Chapter 4
Dain had given Miss Trent more than enough opportunity to see her error. His warnings could not have been clearer.
In any case, to hesitate in such a situation was to indicate doubt, or worse, weakness. To do so with a man was dangerous. To do so with a woman was fatal.
And so Lord Dain smiled and leaned nearer yet, until his great Usignuolo nose was but an inch from hers. “Say your prayers, Miss Trent,” he told her very softly.
Then he slid his hand—his big, dark, bare hand, for he had removed his gloves to eat and hadn’t put them back on—down the sleeve of her pelisse until he came to the first button of her frivolous pearl grey gloves.
He popped the tiny pearl from the buttonhole.
She glanced down at his hand, but didn’t move a muscle.
Then, aware that every eye in the place was fastened upon them, and the noisy conversations had sunk to whispers, he began to talk to her in Italian.
In the tones of a lover, he described the weather, a grey gelding he was thinking of selling, and the condition of Parisian drains.
Though he had never tried or needed to seduce a woman, he’d seen and heard other poor sods at that game, and he reproduced their ludicrous tones to a nicety.
Everyone about them would think they were lovers.
And all the while, he was working his way swiftly down toward her wrist.
She never made a murmur, only glanced now and then from his face to his hands with a frozen expression he interpreted as speechless horror.
He might have interpreted more accurately had he felt inwardly as self-possessed as he seemed outwardly.
Outwardly, his expression remained sensuously intent, his voice low and seductive.
Inwardly, he was disturbingly aware that his pulse had begun to accelerate at about Button Number Six.
By Number Twelve, it was racing. By Number Fifteen, he had to concentrate hard to keep his breathing steady.
He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings.
He’d never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove.
He had committed salacious acts beyond number.
He’d never once felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed.
He was too busy searching Dain’s Dictionary for a definition of his state—and too confused by what he read there—to realize that Miss Jessica Trent’s grey eyes had taken on the drunkenly bewildered expression of a respectable spinster being seduced in spite of herself.
Even if he had comprehended her expression, he wouldn’t have believed it, any more than he could believe his untoward state of excitement—over a damned glove and a bit of feminine flesh.
Not even one of the good bits, either—the ones a man didn’t have—but an inch or so of her wrist, plague take her.
The worst was that he couldn’t stop. The worst was that his passionately intent expression had somehow become genuine, and he was no longer talking in Italian about drains, but about how he wanted to unbutton, unhook, untie every button, hook, and string…
and slip off her garments, one by one, and drag his monstrous blackamoor’s hands over her white virgin’s flesh.
And while in Italian he detailed his heated fantasies, he was slowly peeling the glove back, exposing a delicately voluptuous palm.
Then he gave one small tug toward her knuckles.
And paused. Then another tug. And paused.
Then another tug…and the glove was off. He let it fall to the table, and took her small, cool, white hand in his great, warm one.
She gave a tiny gasp. That was all. No struggle.
Not that it would have made the least difference to him.
He was overwarm and short of breath, and his heart pounded as though he’d been running very hard after something.
And just as though he had done so and got it at last, he was not about to let it go.
His fingers closed around her hand and he gave her a fierce look, daring her to try—just try—to get away.
He found she was still wearing the same wide-eyed expression. Then she blinked and, dropping her gaze to their joined hands, she said in a small, breathless voice, “I’m very sorry, my lord.”
Though still not properly in control of his own respiration, Dain managed to get the words out. “I have no doubt you are. But it’s too late, you see.”
“I do.” She shook her head sadly. “I fear your reputation will never recover.”
He felt a prickle of uneasiness. He ignored it and, with a laugh, glanced about him at their fascinated audience. “mia Cara, it is your own rep—”
“The Marquess of Dain has been seen in the company of a lady,” she said. “He has been seen and heard wooing her.” She looked up, her silver eyes gleaming. “It was lovely. I had no idea Italian was so…moving.”
“I was talking about drains,” he said tightly.
