Lord of Scoundrels

by Loretta Chase

  Her gazed lifted to his. Silver mist shimmered in her eyes. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Thank you.” She pulled off her glove and took the ring from the box. “You must put it on my finger.”

  “Must I?” He tried to sound disgusted. “Some sentimental twaddle, I suppose.”

  “There’s no one to see,” she said.

  He took the ring from her and slipped it over her finger, then quickly drew his hand away, afraid she’d discern the trembling.

  She turned her hand this way and that, and the diamonds took fire.

  She smiled.

  “At least it fits,” he said.

  “Perfectly.” Turning her head, she darted one quick kiss at his cheek, then hastily returned to her seat. “Thank you, Beelzebub,” she said very softly.

  His heart constricted painfully. He snatched up the reins. “We’d better get out of here, before the fashionable stampede begins,” he said, his voice very gruff. “Nick! Harry! You can stop playing dead now.”

  They could play anything. They’d been trained by a circus equestrian, and they loved to perform, responding instantly to the subtle cues Dain had spent three full days learning from their former master. Though he knew how it was done, even he sometimes had trouble remembering that it was a certain flick of the reins or a change in tone they reacted to, and not his words.

  At any rate, they were fondest of the role they’d played en route to Hyde Park, and he let them play it again, all the way back. That took his betrothed’s attention away from him, and fixed it on praying she’d arrive alive at her aunt’s doorstep.

  With Jessica preoccupied, Dain had leisure to collect his shattered composure, and address his intelligence to putting two and two together, as he should have done weeks ago.

  There had been six onlookers, Herriard had said.

  Now Dain tried to remember the faces. Vawtry, yes, looking utterly thunderstruck. Rouvier, the man Dain had publicly embarrassed. Two Frenchmen he recalled having seen many times at Vingt-Huit. And two Frenchwomen, one unfamiliar. The other had been Isobel Callon, one of Paris’ most vicious gossips…and one of Francis Beaumont’s favorite female companions.

  What had Jessica said that night? Something about how the gossip would have died down if she hadn’t burst into his house.

  But maybe it wouldn’t have died down, Dain reflected. Maybe public interest in his relations with Miss Trent had swelled to insane proportions because someone had fed the rumor mill. Maybe someone had kept the gossip stirred and encouraged the wagers, knowing the rumors would drive Beelzebub wild.

  All Beaumont would have needed to do was drop a word to the right party. Isobel Callon, for instance. She’d seize the delicious tidbit and make a campaign of it. She wouldn’t need much encouragement to do so, because she hated Dain. Then, having sown the seeds, Beaumont could retire to England and enjoy his revenge at a safe distance…and laugh himself sick when letters arrived from his friends, detailing the latest events in the Dain-versus-Trent drama.

  When the suspicion had first arisen, Dain had thought it far-fetched, the product of an agitated mind.

  Now it made a good deal more sense than any other explanation. It did explain at least why jaded Paris had become so obsessed with one ugly Englishman’s handful of encounters with one pretty English female.

  He glanced at Jessica.

  She was trying to ignore Nick and Harry’s Steeds of Death performance by concentrating on her betrothal ring. She hadn’t put her glove back on. She turned her hand this way and that, making the diamonds spark rainbow fire.

  She liked the ring.

  She had bought a red silk nightgown, trimmed with black. For her wedding night.

  She had kissed him back and touched him. And she hadn’t seemed to mind being kissed and touched.

  Beauty and the Beast. That’s what Beaumont would call it, the poison-tongued sod.

  But in thirteen days, this Beauty would be the Marchioness of Dain. And she would lie in the Beast’s bed. Naked.

  Then Dain would do everything he’d been dying to do for what seemed an eternity. Then she would be his, and no other man could touch her, because she belonged to him exclusively.

  True, he could have bought Portugal for what “exclusive ownership” was costing him.

  On the other hand, she was prime quality. A lady. His lady.

  And it was very possible Dain owed it all to the sneaking, corrupt, cowardly, spiteful Francis Beaumont.

