But maybe it wasn’t.
Jessica reminded herself that “maybe” was hardly a reliable basis for marriage.
On the other hand, Genevieve had advised her to reel him in. Even as late as this morning, after all that had happened, Genevieve had not changed her mind. “I know he behaved abominably, and I do not blame you for shooting him,” she said. “But recollect that he was interrupted at a time a man most dislikes interruption. He was not thinking rationally. He could not. All the same, I am certain he cares for you. He did not look so insolent and cynical when he danced with you.”
“Marriage or nothing,” Dain’s impatient voice broke into her thoughts. “Those are the terms, the only terms. Take your pick, Jess.”
Dain told himself it didn’t matter. If she consented, he could at least exorcise his idiotic lust in exchange for the extortionate sum he had to pay. Then he could leave her in Devon and pick up his life again. If she refused, he’d pay nothing, and she would go away and stop plaguing him, and he would forget the lust and her. Either way, he won and she lost.
But his heart pounded all the same, and his gut twisted with a chill, throbbing dread he had not felt since his boyhood.
He set his jaw and endured while he watched her move away from Herriard toward a chair. But she didn’t sit down. She simply stared at it, her beautiful face a blank.
Herriard frowned. “Perhaps you want some time, Miss Trent. A few minutes of privacy. I am sure His Lordship would concede that much,” he said, turning the frown upon Dain. “After all, the lady’s entire future is at stake.”
“I don’t need more time,” said Miss Trent. “It is easy enough to calculate the assets and liabilities on either side.”
She looked up at Dain and, to his astonishment, smiled. “I find the prospect of a life of poverty and obscurity in a remote outpost of civilization singularly unattractive. I can think of nothing more absurd than living so merely for the sake of my pride. I had much rather be a wealthy marchioness. You are perfectly awful, of course, Dain, and I don’t doubt you’ll strive to make my life a misery to me. However, Mr. Herriard will see that I am well provided for in the mercenary sense. Also, I shall derive some personal satisfaction from knowing that you will have to eat every last contemptuous word you ever uttered about men who let themselves be trapped into marriage and entanglements with respectable women. I should give anything to be a fly on the wall when you explain your betrothal to your friends, my lord Beelzebub.”
He stared at her, afraid to trust his hearing.
“The answer is yes,” she said impatiently. “Do you think I’m such a sapskull as to say no, and let you off scot-free?”
He found his voice. “I knew that was too much to hope.”
She approached him. “What will you tell your friends, Dain? Something about marriage being less bother than having me chasing after you and shooting you, I suppose.”
She lightly touched his coat sleeve, and the small gesture made his chest constrict painfully.
“You ought to put it in a sling,” she said. “Make a show of it. Not to mention you’ll be less likely to damage it accidentally.”
“A sling would spoil the line of my coat,” he said stiffly. “And I don’t need to make a show of or explain anything.”
“Your friends will roast you unmercifully,” she said. “I should give anything to hear it.”
“I shall announce our betrothal to them tonight, at Antoine’s,” he said. “And they may make what they like of it. It’s nothing to me what those morons think. Meanwhile, I advise you to run along and pack. Herriard and I have business to discuss.”
She stiffened. “Pack?”
“We’ll leave for England the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll see to the travel arrangements. We’ll be married in London. I won’t have a mob descending upon the Dartmoor countryside and agitating the cattle. We can leave for Devon after the wedding breakfast.”
Her eyes darkened. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “We can be wed here. You might allow me to enjoy Paris for a while at least, before you exile me to Devon.”
“We will be wed in St. George’s, Hanover Square,” he said. “In a month’s time. I’ll be damned if I’ll plead with the sodding Archbishop of Canterbury for a special license. The banns will be read. And you may enjoy London in the interim. You are not staying in Paris, so just put that idea out of your head.”
