Lord of Scoundrels (9 page)

It
must
be that way, Jessica told herself. The alternative was ruin, and she would not let her life be destroyed on account of a temporary madness, regardless how virulent.

It took Dain exactly nine seconds to spot Miss Trent in the mob. She stood with Sellowby and several other notorious rakes at the far end of the ballroom. She wore a silver-blue gown that shimmered in the light, and there seemed to be a lot of shimmering and fluttering objects dancing about her head. He supposed she had it screwed up in the ridiculous coils again. But the coiffure, like exaggerated sleeves and bonnets heaped with gew-gaws, was the current fashion, and he doubted it could be any more atrocious than the birds of paradise standing upon a topknot on Lady Wallingdon’s fat head.

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.

“It doesn’t turn out that way,” she said shakily. “You only came to make fools of them—and of me, especially. You marched in and took over and made everyone kowtow to you, like it or not. You made me dance to your tune as well.”

“You seemed to like it,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean I like
you
,” she said. “You had better let go of my hand before people start thinking you like
me
.”

“I don’t care what they think.
Andiamo
.”

Her hand firmly imprisoned in his, he started walking, and she had no choice but to go with him—or be dragged along.

He was leading her to the entryway.

Jessica was looking frantically about her, debating whether it would do any good to scream for help, when a loud crash came from the cardroom. Then someone screamed and several others shouted and there were more loud crashes. And in the next instant, everyone in the ballroom was rushing toward the noise.

Everyone except Dain, who merely picked up his pace and continued toward the entrance.

“It must be a fight,” she said, trying to pull her hand free. “A riot, by the sounds of it. You’ll miss the fun, Dain.”

He laughed and tugged her through the entryway.

D
ain knew the house. It had belonged to the previous Marquess of Avory, and had been the scene of more than one drunken orgy. It was promising to become one of the most notorious residences in Paris when the marquess had met his untimely death. That had been about two years ago, and the furnishings were vastly different now. Still, Dain had no trouble recognizing the small sun parlor on the ground floor whose French doors opened into the garden.

That was where he took Jessica.

To negotiate.

Because—as he
should
have expected and prepared for—matters were not proceeding as he’d planned.

He had planned to wreak havoc and mayhem. Within five minutes of his arrival, he’d found that the combined pride of the Ballisters and Usignuolos wouldn’t let him.

No matter how much he was goaded, he would not be reduced to behaving like an animal.

Not in front of her, at any rate.

He had remembered the scornful look she’d given her brother two weeks ago, and the contemptuously amused look she’d given Dain himself, and how it had made him behave like a complete idiot.

He’d tried to forget it, but every moment and emotion of the episode was branded upon his mind: humiliation, rage, frustration, passion…and one stunning moment of happiness.

He had experienced a host of disagreeable emotions this evening…and forgotten them all the instant he’d danced with her.

She’d been slender and supple and light in his arms. So easy to hold. Her skirts had swirled about his legs, and he’d thought of slim white limbs entangled with his amid the rustle of sheets. Her scent, the provocatively innocent blend of chamomile soap and Woman, had whirled in his head, and he’d thought of pearly skin glimmering in the light of a single candle and long black hair tumbled upon a pillow…and himself wrapped in her clean, sweet womanliness, touching, tasting, drinking her in.

He had told himself these were ludicrous fantasies, that clean, sweet women did not lie in his bed and never would, willingly.

But she had seemed willing enough to dance with him. Though she couldn’t have enjoyed it, and must have had a typically understand feminine motive for seeming to, she’d made him believe she did and that she was happy. And when he’d gazed into her upturned countenance, he’d believed, for a moment, that her silver-grey eyes had been glowing with excitement, not resentment, and she had let him draw her closer because that was where she wanted to be.

It was all lies, of course, but there were ways to make certain lies half-true. Dain knew the ways. She, like every other human being since the Creation, had a price.

Consequently, all he had to do was find out what it was and decide whether he was willing to pay.

He led her to a corner of the garden farthest from the blazing lights of the house. Most of the late Lord Avory’s collection of Roman artifacts was still picturesquely strewn among the shrubbery, doubtless because it would cost a fortune to move the mammoth pieces.

Dain picked his companion up and sat her upon a stone sarcophagus. Standing upon an ornate base, it was tall enough to bring them nearly eye to eye.

“If I do not return very soon,” she said tightly, “my reputation will be in tatters. Not that you care, certainly. But I warn you, Dain, that I will not take it docilely and you—”

“My reputation is already in tatters,” he said. “And
you
don’t care.”

