Lord of Scoundrels (29 page)

“Paris?” Vawtry sat up abruptly.

“Said the fellers there’d like her better and treat her kinder ’n them hereabouts. ’N I guess the gal liked the idea, cuz she lit up purty, ’n said Her Ladyship weren’t a bad sort. ’N I was to tell Her Ladyship that she done what Her Ladyship said—tole the boy some’at or other like Her Ladyship asked her to.”

…
it was better to leave him where he would be safe…and provided for
. Jessica had told the whore what to say and the whore had done it.

Then Dain saw how much trust his wife had placed in him. If she hadn’t, she would have come with him, no matter what he said or did. But she’d trusted…that he’d make the boy feel safe, and make Dominick believe that what he’d been told was true.

Perhaps, Dain thought, his wife knew him a great deal better than he knew himself. She saw in him qualities he’d never discerned when he’d looked into a mirror.

If that was the case, he must believe she saw qualities in Charity he’d never suspected were there. Charity must possess something like a heart, if she’d taken the trouble to prepare Dominick for her desertion.

Jessica had also said that Charity was a child herself.

That seemed true enough. Plant an idea in her head, and she would run away with it.

He found himself grinning at Vawtry. “You should have found another bauble to distract her with,” Dain said. “Something safer to scheme and dream about. She’s a child, you know. Amoral, unprincipled. At present, she has fifteen hundred pounds in her hands, and she’s forgotten all about the icon—and you. She’ll never know—or if she hears, she won’t care—that you risked your life and honor for…” Dain gave a short laugh. “What was it, Vawtry? Love?”

Beneath the bruises and lumps and caked blood, Vawtry’s countenance turned a very dark red. “She
wouldn’t
. She
couldn’t
.”

“I’ll wager fifty quid she’s on her way to the coast this very minute.”

“I’ll kill her,” Vawtry croaked. “She can’t leave me. She
can’t
.”

“Because you’ll hunt her down,” Dain said mockingly. “You’ll follow her to the ends of the earth. If, that is, I don’t see you hanged first.”

The color abruptly drained from Vawtry’s battered face, leaving a mottled landscape on a sickly grey background.

Dain studied his former comrade for a long moment. “The trouble is, I can think of no more fiendish a purgatory than the one you’ve stumbled into all by yourself. I can imagine no torment more hellish than being hopelessly besotted with Charity Graves.” He paused. “Except one.” Dain’s mouth curled into a mocking smile. “And that is being married to her.”

It was the most efficient solution, Dain decided. It was certainly a great deal less bother than prosecuting the besotted fool.

Vawtry had committed one crime, arson, and attempted another, theft.

Still, he had set fire to the least valuable structure on the estate and, thanks to the damp and the quick action of Dain’s people, the damage was minimal.

As to the theft: Jessica had punished the inept criminal more brutally than Dain would have done. That a woman had administered the punishment added a lovely touch of humiliation to Vawtry’s other woes.

Any gentleman possessing a modicum of masculine pride would rather have his ballocks torn off with red-hot pincers than allow the world to learn he’d been thrashed by a slip of a female.

Therefore, with the wisdom of Solomon—and a vivid recollection of Jessica’s blackmail method in Paris—His Lordship pronounced sentence.

“You will find Charity Graves, wherever she is,” Dain told his prisoner. “And you will marry her. That will make you legally responsible for her. And I will hold you legally and
personally
responsible if she ever comes within ten miles of my wife, my son, or any other member of my house-hold. If she bothers us—any of us—ever again, I will throw a large dinner party, Vawtry.”

Vawtry blinked. “Dinner?”

“To this dinner, I will invite all of our boon companions,” Dain told him. “And when the port goes round, I shall stand up and regale the company with your fascinating adventures. I will provide a deliciously detailed account, in particular, of what I observed this evening from my front doorway.”

After the moment it took him to comprehend, Vawtry went to pieces. “Find her?” he cried, looking wildly about him. “Marry her?
How?
Gad, can’t you see? I wouldn’t have got into this if I weren’t three paces ahead of the bailiffs. I’ve
nothing
, Dain. Less than that.” He groaned. “Five thousand less, to be precise. I’m
ruined
. Don’t you see? I wouldn’t have come to Devon at all if Beaumont hadn’t told me I could win a fortune at the wrestling match.”

“Beaumont?” Dain repeated.

Vawtry didn’t heed him. “Fortune, indeed. With those buffle-headed amateurs. Do you believe it?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “He was roasting me, the swine. ‘Greatest match since Cann and Polkinghorne,’ he said.”

“Beaumont,” Dain said again.

“Twenty thousand, he told me the thing was worth,” Vawtry went on miserably. “But he was roasting me about that, too, wasn’t he? Said he knew a Russian who’d sell his firstborn for it. And I
believed
him.”

