Lord of Scoundrels (11 page)

He leafed through the pages, dropping several on the floor in the process.

It was then Jessica realized he wasn’t using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn’t be, except for a minor bullet wound. She’d aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.

He looked her way then, and caught her staring. “Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you’d like a better look. Regrettably, there’s nothing to see. There’s nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn’t work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn’t aim a ways lower. I’m merely disarmed, not unmanned. But I have no doubt Herriard here will see to the emasculation.”

Her conscience pricked. She ignored it. “You got—and
will
get exactly as you deserve, you deceitful, spiteful brute.”

“Miss Trent,” Herriard said gently.

“No, I will not guard my tongue,” she said. “His Lordship wanted me present because he wanted a row. He knows very well he’s in the wrong, but he’s too curst stubborn to admit it. He wants to make me out to be a scheming, greedy—”

“Vindictive,” said Dain. “Don’t leave out vindictive.”

“
I
, vindictive?” she exclaimed. “I was not the one who arranged to have the biggest gossips in Paris ‘happen along’ while I was half-undressed and being led—fool that I was—straight to ruination.”

His black brows rose a fraction. “You’re not implying, Miss Trent, that
I
arranged that farce.”

“I don’t have to imply anything! It was obvious. Vawtry was there.
Your
friend. And the others—those snide Parisian sophisticates. I know who arranged for them to watch me be disgraced. And I know why. You did it for spite. As though everything that’s happened—all the gossip, every dent in your precious reputation—were
my fault!
”

There was a short, taut silence. Then Dain threw the rest of the papers to the carpet, stalked to the decanter tray, and helped himself to a glass of sherry. He needed only one hand to do that, and only one swallow to empty it.

When he turned back to her, the irritating mockery of a smile was in place. “It would appear that we’ve been laboring under the same misapprehension,” he said. “I thought
you
had arranged for the—er—interruption.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “You also seem to labor under the misapprehension that you are a splendid catch—in addition to mistaking me for a lunatic.
If
I were desperate for a husband—which I have not been and never will be—I should not have to resort to such ancient, pathetic tricks.”

She drew herself up. “I may appear a negligible, dried-up spinster to you, my lord, but yours, I assure you, is the minority view. I am unwed by choice, not for lack of offers.”

“But now you won’t get any,” he said. His sardonic gaze drifted lazily over her, making her skin prickle. “Thanks to me. And that’s what all this is about.”

He set down the empty glass and turned to Herriard. “I’ve damaged the goods, and now I must pay what you deem the value of the merchandise, or else you will heap me with documents, plague me with barristers and clerks, and drag me through endless months of litigation.”

“If the law regarded women in a proper light, the process would not be endless,” said Mr. Herriard, unruffled. “The punishment would be severe and swift.”

“But we live in benighted times,” said Dain. “And I am, as Miss Trent will assure you, the most benighted of men. I have, among other quaint beliefs, the antiquated notion that if I pay for something, it ought to belong to me. Since I seem to have no choice but to pay for Miss Trent—”

“I am not a pocket watch,” she said tightly. She told herself she ought not feel in the least surprised that the cocksure clodpole proposed to settle matters by making her
his mistress
. “I am a human being, and you will never own me, no matter what you pay. You may have destroyed my honor in the eyes of the world, but you will not destroy it in fact.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Destroy your honor? My dear Miss Trent, I am proposing to
redeem
it. We shall be wed. Now, why don’t you sit down and be quiet like a good girl and let the men sort out the details.”

Jessica experienced a moment of numb incomprehension before the words struck, sharp and stunning as a blow to the head. The room darkened and everything within it wobbled drunkenly. She had to struggle to focus. “Wed?” Her voice sounded very far away, weak, plaintive.

“Herriard demands that I bail out your brother, and house and support you for the rest of your life,” he said. “Very well. I agree—but on the same terms any other man would insist upon: exclusive ownership and breeding rights.”

His hooded gaze dropped to her bodice, and heat simmered there and spread, just as though it had been his hands, not his eyes, upon her.

