It was clean. No bones had been shattered. Muscle and nerve damage was negligibly minor. There was no danger of infection.
Dain should not, therefore, be feverish, but he was. First his arm burned, then his shoulder and neck caught fire. Now his head was ablaze.
Amid this internal hellfire, he heard Esmond’s voice, smooth and soothing as always.
“She knows, naturellement, that no jury in France would convict her,” said Esmond. “Here, it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than to convict a beautiful woman of any crime which appears to be in any way connected to l’amour.”
“Of course she knows.” Dain gritted out the words. “Just as I know she didn’t do it in the heat of the moment. Did you see her hand? Not a hint of trembling. Cold and steady as you please. She was not in a mindless rage. She knew precisely what she was doing.”
“She knows very well what she is doing,” Esmond agreed. “Shooting you was only the beginning. She means to make a spectacle of you. I am to tell you that she will make public—in the courtroom if she can get the trial she insists upon, or in the papers if she cannot—every detail of the episode. She says she will repeat all you said to her and describe in full detail everything you did.”
“In other words, she’ll exaggerate and twist words to her purpose,” said Dain, angrily aware that all she had to utter was the truth. And that, in the eyes of the world, would reduce Lord Beelze-bub to a lovesick, panting, groaning, sweating schoolboy. His friends would howl with laughter at his mawkish outpourings, even the Italian.
She would remember what the words sounded like—she was adept in Latin, wasn’t she?—and do an apt imitation, because she was quick and clever…and vengeful. Then all his mortifying secrets, dreams, fantasies, would be translated into French and English—and soon, every other language known to humankind. The words would be printed in bubbles over his head in printshop caricatures. Farces of the episode would be enacted upon the stage.
That was merely a fraction of what he’d face, Dain knew.
He had only to recollect how the press had pilloried Byron a dozen years earlier—and the poet had been a model of social rectitude compared to the Marquess of Dain. Furthermore, Byron had not been obscenely wealthy, terrifyingly big and ugly, and infuriatingly powerful.
The bigger they are, the harder the fall. And the better the world liked seeing them fall.
Dain understood the way of the world very well. He could see plainly enough what the future held. Miss Jessica Trent saw, too, undoubtedly. That was why she hadn’t killed him. She wanted to make sure he suffered the torments of hell while he lived.
She knew he would suffer, because she had struck in the only place where he could be hurt: his pride.
And if he couldn’t endure it—which she knew, of course, he couldn’t—she’d get her satisfaction in private, no doubt. She would make him crawl.
She had him exactly where she wanted him, the she-devil.
Amid the hellfire raging over half his body, his head began to pound. “I’d better deal with her directly,” he said. His tongue was thick, slurring the words. “Negotiate. Tell her…” He swallowed. His throat burned, too. “Terms. Tell her…”
He shut his eyes and searched his throbbing, roiling mind for words, but they wouldn’t come. His head was a red-hot mound of metal a hellish blacksmith was hammering upon, pounding intellect, thought, into nothingness. He heard Esmond’s voice, very far away, but couldn’t make sense of the words. Then the satanic hammer struck one shattering blow, and knocked Dain into oblivion.
Consumed by the feverish illness he shouldn’t have had, Dain drifted in and out of consciousness for most of the next four days.
On the morning of the fifth day, he woke fully, and more or less recovered. That was to say, the fire and throbbing were gone. His left arm refused to move, though. It dangled uselessly at his side. There was feeling in it, but he couldn’t make it do anything.
The physician returned, examined, made wise noises, and shook his head. “I can find nothing wrong,” he said.
He summoned a colleague, who also found nothing wrong, and summoned another, with the same result.
By late afternoon, Dain had seen eight medical men, all of whom told him the same thing. By then, Dain was beside himself. He had been poked and questioned and muttered over for most of the day, and spent a great deal of money on physicians’ fees to no purpose.
To cap it off, a law clerk arrived minutes after the last quack left. Herbert delivered the message the clerk had brought just as Dain was attempting to pour himself a glass of wine. His eye upon the note on the silver salver, Dain missed the glass, and splattered wine on his dressing gown, slippers, and the Oriental carpet.
He hurled imprecations, as well as the salver, at Herbert’s head, then stormed out of the drawing room and on to his own room, where he worked himself into a fury trying to unseal and unfold the note with one hand. By then, he was so enraged, he could scarcely see straight.
There was little enough to see. According to the note, Mr. Andrew Herriard wished to meet with His Lordship’s solicitor on behalf of Miss Jessica Trent.
Lord Dain’s insides turned to lead.
Andrew Herriard was a famous London solicitor with an extensive clientele of powerful expatriates in Paris. He was also a pillar of rectitude—incorruptible, loyal, and indefatigable in serving his clients. Lord Dain was aware, as were a great many people, that beneath the lawyer’s saintly exterior loomed a steel trap with jaws and teeth a shark would envy. The trap was reserved primarily for men, because Mr. Andrew Herriard was a gallant knight in the service of the weaker sex.
