Chapter 13
Jessica wasn’t sure when exactly she’d become aware she was being carried up the stairs.
It all seemed part of a dream or part of long ago, when she was a sleepy little girl, so tiny that even Uncle Frederick, who was the smallest of her uncles, could easily scoop her up in one arm and carry her up the stairs to the nursery.
An uncle’s arm made a hard seat, true, and the ride was bumpy, but she was perfectly safe, snugly braced against a big male body, her head nestled upon a broad shoulder.
Gradually the fog of sleep cleared, and even before she opened her heavy eyes, Jessica knew who was carrying her.
She also remembered what had happened. Or most of it. A great deal was lost in the delirious whirlpool Dain had pulled her into.
“I’m awake,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep. She was still weary, and her mind was thick as pudding. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“You’ll tumble down the stairs,” Dain said gruffly. “At any rate, we’re nearly there.”
There, it turned out, was Her Ladyship’s Apartments. The Grand Catacombs, she silently renamed them, as Dain carried her into the dimly lit cavern of her bedchamber.
He set her down very carefully upon the bed.
Then he rang for her maid…and left. Without another word, and in rather a hurry.
Jessica sat gazing at the empty doorway, listening to his carpet-muffled footsteps as he strode down the long hallway, until she heard the faint thud of his door closing.
Sighing, she bent to remove the stocking he’d loosened, which had slid down to her ankle.
She had known from the minute she’d agreed to marry him that it wouldn’t be easy, she reminded herself. She had known he was in an exceedingly prickly humor this evening—all day, in fact. She could not expect him to behave rationally…and bed her properly…and sleep with her.
Bridget appeared then, and without appearing to notice her mistress’s disordered state of dress or distracted state of mind, quietly and efficiently prepared Her Ladyship for bed.
Once tucked in, the maid gone, Jessica decided there was no point in fretting about Dain’s failure to deflower her.
What he had done had been very exciting and surprising, especially the last part, when he’d made her have a little earthquake.
She knew what that was, because Genevieve had told her.
And thanks to her grandmother, Jessica was well aware that those extraordinary sensations did not always occur, especially early in marriage. Not all men took the trouble.
She could not believe Dain had taken the trouble merely to score a point, like proving his power over her.
According to Genevieve, it was extremely painful for an aroused male to deny himself release.
Unless Dain had an esoteric way of relieving his arousal that Genevieve had failed to mention, he’d surely suffered acute discomfort.
He must have had a compelling reason for doing so.
Jessica could not begin to imagine what it was. He wanted her, beyond a doubt. He had tried to resist, but he couldn’t—not after she’d shamelessly bared her breasts and stuck them right under his arrogant Florentine nose…not after she’d hiked up her skirts and sat on his breeding organs.
She flushed, recalling, but the heat she felt wasn’t embarrassment. At the time, she’d felt wonderfully free and wicked…and she’d been hotly, deliciously rewarded for her boldness.
Even now, she felt he’d given her a gift. As though it were her birthday, not his. And after gifting his wife with a little earthquake and enduring acute physical discomfort, he had—with no small difficulty, she was sure—contrived to get her up the stairs without waking her.
She found herself wishing he hadn’t done so. It would have been easier if he’d roughly wakened her and laughed at her and let her make her own way upstairs, dazed, stumbling…besotted. It would have been easier still if he had simply pushed her down, rammed into her, rolled away, and fallen asleep.
Instead, he’d taken pains. He’d taught her pleasure and taken care of her after. Sweet and chivalrous he’d been, truly.
Her husband was transforming simple animal attraction into something much more complicated.
And soon, if she was not very careful, she might make the fatal error of falling in love with him.
Midafternoon of the following day, Lady Dain discovered that Athcourt did have ghosts.
She knelt on a threadbare carpet in the uppermost chamber of the North Tower.
The room was one of Athcourt’s furnishings graveyards.
About her were trunks filled with clothing of bygone eras, draperies, and linens, as well as assorted odds and ends of furniture, crates of mismatched dinnerware, and a number of household utensils of enigmatic function.
Beside her knelt Mrs. Ingleby, the housekeeper.
