Lord of Scoundrels (4 page)

“Ah, yes,” he said. “She does not at all resemble him. Obviously it is Genevieve she takes after.”

“I might have known,” Beaumont said, refilling his own glass. “Met her already, have you? And did she take after you, Esmond?”

“I encountered Trent and his kinswomen a short while ago at Tortoni’s,” Esmond said. “The restaurant was in an uproar. Genevieve—Lady Penbury, that is—has not been seen in Paris since the Peace of Amiens. It became very clear she had not been forgotten, although five and twenty years have passed.”

“By Jupiter,
yes!
” Goodridge cried, slamming his hand upon the table. “That’s it, of course. I was so stunned by Dain’s astonishing behavior with the girl that I never made the connection.
Genevieve
. Well, that explains it, then.”

“Explains what?” Vawtry asked.

Goodridge’s gaze met Dain’s. The former’s expression grew uneasy.

“Well, naturally, you were a trifle…curious,” Goodridge said. “Genevieve’s a bit out of the common run, and if Miss Trent’s the same sort of—of anomaly, well, then, she’s rather like those things you buy from Champtois. And there she was, in the very man’s shop. Like the Trojan horse medicine case you bought last month.”

“An odd piece, you mean,” said Dain. “Also, undoubtedly, an outrageously expensive one. Excellent analogy, Goodridge.” He raised his glass. “I could not have put it better myself.”

“All the same,” said Beaumont, glancing from Goodridge to Dain, “I can’t believe a Parisian restaurant was in an uproar over a pair of
odd
females.”

“When you meet Genevieve, you will comprehend,” said Esmond. “This is not merely a beauty, monsieur. This is
la femme fatale
. The men plagued them so, they could scarcely attend to their meal. Our friend, Trent, was much provoked. Fortunately for him, Mademoiselle Trent exercises great restraint upon her own charm. Otherwise, I think, there would have been bloodshed. Two such women…” He shook his head sadly. “It is too much for Frenchmen.”

“Your countrymen have odd notions of charm,” Dain said as he filled a glass for the count and handed it to him. “All I noted was a razortongued, supercilious bluestocking of a spinster.”

“I like clever women,” said Esmond. “So stimulating.
Mais chacun à son goût
. It delights me that you find her disagreeable, my lord Dain. Already there is too much competition.”

Beaumont laughed. “Dain doesn’t compete. He barters. And there’s only one type he barters for, as we all know.”

“I pay a whore a few coins,” said Dain. “She gives me exactly what I require. And when it’s done, it’s done. Since the world seems to be in no danger of running out of whores, why should I go to what we all know is excessive bother for the other sort?”

“There is love,” said Esmond.

His listeners broke into loud guffaws.

When the noise subsided, Dain said, “There seems to be a language gap, gentlemen. Wasn’t love what I was talking about?”

“I thought you were speaking of fornication,” Esmond said.

“Same thing, in Dain’s Dictionary,” said Beaumont. He rose. “I think I’ll toddle downstairs to throw a few francs into that rathole called
Rouge et Noir
. Anyone else?”

Vawtry and Goodridge followed him to the door.

“Esmond?” Beaumont asked.

“Perhaps,” said the count. “I will decide later, after I finish my wine.” He took the seat beside Dain that Vawtry had vacated.

After the others were out of earshot, Dain said, “It’s nothing to me either way, Esmond, but I am curious. Why don’t you simply tell Beaumont he’s barking up the wrong tree?”

Esmond smiled. “It would make no difference, I promise you. With me, he has the same problem, I think, he has with his wife.”

Beaumont rutted with just about anything he could get his hands on. His disgusted wife had decided, some years ago, that he was to keep his hands off her. All the same, she still had her hooks in him. Beaumont was furiously possessive, and Esmond’s interest in his wife was driving him demented with jealousy. It was pathetic, Dain thought. And ludicrous.

“One of these days, maybe I’ll understand why you waste your time on her,” Dain said. “You could have something very like Leila Beaumont, you know, for a few francs. And this is the right place to find precisely what one likes, isn’t it?”

Esmond finished his wine. “I think, perhaps, I shall not come to this place again. It gives me…a bad feeling.” He stood up. “I think, tonight, I prefer to visit the Boulevard des Italiens.”

He invited Dain to join him, but Dain declined. It was nearly a quarter to one, and he had a one-o’clock appointment upstairs with an Amazonian blonde named Chloe.

Perhaps Esmond’s “bad feeling” had put Dain’s instincts on the alert, or perhaps he’d drunk less wine than usual. Whatever the reason, the marquess took careful note of his surroundings when Chloe welcomed him into the crimson-draped room.

He discerned the peephole as he was about to pull off his coat. It was several inches below his own eye level in the middle of the wall to the left of the bed.

He took Chloe’s hand and led her to a spot directly in front of the peephole. He told her to strip, very slowly.

Then he moved, very quickly—out the door and into the hall, where he yanked open the door of what appeared to be a linen closet, and kicked open the door behind that. The chamber beyond was very dark, but it was also very small, and he hadn’t far to reach when he heard the man move—toward another door, apparently. But not quickly enough.

Dain yanked him back, swung him round, and, grabbing the knot of his neckcloth, shoved him back against the wall.

“I don’t need to see you,” Dain said, his voice dangerously low. “I can smell you, Beaumont.”

It was not hard to recognize Beaumont at close quarters. His clothes and breath usually reeked of spirits and stale opium.

