Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

Lady Wallingdon’s fat face was arranged in a rigidly polite expression of welcome. Dain stalked to her, made an extravagant bow, smiled, and pronounced himself enchanted and honored and, generally, beside himself with rapture.

He gave her no excuse for retreating, and when he sweetly asked to be introduced to her guests, he took a malicious pleasure in the consternation that widened her beady eyes and drained all the color from her jowly face.

By this time, the mob of frozen statues about them was beginning to stir back to life. His trembling hostess gave a signal, the musicians dutifully began playing, and the ballroom gradually returned to a state as close to normal as one could reasonably expect, given the monster in its midst.

All the same, as his hostess led him from one group of guests to the next, Dain was aware of the tension in the air, aware that they were all waiting for him to commit an outrage—and probably wagering on what kind of outrage it would be.

He wanted, very badly, to oblige them. It had been nearly eight years since he’d entered this world, and though they all looked and behaved as he remembered polite Society looking and behaving, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be a freak. He’d remembered the stiff courtesy that couldn’t disguise the fear and revulsion in their eyes. He’d remembered the women turning pale at his approach and the false heartiness of the men. He had forgotten, though, how bitterly alone they made him feel, and how the loneliness enraged him. He had forgotten how it twisted his insides into knots and made him want to howl and smash things.

After half an hour, his control was stretched to the breaking point, and he decided to leave—just as soon as he put the author of his miseries in her place, once and for all.

The quadrille having ended, Malcolm Goodridge was leading Miss Trent back to her circle of admirers, who were loitering near an enormous potted fern.

Dain released Lady Wallingdon. Leaving her to totter to a chair, he turned and marched across the room in the direction of the grotesque fern. He kept on marching until the men crowding about Miss Trent had to give way or be trodden down. They gave way, but they didn’t go away.

He swept one heavy-lidded glance over them.

“Go away,” he said quietly.

They went.

He gave Miss Trent a slow, head-to-toe survey.

She returned the favor.

Ignoring the simmering sensation her leisurely grey gaze triggered, he let his attention drift to her bodice, and boldly studied the rampant display of creamy white shoulders and bosom.

“It must be held up with wires,” he said. “Otherwise, your dressmaker has discovered a method of defying the laws of gravity.”

“It is lined with a stiffening material and bones, like a corset,” she said calmly. “It is horridly uncomfortable, but it is the height of fashion, and I dared not risk your displeasure by appearing a dowd.”

“Ah, you were confident I’d come,” he said. “Because you are irresistible.”

“I hope I’m not so suicidal as to wish to be irresistible to you.” She fanned herself. “The simple fact is that there seems to be a farce in progress, of which we are the principals. I am prepared to take reasonable measures to help put an end to it. You set the tongues wagging with the scene in the coffee shop, but I will admit that I provided provocation,” she added quickly, before he could retort. “I will also admit that the gossip might have died down if I hadn’t burst into your house and annoyed you.” Her color rose. “As to what happened afterward, no one saw, apparently, which makes it irrelevant to the problem at hand.”

He noted that she was gripping her fan tightly and that her bosom was rising and falling with a rapidity indicative of agitation.

He smiled. “You did not behave, at the time, as though it were irrelevant. On the contrary—”

“Dain, I kissed you,” she said evenly. “I see no reason to make an issue of it. It was not the first time you’ve ever been kissed and it won’t be the last.”

“Good heavens, Miss Trent, you are not threatening to do it again?” He widened his eyes in mock horror.

She let out a sigh. “I knew it was too much to hope you would be reasonable.”

“What a woman means by a ‘reasonable’ man is one she can manage,” he said. “You are correct, Miss Trent. It is too much to hope. I hear someone sawing at a violin. A waltz, or an approximation thereof, appears to be in the offing.”

“So it does,” she said tightly.

“Then we shall dance,” he said.

“No, we shan’t,” she said. “I had saved two dances because…Well, it doesn’t matter. I already have a partner for this one.”

