Her gazed lifted to his. Silver mist shimmered in her eyes. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Thank you.” She pulled off her glove and took the ring from the box. “You must put it on my finger.”
“Must I?” He tried to sound disgusted. “Some sentimental twaddle, I suppose.”
“There’s no one to see,” she said.
He took the ring from her and slipped it over her finger, then quickly drew his hand away, afraid she’d discern the trembling.
She turned her hand this way and that, and the diamonds took fire.
She smiled.
“At least it fits,” he said.
“Perfectly.” Turning her head, she darted one quick kiss at his cheek, then hastily returned to her seat. “Thank you, Beelzebub,” she said very softly.
His heart constricted painfully. He snatched up the reins. “We’d better get out of here, before the fashionable stampede begins,” he said, his voice very gruff. “Nick! Harry! You can stop playing dead now.”
They could play anything. They’d been trained by a circus equestrian, and they loved to perform, responding instantly to the subtle cues Dain had spent three full days learning from their former master. Though he knew how it was done, even he sometimes had trouble remembering that it was a certain flick of the reins or a change in tone they reacted to, and not his words.
At any rate, they were fondest of the role they’d played en route to Hyde Park, and he let them play it again, all the way back. That took his betrothed’s attention away from him, and fixed it on praying she’d arrive alive at her aunt’s doorstep.
With Jessica preoccupied, Dain had leisure to collect his shattered composure, and address his intelligence to putting two and two together, as he should have done weeks ago.
There had been six onlookers, Herriard had said.
Now Dain tried to remember the faces. Vawtry, yes, looking utterly thunderstruck. Rouvier, the man Dain had publicly embarrassed. Two Frenchmen he recalled having seen many times at Vingt-Huit. And two Frenchwomen, one unfamiliar. The other had been Isobel Callon, one of Paris’ most vicious gossips…and one of Francis Beaumont’s favorite female companions.
What had Jessica said that night? Something about how the gossip would have died down if she hadn’t burst into his house.
But maybe it wouldn’t have died down, Dain reflected. Maybe public interest in his relations with Miss Trent had swelled to insane proportions because someone had fed the rumor mill. Maybe someone had kept the gossip stirred and encouraged the wagers, knowing the rumors would drive Beelzebub wild.
All Beaumont would have needed to do was drop a word to the right party. Isobel Callon, for instance. She’d seize the delicious tidbit and make a campaign of it. She wouldn’t need much encouragement to do so, because she hated Dain. Then, having sown the seeds, Beaumont could retire to England and enjoy his revenge at a safe distance…and laugh himself sick when letters arrived from his friends, detailing the latest events in the Dain-versus-Trent drama.
When the suspicion had first arisen, Dain had thought it far-fetched, the product of an agitated mind.
Now it made a good deal more sense than any other explanation. It did explain at least why jaded Paris had become so obsessed with one ugly Englishman’s handful of encounters with one pretty English female.
He glanced at Jessica.
She was trying to ignore Nick and Harry’s Steeds of Death performance by concentrating on her betrothal ring. She hadn’t put her glove back on. She turned her hand this way and that, making the diamonds spark rainbow fire.
She liked the ring.
She had bought a red silk nightgown, trimmed with black. For her wedding night.
She had kissed him back and touched him. And she hadn’t seemed to mind being kissed and touched.
Beauty and the Beast. That’s what Beaumont would call it, the poison-tongued sod.
But in thirteen days, this Beauty would be the Marchioness of Dain. And she would lie in the Beast’s bed. Naked.
Then Dain would do everything he’d been dying to do for what seemed an eternity. Then she would be his, and no other man could touch her, because she belonged to him exclusively.
True, he could have bought Portugal for what “exclusive ownership” was costing him.
On the other hand, she was prime quality. A lady. His lady.
And it was very possible Dain owed it all to the sneaking, corrupt, cowardly, spiteful Francis Beaumont.
In which case, Dain decided, it would be pointless—as well as a waste of energy better saved for the wedding night—to take Beaumont apart and break him into very small pieces.
By rights, Dain ought to thank him instead.
But then, the Marquess of Dain was not very polite.
He decided the swine wasn’t worth the bother.
Chapter 10
On a bright Sunday morning on the eleventh day of May in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred Twenty-Eight, the Marquess of Dain stood before the minister of St. George’s, Hanover Square, with Jessica, only daughter of the late Sir Reginald Trent, baronet.
Contrary to popular expectation, the roof did not fall in when Lord Dain entered the holy edifice, and lightning did not strike once during the ceremony. Even at the end, when he hauled his bride into his arms and kissed her so soundly that she dropped her prayer book, no clap of thunder shook the walls of St. George’s, although a few elderly ladies fainted.
As a consequence, on the evening of that day, Mr. Roland Vawtry gave Francis Beaumont his note of hand for three hundred pounds. Mr. Vawtry had previously written and delivered other notes of varying amounts to Lord Sellowby, Captain James Burton, Augustus Tolliver, and Lord Avory.
Mr. Vawtry did not know where or how he would get the money to cover the notes. Once, a decade earlier, he’d gone to the moneylenders. The way that worked, he learned—and learning it had cost him two years of wretchedness—was, in a nutshell, that if they lent you five hundred pounds, you were obliged to pay back one thousand. He had rather blow out his brains than repeat the experience.
He was painfully aware that he would have no trouble covering his present debts of honor if he hadn’t had to settle so very many others before he left Paris. He wouldn’t have had the present debts at all, he reflected miserably, if he had learned his lesson in Paris and left off wagering on any matter involving Dain.
He had won exactly once, and that had not been much of a victory. He had lost two hundred pounds to Isobel Callon when she insisted Dain had lured Miss Trent to Lady Wallingdon’s garden to make love to her.
Vawtry had simply won it back when Dain, contrary to Isobel’s confident prediction, had failed, when caught, to enact the role of chivalrous swain. He had behaved, for once, like himself.
Unfortunately for Vawtry’s finances, that had happened only the once. Because not a week later, after vowing he wouldn’t have Miss Trent if she were served on a platter of solid gold—after the incomprehensible female had shot him—Dain had strolled into Antoine’s and coolly announced his betrothal. He had said that someone had to marry her because she was a public menace, and he supposed he was the only one big and mean enough to manage her.
Moodily wondering just who was managing whom, Vawtry settled into a corner table with Beaumont at Mr. Pearke’s oyster house in Vinegar Yard, on the south side of Drury Lane Theater.
It was not an elegant dining establishment, but Beaumont was partial to it because it was a favorite haunt of artists. It was also very cheap, which made Vawtry partial to it at the moment.
“So Dain gave you all a show, I hear,” said Beaumont, after the tavern maid had filled their glasses. “Terrified the minister. Laughed when the bride vowed to obey. And nearly broke her jaw kissing her.”
Vawtry frowned. “I was sure Dain would drag it out to the last minute, then loudly announce, ‘I don’t.’ And laugh and stroll out the way he came.”
“You assumed he would treat her as he did other women,” said Beaumon
t. “You forgot, apparently, that all the other women had been tarts, and that, in Dain’s aristocratic dictionary, the tarts are mere peasant wenches, to be tumbled and forgotten. Miss Trent, however, is a gently bred maiden. Completely different situation, Vawtry. I do wish you’d seen.”
Vawtry saw now. And now it seemed so obvious, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out for himself ages ago. A lady. A different species altogether.