Lord of Scoundrels (Scoundrels 3)

Until Charity Graves made her spiteful entrance.

Jessica was not about to spend more weeks working on him, only to have her efforts flung in her face the next time someone or something set him off. He would have to stop viewing the present—and her especially—through the warped spectacles of the past. He would have to learn who his wife was and deal with that woman, not the general species, Female, he viewed with such bitter contempt. He would have to learn it all the hard way, because she had a more urgent problem to spend her energy upon at present.

Dain was a grown man, ostensibly able to look after himself and presumably capable of sorting matters out rationally…eventually.

His son’s situation, however, was far more perilous, for little boys were entirely at the mercy of others. Someone must act on Dominick’s behalf. It was all too clear that the someone must be Jessica. As usual.

“What it means is that you win,” she said. “It goes your way from now on, my lord. You want blind obedience. That is what you’ll get.”

He treated her to another mocking laugh. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he said. Then he stalked out.

It took Dain a week to believe it, though he saw it and heard it every day and every night.

His wife agreed with everything he said, regardless how imbecilic. She would dispute nothing, regardless how much he goaded her. She was perfectly amiable, regardless how obnoxious he was.

If Dain had been in the least superstitious, he might have believed that another woman’s soul had entered Jessica’s beautiful body.

A week with this amiable, blindly obedient stranger left him acutely uncomfortable. After two weeks, he was wretched.

Yet he had nothing to complain about. Nothing, that is, that his pride would let him complain about.

He could not say she was plaguing him to death when she never so much as hinted at disagreement or displeasure.

He could not say she was cold and unresponsive in bed, when she behaved as willingly and lustily as she had from the start.

He could not complain that she was unkind, when any hundred outside observers would have unanimously agreed that her behavior was nothing short of angelic.

Only he—and she—knew he was being punished, and why.

It was all because of the unspeakable thing he’d made with Charity Graves.

It did not matter to Jessica that the thing was as foul inwardly as it was hideous outwardly, that there was not a scrap of good it could have inherited from its depraved monster of a sire and its vicious whore of a mother. It would not have mattered to Jessica if the thing had two heads and maggots crawling out of its ears—which, in Dain’s view, would make it no more repellent than it already was. It might have crawled on its belly and been covered with green slime and it would be all the same to Jessica: Dain had made it; therefore, Dain must take care of it.

It was the same way she’d viewed her brother’s case. It didn’t matter that Bertie was a through nincompoop. Dain had lured the fool in over his head; ergo, Dain must fish the fool out.

It was the same way she’d viewed her own case: Dain had ruined her; Dain must repair the damage.

And once again, just as in Paris, Jessica had devised his punishment with diabolical precision. This time, everything he’d insisted he didn’t want, she didn’t give. There was no plaguing, pestering, or disobedience. There was no uncomfortable sentiment, no pity…and no love—for never once, after hammering the words into his brain and heart in the burial ground in Devonport, did Jessica again say, “I love you.”

To his everlasting shame, he tried to make her say it. During lovemaking, Dain tried everything he could think of to make the words come. But no matter how tender he was, or passionately creative, no matter how much aching Italian lyricism he poured into her ears, she wouldn’t say them. She sighed, she moaned, she groaned. She cried out his name, and the Almighty’s, and even, at times, the Fallen One’s…but never the three sweet words his heart hungered for.

After three weeks, he was desperate. He would have settled for anything vaguely like affection: one “blockhead” or “clodpole”—a priceless vase hurled at his head—his shirts in shreds—a row, please God, just one.

The trouble was, he dared not goad her too far. If he rose to the truly heinous heights of which he was capable, he might provoke the row he craved; he might also drive her away. For good. He couldn’t risk it.

As it was, Dain knew her patience wouldn’t hold out indefinitely. Being the world’s most perfect wife to the world’s most impossible husband was a Herculean task. Even she could not keep at it forever. And when her patience snapped, she would leave. For good.

After a month, panic set in, as Dain perceived the first signs of strain in her flawless, angelically patient and amiable countenance. His own features bleakly composed, he sat at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning in mid-June, covertly nothing the fine taut lines that had appeared in her forehead and at the corners of her eyes. Her posture was taut as well, as stiff as the dutiful smile she wore during the gruesomely cheerful conversation about nothing in particular, and most certainly, about nothing that mattered to either of them.

I’m losing her, he thought, and his hand came up, instinctively, to reach for her and draw her back. But he reached for the coffeepot instead. He filled his cup and stared helplessly at the dark liquid and saw his black future there, because it was not in him to give her what she wanted.

He could not accept the monstrosity she called his son.

Dain knew his behavior was irrational in her eyes. Even to himself he could not explain it, though he’d been trying all this last hellish week. But he couldn’t reason past the revulsion. Even now, panicked and heartsick, he could not reason past the bile rising inside, instantly, at the image in his mind’s eye: the dark, sullen face with its hideous beak…the malformed, freakish little body. It was all he could do to remain quietly in his chair, pretending to be a civilized adult, while inwardly the monster raged and howled, craving destruction.

“I had better make haste,” Jessica said, rising. “Otherwise I shall be late for church.”

He rose, too, the polite husband, and escorted her downstairs, and watched while Bridget helped Her Ladyship into shawl and bonnet.

He made the same joke he’d made every previous Sunday, about Lady Dain’s setting a good example for the community and Lord Dain’s considerateness in keeping away, so that the church roof didn’t collapse upon the pious souls of Athton.

And when Her Ladyship’s carriage set off, he stood as he had the four previous Sundays, at the top of the drive, watching until it had disappeared from view.

But this Sabbath, when he returned to the house, he did not go to his study as usual. This day, he entered Athcourt’s small chapel and sat on the hard bench where he’d shivered countless Sundays in his childhood while trying desperately to keep his mind on h

eavenly things and not upon the hunger gnawing at his belly.

This time, he felt as lost and helpless as that little boy had been, trying to understand why his Heavenly Father had made him wrong inside and out and wondering what prayer must be prayed, what penance must be paid, to make him right.

And this time, the grown man asked, with the same despair a little boy had asked, decades ago: Why will You not help me?

While Lord Dain was struggling with his inner demons, his wife was preparing to snare one of flesh-and-blood. And, while Jessica had faith enough in Providence, she preferred to seek help from more accessible sources. Her assistant was Phelps, the coachman.

He was one of the very few staff members who’d been at Athcourt since the time of the previous marquess. Then, Phelps had been a lowly groom. That he’d been retained and promoted was proof of Dain’s regard for his abilities. That he was called “Phelps,” rather than the standard “John Coachman,” evidenced high regard for the man personally.

The regard was returned.

This did not mean that Phelps considered His Lordship infallible. What it meant, Jessica had learned, shortly after the contretemps at Devonport, was that Phelps understood the difference between doing what the master ordered and doing what was good for him.

The alliance between Jessica and the coachman had begun on the first Sunday she’d attended church in Athton. After she’d alit from the carriage, Phelps had asked permission to do his own kind of “meditatin’,” as he put it, at the Whistling Ghost public house.

“Certainly,” Jessica replied, adding with a rueful smile, “I only wish I could go with you.”