Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

  But not Susannah. She couldn’t dance because she was in mourning, but she could talk and did, and looked up at him as though he were a knight in shining armor, Sir Galahad himself.

  After four months, he was permitted to hold her gloved hand for twenty seconds. It took him another two months to work up the courage to kiss her.

  In her uncle’s rose garden, the chivalrous knight had planted a chaste kiss upon his lady’s cheek.

  Almost in the same instant, as though on cue, a flock of shrieking women—mother, aunt, sisters—flew out of the bushes. The next he knew, he was closeted in the study with Susannah’s uncle and sternly commanded to declare his intentions. Naive, besotted puppy that he’d been, Dain had declared them honorable.

  In the next moment, he had a pen in his hand and an immense heap of documents before him, which he was commanded to sign.

  Even now, Dain could not say where or how he’d found the presence of mind to read them first. Perhaps it had to do with hearing two commands in a row, and being unaccustomed to taking orders of any kind.

  Whatever the reason, he’d set down the pen and read.

  He’d discovered that in return for the privilege of marrying his blushing rosebud, he would be permitted to pay all of her late brother’s debts, as well as her uncle’s, aunt’s, mother’s, and her own, now and forever, ’til death do us part, amen.

  Dain had decided it was a foolhardy investment and said so.

  He was sternly reminded that he’d compromised an innocent girl of good family.

  “Then shoot me,” he’d replied. And walked out.

  No one had tried to shoot him. Weeks later, back in Paris, he’d learned that Susannah had wed Lord Linglay.

  Linglay was a sixty-five-year-old rouge-wearing roué who looked about ninety, collected obscene snuffboxes, and pinched and fondled every serving girl foolish enough to come within reach of his palsied hands. He had not been expected to survive the wedding night.

  He had not only survived, but he’d managed to impregnate his young bride, and had continued to do so at a brisk pace. She’d scarcely get one brat out before the next one was planted.

  Lord Dain was imagining in detail his former love in the arms of her painted, palsied, sweating, and drooling spouse, and savoring those details, when the bells of Notre Dame clanged in the distance.

  He realized they were rather more distant than they ought to be, if he was upon the Rue de Rivoli, where he lived and ought to be by now.

  Then he saw he was in the wrong street, the wrong neighborhood altogether.

  His baffled glance fell upon a familiar-looking lamppost.

  His spirits, lightened by images of Susannah’s earthly purgatory, instantly sank again and dragged him, mind, body, and soul, into the mire.

  Touch me. Hold me. Kiss me.

  He turned the corner, into the dark, narrow street, where the blank, windowless walls could see and tell nothing. He pressed his forehead against the cold stone and endured, because he hadn’t any choice. He couldn’t stop what twisted and ached inside him.

  I need you.

  Her lips clinging to his…her hands, holding him fast. She was soft and warm and she tasted of rain, and it was sweet, unbearably sweet, to believe for a moment that she wanted to be in his arms.

  He’d believed it for that moment, and wanted to believe still, and he hated himself for what he wanted, and hated her for making him want it.

  And so, setting his jaw, Lord Dain straightened and went on his way, enduring, while he told himself she’d pay. In time.

  Everyone did. In time.

  Chapter 6

  On the afternoon following Madame Vraisses’ party, an unhappy Roland Vawtry paid Francis Beaumont two hundred pounds.

  “I saw it myself,” Vawtry said, shaking his head. “From the window. Even so, I shouldn’t have believed it if everyone else hadn’t seen it as well. He went right out the door and chased her down the street. To scare her off, I suppose. Daresay she’s packing her bags this instant.”

  “She was at the unveiling celebration last night,” Beaumont said, smiling. “Cool and collected and managing her swarm of panting admirers with smooth aplomb. When Miss Trent does decide to pack, it will be her trousseau. And the linens will be embellished with a D as in Dain.”

  Vawtry bridled. “It isn’t at all like that. I know what happened. Dain doesn’t like interruptions. He doesn’t like uninvited guests. And when he doesn’t like something, he makes it go away. Or he smashes it. If she’d been a man, he would have smashed her. Since she wasn’t, he made her go away.”