The idea of the Marchioness of Dain living in the stewpot he called home on the Rue de Rivoli made his flesh creep. His lady wife would not sit at the table where half the degenerates of Paris had caroused and eaten and drunk until they were sick—and retched upon carpets and furniture. She would not embroider or read by the fire in a drawing room that had housed orgies the Romans would have envied.
He made a mental note to order a new mattress for the ancestral bed in Devon, and to have all the present bedclothes and hangings burnt. He would not have the Marchioness of Dain contaminated by the objects amid which he’d fathered a bastard upon Charity Graves.
“I have had a perfectly wretched time in Paris, thanks to you,” she said, her grey eyes sparking. “You might at least allow me to make up for it. I should not dream of expecting you to live in my pocket, but I should think I might be permitted to go to parties and enjoy my newly redeemed honor and—”
“You can go to parties in London,” he said. “You may have as grand a wedding breakfast as you like. You may buy all the frocks and fripperies you like. What the devil do you care where you are, so long as I pay the bills?”
“How can you be so insensitive?” she cried. “I do not wish to be hustled away from Paris as though I were a mortifying secret.”
“A secret?” His voice rose. “In St. George’s, Hanover Square? How much more bloody public and respectable can this infernal match be?”
He looked over her head at Herriard, who was at the table, tucking papers into his leather document case, his countenance expressing studied oblivion to the row. “Herriard, perhaps you can explain what harrowing crime I shall perpetrate with a London wedding.”
“This dispute is not within my jurisdiction,” said Herriard. “No more than is the number of wedding guests or any of the other disagreements which usually attend upon a betrothal. You will have to negotiate on your own.”
Lord Dain thought he’d endured enough “negotiating” for one day. He had not come intending to marry the author of his misery. Not consciously, at any rate. He had offered, he’d thought, only because he couldn’t bear to be cornered and harried and beaten by a vengeful little spinster and her diabolical lawyer.
He had not realized, until he offered, how very much her answer did matter. He had not realized until now how boring and depressing Paris and the weeks and months to come would appear when he contemplated her gone…forever.
Though she’d consented, he was still anxious, because she wasn’t his yet, and she might escape after all. Yet his pride wouldn’t let him yield to her. Yield an inch, and a woman would take an ell.
He must begin as he meant to go on, he told himself, and he meant to be master in his own house. He would not be managed. He would not change his ways for anybody, even her. Dain gave the orders; others obeyed.
“Cara,” he said.
She met his gaze, her expression wary.
He took her hand. “Pack your bags,” he said softly.
She tried to pull her hand away. He let it go, but only to wrap his good arm about her waist and pull her close and up, off the floor, and clamp his mouth over hers.
It was over in an instant. She scarcely had time to struggle. One swift, brazen kiss…and he let her down and released her. She tottered back a step, her face flushed.
“That’s all the negotiating you get, Jess,” he said, hastily smothering the heat and hunger the too short embrace had stirred. “If you go on arguing, I shall assume you want more.”
“Very well, London it is—but that will cost you, Dain,” she said.
Sh
e turned away. “Mr. Herriard, show him no mercy. If he wants blind obedience, he will not get it cheap. I shall expect a king’s ransom in pin money. My own carriages and cattle. Ample portion to issue, female as well as male. Make him howl, Mr. Herriard. If he does not roar and stomp about like an outraged elephant, you may be certain you are not demanding enough.”
“I should pay a great deal,” Dain said, grinning evilly, “for blind obedience. I shall begin making a list of commands this very night.” He made her an extravagant bow. “Until the day after tomorrow, then, Miss Trent.”
She curtsied. “Go to blazes, Dain.”
“I shall, undoubtedly—eventually.” He looked to the solicitor. “You may call upon me at two o’clock tomorrow with your infernal documents, Herriard.”
Without waiting for a reply, Dain sauntered from the room.
Chapter 9
On the way to Calais, Dain had ridden with Bertie outside the coach. At the inns, Dain had retired to the taproom with Bertie while Jessica dined with her grandmother. During the Channel crossing, His Lordship had kept to the opposite end of the French steamer. En route to London, he had again ridden outside the luxurious carriage he’d hired. Once in London, he had deposited her, Bertie, and Genevieve at the door of Uncle Arthur and Aunt Louisa’s house. Jessica had not seen her betrothed since.
