Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

“That sounds like the sort of thing some drunken jackass would announce—just before falling into the punch bowl—to a crowd of his fellow drunken jackasses, amid the usual masculine witticisms about fornication and excretory processes.”

“I know what men find hilarious,” she said. “I’ve lived with you and reared ten male cousins. Drunk or sober, they like jokes about what they do—or want to do—with females, and they are endlessly fascinated with passing wind, water, and—”

“Women don’t have a sense of humor,” Bertie said. “They don’t need one. The Almighty made them as a permanent joke on men. From which one may logically deduce that the Almighty is a female.”

“That, Bertie, is a consequence of the feminine brain having reached a more advanced state of development,” said the female without looking up. “She recognizes that the selection of a gift requires the balancing of a profoundly complicated moral, psychological, aesthetic, and sentimental equation. I should not recommend that a mere male attempt to involve himself in the delicate process of balancing it, especially by the primitive method of counting

Beaumont wanted Esmond very badly. Esmond wanted Beaumont’s wife. And she didn’t want anybody.

Which was exactly the wrong time for Bertie Trent to tell him that the dirty, mildewed picture Miss Trent had bought for ten sous had turned out to be an extremely valuable Russian icon.

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.

“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.”

“Miss Trent,” he said, his own tones equally low and hard, “I should like to see you try.”

“I shall kill you, Dain,” she muttered. “I shall put a bullet precisely where that Italian nose of yours meets your black brows.”

But since Dain wasn’t normal, and he’d surely paid for a great deal more than mere basics, she had tossed feverishly in her bed in an agitated muddle of fear and curiosity and…well, if one was perfectly honest with oneself, which she generally was, there was some hankering, too, heaven help her.

She could not stop thinking about his hands. Which wasn’t to say she hadn’t contemplated every other part of him as well, but she’d had direct, simmering physical experience of those large, too adept hands. At the mere thought of them, even now, furious as she was, she felt something hot and achy curl inside her, from her diaphragm to the pit of her belly. Which only made her the more furious.

Jessica had adopted the tone and manner she’d found effective in dealing with unruly boys bigger than she was and with those of her uncles’ and aunts’ servants who made nonsensical remarks such as “Master wouldn’t like it” or “Missus says I may not.” Hers was a tone and manner that assured the listener of only two choices: obedience or death. It proved as effective in this case as in most others.

After nearly a week of having his nerves scraped raw by her brainless puppy of a brother, all Dain had accomplished was to find himself the object of Miss Trent’s amusement

He melted under that maidenly ardor as though it were rain and he a pillar of salt.

Bewildered and heated at once, he moved his big hands unsteadily over her back and shaped his trembling fingers to her deliciously dainty waist. He had never before held anything like her—so sweetly slim and supple and curved to delicate perfection. His chest tightened and ached and he wanted to weep. Sognavo di te. I’ve dreamed of you. Ti ho voluta tra le mie braccia dal primo momento che ho vista. I’ve wanted you in my arms since the moment I met you.

He stood, helpless in the driving rain, unable to rule his needy mouth, his restless hands, while, within, his heart beat out the mortifying truth. Ho bisogno di te. I need you.

Then what holds you here? he asked himself. What mighty force dragged you here, to gaze stupidly, like a moonstruck puppy, at a house, because she was in it? And what chains held you here, waiting for a glimpse of her?

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.

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.

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.

But she had seemed willing enough to dance with him. Though she couldn’t have enjoyed it, and must have had a typically underhand 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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

“I don’t faint,” she said. “I don’t indulge in hysterics. I’ll be quite all right.”

She was a healthy young woman who had simply yielded to feelings countless other women yielded to—and might do with impunity if they were married or widowed and discreet about it.

The bigger they are, the harder the fall. And the better the world liked seeing them fall.

She knew he would suffer, because she had struck in the only place where he could be hurt: his pride.

“There is no animal more invincible than a woman,” Aristophanes had said, “nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.” Ruthless. Vicious. Fiendish.

He needed only one hand to do that, and only one swallow to empty it.

“I am a human being, and you will never own me, no matter what you pay.

“Herriard demands that I bail out your brother, and house and support you for the rest of your life,” he said. “Very well. I agree—but on the same terms any other man would insist upon: exclusive ownership and breeding rights.”

She heard it then, faint but recognizable. She’d heard it before, in boyish boasts and taunts: the small, discordant note of uncertainty beneath the laughter. She swiftly reviewed the words he’d uttered, and wondered if that was all his pride would allow him to say. Masculine pride was an exceedingly precious and fragile item. That was why males built fortresses about it, practically from infancy.

I’m not afraid, boys said, laughing, when they were sick with terror. They laughed off floggings and pretended to feel nothing. They also dropped rodents and reptiles into the laps of little girls they were infatuated with, and laughed in that same uncertain way when the little girls ran away screaming.

His proposal was, perhaps, the equivalent of a gift of a reptile or rodent. If she indignantly rejected it, he would laugh, and tell hims...

“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.”

“A secret?” His voice rose. “In St. George’s, Hanover Square? How much more bloody public and respectable can this infernal match be?”

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.

The beasts tossed their heads and answered with evil horsey laughter.

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.”

Lecturing herself didn’t do any good. She knew he was perfectly awful and he’d used her abominably and he was incapable of affection and he was wedding her mainly for revenge…and she wanted him to want only her, all the same.

“Truly?” She shot him a glance from under her lashes. “Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you’d told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee.” “The what?” “It was ghastly expensive,” she said, “but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination.” Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers.

She looked up. He was scowling malevolently at his big, gloved hand. “You,” he growled. “Plague take you.” She tilted her head back. “I’ll return it, if you wish. The nightgown.”

She claimed, too, her hands raking over his massive shoulders and down, digging her fingers into the powerful sinews of his arms. Mine, she thought, as the muscles bunched and flexed under her touch. And mine, she vowed, as she splayed her hands over his broad, hard chest. She would have him and keep him if it killed her. A monster he may be, but he was her monster. She would not share his stormy kisses with anyone else. She would not share his big, splendid body with anyone else.

“Very well,” she said, glancing idly about her, just as though she were sitting at a tea table. “Did you know that Shelley’s first wife drowned herself in the Serpentine?” “Is my first wife considering the same?” he asked, eyeing her uneasily. “Certainly not. Genevieve says that killing oneself on account of a man is inexcusably gauche. I was merely making conversation.”

She looked up. “You’d laugh even if I managed to strike. You’d laugh if your back were torn to shreds. Did you laugh after I shot you?”