Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

By this time, Roland Vawtry had relieved Ainswood and the others of responsibility for Charity Graves and was marching her into the inn where she claimed to be staying.

She was not supposed to be staying at an inn in Devonport. She was supposed to be where he’d left her two days earlier, in Ashburton, where she’d said nothing about Dain or Dain’s bastard. There, all she had done was sashay into the public room and settle at a table nearby with a fellow who seemed to know her. After a while, the fellow had left, and Vawtry’s comrades having departed for assignations of their own, he had found himself sharing the table with her and buying her a tankard of ale. After which they had adjourned for a few rollicking hours of what Beaumont had claimed Vawtry badly needed.

Beaumont had been right on that count, as he seemed to be on so many others.

But Beaumont didn’t have to be here now to point out that what Charity Graves badly needed was to be beaten within an inch of her life.

The inn, fortunately, was not a respectable one, and no one made a murmur when Vawtry stomped up after her to her room. As soon as he’d shut the door, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

“You lying, sneaking, troublemaking little strumpet!” he burst out. Then he broke away, fearing he would kill her, and certain that he did not badly need to be hanged for murdering a tart.

“Oh, my,” she said with a laugh. “I fear you’re not happy to see me, Rolly, my love.”

“Don’t call me that—and I’m not your love, you stupid cow. You’re going to get me killed. If Dain finds out I was with you in Ashburton, he’s sure to think I put you up to that scene.”

He flung himself into a chair. “Then he’ll take me apart, piece by piece. And ask questions later.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “And it’s no use hoping he won’t find out, because nothing ever goes right when it comes to him. I vow, it must be a curse. Twenty thousand pounds—slipped through my hands—I didn’t even know it was there—and now this. Because I didn’t know you were there—here—either. And the brat—his bastard. Who knew he had one? But now everyone does—thanks to you—including her—and if he doesn’t kill me, the bitch will shoot me.”

Charity approached. “Did you say ‘twenty thousand,’ lovey?” She sat on his lap and drew his arm around her and pressed his hand against her ample breast.

“Leave me alone,” he grumbled. “I’m not in the mood.”

Roland Vawtry’s mood was one of black despair.

He was mired in debt, with no way of getting out, ever, because he was Dame Fortune’s dependent, and she was capricious, as Beaumont had so wisely warned. She gave a priceless icon to a man who already had more than he could spend in three lifetimes. She took away from a man who had next to nothing, and left him with less than nothing. She could not even give him a tart without making that female the author of his demise.

Mr. Vawtry truly believed himself to be at the last stages of desperation. The modest stock of common sense and self-confidence he’d once possessed had been ruthlessly vandalized in a matter of days by a man whose primary delight in life was making other people miserable.

Vawtry was incapable of recognizing that his situation wasn’t half so catastrophic as it appeared, any more than he recognized Francis Beaumont as the insidious agent destroying his peace of mind.

His mind poisoned, Vawtry believed that his friendship with Dain was the source of his troubles. “‘He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,’” Beaumont had quoted, and Roland Vawtry had promptly realized that his spoon had been too short for dining with the likes of Dain, and that his own case was the same as Bertie Trent’s. Association with Beelzebub had ruined them both.

Now, Vawtry was not only ruined, but—thanks to Charity—in imminent danger of a violent death. He needed to think—or better yet, run for his life. He knew he couldn’t do either of those things properly while his lap was filled with a buxom trollop.

All the same, angry as he was with her, he felt disinclined to push her off. Her luxurious bosom was warm and soft, and she was stroking his hair back, just as though he had not nearly killed her minutes earlier. A woman’s touch—even that of a brazen whore—was very comforting.

Under the comforting touch, Vawtry’s mind softened toward her. After all, Dain had done Charity an ill turn as well. At least she’d had the courage to confront him.

Besides, she was pretty—very pretty—and exceedingly jolly company in bed. Vawtry squeezed her breast and kissed her.

