Lord of Scoundrels (6 page)

“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.

T
hen he nearly trampled her down because, for some insane reason, Miss Trent wasn’t fleeing down the street, but marching back toward his house.

“Confound his insolence!” she cried, making for the door. “I shall break his nose. First the porter, now my maid—
and
the hackney. It is the outside of enough.”

Dain stepped in her way, his massive body shielding the entrance. “Oh, no, you don’t. I don’t know or care what your game is—”

“
My
game?” She stepped back, planted her hands on her hips, and glared up at him. At least she seemed to be glaring. It was difficult to tell, given the large bonnet brim and the failing light.

The sun had not quite set, but massive grey clouds were submerging Paris in a heavy gloom. From a distance came the low boom of thunder.

“
My
game?” she repeated. “It’s your bully of a footman, following his master’s example, I collect—taking out his vexation on innocent parties. Doubtless he thought it a great joke to frighten away the hackney—with my maid inside the vehicle—and leave me stranded—
after
stealing my umbrella.”

She turned on her heel and stalked off.

If Dain was interpreting this ranting correctly, Herbert had frightened away Miss Trent’s maid as well as the hired vehicle that had brought her here.

A thunderstorm was rapidly approaching, Herbert had taken her umbrella, and the chances of locating an unoccupied hackney at this hour in bad weather were about nil.

Dain smiled. “Adieu, then, Miss Trent,” he said. “Have a pleasant promenade home.”

“Adieu, Lord Dain,” she answered without turning her head. “Have a pleasant evening with your cows.”

Cows?

She was merely trying to provoke him, Dain told himself. The remark was a pathetic attempt at a setdown. To take offense was to admit he’d felt the sting. He told himself to laugh and return to his…cows.

A few furious strides brought him to her side. “Is that prudery, I wonder, or envy?” he demanded. “Is it their trade which offends you—or merely their being more generously endowed?”

She kept on walking. “When Bertie told me how much you paid, I thought it was their services which were so horrifically expensive,” she said. “Now, however, I comprehend my error. Obviously you pay by volume.”

“Perhaps the price is exorbitant,” he said, while his hands itched to shake her. “But then, I am not so shrewd at haggling as you. Perhaps, in future, you would like to conduct negotiations for me. In which case, I ought to describe my requirements. What I like—”

“You like them big, buxom, and stupid,” she said.

“Intelligence is hardly relevant,” he said, suppressing a ferocious urge to tear her bonnet from her head and stomp on it. “I do not hire them to debate metaphysics. But since you understand what I want them to look like, I should hasten to explain what I like them to do.”

“I know you like to have them take off your clothes,” she said. “Or perhaps put them on again. At the time, it was difficult to determine whether they were at the beginning or the end of the performance.”

“I like
both
,” he said, jaw clenched. “And in between, I like them to—”

“I recommend you try to fasten your buttons by yourself at present,” she said. “Your trousers are beginning to bunch up in an unsightly way over the tops of your boots.”

It was not until this moment that Dain recollected his state of dress—or undress, rather. He now discovered that his shirt cuffs were flapping at his wrists, while the body of the garment billowed in the gusting wind.

While the words “shy” and “modest” did appear in Dain’s Dictionary, they had no connection with him. On the other hand, his attire, unlike his character, was always
comme il faut
. Not to mention that he was marching through the streets of the most sartorially critical city in the world.

Heat crawled up his neck. “Thank you, Miss Trent,” he said coolly, “for calling the matter to my attention.” Then, just as coolly, and walking at her side all the while, he unbuttoned all the trouser buttons, tucked the shirt inside, and leisurely buttoned up again.

Miss Trent made a small choked sound.

Dain gave her a sharp glance. He could not be sure, given the bonnet and the rapidly deepening darkness, but he thought her color had risen.

“Do you feel faint, Miss Trent?” he asked. “Is that why you have walked straight past what should have been your next turning?”

She stopped. “I walked past it,” she said in a muffled voice, “because I didn’t know that was it.”

