Chapter 15 #3
After twenty minutes of riding with a marble statue, Dain could bear it no longer. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I promised you would not be embarrassed in public, I know. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I should think that was obvious.”
“I know very well you didn’t sire the child on purpose,” she said icily. “That is rarely the first thing a male thinks of when he’s tumbling a trollop.”
So much for hoping she hadn’t been able to see the boy’s face.
He might have known. Her keen eyes missed nothing. If she could discern a priceless icon under inches of mold and dirt, she could easily spot a bastard at twenty paces.
She had seen, beyond a doubt. Jessica would not have judged the matter on a tart’s words alone. If she hadn’t seen, she would have given Dain a chance to defend himself. And he would have denied Charity’s accusation.
But now there would be no denying the blackamoor skin and the monstrous nose—visible, easily identifiable for miles. No hope of denying, when Jessica had observed as well that the mother was fair, green-eyed and auburn-haired.
“And it is no good trying to pretend you didn’t know the child was yours,” Jessica went on.
“Your friend Ainswood knew, and he moved quickly enough to get the woman out of the way—as though I were a half-wit, and could not see what was before me. ‘Asylum,’ indeed. It’s the lot of you who belong in Bedlam.
Running about like overwrought hens—and meanwhile the boy gets away.
You had him.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing angry reproach.
“But you let him go. How could you, Dain? I could not believe my eyes. Where the devil were your wits?”
He stared at her.
She turned back to the window. “Now we’ve lost him, and heaven only knows how long it will take to find him again.
I could just scream. If I had not gone with you to the churchyard, I might have been able to catch him.
But I could scarcely walk, let alone run—and I must not contradict you in public, so I could hardly shout, ‘After him, idiot!’ in front of your friends—even if it had not been too late, anyhow.
I cannot recollect when I’ve seen a little boy take off so fast. One moment he was there. The next, he’d vanished.”
His heart was a fist, beating mercilessly against his ribs.
Find him. Catch him.
She wanted him to go after the hideous thing he’d made with that greedy, vengeful slut. She wanted him to look at it and touch it and…
“No!” The word exploded from him, a roar of denial, and with it, Dain’s mind turned black and cold.
The small, dark face he’d looked into had turned his insides into a seething pit of emotion it had wanted every iota of his will to contain. His wife’s words had sent the lava spilling through the crevices.
But the frigid darkness had come, as it always did, to preserve him, and it smothered feeling, as it always did.
“No,” he repeated quietly, his voice cold and controlled. “There will be no finding. She had no business having him in the first place. Charity Graves knew well enough how to get rid of such ‘inconveniences.’ She’d done it countless times thereafter, I don’t doubt.”
His wife was staring at him now, her face pale and shocked, just as she’d looked when he told her about his mother.
“But wealthy aristocrats don’t come Charity’s way very often,” he went on, telling this tale in the same coldly brutal way he’d related his mother’s.
“And when she found she was breeding, she knew the brat was either mine or Ainswood’s.
Either way, she imagined she had a ripe pigeon to pluck.
When the brat turned out to be mine, she didn’t waste a minute finding out the name of my solicitor.
She wrote to him promptly enough, proposing an allowance of five hundred a year. ”
“Five hundred?” Jessica’s color returned. “To a professional? And not even your mistress, either, but a common trollop you shared with your friend?” she added indignantly. “And one who had the babe on purpose—not a respectable girl got in the family way—”
“Respectable? Did you imagine, even for an instant, Jess, that I—gad, what? I seduced—lured an innocent—and left her breeding?”
His voice had begun to rise. Clenching his fist, he added levelly, “You know very well I had managed to avoid entanglements with respectable females until you exploded into my life.”
“Certainly I never imagined you would go to the bother of seducing an innocent,” she said crisply.
“It simply hadn’t occurred to me that a trollop might have a babe through pure greed.
Even now I have difficulty imagining a woman being so wrongheaded.
Five hundred pounds.” She shook her head.
“I doubt even the Royal Dukes support their by-blows in such luxury. No wonder you are so outraged. And no wonder, either, there is so much ill feeling between you and the boy’s mother.
I had a suspicion she went out of her way to embarrass you.
She must have heard—or seen—that you had your wife with you. ”
“If she tries it again,” he said grimly, “I’ll have her and the guttersnipe she spawned transported. If she comes within twenty miles of you—”
“Dain, the woman is one matter,” she said.
“The child is another. He did not ask to have her for a mother, any more than he asked to be born. She was exceedingly unkind to use him as she did today. No child should be subjected to such a scene. Still, I strongly doubt she considers anybody’s feelings but her own.
I noticed that she was far better dressed than her so-called ‘lovey.’ Dirt is one thing—little boys cannot remain clean above two and a half minutes—but there is no excuse for the child to wear rags, when his mother is garbed like a London high-flyer. ”
She looked up at him. “How much do you give her, by the way?”
“Fifty,” he said tightly. “More than enough to feed and clothe him—and let her spend all she makes on her back on herself. But I daresay the rags were all part of her game: to make me appear the villain of the piece. Too bad I’m accustomed to the role, and that what other fools think does not concern me in the least.”
“Fifty a year is more than generous. How old is he?” Jessica demanded. “Six, seven?”
“Eight, but it makes no—”
“Old enough to notice his appearance,” she said.
“I cannot excuse his mother for dressing him so shabbily. She has the money, and ought to know how a boy of that age would feel. Mortified, I don’t doubt—which is why he annoyed Joseph.
But she does not consider the child, as I said, and all you have told me only convinces me she is an unfit mother.
I must ask you, Dain, to set aside your feelings toward her, and consider your son.