Now, a full fortnight after leaving Paris—fourteen days during which her affianced husband seemed determined to ignore her out of existence—he arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon and expected her to drop whatever she was doing to attend to him.
“He wants me to go for a drive?” Jessica said indignantly when her flustered aunt returned to the sitting room to relay Dain’s message. “Just like that? He has suddenly recollected my existence and expects me to come running at the snap of his fingers? Why didn’t you tell him to go to the devil?”
Aunt Louisa sank into a chair, pressing her fingers to her forehead. In the few minutes she’d spent with him, Dain had evidently managed to undermine even her autocratic composure.
“Jessica, pray look out the window,” she said.
Jessica set down her pen upon the writing desk where she’d been battling with the wedding breakfast menu, rose, and went to the window. Upon the street below she saw a handsome black curricle. It was attached to two very large, very temperamental black geldings, which Bertie was struggling mightily to hold. They were snorting and dancing restlessly about. Jessica had no doubt that in a very few minutes they’d be dancing on her brother’s head.
“His Almighty Lordship says he will not leave the house without you.” Aunt Louisa’s voice throbbed with outrage. “I advise you to hurry, before those murderous beasts of his kill your brother.”
In three minutes, a seething Jessica had a bonnet upon her head and her green pelisse snugly fastened over her day frock.
In another two, she was being helped onto the carriage seat. Or shoved was more like it, for Dain promptly flung his huge body onto the seat, and she had to wedge herself into a corner to avoid his brawny shoulder. Even so, in the narrow space it was impossible to escape physical contact. His useless left hand lay upon his thigh, and that muscled limb pressed brazenly against hers, as did the allegedly crippled left arm. Their warmth penetrated the thick fabric of her pelisse as well as the muslin frock beneath, to make her skin tingle.
“Comfortable?” he asked with mocking politeness.
“Dain, this curricle is not big enough for the two of us,” she said crossly. “You’re crushing me.”
“Maybe you’d better sit on my lap, then,” he said.
Suppressing the urge to slap the smirk off his face, she turned her attention to her brother, who was still fumbling about the horses’ heads. “Confound you, Bertie, get away from there!” she snapped. “Do you want them to mash your skull upon the paving stones?”
Dain laughed and gave the beasts leave to start, and Bertie hastily stumbled back to the safety of the sidewalk.
A moment later, the curricle was hurtling at a breakneck pace through the crowded West End streets. Jammed, however, between the high, cushioned side of the carriage seat and the rock-hard body of her demonic betrothed, Jessica knew she was in small danger of tumbling out. She leaned back and contemplated Dain’s Steeds from Hell.
They were the worst-tempered horses she’d ever encountered in her life. They fussed and snorted about and objected to everything and everybody that strayed into their path. They tried to trample pedestrians. They exchanged equine insults with every horse they met. They tried to knock over lampposts and curb posts, and strove to collide with every vehicle that had the effrontery to share the same street with them.
Even when they reached Hyde Park, the animals showed no signs of tiring. They tried to run down the workmen finishing the new archway at Hyde Park Corner. They threatened to stampede down Rotten Row—upon which no vehicle but the monarch’s was permitted.
They succeeded in none of their fiendish enterprises, however. Though he waited until the last minute, Dain quelled all attempts at mayhem. To Jessica’s mingled annoyance and admiration, he did so without seeming to make the slightest effort, despite having to drive with only one hand.
“I suppose there wouldn’t be any challenge in it,” she said, thinking aloud, “if your cattle behaved themselves.”
He smoothly drew the right one back from imminent collision with the statue of Achilles and turned the satanic beasts westward into the Drive. “Perhaps your ill temper has communicated itself to them, and they’re frightened. They don’t know where to run, what to do. Is that it, Nick, Harry? Afraid she’ll shoot you?”
