Lord of Scoundrels (19 page)

“You don’t know what her life was like,” she said. “You were a child. You couldn’t know what she felt. She was a foreigner, and her husband was old enough to be her father.”

“Like Byron’s Donna Julia, you mean?” His voice dripped acid irony. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps Mama would have done better with two husbands, of five and twenty.”

“You don’t know whether your father treated her well or ill,” his wife persisted, like a teacher with a stubborn student. “You don’t know whether he made the way easy for her or impossible. For all you know, he may have made her wretched—which is more than likely, if his portrait offers an accurate indication of his character.”

And what of me?
he wanted to cry.
You don’t know what it was like for me, the hideous thing she left behind, shut out, shunned, mocked, abused. Left…to endure…and pay, dearly, for what others took for granted: tolerance, acceptance, a woman’s soft hand
.

He was appalled at his own inner rage and grief, the hysteria of a child…who had died five and twenty years ago.

He made himself laugh and meet her steady grey gaze with the mocking mask he wore so well. “If you’ve taken my sire in dislike, feel free to exile him to the North Tower. You may hang her in his place. Or in the chapel, for all I care.”

He headed for the door. “You needn’t consult me about redecorating. I know no female can live two days in a house and leave anything as it was. I shall be much astonished if I can find my way about when I return.”

“You’re going away?” Her tones remained steady. When he paused and turned at the threshold, she was looking out the window, her color back to normal, her countenance composed.

“To Devonport,” he said, wondering why her composure chilled him so. “A wrestling match. Sherburne and some other fellows. I’m to meet them at nine o’clock. I need to pack.”

“Then I must change orders for dinner,” she said. “I think I’ll dine in the morning room. But I had better have a nap before then, or I shall fall asleep into my plate. I have been over only about one quarter of the house, yet I feel as though I had walked from Dover to Land’s End.”

He wanted to ask what she thought of the house, what she liked—apart from the soul-shattering portrait of his mother—and what she didn’t like—besides the offensive landscape in the dining room, which he hadn’t liked, either, he recalled.

If he were not going away, he could have found out over dinner, in the cozy intimacy of the morning room.

Intimacy, he told himself, was the last thing he needed now. What he needed was to get away, where she could not turn him upside down and inside out with her heart-stopping “discoveries”…or torment him with her scent, her silken skin, the soft curves of her slender body.

It took all his self-control to walk, not run, from the room.

Jessica spent ten minutes trying to calm down. It didn’t work.

Unwilling to cope with Bridget or anyone else, she ran her own bath. Athcourt, fortunately, boasted the rare luxury of hot and cold running water, even on the second floor.

Neither solitude nor the bath calmed her down, and napping was impossible. Jessica lay on her large, lonely bed, stiff as a poker, glaring up at the canopy.

Barely three days wed, and the great jackass was abandoning her. For his friends. For a
wrestling match
.

She got up, pulled off her modest cotton night-gown, and stalked, naked, to her dressing room. She found the wine red and black silk negligee and put it on. She slipped into the black mules. She shrugged into a heavy black and gold silk dressing gown, tied the sash, and loosely draped the neckline so that a bit of the negligee peeped above it.

After running a brush through her hair, she returned to her bedchamber and exited through the door that opened into what Mrs. Ingleby had called the Withdrawing Chamber. At present, it housed part of Dain’s collection of artistic curios. It also adjoined His Lordship’s apartments.

She crossed the huge, dim room to the door that led to Dain’s rooms. She rapped. The muffled voices she’d heard while approaching abruptly ceased. After a moment, Andrews opened the door. As he took in her dishabille, he let out a gasp, which he quickly turned into a small, polite cough.

She turned a sweet, artless smile upon him. “Ah, you haven’t gone yet. I am so relieved. If His Lordship can spare a minute, I need to ask him something.”

Andrews glanced to his left. “My lord, Her Ladyship wishes—”

“I’m not deaf,” came Dain’s cross voice. “Get away from there and let her in.”