“That is completely wrong!” she cried. “I tried to tell you before: I do sympathize, and I was willing to help mend matters. Within reason, that is. But you refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time—usually the wrong one.”

“Whereas women are capable of holding twenty-seven contradictory notions simultaneously,” he returned. “Which is why they are incapable of adhering to anything like a principle.”

He took her hand and began to peel off her glove.

“You’d better stop that,” she said. “You’re only going to make matters worse.”

He pulled away the glove, and at the first glimpse of her fragile, white hand, all thoughts of negotiation fled. “I don’t see how matters could become worse,” he muttered. “I am already besotted with a needle-tongued, conceited, provoking ape leader of a
lady
.”

Her head jerked up, her grey eyes widening. “Besotted? You’re nothing like it.
Vengeful
is more like it. Spiteful.”

He went to work with speedy efficiency on the other glove. “I must be besotted,” he said evenly. “I have the imbecilic idea that you’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. Except for your coiffure,” he added, with a disgusted glance at the coils and plumes and pearls. “That is ghastly.”

She scowled. “Your romantic effusions leave me breathless.”

He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her wrist.

“
Sono il tuo schiavo
,” he murmured.

He felt the jump of her pulse against his lips. “It means, ‘I am your slave,’” he translated, as she snatched her hand away. “
Carissima
. Dearest.”

She swallowed. “I think you had better stick to English.”

“But Italian is so moving,” he said. “
Ti ho voluto dal primo momento che ti vedi
.”

I’ve wanted you from the first moment I saw you.

“
Mi tormenti ancora
.”

You’ve tormented me ever since.

He went on telling her, in words she couldn’t understand, all he’d thought and felt. And while he talked, watching her eyes soften and hearing her breath quicken, he swiftly removed his own gloves.

“Oh, don’t,” she breathed.

He leaned in closer, still speaking the language that seemed to mesmerize her.

“You shouldn’t use masculine wiles,” she said in a choked voice. She touched his sleeve. “What have I done that’s so unforgivable?”

You made me want you
, he told her in his mother’s language.
You’ve made me heartsick, lonely. You’ve made me crave what I vowed I would never need, never seek
.

She must have heard the rage and frustration throbbing beneath the longing words, but she didn’t recoil or try to escape. And when he wrapped his arms about her, she only caught her breath, and let it out on a sigh, and he tasted that sigh when his mouth closed over hers.

Jessica had heard the turmoil in his voice, and required no powers of divination to understand that it boded ill. She’d told herself a hundred times already to run away. Dain would let her go. He had too much pride to force her into his embrace or chase her if she fled.

She simply couldn’t do it.

She didn’t know what he needed, and even if she had known, she doubted she could provide it. Yet she felt—and the feeling was as certain as her awareness of imminent disaster—that he needed it desperately, and she couldn’t, despite common sense and reason, abandon him.

Instead, she abandoned herself, as she had been tempted to do the first time she’d seen him, and as she’d been more painfully tempted when he’d unbuttoned her impossible glove, and as she’d wanted past endurance when he’d kissed her in the storm.

He was big and dark and beautiful and he smelled of smoke and wine and cologne and Male. Now she found that she’d never wanted anything so desperately in all her life as she wanted his low voice sending shivers up and down her back and the lashing strength of his arms about her and his hard, depraved mouth crushing hers.

She couldn’t keep herself from answering the fierce tenderness of his kiss, any more than she could keep her hands from straying over wool and linen, warm with his body’s warmth, until she found the place where his heart beat, fast and hard, like her own.

He shuddered at her touch, and pushed between her thighs, pulling her closer while he dragged scorching kisses over her mouth and down, to her neck. She was aware of hot masculinity throbbing against her belly and of the pulsing heat that contact generated in the intimate place between her legs. She heard the rational voice in her head telling her matters were escalating too swiftly, and urging her to draw back, to retreat while she still could, but she couldn’t.

She was wax in his hands, melting under the kisses simmering over the swell of her breast.

She’d thought she understood what desire was: attraction, a potent magnetic current between male and female, drawing them together. She’d thought she understood lust: a hunger, a craving. She’d been feverish at night, dreaming of him, and restless and edgy by day, thinking of him. She’d called it animal attraction, primitive, mad.

She found she’d understood nothing.

Desire was a hot, black whirlpool, tearing her this way and that, and all the while, inevitably, and with perilous swiftness, dragging her down, beneath intellect, beneath will and shame.