“So it wasn’t Bertie Trent who put the idea in your head, after all, but Beaumont,” Dain said. “I might have known. He bears me a grudge,” he explained to the bewildered Vawtry.

“A grudge? But why pick on me?”

“To make you resentful of me, in hopes of creating ill will between us, I suppose,” Dain said. “That he could add to your miseries at the same time simply made the business more delightful for him,” Dain frowned. “He’s nothing more than a sneaking troublemaker. He hasn’t the nerve to seek revenge like a man. Which makes it all the more annoying that he has succeeded in his spiteful game far beyond his wildest dreams.” His frown deepened. “I might have had you hanged. And he would have laughed himself sick.”

While Vawtry was trying to digest this, Dain took a slow turn about the small room, reflecting.

“I believe I will pay your debts, Vawtry,” he said finally.

“You’ll
what?
”

“I will also make you a modest annual allowance,” Dain went on. “For services rendered.” He paused and folded his hands behind his back. “You see, my very dear, very loyal friend, I had no idea how valuable my icon was…until you told me. I had actually planned to give it to Mrs. Beaumont, in exchange for a portrait of my wife. Jessica had told me how much Mrs. Beaumont admired the icon. I thought it would be a more pleasing reward to the artist than mere coins.” Dain smiled faintly. “But no portrait, even by the brilliant Leila Beaumont, is worth twenty thousand quid, is it?”

Vawtry had finally caught on. His battered face was creasing into a smile.

“Naturally, you will write to Beaumont, thanking him for sharing the information,” Dain said. “It would be the polite thing to do. And naturally, as your very dear friend, he will be unselfishly delighted that you were able to profit from his wisdom.”

“He’ll be tearing his hair out when he reads it,” Vawtry said. Then he flushed. “Pox take me, Dain, I hardly know what to say or think. Everything—gone so wrong—yet you’ve found a way to turn it right, in spite of what I did. If you’d dropped me into the nearest bog, there’s not a fellow in England who’d blame you.”

“If you do not keep that infernal female out of my way, I’ll drop you both into a bog,” Dain promised. He moved to the door. “Phelps will find someone to patch you up. I’ll send one of the servants along to you with travel funds. And by the time the sun comes up, I will expect you to be gone, Vawtry.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Thank—”

The door slammed behind Dain.

A
t two o’clock in the morning, Lord Dain emerged from his bath. Then he was obliged to don his dressing gown and slippers and look for his wife because, as he might have expected, she was not in bed, where she was supposed to be.

He tried the South Tower first, but she was not hovering at Dominick’s bedside. Mary was there, dozing in a chair. The boy was sound asleep, sprawled on his belly, the bedclothes kicked into a heap at the foot of the bed.

Grumbling under his breath, Dain untangled the sheets and blankets and briskly tucked them about his son. Then he gave the oblivious brat a pat on the head and left.

A quarter of an hour later, he found Jessica in the dining room.

Wrapped in her black and gold silk dressing gown, her hair carelessly piled and pinned atop her head, she stood before the fireplace. Her fingers cupped the bowl of a brandy snifter and she was gazing up at the portrait of his mother.

“You might have invited me to get drunk with you,” he said from the doorway.

“This was between Lucia and me,” she said, her eyes still upon the picture. “I came to raise a glass in her honor.”

She lifted her glass. “To you, my dear Lucia: for bringing my wicked husband into the world…for giving him so much of what was best in you…and for giving him up, so that he would live and grow up into a man…and I would find him.”

She swirled the amber liquid in the glass, and sniffed appreciatively. Then, with a small sigh of pleasure, she brought it to her lips.

Dain stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “You don’t know how lucky you were to find me,” he said. “I am one of the few men in western Europe who could afford you. That, I have no doubt, is my very best brandy.”

“I did take your wine cellar into account when I weighed your assets and liabilities,” Jessica said. “It may well have tipped the scales in your favor.”

She gestured with the glass at the painting. “Doesn’t she look splendid there?”

Dain walked to the head of the table, sat in his chair, and studied the portrait. Then he got up and moved to the sideboard and considered it from that angle. He examined it from the doorway leading to the Musicians’ Gallery, from the windows, and from the foot of the long dining table. Finally he joined his wife before the fireplace, folded his arms over his chest, and broodingly surveyed his mother from there.

But no matter what angle he viewed her from or how long and hard he stared, he no longer hurt inside. All he saw was a beautiful young woman who had loved him in her own temperamental way. Though he would never know the full truth of what had happened twenty-five years ago, he knew enough, believed enough, to forgive her.

“She was a handsome article, wasn’t she?” he said.

“Exceedingly so.”

