Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

“If you would send Bertie home, the icon is yours,” she said. “If you will not, it goes to auction at Christie’s.”

If Jessica Trent had comprehended the state Dain was in, she would have stopped at the first sentence. No, if she had truly comprehended, she would have taken to her heels and run as fast and as far as she could. But she couldn’t understand what Lord Dain barely understood himself. He wanted the gentle Russian Madonna, with her half-smiling, half-wistful face and the scowling Baby Jesus nestled to her bosom, as he had not wanted anything in all his life. He had wanted to weep when he saw it, and he didn’t know why.

The work was exquisite—an art sublime and human at once—and he’d been moved, before, by artistry. What he felt at this moment wasn’t remotely like those pleasant sensations. What he felt was the old monster howling within. He couldn’t name the feelings any better than he could when he’d been eight years old. He’d never bothered to name them, simply shoved and beaten them out of his way, repeatedly, until, like his schoolmates of long ago, they’d stopped tormenting him.

Having never been allowed to mature, those feelings remained at the primitive childlike level. Now, caught unexpectedly in their grip, Lord Dain could not reason as an adult would. He could not tell himself Bertie Trent was an infernal nuisance whom Dain should have sent packing ages ago. It never occurred to the marquess to be delighted at present, when the nitwit’s sister was prepared to pay—or bribe was more like it—him generously to do so.

All Dain could see was an exceedingly pretty girl teasing him with a toy he wanted very badly. He had offered her his biggest and very best toy in trade. And she had laughed and threatened to throw her toy into a privy, just to make him beg.

Much later, Lord Dain would understand that this—or something equally idiotic—had been raging through his brain.

But that would be much later, when it was far too late.

At this moment, he was about eight years old on the inside and nearly three and thirty on the outside, and thus, beside himself.

He leaned toward her. “Miss Trent, there are no other terms,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “I pay you fifteen hundred quid and you say, ‘Done,’ and everyone goes away happy.”

“No, they don’t.” Her chin jutted up stubbornly. “If you will not send Bertie home, there is no business on earth I would do with you. You are destroying his life. No amount of money in the world will compensate. I should not sell the icon to you if I were in the last stages of starvation.”

“Easy enough to say when your stomach is full,” he said. Then, in Latin, he mockingly quoted Publilius Syrus. “‘Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.’”

In the same language she quoted the same sage, “‘You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.’”

His countenance betrayed nothing of his astonishment. “It would appear that you have dipped into Publilius,” he said. “How very odd, then, that so clever a female cannot see what is before her eyes. I am not a dead language to play in, Miss Trent. You are treading perilously close to dangerous waters.”

“Because my brother is drowning there,” she said. “Because you are holding his head under. I am not large enough or powerful enough to pull your hand away. All I have is something you want, which even you cannot take away.” Her silver eyes flashed. “There is only one way for you to get it, my lord Beelzebub. You throw him back.”

Had he been capable of reasoning in an adult fashion, Dain would have acknowledged that her reasoning was excellent—that, moreover, it was precisely as he would have done had he found himself in her predicament. He might even have appreciated the fact that she told him plainly and precisely what she was about, rather than using feminine guiles and wiles to manipulate.

He was not capable of adult reasoning.

The flash of temper in her eyes should have glanced harmlessly off him. Instead, it shot fast and deep and ignited an inner fuse. He thought the fuse was anger. He thought that if she had been a man, he would have thrown her—straight against the wall. He thought that, since she was a woman, he would have to find an equally effective way of teaching her a lesson.

He didn’t know that throwing her was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. He didn’t know that the lessons he wanted to teach her were those of Venus, not Mars, Ovid’s Ars Armatoria, not Caesar’s De Bello Gallico.

Consequently, he made a mistake.

“No, you do not see clearly at all,” he said. “There is always another way, Miss Trent. You think there isn’t because you assume I will play by all the dear little rules Society dotes upon. You think, for instance, that because we’re in a public place and you’re a lady, I’ll mind my manners. Perhaps you even think I have a regard for your reputation.” He smiled evilly. “Miss Trent, perhaps you would like to take a moment to think again.”