He smiled. “You don’t know the way home.”

She began moving again, toward the street he’d indicated. “I shall figure it out.”

He followed her round the corner. “You were going to simply walk back, in the dead of night, to your brother’s house—though you haven’t the vaguest notion how to get there. You’re rather a henwit, aren’t you?”

“I agree that it’s growing dark, though hardly the dead of night,” she said. “In any case, I am certainly not alone, and it hardly seems henwitted to have the most terrifying man in Paris as my escort. It’s very chivalrous of you, Dain. Rather sweet, actually.” She paused at a narrow street. “Ah, I am getting my bearings. This leads to the Rue de Provence, does it not?”

“
What
did you say?” he asked in ominously low tones.

“I said, ‘This leads—’”

“
Sweet
,” he said, following her round the corner.

“Yes, there it is.” She quickened her pace. “I recognize the lamppost.”

If she’d been a man, he would have made sure her skull had an intimate acquaintance with that lamppost.

Dain realized he was clenching his fists. He slowed his steps and told himself to go home. Now. He had never in his life raised a hand against a female. That sort of behavior showed not only a contemptible lack of control, but cowardice as well. Only cowards used deadly weapons against the weaponless.

“There seems to be no imminent danger of your endlessly wandering the streets of Paris and agitating the populace into a riot,” he said tightly. “I believe I might with clear conscience allow you to complete your journey solo.”

She paused and turned and smiled. “I quite understand. The Rue de Provence is usually very crowded at this time, and one of your friends might see you. Best run along. I promise not to breathe a word about your gallantry.”

He told himself to laugh and walk away. He’d done it a thousand times before, and knew it was one of the best exits. There was no way to stab and jab when Dain laughed in your face. He’d been more viciously stabbed and jabbed before. This was merely…irritation.

All the same, the laugh wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t turn his back on her.

She had already disappeared round the corner.

He stormed after her and grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “Now, you hold your busy tongue and
listen
,” he said levelly. “I am not one of your Society fribbles to be twitted and mocked by a ha’pennyworth of a chit with an exalted opinion of her wit. I don’t give a damn what anyone sees, thinks, or says. I am not chivalrous, Miss Trent, and I am not
sweet
, confound your impertinence!”

“And I am not one of your stupid cows!” she snapped. “I am not paid to do exactly as you like, and no law on earth obliges me to do so. I shall say whatever I please, and at this moment, it pleases me exceedingly to infuriate you. Because that is precisely how I feel. You have
ruined
my evening. I should like nothing better than to ruin yours, you spoiled, selfish, spiteful
brute
!”

She kicked him in the ankle.

He was so astonished that he let go of her arm.

He stared at her tiny, booted foot. “Good gad, did you actually think you could hurt me with
that?
” He laughed. “Are you mad, Jess?”

“You great drunken jackass!” she cried. “How dare you?” She tore off her bonnet and whacked him in the chest with it.

“I did
not
give you leave to use my Christian name.” She whacked him again. “And I am
not
a ha’pennyworth of a chit, you thickheaded ox!” Whack, whack, whack.

Dain gazed down in profound puzzlement. He saw a flimsy wisp of a female attempting, apparently, to do him an injury with a bit of millinery.

She seemed to be in a perfect fury. While tickling his chest with her ridiculous hat, she was ranting about some party and somebody’s picture and Mrs. Beaumont and how he had spoiled everything and he would be very sorry, because she no longer gave a damn about Bertie, who was no use on earth to anybody, and she was going straight back to England and open a shop and auction the icon herself and get ten thousand for it, and she hoped Dain choked on it.

Dain was not certain what he was supposed to choke on, except perhaps laughter, because he was certain he’d never seen anything so vastly amusing in all his life as Miss Jessica Trent in a temper fit.

Her cheeks were pink, her eyes flashed silver sparks, and her sleek black hair was tumbling about her shoulders.

It was very black, the same pure jet as his own. But different. His was thick and coarse and curly. Hers was a rippling veil of silk.