She felt the impatient tug at the ties of her bodice, felt the fastenings give way, and it only made her impatient, too, to yield, to give whatever he needed. She felt his fingers trembling as they slid over the skin he’d bared, and she trembled as well, aching under his shatteringly gentle touch.

“
Baciami
.” His voice was rough, his touch a silken caress. “Kiss me, Jess. Again. As though you mean it.”

She lifted her hands and slid her fingers into his thick, curling hair and brought his mouth to hers. She kissed him with all the shameless meaning she had in her. She answered the bold thrust of his tongue as eagerly as her body answered the gentler ravishment of his caress, lifting and arching into him to press her aching breast against his big, warm hand.

This was what she’d needed, hungered for, from the moment she’d met him. He was a monster, but she’d missed him all the same. She’d missed every terrible thing about him…and every wonderful thing: the warm, massive, muscular body vibrating power, insolence, and animal grace…the bold, black eyes, stone-cold one moment and blazing hellfire the next…the low rumble of his voice, mocking, laughing, icy with contempt or throbbing with yearning.

She had wanted him from the start, without understanding what desire was. Now he’d taught her what it was and made her want more.

She broke away and, pulling his head down, kissed his beautiful, arrogant nose and his haughty brow and trailed her mouth over his hard jaw.

“Oh, Jess.” His voice was a moan. “
Sì. Ancora. Baciami. Abbracciami
.”

She heard nothing else, only the need in his voice. She felt nothing else, only the heat of desire pressed to her own heat. She was aware only of the taut power of his frame, and the warm hands moving over her while his mouth claimed hers again, and of the rustle of silk and cambric as he pushed up her skirts and slid his hand over her knee, and of the warmth of that hand grazing the skin above her stocking.

Then his hand tightened and froze and his warm body turned to stone.

His mouth jerked from hers, and startled, Jessica opened her eyes…in time to see the fire die in his, leaving them as cold as the onyx of his stickpin.

Then, too late, she heard as well: the swish of a gown brushing against shrubbery…and muffled whispers.

“It seems we have an audience, Miss Trent,” Dain said. His voice dripped scorn. Coolly he pulled her bodice back up, and yanked her skirts back down. There was nothing protective or gallant in the gesture. He made her feel as though, having had a look at and a sampling of what she had to offer, he’d decided it wasn’t worth having. She might have been a trumpery toy displayed upon Champtois’ counter, not worth a second glance.

And that, Jessica understood as she took in the chilling expression on his countenance, was what he wanted those watching to think. He was going to throw her to the wolves. That was his revenge.

“You know we’re equally to blame,” she said, keeping her voice low so that the onlookers couldn’t hear. “You helped get me into this, Dain. You can bloody well help get me out of it.”

“Ah, yes,” he said in carrying tones. “I am to announce our betrothal, am I not? But why, Miss Trent, should I pay the price of a wedding ring for what I might have,
gratis?
”

She heard gasps behind him, and a giggle. “I shall be ruined,” she said tightly. “This is unworthy of you—and unforgivable.”

He laughed. “Then shoot me.” And with one mocking glance at the figures standing in the shadows, he walked away.

His mind roiling with humiliation and rage, Dain made his way blindly through the garden, wrenched the locked gate from its hinges, and marched through the narrow alleyway and on down the street, and down the next and the next.

It wasn’t until he neared the Palais Royal that his breathing began to return to normal and black fury gave way to stormy thought.

She was like all the others—like Susannah, but worse, a better actress, and more crafty in setting the self-same trap. And he, with years of experience behind him, had walked straight into it. Again. To be snared in worse circumstances.

With Susannah, he’d simply stolen a peck on the cheek in view of her greedy family. This time, several of Paris’ most elite sophisticates had watched him make a cake of himself, heard him groaning and panting and babbling desire and devotion like a feverish schoolboy.

Even as a schoolboy, at thirteen, he had not behaved like a moonstruck puppy. Even then, he had not nearly wept with longing.

Oh, Jess
.

His throat tightened. He paused and ruthlessly swallowed the burning ache, composed himself, and walked on.

At the Palais Royal, he collected a trio of plump tarts and an assortment of male comrades, and plunged into dissipation. Harlots and gambling hells and champagne: his world. Where he belonged, he told himself. Where he was happy, he assured himself.

And so he gambled and drank and told bawdy jokes and, swallowing his revulsion at the familiar smell of perfume, powder, and paint, filled his lap with whores, and buried his grieving heart, as he always did, under laughter.