“There now, you see how naughty you’ve been,” she said. “As though I wouldn’t look after you. Silly boy.” She ruffled his hair. “He won’t think anything like what you say. All I have to do is tell people how Mr. Vawtry paid me…” She considered. “Paid me twenty pounds to keep out of the way and not bother his very dear friend, Lord Dain. I’ll tell ’em how you said I wasn’t to spoil the honeymoon.”

How clever she was. Vawtry buried his face in her plump, pretty bosom.

“But I come—came—anyhow, because I’m a wicked, lying whore,” she continued. “And you was—were—that vexed with me, you beat me.” She kissed the top of his head. “That’s what I’ll say.”

“I wish I had twenty pounds,” he mumbled to her bodice. “I’d give it to you. I would. Oh, Charity, what am I to do?”

She, possessing an innate skill for her profession, showed him what to do, and he, having a knack for misconstruing the obvious, interpreted professional skill as feeling for him. Before many hours had passed, he’d confided all his troubles to her, and for hours after, while he lay asleep in her arms, Charity Graves lay awake planning how to make all her dreams come true.

Chapter 16

Half an hour after he’d stormed into his bedroom and slammed the door, Dain stood upon the threshold of Jessica’s dressing room. He bent a frigid stare upon Bridget, who was taking the pins from Jessica’s hair. “Get out,” he said very quietly.

Bridget fled.

Jessica stayed were she was, upon the chair at her dressing table. Spine stiff, she lifted her hands and continued removing the pins. “I am not going to quarrel with you about this any longer,” she said. “It’s a waste of time. You refuse to listen to a word I say.”

“There’s nothing to listen to,” he ground out. “It’s none of your bloody business.”

That was how he’d responded during the drive home to her efforts to make him understand the problem…because one short scene with a female from his past had cancelled all the progress Jessica had made with him. They were back to where they’d been when she’d shot him.

“You are my business,” she said. “Let me put it to you simply.” She turned in her seat and met his gaze squarely. “You made the mess, Dain. You clean it up.”

He blinked once. Then his mouth curled into the horrid smile. “You are telling me it is my duty. May I remind you, madam, that you—that no one—tells me—”

“That boy is in trouble,” she said. “His mother will be the ruin of him. I have explained this to you every way I could, but you refuse to listen. You refuse to trust my instincts about this, of all matters, when you know I have brought up, virtually single-handed, ten boys. Which includes having to deal with dozens of their beastly friends as well. If there is one thing I understand, my lord, it is boys—good ones, horrid ones, and all the species in between.”

“What you can’t seem to understand is that I am not a little boy, to be ordered about and told my curst duty!”

She was wasting her breath. She turned back to the mirror, and took out the last of the pins.

“I am tired of this,” she said. “I am tired of your mistrust. I am tired of being accused of manipulating and patronizing and…bothering. I am tired of trying to deal with a consistently unreasonable man as though he were a reasonable one. I am tired of having every effort to reach you thrown back at me with insult.”

She took up her brush and began drawing it through her hair with slow, steady strokes. “You don’t want

anything I have to offer, except physical pleasure. Everything else is a vexation. Very well, then. I shall cease vexing you. There will be no more attempts at that laughable thing, a rational adult discussion.”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Certainly not. There will be the icy silence instead. Or the reproachful silence. Or the sulking. The same pleasant manner, in short, to which you treated me the last ten miles to Athcourt.”

“If I was disagreeable, I beg your pardon,” she said composedly. “I shall not behave so again in future.”

He came up to the dressing table and set his right hand down upon it. “Look at me,” he said, “and tell me what that’s supposed to mean.”

She looked up into his rigidly set countenance. Emotion churned in the depths of his eyes, and her heart ached for him, more than ever. He wanted her love. She’d given it. Today she’d declared it, in no uncertain terms, and he had believed her. She had seen that in his eyes as well. He had let the love in and—though he hadn’t been sure what to do with it, and probably wouldn’t be sure for months, years maybe—he hadn’t tried to thrust it away.