Andrews backed away and Jessica strolled in, glancing idly about her while she made her way slowly into the room and around the immense seventeenth-century bed to her husband. The bed was even larger than hers, about ten feet square.

Dain, in shirt, trousers, and stockinged feet, stood near the window. He was glaring down at his traveling case. It stood open upon a heavily carved table which she guessed had been built about the same time as the bed. He would not look at her.

“It is a…delicate matter,” she said, her voice hesitant, shy. She wished she could command a blush as well, but blushes did not come easily to her. “If we might be…private?”

He shot a glance at her, and back to the valise almost in the same instant. Then he blinked, and turned his head toward her once more, stiffly this time. Slowly he surveyed her, up and down and up again, pausing at the revealing neckline of her dressing gown. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

Then his face set, hard as granite. “Ready for your nap, I see.” He glowered past her at Andrews. “What are you waiting for? ‘Private,’ Her Ladyship said. Are you deaf?”

Andrews left, closing the door after him.

“Thank you, Dain,” Jessica said, smiling up at him. Then she stepped closer, took a handful of starched and neatly folded neckcloths from the valise, and dropped them on the floor.

He looked at her. He looked at the linen upon the floor.

She took out a stack of pristine white handkerchiefs and, still smiling, threw them down, too.

“Jessica, I don’t know what game you’re at, but it is not amusing,” he said very quietly.

She collected an armful of shirts and flung them onto the floor. “We have been wed scarcely three days,” she said. “You do
not
desert your new bride for your sapskull friends. You will not make a laughingstock of me. If you are unhappy with me, you say so, and we discuss it—or quarrel, if you prefer. But you do not—”

“You do not dictate to me,” he said levelly. “You do not tell me where I may and may not go—or when—or with whom. I do not explain and you do not question. And you do
not
come into my room and throw temper fits.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “If you leave this house, I will shoot your horse out from under you.”

“Shoot my—”

“I will not permit you to desert me,” she said. “You will not take me for granted as Sherburne does his wife, and you will not make all the world laugh at me—or pity me—as they do her. If you cannot bear to miss your precious wrestling match, you can jolly well take me with you.”

“Take you?” His voice climbed. “I’ll bloody well take you, madam—straight to your room. And lock you in, if you can’t behave yourself.”

“I should like to see you tr—”

He lunged at her, and she dodged an instant too late. In the next instant, she was slung up under one brawny arm, and he was hauling her like a sack of rags to the door she’d entered.

It stood open. Luckily, it opened into the room, and only one of her arms was trapped against his body.

She pushed the door shut.

“Bloody hell!”

Swearing was all he could do about it. He had only one usable hand, which was occupied. He couldn’t move the door handle without letting go of her.

He swore again. Turning, he marched to the bed and dumped her there.

As she fell back onto the mattress, her dressing gown fell open.

Dain’s furious black gaze stormed over her. “Damn you, Jess. Curse and confound you.” His voice was choked. “You will not—you cannot—” He reached out to grab her hand, but she scrambled back.

“You’re not going to put me out,” she said, retreating to the center of the huge bed. “I’m not a child and I will not be locked in my room.”

He knelt on the edge of the mattress. “Don’t think, just because you’ve crippled me, I can’t teach you a lesson. Don’t make me chase you.” He dove at her, grabbing for her foot. She pulled away, and the black mule came off in his hand. He threw it across the room.

She snatched the other one off and threw it at him. He ducked, and the slipper hit the wall.

With a low growl, he flung himself at her. She rolled away to the opposite side of the bed, and he lost his balance. He fell face-first, sprawling across the lower half of the big mattress.

She could have leapt from the bed and escaped then, but she didn’t. She had come prepared for a battle royal, and she would fight this one to the bitter end.

He dragged himself up onto his knees. His shirt-front had fallen open, revealing a tautly muscled neck and the dark web of tantalizingly silky hair her fingers had played with the night before. His big chest rose and fell with his labored breathing. She had only to glance up at his eyes to understand that anger was but the smallest part of what worked on him at this moment.

“I’m not going to wrestle with you,” he said. “Or quarrel. You will go to your room. Now.”