  In which case, Dain decided, it would be pointless—as well as a waste of energy better saved for the wedding night—to take Beaumont apart and break him into very small pieces.

  By rights, Dain ought to thank him instead.

  But then, the Marquess of Dain was not very polite.

  He decided the swine wasn’t worth the bother.

  Chapter 10

  On a bright Sunday morning on the eleventh day of May in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred Twenty-Eight, the Marquess of Dain stood before the minister of St. George’s, Hanover Square, with Jessica, only daughter of the late Sir Reginald Trent, baronet.

  Contrary to popular expectation, the roof did not fall in when Lord Dain entered the holy edifice, and lightning did not strike once during the ceremony. Even at the end, when he hauled his bride into his arms and kissed her so soundly that she dropped her prayer book, no clap of thunder shook the walls of St. George’s, although a few elderly ladies fainted.

  As a consequence, on the evening of that day, Mr. Roland Vawtry gave Francis Beaumont his note of hand for three hundred pounds. Mr. Vawtry had previously written and delivered other notes of varying amounts to Lord Sellowby, Captain James Burton, Augustus Tolliver, and Lord Avory.

  Mr. Vawtry did not know where or how he would get the money to cover the notes. Once, a decade earlier, he’d gone to the moneylenders. The way that worked, he learned—and learning it had cost him two years of wretchedness—was, in a nutshell, that if they lent you five hundred pounds, you were obliged to pay back one thousand. He had rather blow out his brains than repeat the experience.

  He was painfully aware that he would have no trouble covering his present debts of honor if he hadn’t had to settle so very many others before he left Paris. He wouldn’t have had the present debts at all, he reflected miserably, if he had learned his lesson in Paris and left off wagering on any matter involving Dain.

  He had won exactly once, and that had not been much of a victory. He had lost two hundred pounds to Isobel Callon when she insisted Dain had lured Miss Trent to Lady Wallingdon’s garden to make love to her.

  Vawtry had simply won it back when Dain, contrary to Isobel’s confident prediction, had failed, when caught, to enact the role of chivalrous swain. He had behaved, for once, like himself.

  Unfortunately for Vawtry’s finances, that had happened only the once. Because not a week later, after vowing he wouldn’t have Miss Trent if she were served on a platter of solid gold—after the incomprehensible female had shot him—Dain had strolled into Antoine’s and coolly announced his betrothal. He had said that someone had to marry her because she was a public menace, and he supposed he was the only one big and mean enough to manage her.

  Moodily wondering just who was managing whom, Vawtry settled into a corner table with Beaumont at Mr. Pearke’s oyster house in Vinegar Yard, on the south side of Drury Lane Theater.

  It was not an elegant dining establishment, but Beaumont was partial to it because it was a favorite haunt of artists. It was also very cheap, which made Vawtry partial to it at the moment.

  “So Dain gave you all a show, I hear,” said Beaumont, after the tavern maid had filled their glasses. “Terrified the minister. Laughed when the bride vowed to obey. And nearly broke her jaw kissing her.”

  Vawtry frowned. “I was sure Dain would drag it out to the last minute, then loudly announce, ‘I don’t.’ And laugh and stroll out the way he came.”

  “You assumed he would treat her as he did other women,” said Beaumon
t. “You forgot, apparently, that all the other women had been tarts, and that, in Dain’s aristocratic dictionary, the tarts are mere peasant wenches, to be tumbled and forgotten. Miss Trent, however, is a gently bred maiden. Completely different situation, Vawtry. I do wish you’d seen.”

  Vawtry saw now. And now it seemed so obvious, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out for himself ages ago. A lady. A different species altogether.

  “If I had seen, you would be out three hundred quid at present,” he said, his voice light, his heart heavy.

  Beaumont picked up his glass and studied it before taking a cautious sip. “Drinkable,” he said, “but just barely.”

  Vawtry took a very long swallow from his own glass.

  “Perhaps what I actually wish,” Beaumont went on, after a moment, “is that I’d known the facts. Matters would be so different now.”