  “Three hundred,” said Beaumont. “Three hundred says she’s his marchioness before the King’s Birthday.”

  Vawtry suppressed his own smile. Whatever Dain did or didn’t do with Miss Jessica Trent, he would not marry her.

  Which wasn’t to say that Dain would never wed. But that would be only to heap more shame, shock, and disgust upon his family, both the few living—a handful of distant cousins—and the legion dead. The bride, beyond doubt, would be the mistress, widow, or daughter of a notorious traitor or murderer. She would also be a famous whore. The ideal would be a half-Irish mulatto Jewess brothel keeper whose last lover had been hanged for sodomizing and strangling the Duke of Kent’s only legitimate offspring, the nine-year-old Alexandrina Victoria. A Marchioness of Dain who was a gently bred virgin of respectable—if eccentric—family was out of the question.

  Dain’s being married—to anybody—in a mere two months or so was so far out of the question as to belong to another galaxy.

  Vawtry accepted the wager.

  This was not the only wager placed in Paris that week, and not the largest in which the names Dain and Trent figured.

  The prostitutes who’d witnessed Miss Trent’s entry into Dain’s drawing room and his ensuing pursuit told all of their friends and customers about it. The male guests also related the tale, with the usual embellishments, to anyone who’d listen, and that was everyone.

  And everyone, of course, had an opinion. Many put money behind their opinions. Within a week, Paris was seething and restless, rather like the Roman mob at the arena, impatiently awaiting the combat to death of its two mightiest gladiators.

  The problem was getting the combatants into the same arena. Miss Trent traveled in respectable Society. Lord Dain prowled the demimonde. They were, most inconsiderately, avoiding each other. Neither could be persuaded or tricked into talking about the other.

  Lady Wallingdon, who’d resided in Paris eighteen months and had spent most of that time striving, with mixed success, to become its premier hostess, saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and promptly snatched it.

  She boldly scheduled a ball on the same day one of her rivals had scheduled a masquerade. It happened to be exactly a fortnight after the Chasing Miss Trent Down the Street Scene. Though Lady Pembury and her two grandchildren did not qualify as the crème de la crème of either Parisian or London society, and though Lady Wallingdon would not have bothered with them in other circumstances, she invited them to her ball.

  She also invited Lord Dain.

  Then she let everyone know what she’d done. Though she, like at least half of Paris, believed him to be enslaved by Miss Trent, Lady Wallingdon did not expect him to come. Everyone knew that the Marquess of Dain was about as likely to attend a respectable social affair as he was to invite the executioner to test the guillotine’s blade upon his neck.

  On the other hand, Dain had already behaved in an unlikely manner regarding Miss Trent, which meant there was a chance. And where there was a chance of something impossible happening, there would always be people wanting to be there in case it did.

  In Lady Wallingdon’s case, these turned out to be the very same people she’d invited. Not a single note of regrets arrived. Not even, to her disquiet, Lord Dain’s.

  But then, he hadn’t sent an acceptance, either, so at least she didn’t have to pretend she didn’t know whether he’d attend or not, and worry a
bout being caught in a lie. She could keep her other invitees in suspense with a clear conscience. In the meantime, to be on the safe side, she hired a dozen burly French menials to augment her own staff.

  Jessica, meanwhile, was acknowledging defeat. After a mere three encounters with Dain, a simple animal attraction had intensified to mindless infatuation. Her symptoms had not simply become virulent; they had become noticeable.

  At Madame Vraisses’ party, Mr. Beaumont had made a few sly remarks about Dain. Jessica, whose nerves were still vibrating with the aftershocks of one stormy embrace, had answered far too sharply. Beaumont’s knowing smile had told her he’d guessed what her problem was, and she wouldn’t have put it past him to tell Dain.

  But the Beaumonts had abruptly left Paris a week after the party, and Dain hadn’t come within a mile of her since the devastating kiss in the thunderstorm.

  And so, if he had been told that Jessica Trent was besotted with him, he obviously didn’t care. Which was just as she preferred it, Jessica assured herself.