“I didn’t know. Neither did anyone else, I’m sure. They all think you were making love.” She smiled. “To nitwit Bertie Trent’s spinster sister.”
Then, too late, he saw the flaw in his reasoning. Then he recalled Esmond’s remark about the legendary Genevieve. Everyone here would believe the chit followed in her grandmother’s footsteps—a femme fatale—and the curst Parisians would believe he’d fallen under her spell.
“Dain,” she said in a low, hard voice, “if you do not release my hand this instant, I shall kiss you. In front of everybody.”
He had a ghastly suspicion he’d kiss her back—in front of witnesses—Dain, Beelzebub himself, kissing a lady—a virgin. He crushed his panic.
“Miss Trent,” he said, his own tones equally low and hard, “I should like to see you try.”
“By gad,” came an obnoxiously familiar voice from behind Dain. “I had to go nearly to that blasted Bwy Bullion—and it ain’t exactly what you wanted, I know, but I tried one myself first, and I daresay you won’t be disappointed.”
Oblivious to the tension throbbing about him, Bertie Trent set a small cigar box down upon the table one inch from Dain’s hand. The hand still clasping Miss Trent’s.
Bertie’s gaze fell there and his blue eyes widened. “Deuce take you, Jess,” he said crossly. “Can’t a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?”
Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.
Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. “Don’t pay it any mind, Dain.
She does that to all the chaps. I don’t know why she does it, when she don’t want ’em.
Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa’s.
Go to all the bother of catching a mouse, and then the confounded things won’t eat ’em.
Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up. ”
Miss Trent’s lips quivered.
The hint of laughter was all that was needed to shrivel and crush and beat the tumultuous mixture inside Lord Dain into frigid fury.
He had commenced his formal education by having his head thrust into a privy. He had been mocked and tormented before. But not for long.
“Fortunately, Trent, you have the knack of arriving in the very nick of time,” he said.
“Since words cannot express my relief and gratitude, actions must speak louder. Why don’t you toddle round to my place after you take your irresistible sister home?
Vawtry and a few others are coming by for a bottle or two and a private game of hazard. ”
After enduring Trent’s incoherent expressions of delight, Lord Dain took his cool leave of the pair and sauntered out of the shop, grimly determined to hold Bertie Trent’s head under until he drowned.
Even before Lord Dain arrived home, the eyewitness reports of his tête-à-tête with Miss Trent were moving swiftly through the streets of Paris.
By the time, close to dawn, his private orgy of drinking and gambling had broken up—and Bertie, a few hundred pounds the poorer, was being carried by a brace of servants to his bed—wagers were being made regarding the Marquess of Dain’s intentions toward Miss Trent.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, Francis Beaumont, encountering Roland Vawtry at Tortoni’s, bet him one hundred fifty pounds that Dain would be shackled to Miss Trent before the King’s Birthday in June.
“Dain?” Vawtry repeated, his hazel eyes widening. “Wed? To a gentry spinster? Trent’s sister?”
Ten minutes later, when Vawtry had stopped laughing and was beginning to breathe normally again, Beaumont repeated his offer.
“It’s too easy,” said Vawtry. “I can’t take your money.
It wouldn’t be fair. I’ve known Dain since we were at Oxford.
That business in the coffee shop was one of his jokes.
To get everyone in an uproar. This very minute, he’s probably laughing himself sick about what a lot of fools he’s made of everybody. ”
“Two hundred,” said Beaumont. “Two hundred says he stops laughing inside a week.”
“I see,” said Vawtry. “You want to throw your money down another rathole. Very well, my lad. Define the terms.”
“Inside a week, someone sees him go after her,” said Beaumont. “He follows her out of a room. Down a street. Takes her hand. Gad, I don’t care—grabs her by the hair—That’s more in his style, isn’t it?”
“Beaumont, going after women isn’t in Dain’s style,” Vawtry said patiently. “Dain says, ‘I’ll take this one.’ Then he lays down the money and the female goes.”
“He goes after this one,” said Beaumont. “Just as I said. Before reliable witnesses. Two hundred says he does it within seven days.”