The beasts tossed their heads and answered with evil horsey laughter.
Leave it to Dain, she thought, to give his horses Lucifer’s nicknames. And leave it to him to own animals who fully merited the names.
“You’d be ill tempered, too,” she said, “if you’d spent the last week wrestling with guest lists and wedding breakfast menus and fittings and a lot of pestering relatives. You’d be cross, too, if every tradesman in London were besieging your house, and if your drawing room had come to look like a warehouse, heaped with catalogs and samples. They have been plaguing me since the morning our betrothal announcement appeared in the paper.”
“I shouldn’t be ill tempered in the least,” he said, “because I should never be so cork-brained as to let myself be bothered.”
“You’re the one who insisted upon the grand wedding at St. George’s, Hanover Square,” she said. “Then you left it all to me. You haven’t made the smallest pretense of helping.”
“I? Help?” he asked incredulously. “What the devil are servants for, you little nitwit? Did I not tell you to send the bills to me? If no one else in the household is competent to do the work, then hire somebody. If you want to be a wealthy marchioness, why don’t you act like one? The working classes work,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “The upper classes tell them what to do. You should not upset the social order. Look at what happened in France. They overthrew the established order decades ago, and what have they to show for it? A king who dresses and behaves like a bourgeois, open sewers in their grandest neighborhoods, and not a decently lit street, except about the Palais Royal.”
She started at him. “I had no idea you were such a Tory snob. Certainly one couldn’t tell, given your choice of companions.”
He kept his gaze upon the horses. “If you’re referring to the tarts, may I remind you that they’re hired help.”
The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of his bed partners. Jessica did not want to think about how he’d amused himself at night while she lay sleepless in her bed, fretting about the wedding night and her lack of experience—not to mention her lack of the Rubenesque figure he was so revoltingly partial to.
Gloomily certain that her marriage would be a debacle—no matter what Genevieve said—Jessica did not want to care whether she pleased him in bed or not. She could not get the better of her pride, thou
gh, and that feminine vanity couldn’t bear the prospect of failing to captivate a husband. Any husband, even him. Neither of Genevieve’s spouses had ever dreamt of straying, nor had any of the lovers she’d discreetly taken during her long widowhood.
But now was hardly the time to wrestle with that daunting problem, Jessica told herself. It made more sense to take the opportunity to get some practical matters sorted out. Like the guest list.
“I know where your female companions fit on your social scale,” she said. “The men are another matter. Mr. Beaumont, for instance. Aunt Louisa says one may not invite him to the wedding breakfast because he isn’t good ton. But he is your friend.”
“You bloody well better not invite him,” Dain said, his jaw hardening. “Buggering sod tried to spy on me when I was with a whore. Invite him to the wedding and the swine will think he’s invited to attend the wedding night as well. What with the opium and drink, he probably can’t get his own rod to stand to attention—so he watches someone else do it.”
Jessica discovered that the image of Rubenesque trollops writhing in his lap wasn’t nearly so agitating as what now appeared in her mind’s eye: six and a half feet of dark, naked, aroused male.
She had a good idea of what arousal looked like. She’d seen some of Mr. Rowlandson’s erotic engravings. She wished she hadn’t. She didn’t want so vivid an image of Dain doing with a voluptuous whore what the men in Rowlandson’s pictures had been doing.
The picture hung in her mind, bold as the illuminations displayed during national celebrations, and it twisted her insides into knots and made her want to kill somebody.
She was not simply jealous, she was madly so—and he’d put her into this mortifying state with but a few careless words. Now she looked into the future, and saw him doing it again and again, until he made her completely insane.
She should not let him do it to her, Jessica knew. She should not be jealous of his tarts. She should thank her lucky stars for them, because he’d spend as little time as possible with her, while she would be a wealthy noblewoman, free to conduct her life as she wished. She’d told herself this a thousand times at least, since the day he’d so insolently proposed and she’d stupidly let her heart soften.
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