  He frowned down at the table. “If I’d known the truth then, I might at least have dropped a hint to you. But I didn’t know, because my wife tells me nothing. I truly believed, you see, that Miss Trent was penniless. Right up until last night, when an artist friend who does sketches for Christie’s corrected my misapprehension.”

  Mr. Vawtry eyed his friend uneasily. “What do you mean? Everyone knows Bertie Trent’s sister hadn’t a feather to fly with, thanks to him.”

  Beaumont glanced about. Then, leaning over the table, he spoke in lower tones. “You recall the moldering little picture Dain told us about? The one the wench got for ten sous from Champtois?”

  Vawtry nodded.

  “Turned out to be a Russian icon, and one of the finest and most unusual works of the Stroganov school in existence.”

  Vawtry looked at him blankly.

  “Late sixteenth century,” Beaumont explained. “Icon workshop opened by the Stroganov family, Russian nobility. The artists made miniatures for domestic use. Very delicate, painstaking work. Costly materials. Highly prized these days. Hers is done with gold leaf. The frame is gold, set with precious gems.”

  “Obviously worth more than ten sous,” Vawtry said, trying to keep his tone casual. “Dain did say she was shrewd.” He emptied his glass in two swallows and refilled it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the tavern maid approaching with their meal. He wished she’d hurry. He didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Value, of course, is in the eye of the beholder,” Beaumont went on. “I’d put it at a minimum of fifteen hundred pounds. At auction, several times that, very likely. But I know of at least one Russian who’d sell his firstborn to have it. Ten, possibly twenty thousand.”

  Lady Granville, daughter of the Duke of Sutherland, one of the richest men in England, had brought her husband a dowry of twenty thousand pounds.

  Such women, the daughters of peers, were far beyond Mr. Vawtry’s reach, along with their immense dowries. Miss Trent, on the other hand, the daughter of an insignificant baronet, belonged to the same class of country gentry as Mr. Vawtry himself.

  He saw now that he’d had a perfect opportunity to cultivate her, after Dain had publicly insulted and humiliated her. She had been vulnerable then. Instead of merely handing her his coat, Vawtry might have enacted the role of chivalrous knight. He might, in that case, have stood before the preacher with her this very day.

  Then the icon would have been his, and clever Beaumont could have helped him turn it into ready money…ready to be invested. Roland Vawtry could have settled down with a pretty enough wife, and lived in tranquil comfort, no longer dependent on Dame Fortune—or, more to the point, the whims of the Marquess of Dain.

  Instead, Roland Vawtry was five thousand pounds in debt. Though this was not very much by some people’s standards, by his, it might have been millions. He was not concerned about the tradesmen he owed, but he was deeply anxious about the notes of hand he’d given his friends. If he did not make good on them very soon, he would not have any friends. A gentleman who failed to pay debts of honor ceased being deemed a gentleman. That prospect was even more harrowing to him than the threat of moneylenders, sponging houses, or debtors’ prison.

  He viewed his situation as desperate.

  Certain people could have told him that Francis Beaumont could detect another’s desperation at twenty paces, and took great personal pleasure in exacerbating it. But those wise persons were not about, and Vawtry was not an overly intelligent fellow.

  Consequently, by the time they’d finished their meal and emptied half a dozen bottles of the barely drinkable wine, Mr. Beaumont had dug his pit, and Mr. Vawtry had obligingly toppled head-first into it.

  At about the time Roland Vawtry was tumbling into a pit, the new Marchioness of Dain’s hind-quarters were showing symptoms of rigor mortis.

  She sat with her spouse in the elegant black traveling chariot in which they’d been riding since one o’clock in the afternoon, when they’d left their guests at the wedding breakfast.

  For a man who viewed marriage and respectable company with unmitigated contempt and disgust, he had behaved with amazing good humor. In fact, he had seemed to find the proceedings infinitely amusing. Three times he’d asked the trembling minister to speak up, so that the audience didn’t miss anything. Dain had also thought it a great joke to make a circus performance of kissing his bride. It was a wonder he hadn’t thrown her over his shoulder and carried her out of the church like a sack of potatoes.