“One can hardly blame the Dartmouth black-guard for making off with her, I suppose,” he said. “At least he stayed with her. They died together. How that must have infuriated my father.” He laughed. “But I don’t doubt ‘Jezebel’s’ son infuriated him far more. He couldn’t disown me because he was too great a snob to leave his precious heritage in the vulgar hands of a sprig of the cadet branch. The great hypocrite couldn’t even destroy her portrait—because she was part of the Ballisters’ history, and he, like his noble ancestors, must preserve everything for his descendants, like it or not.”

“He didn’t even throw out your toys.”

“He threw me out, though,” Dain said. “The dust had scarcely settled behind my mother when he packed me off to Eton. Gad, what an obstinate old idiot. He could have cultivated me, won me over with the smallest effort. I was eight years old. Completely at his mercy. Clay in his hands. He could have molded me just as he liked. If he wanted revenge on her, that was the way to get it—and get the kind of son he wanted at the same time.”

“I’m glad he didn’t mold you,” Jessica said. “You would not have turned out half so interesting.”

He looked down into her smiling countenance. “Interesting, indeed. The Bane and Blight of the Ballisters, Lord of Scoundrels himself. The greatest whoremonger in Christendom. A cocksure, clod-pated ingrate.”

“The wickedest man who ever lived.”

“A great gawk of a lummox. A spoiled, selfish, spiteful brute.”

She nodded. “Don’t leave out ‘conceited clod-pole.’”

“It does not matter what you think,” he said loftily. “My son believes I am King Arthur and all the knights of the Round Table rolled into one.”

“You are too humble, my dear,” she said. “Dominick is convinced that you are Jupiter and the entire pantheon of Roman deities rolled into one. It is thoroughly nauseating.”

“You don’t know what nauseating is, Jess,” he said with a laugh. “I only wish you might have seen the animate pile of filth I encountered at the Golden Hart Inn. If the thing had not spoken, I might have mistaken it for a moldering heap of refuse, and pitched it into the fire.”

“Phelps told me,” she said. “I went downstairs while you were bathing and cornered him when he was on his way out. He described the state Dominick had been in, and how you faced it and dealt with it, yourself…with your own
two
hands.”

She slipped her arm through is, through the one that his own fears and need had paralyzed, and a little boy’s greater fears and need had cured. “I did not know whether to laugh or cry,” she said. “So I did both.” Silver mist shimmered in her eyes. “I am so proud of you, Dain. And proud of myself,” she added, looking away and blinking hard, “for having the good sense to marry you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Sense had nothing to do with it. But I will give you credit for making the best of a situation that would have driven any normal female to leap, screaming, from the top of the nearest tower.”

“That would have been unforgivably gauche,” she said.

“It would have meant admitting defeat, you mean,” he said. “And that you cannot do. It isn’t in your nature. As Vawtry has learned, to his everlasting mortification.”

She frowned. “I know I took advantage of him. In spite of everything, he was too much the gentleman to fight back properly. All he could do was try to shake me off. But I should not have taken advantage if the curst fool had let go of the icon. Then, by the time he finally did, I was much too overwrought to stop smashing him. If you had not come when you did, I fear I might have killed him.” She leaned her head against his brawny upper arm. “I do not think anyone else could have stopped me.”

“Yes, we big, mean lummoxes have our uses,” he said. He scooped her up and carried her to the dining room table. “Luckily, I had both arms working by then, else I doubt even I could have managed it.” He plunked her down upon the gleaming wood surface. “What I should like to know, though, is why my levelheaded wife hadn’t the common sense to keep at least a few servants with her, fire or no fire.”

“I did,” she said. “But Joseph and Mary were up in the South Tower, too far away to hear anything. I should not have noticed Vawtry myself, if he hadn’t come down the main staircase. But I had gone down to the ground floor to watch for you. Someone had to be there when you arrived, to make Dominick feel welcome. I wanted to be the one. I wanted to prove I was looking forward to his arrival.” Her voice quavered. “I wanted to reassure him and—and give him a h-hug.”

He tilted up her chin and gazed into her misty eyes. “I hugged him,
cara
,” he said softly. “I took him up in front of me on my horse, and I held him close, because he is a child, needing reassurance. I told him I would take care of him…because he was my son. And I told him you wanted him, too. I told him all about you—that you could be kind and amazingly understanding, but that you wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense.” He smiled. “And when we came home, the first thing Dominick saw was active, incontrovertible proof of that last. You proved that Papa was telling the truth, and Papa knows everything about everybody.”

“Then I shall hug Papa.” She wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her head against his chest. “I love you, Sebastian Leslie Guy de Ath Ballister. I love you, Lord Dain and Beelzebub, Lord Blackmoor, Lord Launcells, Lord Ballister—”

“That’s too many names,” he said. “We’ve been wed more than a month. Since it appears that you mean to stay, I might as well give you leave to call me by my Christian name. It is preferable, at any rate, to ‘clodpole.’”