She’d lost the sash of her dressing gown, and the top part had slid down to her elbows. She shrugged out of it, then sank down upon the pillows and gazed up at the canopy, her mouth set mulishly.

He moved closer, the mattress sagging under his weight. “Jess, I’m warning you.”

She wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t turn her head. She didn’t have to. That deadly tone of his wasn’t quite as ominous and intimidating as he wanted it to be. She didn’t have to look, either, to understand why he’d paused.

She knew he didn’t want to look at her, but he couldn’t help it. He was a man, and had to look, and what he saw could hardly fail to distract him. She was aware that one of the narrow ribbons holding up the bodice of her negligee had slipped down over her shoulder. She was aware that the gauzy skirt was tangled about her legs.

She heard his breath hitch.

“Damn you, Jess.”

She heard the indecision in the husky baritone. She waited, still fixed upon the black and gold dragons above her, leaving him to battle it out with himself.

A full minute and more he remained unmoving and silent, but for the harsh, unsteady breathing.

Then the mattress shifted and sank, and she felt his knees against her hip and heard his muffled moan of defeat. His hand fell upon her knee and slid upward, the silk whispering under his touch.

She lay still while he slowly stroked up over her hip, over her belly. The warmth of the caress stole under her skin and made her feverish.

He paused at her bodice, and traced the eyelet work over her breast. It tautened under his touch, her nipple hardening and thrusting up against the thin silk…yearning for more, as she did.

He pushed the fragile fabric down, and brushed his thumb over the hard, aching peak. Then he bent and took it in his mouth, and she had to clench her hands to keep from holding him there, and clench her jaw as well, to keep from crying out as she had done the night before:
Yes…please…anything…don’t stop
.

He had made her beg last night, yet he had not made her his. And today he thought he could turn his back and walk away, and do as he pleased. He thought he could desert her, leave her wretched and humiliated, a bride, but not a wife.

He didn’t want to want her, but he did. He wanted her to beg for his lovemaking, so that he could pretend he was in control.

But he wasn’t. His mouth was hot on her breast, her shoulder, her neck. His hand was shaking, his touch roughening, because he was feverish, too.

“Oh, Jess.” His voice was an anguished whisper as he sank down beside her. He pulled her to him, and dragged hot kisses over her face. “
Baciami
. Kiss me.
Abbracciami
. Hold me. Touch me. Please. I’m sorry.” Urgent, desperate, his voice, while he struggled with the narrow ribbon ties.

I’m sorry
. He’d actually said it. But he didn’t know what he was saying, Jessica told herself. He was lost in simple animal hunger, as she had been, last night.

He wasn’t sorry, merely mindless with primitive male lust. His hand worked feverishly, pulling the gown down, moving over her back, her waist.

He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Don’t be angry. Touch me.” He pushed her hand under his shirt. “The way you did last night.”

His skin was on fire. Hot and smooth and hard…feathery masculine hair…muscles quivering under her fingers…his big body shuddering under her lightest touch.

She wanted to resist, to remain angry, but she wanted this more. She’d wanted to touch and kiss and hold him from the day she’d met him. She’d wanted him to burn for her, just as she’d wanted him to set her ablaze.

He was pulling the negligee down, over her hips.

She grasped the edges of his shirtfront and, with one fierce yank, tore it in half.

His hand fell from her hip. She tore the shirt cuff away, and rent the seam up to the shoulder. “I know you like to be undressed,” she said.

“Yes,” he gasped, and shifted back to give her access to the other, useless arm. She was no more gentle with that sleeve. She ripped it off.

He pulled her against him, pressing her bared breasts to the powerful chest she’d exposed. His heart beat next to hers, to the same frenetic rhythm. He grasped the back of her head and crushed her mouth to his, and drove out anger, pride, and thought in that long, devouring kiss.

The ragged remains of his shirt came away in her hands. He stripped away her negligee in the same frantic moment. Their hands became tangled, tearing at his trouser buttons. Wool ripped and buttons tore from the cloth.