Sir Bertram’s sister. I want to see him. Now.” She rapped the point of her umbrella upon the marble floor for emphasis.
Jessica had adopted the tone and manner she’d found effective in dealing with unruly boys bigger than she was and with those of her uncles’ and aunts’ servants who made nonsensical remarks such as “Master wouldn’t like it” or “Missus says I may not.” Hers was a tone and manner that assured the listener of only two choices: obedience or death. It proved as effective in this case as in most others.
The footman darted a panicked look toward the stairway at the end of the hall. “I—I can’t, miss,” he said in a frightened whisper. “He—he’ll kill me. No interruptions. None, miss. Ever.”
“I see,” she said. “You’re brave enough to throw a porter half your size into the street, but you—”
A shot rang out.
“Bertie!” she cried. Dropping her umbrella, Jessica ran toward the staircase.
Normally the sound of a pistol shot, even if followed, as this was, by feminine screams, would not have thrown Jessica into a panic. The trouble was, her brother was in the vicinity. If Bertie was in the vicinity of a ditch, he was sure to fall into it. If Bertie was in the vicinity of an open window, he was sure to tumble out of it.
Ergo, if Bertie was in the vicinity of a moving bullet, he may be counted upon to walk straight into it.
Jessica knew better than to hope he hadn’t been hit. She only prayed she could stop the bleeding.
She raced up the long stairway and into the hall and headed unerringly toward the shrieks—feminine—and drunken shouts—masculine.
She flung open a door.
The first thing she saw was her brother lying faceup on the carpet.
For an instant, that was all she saw. She hurried to the body. Just as she was kneeling to examine it, Bertie’s chest heaved jerkily and he let out a loud snore—a loud, wine-reeking snore that drove her instantly upright again.
Then she noticed that the room was as still as a tomb.
Jessica glanced about her.
Strewn about the chairs and sofas and sprawling over tables were, in various stages of dishabille, about a dozen men. Some she’d never seen before. Some—Vawtry, Sellowby, Goodridge—she recognized. With them were a number of women, all members of an ancient profession.
Then her gaze lit upon Dain. He sat in an immense chair, a pistol in his hand and two buxom trollops—one fair, the other dark—in his lap. They were staring at her and, like everyone else, seemed frozen in the same position they’d been in when she’d burst through the door. The darker female had apparently been in the act of tugging Dain’s shirt from his waistband, while the other had evidently been assisting the process by unfastening his trouser buttons.
To be surrounded by a lot of half-dressed, drunken men and women in the early stages of an orgy did not distress Jessica in the least. She had seen little boys running about naked—on purpose to make the females of the household scream—and she had more than once been treated to the sight of a bare adolescent bottom, for this was often a male cousin’s idea of witty repartee.
She was not in the least disconcerted or agitated by her present surroundings. Even the pistol in Dain’s hand didn’t alarm her, since it had already gone off and would need to be reloaded.
The only disturbing sensation she experienced was an altogether irrational urge to rip those two strumpets’ hair out by the dyed roots and break all their fingers. She told herself this was silly. They were merely businesswomen, doing what they were paid for. She told herself she felt sorry for them, and this was why she felt so acutely unhappy.
She almost believed that. At any rate, whether she did or didn’t, she was mistress of herself and, therefore, of any situation.
“I thought he was dead,” Jessica said, nodding at her unconscious brother. “But he’s only dead drunk. My mistake.” She walked to the door. “Do carry on, monsieurs. And mademoiselles.”
And out she went.
Up to a point, Lord Dain decided, all had gone swimmingly. He had finally worked out a solution to his temporary problem with trollops. If he couldn’t tolerate having them in a brothel or in the streets, he would have them at home.
It would not be the first time.
Nine years ago, at his father’s funeral, a round-heeled local girl named Charity Graves had taken his fancy, and he had taken her, a few hours later, in the great ancestral bed. She had been jolly enough company, but not nearly so jolly as the thought of his recently deceased sire spinning in the tomb of his noble ancestors—and most of the ancestors whirling along with him.
An annoyance had resulted nine months later, but that was easily enough dealt with. Dain’s man of business had dealt with it to the tune of fifty pounds per annum.
Since then, Dain had confined himself to whores who plied their trade according to businesslike rules, and knew better than to produce—let alone attempt to manipulate and blackmail him with—squalling brats.
Denise and Marguerite understood the rules, and he had every intention of getting properly down to business at last.
Just as soon as he dealt with Miss Trent.
Though Dain had felt certain she would accost him sooner or later, he had not expected her to explode into his drawing room. Still, that was, in a general way, in accordance with his plans. Her brother was falling to pieces with a gratifying rapidity, now that Dain had taken an active role in his disintegration.
Miss Trent would certainly know why. And being a clever female, she would soon be obliged to admit she’d made a grave error in trying to play the Marquess of Dain for a fool. He had decided she would be obliged to admit it upon her knees. Then she would have to beg for mercy.
That was where matters seemed to have gone awry.
All she had done was give her brother one bored look and the guests another, and dropped a faintly amused glance upon Dain himself. Then, cool as you please, the insufferable creature had turned her back and walked out.
For six days, Dain had spent nearly all his waking hours with her accursed brother, pretending to be that dithering imbecile’s bosom bow. For six days, Trent had been yapping in Dain’s ears, nipping at his heels, slavering and panting for attention, and tripping over his own feet and any hapless object or human in his way. After nearly a week of having his nerves scraped raw by her brainless puppy of a brother, all Dain had accomplished was to find himself the object of Miss Trent’s amusement.
“Allez-vous en,” he said in a very low voice. Denise and Marguerite instantly leapt up from his lap and darted to opposite corners of the room.
“I say, Dain,” Vawtry began mollifyingly.
Dain shot him one incinerating glance. Vawtry reached for a wine bottle and hastily refilled his glass.
Dain set down the pistol, stalked to the door and through it, and slammed it behind him.
After that, he moved quickly. He reached the landing in time to see Trent’s sister pause at the front door and look about for something.
“Miss Trent,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The angry baritone reverberated through the hall like low thunder.
She jerked open the door and darted through it.
He watched the door close and told himself to return to shooting the noses off the plaster cherubs on the ceiling, because if he went after her, he’d kill her. Which was unacceptable, because Dain did not, under any circumstances, sink to allowing any member of the inferior sex to provoke him.
Even while he was counseling himself, he was running down the remaining stairs and down the long hall to the door. He wrenched it open and stormed out, the door crashing behind him.