She summoned her composure. “I see what you are about,” she said. “It’s not a genuine offer at all, but a strategy to tie our hands. You know we can’t sue you if you offer to do the allegedly honorable thing. You also know I won’t marry you. And so you think you have us at
point non plus
.”

“I do,” he said, smiling. “If you refuse me and attempt litigation, you’ll only humiliate yourself. Everyone will believe you’re a money-hungry slut.”

“And if I accept your make-believe offer of marriage, you’ll play along until the last minute—and leave me waiting at the altar,” she said. “And humiliate me anyhow.”

He laughed. “And open the door to a long, expensive breach-of-promise suit? Make Herriard’s job easier for him? Think again, Jess. And keep it simple, why don’t you? Marriage or nothing.”

She snatched up the first thing at hand—a small but heavy brass figure of a horse.

Mr. Herriard stepped toward her. “Miss Trent,” he said quietly. “I beg you will resist the temptation.”

“Might as well,” said Dain. “It won’t do a bit of good. I can duck a missile, if not a bullet.”

She set down the statue and turned to Herriard. “You see, don’t you?” she asked. “He’s not offering in order to make amends, because he doesn’t think he owes me any. All he wants is to get the better of me—and getting the better of you in the bargain will make his triumph all the sweeter to him.”

“It hardly matters what you think of me,” said Dain. “There are only two choices. And if you’re waiting for me to make it more palatable by falling to my knees and begging for your hand, Jess, you may wait until Judgment Day,” he added with a laugh.

She heard it then, faint but recognizable. She’d heard it before, in boyish boasts and taunts: the small, discordant note of uncertainty beneath the laughter. She swiftly reviewed the words he’d uttered, and wondered if that was all his pride would allow him to say. Masculine pride was an exceedingly precious and fragile item. That was why males built fortresses about it, practically from infancy.

I’m not afraid
, boys said, laughing, when they were sick with terror. They laughed off floggings and pretended to feel nothing. They also dropped rodents and reptiles into the laps of little girls they were infatuated with, and laughed in that same uncertain way when the little girls ran away screaming.

His proposal was, perhaps, the equivalent of a gift of a reptile or rodent. If she indignantly rejected it, he would laugh, and tell himself that was precisely what he wanted.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Jessica reminded herself that “maybe” was hardly a reliable basis for marriage.

On the other hand, Genevieve had advised her to reel him in. Even as late as this morning, after all that had happened, Genevieve had not changed her mind. “I know he behaved abominably, and I do not blame you for shooting him,” she said. “But recollect that he was interrupted at a time a man most dislikes interruption. He was not thinking rationally. He could not. All the same, I am certain he cares for you. He did not look so insolent and cynical when he danced with you.”

“Marriage or nothing,” Dain’s impatient voice broke into her thoughts. “Those are the terms, the only terms. Take your pick, Jess.”

Dain told himself it didn’t matter. If she consented, he could at least exorcise his idiotic lust in exchange for the extortionate sum he had to pay. Then he could leave her in Devon and pick up his life again. If she refused, he’d pay nothing, and she would go away and stop plaguing him, and he would forget the lust and her. Either way, he won and she lost.

But his heart pounded all the same, and his gut twisted with a chill, throbbing dread he had not felt since his boyhood.

He set his jaw and endured while he watched her move away from Herriard toward a chair. But she didn’t sit down. She simply stared at it, her beautiful face a blank.

Herriard frowned. “Perhaps you want some time, Miss Trent. A few minutes of privacy. I am sure His Lordship would concede that much,” he said, turning the frown upon Dain. “After all, the lady’s entire future is at stake.”

“I don’t need more time,” said Miss Trent. “It is easy enough to calculate the assets and liabilities on either side.”