A few tresses shaken loose from their pins dangled teasingly against her bodice.

And that was when he became distracted.

Her apple green pelisse fastened all the way to her white throat. It was fastened very snugly, outlining the curve of her breasts.

Measured against, say, Denise’s generous endowments, Miss Trent’s were negligible. In proportion to a slim, fine-boned frame and a whisper of a waist, however, the feminine curves abruptly became more than ample.

Lord Dain’s fingers began to itch, and a snake of heat stirred and writhed in the pit of his belly.

The tickling bonnet became an irritation. He grabbed it and crushed it in his hand and threw it down. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’re beginning to bother me.”

“Bother you?” she cried. “
Bother
? I’ll bother you, you conceited clodpole.” Then she drew back, made a fist, and struck him square in the solar plexus.

It was a good, solid blow, and had she directed it at a man less formidably built, that man would have staggered.

Dain scarcely felt it. The lazy raindrops plopping on his head had about as much physical impact.

But he saw her wince as she jerked her hand away, and realized she’d hurt herself, and that made him want to howl. He grabbed her hand, then hastily dropped it, terrified he’d crush it by accident.

“Damn and blast and confound you to hell!” he roared. “Why won’t you leave me in peace, you plague and pestilence of a female!”

A stray mongrel, sniffing at the lamppost, yelped and scurried away.

Miss Trent did not even blink. She only stood gazing with a sulkily obstinate expression at the place she’d hit, as though she were waiting for something.

He didn’t know what it was. All he knew—and he didn’t know how he knew, but it was a certainty as ineluctable as the storm swelling and roaring toward them—was that she hadn’t got it yet and she would not go away until she did.

“What the devil do you want?” he shouted. “What in blazes is the matter with you?”

She didn’t answer.

The desultory plops of rain were building to a steady patter upon the
trottoir
. Droplets glistened on her hair and shimmered on her pink-washed cheeks. One drop skittered along the side of her nose and down to the corner of her mouth.

“Damnation,” he said.

And then he didn’t care what he crushed or broke. He reached out and wrapped his monster hands about her waist and lifted her straight up until her wet, sulky face was even with his own.

And in the same heartbeat, before she could scream, he clamped his hard, dissolute mouth over hers.

The heavens opened up then, loosing a torrent.

Rain beat down upon his head, and a pair of small, gloved fists beat upon his shoulders and chest.

These matters troubled him not a whit. He was Dain, Lord Beelzebub himself.

He feared neither Nature’s wrath nor that of civilized society. He most certainly was not troubled by Miss Trent’s indignation.

Sweet, was he? He was a gross, disgusting pig of a debauchee, and if she thought she’d get off with merely one repellent peck of his polluted lips, she had another think coming.

There was nothing sweet or chivalrous about his kiss. It was a hard, brazen, take-no-prisoners assault that drove her head back.

For one terrifying moment, he wondered if he’d broken her neck.

But she couldn’t be dead, because she was still flailing at him and squirming. He wrapped one arm tightly about her waist and brought the other hand up to hold her head firmly in place.

Instantly she stopped squirming and flailing. And in that instant her tightly compressed lips yielded to his assault with a suddenness that made him stagger backward, into the lamppost.

Her arms lashed about his neck in a strangle-hold.

Madonna in cielo
.

Sweet mother of Jesus, the demented female was
kissing him back
.

Her mouth pressed eagerly against his, and that mouth was warm and soft and fresh as spring rain. She smelled of soap—chamomile soap—and wet wool and Woman.

His legs wobbled.

He leaned back against the lamppost and his crushing grasp loosened because his muscles were turning to rubber. Yet she clung to him, her slim, sweetly curved body sliding slowly down his length until her toes touched the pavement. And still she didn’t let go of his neck. Still she didn’t pull her mouth away from his. Her kiss was as sweet and innocently ardent as his had been bold and lustily demanding.

He melted under that maidenly ardor as though it were rain and he a pillar of salt.