Her grey eyes narrowed. “I think you are threatening me,” she said.

“Let me make it as clear as you did your own threat.” He leaned toward her. “I can crack your reputation in under thirty seconds. In three minutes I can reduce it to dust. We both know, don’t we, that being who I am, I need not exert myself overmuch to accomplish this. You have already become an object of speculation simply by being seen in my company.” He paused briefly to let the words sink in.

She said nothing. Her slitted eyes were glinting furious sparks.

“Here is how it works,” he went on. “If you accept my offer of fifteen hundred, I shall behave myself, escort you to a cabriolet, and see that you are taken safely home.”

“And if I do not accept, you will attempt to destroy my reputation,” she said.

“It will not be an attempt,” he said.

She sat up very straight and folded her dainty gloved hands upon the table. “I should like to see you try,” she said.

Chapter 4

Dain had given Miss Trent more than enough opportunity to see her error. His warnings could not have been clearer.

In any case, to hesitate in such a situation was to indicate doubt, or worse, weakness. To do so with a man was dangerous. To do so with a woman was fatal.

And so Lord Dain smiled and leaned nearer yet, until his great Usignuolo nose was but an inch from hers. “Say your prayers, Miss Trent,” he told her very softly.

Then he slid his hand—his big, dark, bare hand, for he had removed his gloves to eat and hadn’t put them back on—down the sleeve of her pelisse until he came to the first button of her frivolous pearl grey gloves.

He popped the tiny pearl from the buttonhole.

She glanced down at his hand, but didn’t move a muscle.

Then, aware that every eye in the place was fastened upon them, and the noisy conversations had sunk to whispers, he began to talk to her in Italian. In the tones of a lover, he described the weather, a grey gelding he was thinking of selling, and the condition of Parisian drains. Though he had never tried or needed to seduce a woman, he’d seen and heard other poor sods at that game, and he reproduced their ludicrous tones to a nicety. Everyone about them would think they were lovers. And all the while, he was working his way swiftly down toward her wrist.

She never made a murmur, only glanced now and then from his face to his hands with a frozen expression he interpreted as speechless horror.

He might have interpreted more accurately had he felt inwardly as self-possessed as he seemed outwardly. Outwardly, his expression remained sensuously intent, his voice low and seductive. Inwardly, he was disturbingly aware that his pulse had begun to accelerate at about Button Number Six. By Number Twelve, it was racing. By Number Fifteen, he had to concentrate hard to keep his breathing steady.

He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He’d never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He had committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never once felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers

grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed.

He was too busy searching Dain’s Dictionary for a definition of his state—and too confused by what he read there—to realize that Miss Jessica Trent’s grey eyes had taken on the drunkenly be-wildered expression of a respectable spinster being seduced in spite of herself.

Even if he had comprehended her expression, he wouldn’t have believed it, any more than he could believe his untoward state of excitement—over a damned glove and a bit of feminine flesh. Not even one of the good bits, either—the ones a man didn’t have—but an inch or so of her wrist, plague take her.

The worst was that he couldn’t stop. The worst was that his passionately intent expression had somehow become genuine, and he was no longer talking in Italian about drains, but about how he wanted to unbutton, unhook, untie every button, hook, and string…and slip off her garments, one by one, and drag his monstrous blackamoor’s hands over her white virgin’s flesh.

And while in Italian he detailed his heated fantasies, he was slowly peeling the glove back, exposing a delicately voluptuous palm. Then he gave one small tug toward her knuckles. And paused. Then another tug. And paused. Then another tug…and the glove was off. He let it fall to the table, and took her small, cool, white hand in his great, warm one. She gave a tiny gasp. That was all. No struggle. Not that it would have made the least difference to him.

He was overwarm and short of breath, and his heart pounded as though he’d been running very hard after something. And just as though he had done so and got it at last, he was not about to let it go. His fingers closed around her hand and he gave her a fierce look, daring her to try—just try—to get away.

He found she was still wearing the same wide-eyed expression. Then she blinked and, dropping her gaze to their joined hands, she said in a small, breathless voice, “I’m very sorry, my lord.”