Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

“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.

Chapter 5

Then 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!”