  If he had, Jessica thought wryly, he would have still managed to look every inch the aristocrat. Or monarch was more like it. She had learned that Dain had an exceedingly high opinion of his consequence, in which the standard order of precedence played no role whatsoever.

  He’d made his views very clear to her aunt, not long after he’d given Jessica the heartachingly beautiful betrothal ring. After taking Jessica home and spending an hour with her in the parlor, perusing her lists and menus and other wedding annoyances, he’d sent her away and had a private conversation with Aunt Louisa. He’d explained how the future Marchioness of Dain was to be treated. It was simple enough.

  Jessica was not to be pestered and she was not to be contradicted. She answered to nobody but Dain, and he answered to nobody but the king, and then only if he was in the mood.

  The next day, Dain’s private secretary had arrived with a brace of servants and taken over. After that, all Jessica had had to do was give an occasional order and accustom herself to being treated like an exceedingly precious and delicate, all-wise and altogether perfect princess.

  Not by her husband, though.

  They had been traveling for more than eight hours, and though they stopped frequently to change horses, that was for not a second more than the one to two minutes it took to make the change. At Bagshot, at about four o’clock, she’d needed to use the privy. She’d returned to find Dain pacing impatiently by the carriage, pocket watch in hand. He had strongly objected to her taking five times longer to answer nature’s call than the stablemen did to unhitch four horses and hitch up four fresh ones.

  “All a male need do,” she’d told him patiently, “is unfasten his trouser buttons and aim somewhere, and it’s done. I am a female, however, and neither my plumbing nor my garments are so accommodating.”

  He had laughed and stuffed her into the carriage and told her she was an infernal bother, but she was born that way, wasn’t she?—being born female. Nonetheless, the second time she’d needed to relieve herself, a few miles back at Andover, he’d grumblingly told her to take her time. She’d returned to find him patiently sipping a tankard of ale. He had laughingly offered her a sip, and laughed harder when she drained the quarter pint he’d left.

  “That was a mistake,” he’d said when they were once more upon the road. “Now you’ll be wanting to stop at every necessary from here to Amesbury.”

  That had led to a series of privy and chamber pot jokes. Jessica had never before understood why men found those sorts of anecdotes so gut-busting hilarious. She had moments ago discovered that they could be funny enough if related by an evilly
clever storyteller.

  She was at present recovering from an altogether immature fit of whooping laughter.

  Dain was lounging back in the seat, which, as usual, he took up most of. His half-closed eyes were crinkled up at the corners and his hard mouth had curved into an endearingly crooked smile.

  She wanted to be vexed with him for making her laugh so intemperately at the crass, puerile story. She couldn’t be. He looked so adorably pleased with himself.

  She was in a sorry case, to find Beelzebub adorable, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to crawl into his lap and cover his wicked countenance with kisses.

  He caught her studying him. She hoped she didn’t look as besotted as she felt.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” he asked.

  “My backside and limbs have fallen asleep,” she said, shifting her position a fraction away. Not that one could get away, even in this coach, which was roomier than his curricle. There was still only one seat, and there was a great deal of him. But the air had cooled considerably with evening, and he was very warm.

  “You should have asked to step out to stretch your limbs when we stopped at Weyhill,” he said. “We shan’t stop again until Amesbury.”

  “I scarcely noticed Weyhill,” she said. “You were telling one of the most moronic anecdotes I’d ever heard.”

  “Had it been less moronic, the joke would have gone over your head,” he said. “You laughed hard enough.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” she said. “I thought you were trying to impress me by displaying the uppermost limits of your intellect.”

  He turned an evil grin upon her. “When I set out to impress you, my lady, believe me, intellect will have nothing to do with it.”

  She met his gaze stoically, while her insides went into a feverish flurry. “You are referring to the wedding night, no doubt,” she said composedly. “The ‘breeding rights’ for which you’ve paid so extortionate a price. Well, it will be easy enough to impress me, since you’re an expert and I have never done it, even once.”