It didn’t matter to the solicitor that the law was squarely on the side of male prerogative, and that a woman, to all intents and purposes, had no rights under that law and nothing she could call her own, including her offspring.
Herriard created the rights he believed women were entitled to—and got away with it. Even Francis Beaumont, devious swine that he was, could not touch the tenth part of a farthing of his wife’s income, thanks to Herriard.
This was because Herriard’s approach, when a fellow balked at outrageous demands, was to subject the poor sod to an endless stream of barristers and petty litigation, until the sod caved in from sheer exhaustion, was ruined by legal fees, or was carried, screaming, to a lunatic asylum.
Miss Trent, in short, was not only going to make Lord Dain crawl, but she would have Herriard do the dirty work for her, and have it all done legally, with not a loophole for Dain to wriggle out of.
“There is no animal more invincible than a woman,” Aristophanes had said, “nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless.”
Ruthless. Vicious. Fiendish.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dain muttered. “Not via go-betweens, you demon spawn.” He wadded the note into a tight ball and hurled it at the grate. Then he stomped to his writing desk, grabbed a sheet of notepaper, scrawled an answer, and shouted for his valet.
In his note to Mr. Herriard, Dain had declared that he would meet with Miss Trent at seven o’clock that evening at her brother’s house. He would not, as Herriard had requested, send his solicitor to meet with hers, because the Marquess of Dain had no intention, he wrote, “of being sworn, signed, and bled dry by proxy.” If Miss Trent had terms to dictate, she could bloody well do it in person. If that didn’t suit, she was welcome to send her brother to Dain, who would be happy to settle the matter at twenty paces—with both combatants armed this time.
Given the last suggestion, Jessica decided it would be best if Bertie spent the evening else-where. He still had no idea what had happened.
She had returned from the police station to find her brother suffering painful consequences of his alcohol consumption during Lady Wallingdon’s ball. His constitution weakened by months of dissipation, he had succumbed to a violent dyspepsia, and had not left his bed until teatime yesterday.
Even in the best of circumstances, his brain functions
were unreliable. At present, the effort to comprehend Dain’s anomalous behavior might trigger a relapse, if not apoplexy. Equally important, Jessica dared not risk Bertie’s bumbling after Dain with the misguided idea of avenging her honor.
Genevieve had agreed. She had, accordingly, taken Bertie to dine with her at the Duc d’Abonville’s. The duc could be relied upon to hold his tongue. It was he, after all, who’d advised Jessica to hold hers until she spoke with a lawyer.
It was also the duc who was paying Mr. Herriard’s fee. If Jessica had not agreed to let him do so, Abonville would have called Dain out himself. That offer had told Jessica all she needed to know about the French nobleman’s feelings about Genevieve.
At seven o’clock, therefore, Bertie was safely out of the way. Only Mr. Herriard was with Jessica in the drawing room. They were standing before a table upon which a neat pile of documents lay when Dain stalked in.
He swept Herriard one contemptuous glance, then bent his sardonic obsidian gaze upon Jessica. “Madam,” he said, with a short nod.
“My lord,” she said, with a shorter one.
“That takes care of the social niceties,” he said. “You may proceed to the extortion.”
Mr. Herriard’s lips set in a thin line, but he said nothing.
He took up the papers from the table and gave them to Dain, who moved across the room to a window. He set the papers upon the wide sill, took up the topmost one, and leisurely read it. When he was done, he put it down and took up the next.
Minutes ticked by. Jessica waited, growing edgier with each passing moment.
Finally, nearly a half hour later, Dain looked up from the documents it should have taken him a fraction of that time to comprehend.
“I wondered how you meant to play it,” he told Herriard. “If we spare ourselves the legalisms and Latinisms, what it boils down to is a defamation suit—if I don’t agree to settle the matter privately, according to your exorbitant terms.”
“The words you uttered in the hearing of six other parties could be construed in only one way, my lord,” said Herriard. “With those words, you destroyed my client’s social and financial credit. You have made it impossible for her to wed or earn a respectable independent livelihood. You have made her an outcast from the society to which she was bred and properly belongs. She will be obliged, therefore, to live in exile from her friends and loved ones. She must build a new life.”
“And I’m to pay for it, I see,” said Dain. “Settle all of her brother’s debts, amounting to six thou sand pounds.” He glanced over the pages. “I am to support her to the tune of two thousand per annum and…ah, yes. There was something about securing and maintaining a place of residence.”
He leafed through the pages, dropping several on the floor in the process.
It was then Jessica realized he wasn’t using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn’t be, except for a minor bullet wound. She’d aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.
He looked her way then, and caught her staring. “Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you’d like a better look. Regrettably, there’s nothing to see. There’s nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn’t work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn’t aim a ways lower. I’m merely disarmed, not unmanned. But I have no doubt Herriard here will see to the emasculation.”