He is yours by law. You can take him away from her. ”
“No.” He had smothered feeling, but his head had begun to pound, and his useless arm was throbbing. He could not freeze and smother physical pain. He could scarcely think past it. Even if he could have reasoned coolly, there was no explanation he could give for his behavior that would satisfy her.
He shouldn’t have tried to explain, he told himself. He could never make her understand. Above all, he didn’t want her to comprehend, any more than he wanted to himself, what he’d felt when he’d looked down into that face, into the devil’s mirror.
“No,” he repeated. “And stop fussing about it, Jess. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on coming to the bedamned wrestling match.
By gad, I cannot seem to stir a foot when you are by without”—he gestured wearily—“without things going off in my face. No wonder I have a headache. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.
Women. Everywhere. Wives and Madonnas and mothers and whores and—and you’re plaguing me to death, the lot of you. ”
By this time, Roland Vawtry had relieved Ainswood and the others of responsibility for Charity Graves and was marching her into the inn where she claimed to be staying.
She was not supposed to be staying at an inn in Devonport.
She was supposed to be where he’d left her two days earlier, in Ashburton, where she’d said nothing about Dain or Dain’s bastard.
There, all she had done was sashay into the public room and settle at a table nearby with a fellow who seemed to know her.
After a while, the fellow had left, and Vawtry’s comrades having departed for assignations of their own, he had found himself sharing the table with her and buying her a tankard of ale.
After which they had adjourned for a few rollicking hours of what Beaumont had claimed Vawtry badly needed.
Beaumont had been right on that count, as he seemed to be on so many others.
But Beaumont didn’t have to be here now to point out that what Charity Graves badly needed was to be beaten within an inch of her life.
The inn, fortunately, was not a respectable one, and no one made a murmur when Vawtry stomped up after her to her room. As soon as he’d shut the door, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“You lying, sneaking, troublemaking little strumpet!” he burst out. Then he broke away, fearing he would kill her, and certain that he did not badly need to be hanged for murdering a tart.
“Oh, my,” she said with a laugh. “I fear you’re not happy to see me, Rolly, my love.”
“Don’t call me that—and I’m not your love, you stupid cow. You’re going to get me killed. If Dain finds out I was with you in Ashburton, he’s sure to think I put you up to that scene.”
He flung himself into a chair. “Then he’ll take me apart, piece by piece.
And ask questions later.” He raked his fingers through his hair.
“And it’s no use hoping he won’t find out, because nothing ever goes right when it comes to him.
I vow, it must be a curse. Twenty thousand pounds—slipped through my hands—I didn’t even know it was there—and now this.
Because I didn’t know you were there—here—either.
And the brat—his bastard. Who knew he had one?
But now everyone does—thanks to you—including her—and if he doesn’t kill me, the bitch will shoot me. ”
Charity approached. “Did you say ‘twenty thousand,’ lovey?” She sat on his lap and drew his arm around her and pressed his hand against her ample breast.
“Leave me alone,” he grumbled. “I’m not in the mood.”
Roland Vawtry’s mood was one of black despair.
He was mired in debt, with no way of getting out, ever, because he was Dame Fortune’s dependent, and she was capricious, as Beaumont had so wisely warned.
She gave a priceless icon to a man who already had more than he could spend in three lifetimes.
She took away from a man who had next to nothing, and left him with less than nothing.
She could not even give him a tart without making that female the author of his demise.
Mr. Vawtry truly believed himself to be at the last stages of desperation. The modest stock of common sense and self-confidence he’d once possessed had been ruthlessly vandalized in a matter of days by a man whose primary delight in life was making other people miserable.
Vawtry was incapable of recognizing that his situation wasn’t half so catastrophic as it appeared, any more than he recognized Francis Beaumont as the insidious agent destroying his peace of mind.
His mind poisoned, Vawtry believed that his friendship with Dain was the source of his troubles.
“‘He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,’” Beaumont had quoted, and Roland Vawtry had promptly realized that his spoon had been too short for dining with the likes of Dain, and that his own case was the same as Bertie Trent’s.
Association with Beelzebub had ruined them both.
Now, Vawtry was not only ruined, but—thanks to Charity—in imminent danger of a violent death. He needed to think—or better yet, run for his life. He knew he couldn’t do either of those things properly while his lap was filled with a buxom trollop.
All the same, angry as he was with her, he felt disinclined to push her off. Her luxurious bosom was warm and soft, and she was stroking his hair back, just as though he had not nearly killed her minutes earlier. A woman’s touch—even that of a brazen whore—was very comforting.
Under the comforting touch, Vawtry’s mind softened toward her. After all, Dain had done Charity an ill turn as well. At least she’d had the courage to confront him.
Besides, she was pretty—very pretty—and exceedingly jolly company in bed. Vawtry squeezed her breast and kissed her.
“There now, you see how naughty you’ve been,” she said.
“As though I wouldn’t look after you. Silly boy.
” She ruffled his hair. “He won’t think anything like what you say.
All I have to do is tell people how Mr. Vawtry paid me…
” She considered. “Paid me twenty pounds to keep out of the way and not bother his very dear friend, Lord Dain. I’ll tell ’em how you said I wasn’t to spoil the honeymoon. ”
How clever she was. Vawtry buried his face in her plump, pretty bosom.
“But I come—came—anyhow, because I’m a wicked, lying whore,” she continued. “And you was—were—that vexed with me, you beat me.” She kissed the top of his head. “That’s what I’ll say.”
“I wish I had twenty pounds,” he mumbled to her bodice. “I’d give it to you. I would. Oh, Charity, what am I to do?”
She, possessing an innate skill for her profession, showed him what to do, and he, having a knack for misconstruing the obvious, interpreted professional skill as feeling for him.
Before many hours had passed, he’d confided all his troubles to her, and for hours after, while he lay asleep in her arms, Charity Graves lay awake planning how to make all her dreams come true.