She looked up at Dain and, to his astonishment, smiled. “I find the prospect of a life of poverty and obscurity in a remote outpost of civilization singularly unattractive. I can think of nothing more absurd than living so merely for the sake of my pride. I had much rather be a wealthy marchioness. You are perfectly awful, of course, Dain, and I don’t doubt you’ll strive to make my life a misery to me. However, Mr. Herriard will see that I am well provided for in the mercenary sense. Also, I shall derive some personal satisfaction from knowing that you will have to eat every last contemptuous word you ever uttered about men who let themselves be trapped into marriage and entanglements with respectable women. I should give anything to be a fly on the wall when you explain your betrothal to your friends, my lord Beelzebub.”

He stared at her, afraid to trust his hearing.

“The answer is yes,” she said impatiently. “Do you think I’m such a sapskull as to say no, and let you off scot-free?”

He found his voice. “I knew that was too much to hope.”

She approached him. “What will you tell your friends, Dain? Something about marriage being less bother than having me chasing after you and shooting you, I suppose.”

She lightly touched his coat sleeve, and the small gesture made his chest constrict painfully.

“You ought to put it in a sling,” she said. “Make a show of it. Not to mention you’ll be less likely to damage it accidentally.”

“A sling would spoil the line of my coat,” he said stiffly. “And I don’t need to make a show of or explain anything.”

“Your friends will roast you unmercifully,” she said. “I should give anything to hear it.”

“I shall announce our betrothal to them tonight, at Antoine’s,” he said. “And they may make what they like of it. It’s nothing to me what those morons think. Meanwhile, I advise you to run along and pack. Herriard and I have business to discuss.”

She stiffened. “Pack?”

“We’ll leave for England the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll see to the travel arrangements. We’ll be married in London. I won’t have a mob descending upon the Dartmoor countryside and agitating the cattle. We can leave for Devon after the wedding breakfast.”

Her eyes darkened. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “We can be wed here. You might allow me to enjoy Paris for a while at least, before you exile me to Devon.”

“We will be wed in St. George’s, Hanover Square,” he said. “In a month’s time. I’ll be damned if I’ll plead with the sodding Archbishop of Canterbury for a special license. The banns will be read. And you may enjoy London in the interim. You are not staying in Paris, so just put that idea out of your head.”

The idea of the Marchioness of Dain living in the stewpot he called home on the Rue de Rivoli made his flesh creep. His lady wife would
not
sit at the table where half the degenerates of Paris had caroused and eaten and drunk until they were sick—and retched upon carpets and furniture. She would not embroider or read by the fire in a drawing room that had housed orgies the Romans would have envied.

He made a mental note to order a new mattress for the ancestral bed in Devon, and to have all the present bedclothes and hangings burnt. He would not have the Marchioness of Dain contaminated by the objects amid which he’d fathered a bastard upon Charity Graves.

“I have had a perfectly wretched time in Paris, thanks to you,” she said, her grey eyes sparking. “You might at least allow me to make up for it. I should not dream of expecting you to live in my pocket, but I should think I might be permitted to go to parties and enjoy my newly redeemed honor and—”

“You can go to parties in London,” he said. “You may have as grand a wedding breakfast as you like. You may buy all the frocks and fripperies you like. What the devil do you care where you are, so long as I pay the bills?”

“How can you be so insensitive?” she cried. “I do not wish to be hustled away from Paris as though I were a mortifying secret.”

“A
secret?
” His voice rose. “In St. George’s, Hanover Square? How much more bloody public and respectable can this infernal match be?”

He looked over her head at Herriard, who was at the table, tucking papers into his leather document case, his countenance expressing studied oblivion to the row. “Herriard, perhaps you can explain what harrowing crime I shall perpetrate with a London wedding.”

“This dispute is not within my jurisdiction,” said Herriard. “No more than is the number of wedding guests or any of the other disagreements which usually attend upon a betrothal. You will have to negotiate on your own.”

Lord Dain thought he’d endured enough “negotiating” for one day. He had not come intending to marry the author of his misery. Not consciously, at any rate. He had offered, he’d thought, only because he couldn’t bear to be cornered and harried and beaten by a vengeful little spinster and her diabolical lawyer.