  Because there was only one way the Marquess of Dain could care about any woman, and that was for as long as it took to tumble her onto a bed—or a tavern table—unbutton his trousers, dispatch his business, and button up again.

  Besotted or not, she knew better than to tempt Fate by risking another encounter with him, when he might see for himself her mortifying condition, and might take it into his head to treat her to his version of caring.

  She had scarcely finished convincing herself that the intelligent thing to do was to leave Paris immediately, when Lady Wallingdon’s invitation arrived.

  Within twenty-four hours, Jessica was aware—as all Paris was—that Dain, too, had been invited.

  It did not take a genius to figure out why: She and Dain were expected to provide the main entertainment. She also understood that a great deal of money would change hands, based on her performance—or lack thereof—with His Lordship.

  She decided she didn’t want any part of it.

  Genevieve decided otherwise. “If he goes, and you are not there, he will feel humiliated,” she said. “Even if he merely wishes to go, for whatever reason, and learns you will not attend, he will feel the same. I know it is irrational and unfair, but men are often so, particularly in any matter they imagine concerns their pride. You had better attend, unless you prefer to risk his rampaging after you to relieve his wounded feelings.”

  Though Jessica very much doubted Dain had any feelings to be wounded, she was also aware that Genevieve had several decades’ more experience with men. A great many men.

  The invitation was accepted.

  Dain could not decide what to do with Lady Wallingdon’s invitation.

  A part of his mind recommended he burn it.

  Another part suggested he urinate on it.

  Another advised him to shove it down Her Ladyship’s throat.

  In the end, he threw it into a trunk, which contained, along with various souvenirs of his travels, one mangled bonnet and one frilly umbrella. Six months from now, he told himself, he would look at those things and laugh. Then he would burn them, just as, years earlier, he’d burned the gloves he’d been wearing when Susannah had first touched his hand, and the piece of a feather that had fallen from her bonnet, and the note inviting him to the fatal dinner party at her uncle’s.

  At present, all he had to decide was how best to settle accounts with Miss Trent, as well as with the pious hypocrites who expected her to effect the miracle of bringing Lord Beelzebub to his knees.

  He knew that was why Lady Wallingdon had invited him. Respectable Paris would like nothing better than to see him fall. That his slayer was a slip of an English spinster made the prospect all the more delicious. He had very little doubt that every self-righteous blockhead in Paris was praying for his defeat—the more ignominious, the better—at her hands.

  They wanted a morality play, the Triumph of Virtue or some such rubbish.

  He could leave them waiting, let them hold their collective breath until they were asphyxiated, while the stage remained empty. He rather enjoyed that image: a few hundred souls dying of suspense while Beelzebub dallied elsewhere, laughing, drinking champagne, his lap filled with painted harlots.

  On the other hand, it would be delightful to laugh in their faces, to stalk onto the stage and treat them to a performance they’d never forget. That image, too, had its appeal: an hour or so of satanic mayhem in one of the Faubourg St. Germain’s most decorously exclusive ballrooms. Then, at the climax, he would sweep Miss Jessica Trent into his arms, stamp his cloven hoof, and disappear with her in a cloud of smoke.

  He’d no sooner conjured the image than he discarded it as antithetical to his purposes. She must be ignored, so that she and everyone else would understand she had no power over him. He would do better to collect an armful of women at random, drag them away, and leave them mindless with terror in a cemetery.

  But that was rather a lot of bother, and Paris didn’t deserve so much entertainment. Better to let it die of disappointment.

  So his mind went, back and forth, right up to the evening of the ball.

  Jessica arrived at the ball in a state of resentful frustration, which ensuing events did little to improve.

  She had spent several hours before the party fussing about her hair, her gown, and her accessories. She spent more than two hours after her arrival enduring a lot of subtle innuendoes from the female guests and not so subtle ones from the males.

  By half past eleven, Bertie had already lost a few hundred quid in the cardroom, drunk himself senseless, and been taken home. Genevieve, mean-while, was dancing for the second time with the Duc d’Abonville. Her beatific expression told Jessica that her grandmother was not going to be of any assistance this night. The French aristocrat had made an impression. When Genevieve was impressed with a man, she could not concentrate on anything else.