They were both gazing at a portrait of a young woman with curling black hair, coal black eyes, and a haughty Florentine nose. Jessica had found it in a dark corner of the room, hidden behind a stack of trunks, and thickly wrapped in velvet bed hangings.
“This can be no one but His Lordship’s mother,” Jessica said, wondering why her heart hammered as though she were afraid, which she wasn’t. “The gown, the coiffure—last decade of the eighteenth century, no question.”
There was no need to remark upon the physical resemblance. The lady was simply the feminine version of the present marquess.
This was also the first portrait Jessica had seen that bore any resemblance to him.
After Jessica’s solitary breakfast—Dain had eaten and vanished before she’d come down—Mrs. Ingleby had given her a partial tour of the immense house, including a leisurely stroll through the long second-floor gallery opposite their bedrooms, which housed the family portraits.
Except for the first Earl of Blackmoor, whose heavy-lidded gaze had reminded her of Dain’s, Jessica had detected no likenesses.
Nowhere among these worthies had she spied a female who could have been Dain’s mother.
Mrs. Ingleby, when questioned, had told her there wasn’t such a portrait, not that she knew of.
She’d been at Athcourt since the present marquess came into the title, when he’d replaced most of the previous staff.
This portrait, then, had been hidden away during his father’s time.
Out of grief? Jessica wondered. Had it been too painful for the late marquess to see his wife’s image?
If so, he must have been a very different man from the one she’d seen in his portrait: a fair, middle-aged gentleman, garbed in somber Quaker-like simplicity.
But the humble dress was in stark contrast to his expression.
No gentle Friend had lived behind the stern countenance with its narrowed, wintry blue eyes.
“I know nothing about her,” Jessica said, “except the date she was wed and the date she died. I hadn’t expected her to be so young. I had assumed the second wife was a more mature woman. This is little more than a girl.”
And who, she wondered angrily, had shackled this ravishing child to the horrid, pious old block of ice?
She drew back, startled by the vehemence of her reaction. Quickly she stood up.
“Have it brought down to my sitting room,” she told the housekeeper. “You may have it lightly dusted before, but no further cleaning until I’ve had a chance to examine it in better light.”
Mrs. Ingleby had been imported from Derbyshire.
She’d heard nothing about old family scandals before she’d come and, because she would not tolerate belowstairs gossip, she’d heard nothing since.
Lord Dain’s agent had hired her, not simply because of her sterling reputation as a housekeeper, but because of her strict principles: In her view, the care of a family was a sacred trust, which one did not abuse by whispering scandal behind one’s employers’ backs.
Either the conditions were good or they were not.
If they were not, one politely gave notice and departed.
Her strict views did not, however, prevent the rest of the staff from gossiping when her back was turned.
Consequently, most of them had heard about the previous Lady Dain.
One of them was one of the footmen summoned to move the portrait to the present Lady Dain’s sitting room.
He told Mr. Rodstock who the portrait subject was.
Mr. Rodstock was much too dignified to dash his head against the chimneypiece as he wished to. All he did was blink, once, and order his minions to alert him the instant His Lordship returned.
Lord Dain had spent most of the day in Chudleigh. At the Star and Garter, he’d met up with Lord Sherburne, who was making his meandering way south to Devonport for a wrestling match.
Sherburne, who’d been wed less than a year, had left his young wife in London.
He was the last person in the world to find anything odd about a very recently married man’s deserting his bride for the bar parlor of a coaching inn several miles from home.
On the contrary, he invited Dain to journey with him to Devonport.
Sherburne was awaiting a few other fellows, who were to arrive this evening.
He suggested Dain pack, collect his valet, and join them for dinner.
Then they could all leave together first thing tomorrow morning.
Dain had accepted the invitation without hesitation, ignoring the skull-splitting shriek of his conscience. Hesitation was always a sign of weakness and, in this case, Sherburne might think Beelzebub needed his wife’s permission first, or that he couldn’t bear to be away from her for a few days.
He could bear it easily, Dain thought now, as he hurried up the north staircase to his room.
Furthermore, she needed to be taught that she could not manipulate him, and this lesson would be considerably less painful for him than the one he’d given her last night.
He’d rather let carrion crows feast on his privates than go through that horrific experience again.