Her conscience pricked. She ignored it. “You got—and will get exactly as you deserve, you deceitful, spiteful brute.”
“Miss Trent,” Herriard said gently.
“No, I will not guard my tongue,” she said. “His Lordship wanted me present because he wanted a row. He knows very well he’s in the wrong, but he’s too curst stubborn to admit it. He wants to make me out to be a scheming, greedy—”
“Vindictive,” said Dain. “Don’t leave out vindictive.”
“I, vindictive?” she exclaimed. “I was not the one who arranged to have the biggest gossips in Paris ‘happen along’ while I was half-undressed and being led—fool that I was—straight to ruination.”
His black brows rose a fraction. “You’re not implying, Miss Trent, that I arranged that farce.”
“I don’t have to imply anything! It was obvious. Vawtry was there. Your friend. And the others—those snide Parisian sophisticates. I know who arranged for them to watch me be disgraced. And I know why. You did it for spite. As though everything that’s happened—all the gossip, every dent in your precious reputation—were my fault!”
There was a short, taut silence. Then Dain threw the rest of the papers to the carpet, stalked to the decanter tray, and helped himself to a glass of sherry. He needed only one hand to do that, and only one swallow to empty it.
When he turned back to her, the irritating mockery of a smile was in place. “It would appear that we’ve been laboring under the same misapprehension,” he said. “I thought you had arranged for the—er—interruption.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “You also seem to labor under the misapprehension that you are a splendid catch—in addition to mistaking me for a lunatic. If I were desperate for a husband—which I have not been and never will be—I should not have to resort to such ancient, pathetic tricks.”
She drew herself up. “I may appear a negligible, dried-up spinster to you, my lord, but yours, I assure you, is the minority view. I am unwed by choice, not for lack of offers.”
“But now you won’t get any,” he said. His sardonic gaze drifted lazily over her, making her skin prickle. “Thanks to me. And that’s what all this is about.”
He set down the empty glass and turned to Herriard. “I’ve damaged the goods, and now I must pay what you deem the value of the merchandise, or else you will heap me with documents, plague me with barristers and clerks, and drag me through endless months of litigation.”
“If the law regarded women in a proper light, the process would not be endless,” said Mr. Herriard, unruffled. “The punishment would be severe and swift.”
“But we live in benighted times,” said Dain. “And I am, as Miss Trent will assure you, the most benighted of men. I have, among other quaint beliefs, the antiquated notion that if I pay for something, it ought to belong to me. Since I seem to have no choice but to pay for Miss Trent—”
“I am not a pocket watch,” she said tightly. She told herself she ought not feel in the least surprised that the cocksure clodpole proposed to settle matters by making her his mistress. “I am a human being, and you will never own me, no matter what you pay. You may have destroyed my honor in the eyes of the world, but you will not destroy it in fact.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Destroy your honor? My dear Miss Trent, I am proposing to redeem it. We shall be wed. Now, why don’t you sit down and be quiet like a good girl and let the men sort out the details.”
Jessica experienced a moment of numb incomprehension before the words struck, sharp and stunning as a blow to the head. The room darkened and everything within it wobbled drunkenly. She had to struggle to focus. “Wed?” Her voice sounded very far away, weak, plaintive.
“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.”
His hooded gaze dropped to her bodice, and heat simmered there and spread, just as though it had been his hands, not his eyes, upon her.
She summoned her composure. “I see what you are about,” she said. “It’s not a genuine offer at all, but a strategy to tie our hands. You know we can’t sue you if you offer to do the allegedly honorable thing. You also know I won’t marry you. And so you think you have us at point non plus.”
“I do,” he said, smiling. “If you refuse me and attempt litigation, you’ll only humiliate yourself. Everyone will believe you’re a money-hungry slut.�
�
“And if I accept your make-believe offer of marriage, you’ll play along until the last minute—and leave me waiting at the altar,” she said. “And humiliate me anyhow.”
He laughed. “And open the door to a long, expensive breach-of-promise suit? Make Herriard’s job easier for him? Think again, Jess. And keep it simple, why don’t you? Marriage or nothing.”
She snatched up the first thing at hand—a small but heavy brass figure of a horse.
Mr. Herriard stepped toward her. “Miss Trent,” he said quietly. “I beg you will resist the temptation.”
“Might as well,” said Dain. “It won’t do a bit of good. I can duck a missile, if not a bullet.”
She set down the statue and turned to Herriard. “You see, don’t you?” she asked. “He’s not offering in order to make amends, because he doesn’t think he owes me any. All he wants is to get the better of me—and getting the better of you in the bargain will make his triumph all the sweeter to him.”
“It hardly matters what you think of me,” said Dain. “There are only two choices. And if you’re waiting for me to make it more palatable by falling to my knees and begging for your hand, Jess, you may wait until Judgment Day,” he added with a laugh.
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 himself that was precisely what he wanted.
Lord of Scoundrels Page 12
