“Jess.” Bertie’s tones took on a pleading desperation. “You know she’ll show it to people and—and I’ll be mortified.”
“Lud, what a prig you’ve got to be since you left England.”
Bertie’s eyes threatened to burst from their sockets. “A what?”
“A prig, dear. A prig and a prude. A regular Methodist.”
Bertie uttered several inarticulate sounds, then turned to Dain, who had by this time given up all thoughts of leaving. He was leaning upon the jewel case, observing Bertie Trent’s sister with a brooding fascination.
“Did you hear that, Dain?” Bertie demanded. “Did you hear what the beastly girl said?”
“I could not fail to hear,” said Dain. “I was listening attentively.”
“Me!” Bertie jammed his thumb into his chest. “A prig.”
“Indeed, it’s thoroughly shocking. I shall be obliged to cut your acquaintance. I cannot allow myself to be corrupted by virtuous companions.”
“But, Dain, I—”
“Your friend is right, dear,” said Miss Trent. “If word of this gets out, he cannot risk being seen with you. His reputation will be ruined.”
“Ah, you are familiar with my reputation, are you, Miss Trent?” Dain enquired.
“Oh, yes. You are the wickedest man who ever lived. And you eat small children for breakfast, their nannies tell them, if they are naughty.”
“But you are not in the least alarmed.”
“It is not breakfast time, and I am hardly a small child. Though I can see how, given your lofty vantage point, you might mistake me for one.”
Lord Dain eyed her up and down. “No, I don’t think I should make that mistake.”
“I should say not, after listening to her scold and insult a chap,” said Bertie.
“On the other hand, Miss Trent,” Dain went on just as though Bertie did not exist—which, in a properly regulated world, he wouldn’t—“if you are naughty, I might be tempted to—”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est, Champtois?” Miss Trent asked. She moved down the counter to the tray of goods Dain had been looking over when the pair had entered.
“Rien, rien.” Champtois set his hand protectively over the tray. He glanced nervously at Dain. “Pas intéressante.”
She looked in the same direction. “Your purchase, my lord?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Dain. “I was, for a moment, intrigued by the silver inkstand, which, as you will ascertain, is about the only item there worth a second glance.”
It was not the inkstand she took up and applied her magnifying glass to, however, but the small dirt-encrusted picture with the thick, mildewed frame.
“A portrait of a woman, it seems to be,” she said.
Dain came away from the jewel case and joined her at the counter. “Ah, yes, Champtois claimed it was human. You will soil your gloves, Miss Trent.”
Bertie, too, approached, sulking. “Smells like I don’t know what.” He made a face.
“Because it’s rotting,” said Dain.
“That’s because it’s rather old,” said Miss Trent.
“Rather been lying in a gutter for about a decade,” said Dain.
“She has an interesting expression,” Miss Trent told Champtois in French. “I cannot decide whether it’s sad or happy. What do you want for it?”
“Quarante sous.”
She put it down.
“Trente-et-cinq,” he said.
She laughed.
Champtois told her he’d paid thirty sous for it himself. He could not sell it for less.
She gave him a pitying look.
Tears filled his eyes. “Trente, mademoiselle.”
In that case, she told him, she would have only the watch.
In the end, she paid ten sous for the filthy, foul-smelling thing, and if she’d dragged negotiations out much longer, Dain thought, Champtois would have ended by paying her to take it.
Dain had never before seen the hard-nosed Champtois reduced to such agony, and he couldn’t understand why. Certainly, when Miss Jessica Trent finally left the shop—taking her brother with her, thank heaven—the only agony Lord Dain experienced was a headache, which he ascribed to spending nearly an hour, sober, in Bertie Trent’s company.
Later that evening, in a private chamber of his favorite den of iniquity, which went by the innocent name of Vingt-Huit, Lord Dain regaled his companions with a description of the farce, as he called it.
“Ten sous?” Roland Vawtry said, laughing. “Trent’s sister talked Champtois down from forty to ten? By gad, I wish I’d been there.”
“Well, it’s plain now what happened, isn’t it?” said Malcolm Goodridge. “She was born first. Since she got all the intelligence, there wasn’t a crumb left for Trent.”
“Did she get all the looks, too?” Francis Beaumont asked as he refilled Dain’s wineglass.
“I could not detect the smallest resemblance in coloring, features, or physique.” Dain sipped his wine.
“That’s all?” Beaumont asked. “Are you going to leave us in suspense? What does she look like?”
Dain shrugged. “Black hair, grey eyes. Something near five and a half feet, and between seven and eight stone.”
“Weighed her, did you?” Goodridge asked, grinning. “Would you say the seven to eight stone was well distributed?”
“How the devil should I know? How could anyone know, with all those corsets and bustles and whatever else females stuff and strap themselves into? It’s all tricks and lies, isn’t it, until they’re naked.” He smiled. “Then it’s other kinds of lies.”
“Women do not lie, my lord Dain,” came a faintly accented voice from the door. “It merely seems so because they exist in another reality.” The Comte d’Esmond entered, and gently closed the door behind him.
Though he acknowledged Esmond with a careless nod, Dain was very glad to see him. Beaumont had a sly way of getting out of people precisely what they least wished to reveal. Though Dain was up to his tricks, he resented the concentration needed to deflect the cur.
With Esmond present, Beaumont would not be able to attend to anyone else. Even Dain found the count distracting at times, albeit not for the same reasons. Esmond was about as beautiful as a man could be without looking remotely like a woman. He was slim, blond, and blue-eyed, with the face of an angel.
When he’d first introduced them a week earlier, Beaumont had laughingly suggested they ask his wife, who was an artist, to paint them together. “She could title it ‘Heaven and Hell,’” he’d said.
Beaumont wanted Esmond very badly. Esmond wanted Beaumont’s wife. And she didn’t want anybody.
Dain found the situation deliciously amusing.
“You’re just in time, Esmond,” said Goodridge. “Dain had an adventure today. There is a young lady newly arrived in Paris—and of all things, it’s Dain she runs into first. And he talked to her.”
All the world knew Dain refused to have any dealings whatsoever with respectable women.
“Bertie Trent’s sister,” Beaumont explained. There was a vacant chair beside him, and everyone knew who it was intended for. But Esmond wandered to Dain’s side and leaned on the back of his chair. To torment Beaumont, of course. Esmond only looked like an angel.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “She does not at all resemble him. Obviously it is Genevieve she takes after.”
“I might have known,” Beaumont said, refilling his own glass. “Met her already, have you? And did she take after you, Esmond?”
“I encountered Trent and his kinswomen a short while ago at Tortoni’s,” Esmond said. “The restaurant was in an uproar. Genevieve—Lady Penbury, that is—has not been seen in Paris since the Peace of Amiens. It became very clear she had not been forgotten, although five and twenty years have passed.”
“By Jupiter, yes!” Goodridge cried, slamming his hand upon the table. “That’s it, of course. I was so stunned by Dain’s astonishing behavior with the girl that I never made the co
nnection. Genevieve. Well, that explains it, then.”