  Normally Jessica could view her grandmother’s romantic frailties with a mildly amused detachment. Now she understood, viscerally, what Genevieve felt, and it wasn’t at all amusing.

  It wasn’t amusing to be edgy and restless and lonely and bored past endurance because it was nearly midnight and one despicable brute couldn’t be bothered to come. It wasn’t amusing, either, to know it was better he didn’t come, and to want him here all the same and to hate herself for wanting it.

  She had even left two dances unclaimed, in the mortifying hope that His Satanic Majesty would take a whim to haul her about the dance floor. Now, watching Genevieve and the handsome French nobleman, Jessica’s heart sank. With Dain, it would never be like that.

  He would never gaze down upon her with such a melting smile as Abonville’s, and if Jessica ever looked upon him with an expression as enraptured as Genevieve’s, Dain would laugh in her face.

  Crushing a despair she knew was irrational, Jessica yielded to her two most pressing suitors. She gave one of the reserved dances to Malcolm Goodridge and the other to Lord Sellowby.

  As he wrote his name upon the last empty stick of her fan—it was to be a souvenir of the occasion, her last night in Paris—Sellowby said, sotto voce, “I see there is no dance left for Dain. Are you confident he will not appear?”

  “Do you believe otherwise?” she said. “Have you detected a whiff of brimstone or a puff of smoke heralding his approach?”

  “I have a hundred pounds riding on his appearance,” said Sellowby. He took out his pocket watch. “At precisely—Well, we shall see in a moment.”

  Jessica saw the minute hand of his timepiece meet its shorter mate at the same instant she heard a clock somewhere loudly chiming.

  On the tenth stroke, heads began swiveling toward the ballroom entrance, and the clamor of voices began to die away. With the twelfth chime, the room fell still as death.

  Her heart thudding, Jessica made herself turn, too, toward the entrance.

  It was an immense, ornate, arched affair.

  It did not seem large enough for the dark, toweri
ng figure that paused beneath it.

  It was a long, dramatic pause, in keeping with the dramatic midnight entrance. And in keeping with his Prince of Darkness reputation, Dain was garbed almost entirely in stark, uncompromising black. A bit of snowy linen showed at his wrists, and another bit about his neck and upper chest, but they only heightened the effect. Even his waistcoat was black.

  Though she stood the room’s length away, Jessica had no doubt the dark gaze sweeping carelessly over the assembly glittered with contempt, and the hard mouth was curled in the ever so faint, ever so scornful smile.

  The recollection of what that dissolute mouth had done to her a fortnight ago sent a wave of heat up her neck. She fanned herself and tried to drive the memory away—along with the suspicion that Sellowby was watching her out of the corner of his eye. She told herself it didn’t matter what Sellowby or anyone else thought, except Dain.

  He had come and she was here, so he could have no complaint on that score. All she had to do now was figure out what game he meant to play, and play it by his rules, and hope the rules fell somewhere within the bounds of civilized behavior. Then, mollified, he would laugh and go on his merry way, and she could go home to England, and he would not come rampaging after her. She would pick up with her life precisely where she had left off, and in a very short time, she would forget that he’d ever existed. Or she would remember him as one did a bad dream or a bout of fever, and sigh with relief that it was over.

  It must be that way, Jessica told herself. The alternative was ruin, and she would not let her life be destroyed on account of a temporary madness, regardless how virulent.

  It took Dain exactly nine seconds to spot Miss Trent in the mob. She stood with Sellowby and several other notorious rakes at the far end of the ballroom. She wore a silver-blue gown that shimmered in the light, and there seemed to be a lot of shimmering and fluttering objects dancing about her head. He supposed she had it screwed up in the ridiculous coils again. But the coiffure, like exaggerated sleeves and bonnets heaped with gew-gaws, was the current fashion, and he doubted it could be any more atrocious than the birds of paradise standing upon a topknot on Lady Wallingdon’s fat head.