“Certainly. Me.”

She held up her fan in front of his face, to display the masculine scribbling upon the sticks. “Look carefully,” she said. “Do you see ‘Beelze-bub’ written there?”

“I’m not shortsighted,” he said, extracting the fan from her tense fingers. “You needn’t hold it so close. Ah, yes, is this the one?” He pointed to a stick. “Rouvier?”

“Yes,” she said, looking past him. “Here he comes.”

Dain turned. A Frenchman was warily approaching, his countenance pale. Dain fanned himself. The man paused. Smiling, Dain pressed thumb and forefinger to the stick with “Rouvier” written on it. It snapped.

Rouvier went away.

Dain turned back to Miss Trent and, still smiling, broke each stick, one by one. Then he thrust the demolished fan into the fern pot.

He held out his hand. “My dance, I believe.”

It was a primitive display, Jessica told herself. On the scale of social development it was about one notch above hitting her over the head with a club and dragging her away by her hair.

Only Dain could get away with it, just as only he could clear the field of rivals simply by telling them, without the smallest self-consciousness or subtlety, to go away.

And only she, besotted lunatic that she was, would find it all dizzyingly romantic.

She took his hand.

They both wore gloves. She felt it all the same: a thrill of contact sharp as an electrical shock. It darted through her limbs and turned her knees into jelly. Looking up, she saw the startled expression in his eyes and wondered, as his knowing smile faded, whether he felt it, too.

But if he did, it caused him no hesitation, for he boldly grasped her waist and, on the next upbeat, whirled her out.

With a gasp, she caught hold of his shoulder.

Then the world swung away, out of focus, out of existence, as he swept her into a waltz unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.

His wasn’t the sedate English mode of waltzing, but a surging, blatantly sensuous Continental style, popular, she supposed, at gatherings of the demimonde. It was the way, she guessed, he danced with his whores.

But Dain wouldn’t change his ways merely to accommodate a lot of Society prudes. He would dance as he chose, and she, delirious, could only be happy he’d chosen her.

He moved with inherent grace: strong, powerful, and utterly sure. She never had to think, only let herself be swept endlessly round the ballroom while her body tingled with consciousness of him and only him: the broad shoulder under her hand…the massive, muscular frame inches from her own…the tantalizing scent of smoke and cologne and Male…the warm hand at her waist, drawing her nearer by degrees, so that her skirts swirled round his legs…and nearer still and into a swift turn…her thigh grazing his…

She looked up into glittering, coal black eyes.

“You’re not putting up much of a struggle,” he said.

“As though it would do any good,” she said, swallowing a sigh.

“Don’t you even want to try?”

“No,” she said. “And there’s the hell of it.”

He studied her face for a long moment. Then his mouth curved into that aggravatingly mocking smile. “I see. You find me irresistible.”

“I’ll get over it,” she said. “I’m going home tomorrow.”

> His hand tightened on her waist, but he made no answer.

The music was faltering to a close. In a moment, he’d laugh and walk away, and she could return to reality…and to a life in which he couldn’t, mustn’t, be a part, or else she’d have no life at all.

“I’m sorry I tarnished your reputation,” she said. “But I didn’t do it all by myself. You could have ignored me. You certainly didn’t have to come tonight. Still, all you have to do now is laugh and walk away, and they’ll see I mean nothing to you, and they’ll see I mean nothing to you, and they had it all wrong.”

He spun her into a last, sweeping turn as the music ended, and held her one hammering moment longer than he should have. Even when he released her at last, he didn’t release her altogether, but kept her hand imprisoned in his.

“And what happens, Jess,” he said, his voice deepening, “if it turns out they had it right?”

The throbbing undercurrent in the low baritone made her look up again. Then she wished she hadn’t, because she thought she saw turmoil in the black depths of his eyes. It must be her own turmoil reflected there, she told herself. It couldn’t be his, and so there was so reason her heart should ache to ease it.