“I love you, Sebastian,” she said.

“I’m rather fond of you, too,” he said.

“Immensely fond,” she corrected.

Her dressing gown was sliding down from her shoulders. He hastily drew it up. “Immense may well be the word for it.” He glanced down at where his shaft was stirring against his dressing gown. “We had better get upstairs quickly and go to sleep forthwith. Before my feelings of fondness swell to an unreasonable degree.”

“Going directly to sleep would be unreasonable,” she said. She slid her hands up and into the opening of his robe and stroked over his chest. The muscles there tightened and pulsed, and the pulsations raced downward.

“You’re exhausted from your ordeal,” he said, swallowing a groan. “Also, I’m sure you must be bruised in a hundred places. You don’t want a fifteen-stone brute heaving about on top of you.”

She drew her thumb over his nipple.

He sucked in his breath.

“You could heave about
under
me,” she said softly.

He told himself to ignore what she’d just said, but the image rose in his mind’s eye, and his rod rose eagerly with it.

It had been a month since she’d told him she loved him. It had been a month since she had actually invited him, instead of simply cooperating. Enthusiastic as the cooperation had been, he’d missed her brazen overtures almost as much as he’d missed the three precious words.

Besides, he was an animal.

Already he was as randy as a rutting bull elephant.

He lifted her off the table. He meant to set her down, because carrying her would be too dangerously intimate. But she wouldn’t be set down. She clung to his arms and wrapped her legs round his waist.

He tried not to look down, but he couldn’t help it.

He saw soft white thighs encircling him, caught a glimpse of the sleek, dark curls just below the sash that was no longer holding the gown decorously in place.

She shifted a bit, and the robe slid from her shoulders again. She slipped first one, then the other arm from the loose sleeves. The elegant robe became a useless scrap of silk dangling from her waist.

Smiling, she brought her arms up to circle his neck. She rubbed her firm, white breasts against the opening of his dressing gown, and it gave way. The warm, feminine mounds pressed against his skin.

He turned and came back to the table and sank down upon it.

“Jess, how the devil am I to climb the stairs in this condition?” he asked hoarsely. “How is a man to see straight when you do such things to him?”

She licked the hollow of his throat. “I like the way you taste,” she murmured. She drew her parted lips over his collarbone. “And the way your skin feels against my mouth. And the way you smell…of soap and cologne and
male
. I love your big, warm hands…and your big, warm body…and your immense, throbbing—”

He dragged her head up and clamped his mouth over hers. She parted instantly, inviting him in.

She was wicked, a
femme fatale
, but the taste of her was fresh and clean. She tasted like rain, and he drank her in. He inhaled the chamomile scent mingled with the fragrance that was uniquely hers. He traced the delectable shape of her with his big, dark hands…the graceful column of her neck, the gentle slope of her shoulders, the silken curve of her breasts with their taut, dusky buds.

He slid back and down upon the table, and drew her down on top of him, and traced those feminine outlines again with his mouth, his tongue.

He stroked down her smooth, supple back and molded his hands to the sinuous turn of her slim waist and the gentle flare of her hips.

“I’m clay in your hands,” she breathed against his ear. “I love you madly. I want you so much.”

The soft voice, husky with desire, swam in his head and sang in his veins, and whirled its mad music through his heart.

“
Sono tutta tua, tesoro mio
,” he answered. “I’m all yours, my treasure.”

He grasped her sweet rump and lifted her onto his manhood…and groaned as she guided him into her. “Oh,
Jess
.”

“All mine.” She sank, slowly, down upon his shaft.

“Sweet Jesus.” Pleasure forked through him, jagged and white-hot. “
Oh, Dio
. I’m going to die.”

“
All mine
,” she said.

“Yes. Kill me, Jess. Do it again.”

She came up and sank again, with the same torturous slowness. Another lightning bolt. Scorching. Rapturous.

He begged for more. She gave him more, riding him, controlling him. He wanted it that way, because it was love that mastered him, happiness that shackled him. She was passionate chatelaine of his body, loving mistress of his heart.

When the storm broke at last and, trembling in the aftermath, she fell into his arms, he held her tight against the hammering heart she ruled…where the secret he’d hidden for so long pounded in his breast.

But he wanted no more such secrets. He could say the words now. So easy it was, when all that had been frozen and buried inside him had thawed and bubbled up, fresh as the Dartmoor streams in springtime.

With a shaky laugh, he brought her head up and lightly kissed her.

“
Ti amo
,” he said. And so ridiculously simple it was that he said it again, in English this time. “I love you, Jess.”

If love had not exploded into his life, her husband informed Jessica a short time later, he might have made a mistake he’d never forgive himself for.

The sun was inching up from the horizon when they returned to the master bedroom, but Dain wasn’t ready to sleep until the evening’s events were clarified, explained, and settled.