“I’m thinking of taking up art,” Dain went on while Beaumont gasped for breath. “I’m thinking of titling my first work ‘Portrait of a Dead Man.’”

Beaumont made a choked sound.

Dain eased his grip a fraction. “There was a remark you wished to make, swine?”

“Can’t…kill me…cold blood,” Beaumont gasped. “Guillotine.”

“Quite right. Don’t want to lose my head on your filthy account, do I?”

Releasing the neckcloth, Dain drove his right fist into Beaumont’s face, then his left into his gut. Beaumont crumpled to the floor.

“Don’t annoy me again,” Dain said. And he left.

At the same moment, Jessica was sitting on her grandmother’s bed. This was the first chance they’d had for an extended conversation, without Bertie fussing and fretting about. He’d departed about an hour ago for one pit of vice or another, at which point Jessica had ordered up some of his best cognac. She had just finished telling Genevieve about her encounter with Dain.

“An animal attraction, obviously,” said Genevieve.

With that, Jessica’s small, desperate hope—that her inner disturbances had been a feverish reaction to the effluvium emanating from the open gutter in front of Champtois’ shop—died a quick, brutal death.

“Damn,” she said, meeting her grandmother’s twinkling silver gaze. “This is not only mortifying, but inconvenient. I am in lust with Dain. Of all times, now. Of all men,
him
.”

“Not convenient, I agree. But an interesting challenge, don’t you think?”

“The challenge is to pry Bertie loose from Dain and his circle of oafish degenerates,” Jessica said severely.

“It would be far more profitable to pry Dain loose for yourself,” said her grandmother. “He is very wealthy, his lineage is excellent, he is young, strong, and healthy, and you feel a powerful attraction.”

“He isn’t husband material.”

“What I have described is perfect husband material,” said her grandmother.

“I don’t want a husband.”

“Jessica, no woman does who can regard men objectively. And you have always been magnificently objective. But we do not live in a utopia. If you open your shop, you will doubtless make money. Yet the family will turn their backs upon you, your social credit will sink, Society will pity you—even while they bankrupt themselves to buy your wares. And every coxcomb in London will be making indecent proposals. Yes, it shows courage to undertake such an endeavor when one is in desperate straits. But you are not desperate, my dear. I can support you well enough, if it comes to that.”

“We’ve been over this ground time and again,” Jessica said. “You’re not Croesus, and we both have expensive tastes. Not to mention that you’ll only create more ill will in the family—while I shall seem a great hypocrite, after insisting for years that you owe none of us a farthing, and we’re not your responsibility.”

“You are very proud and brave, which I respect and admire, my dear.” Her grandmother leaned forward to pat Jessica’s knee. “And assuredly, you are the only one who understands me. We have always been more like sisters or very best friends than grandmama and grandchild, have we not? It is as your sister and friend that I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in.”

Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac. “This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry
shark
.”

“Then use a harpoon.”

Jessica shook her head.

Genevieve sat back against the pillows and sighed. “Ah well, I shall not nag you. It is most unattractive. I shall simply hope his reaction to you was nothing like yours to him. That is a man who gets what he wants, Jessica, and if I were you, I should not want him to be the one reeling in the line.”

Jessica suppressed a shudder. “No danger of that. He doesn’t want anything to do with
ladies
. According to Bertie, Dain views respectable women as a species of deadly fungus. The only reason he spoke to me was to amuse himself by trying to shock me out of my wits.”

Genevieve chuckled. “The watch, you mean. That was a delicious birthday surprise. More delicious still was Bertie’s expression when I opened the box. I have never seen his face turn quite that shade of crimson before.”

“Probably because you chose to open the gift in the restaurant. With the Comte d’Esmond looking on.”

And that was most exasperating of all, Jessica thought. Why in blazes couldn’t she have fallen in lust with Esmond? He was very wealthy, too. And mind-numbingly handsome. And
civilized
.

“Esmond is
très amusante
,” said Genevieve. “Too bad he is already taken. Something very interesting came into his beautiful eyes when he spoke of Mrs. Beaumont.”

Genevieve had mentioned to Esmond the ten-sous picture and Jessica’s belief that it was more than it seemed. Esmond had suggested asking Mrs. Beaumont for the names of experts to clean and appraise it. He’d offered to introduce Jessica to her. They’d made an appointment for the following afternoon, when Mrs. Beaumont would be assisting at a benefit for the widow of her former art master.

“Well, we’ll get to see if anything interesting appears in her eyes tomorrow—or today, rather,” said Jessica. She finished her cognac and slid down from the bed. “I wish we were there already. I feel strongly disinclined to sleep. I have the nasty feeling I’m going to dream about a
shark
.”

I
t would have eased Jessica’s mind, could she but have known, that she gave Lord Dain nightmares.

That is to say, his dreams started out well enough, with thoroughly lewd and lascivious activities. Since he’d often dreamt of females he wouldn’t, awake, have touched with the proverbial long pole, the marquess was not alarmed about dreaming of Bertie Trent’s irritating sister. On the contrary, Dain thoroughly enjoyed putting the supercilious bluestocking in her place—on her back, on her knees, and, more than once, in positions he doubted were anatomically possible.

The trouble was, every time, just as he was on the brink of flooding her virginal womb with the hot seed of latent Ballisters, something ghastly happened. In the dream, he would wake up. Sometimes he found himself sinking in a mire. Sometimes he was chained in a foul black cell, with creatures he couldn’t see tearing at his flesh. Sometimes he was lying on a slab in a morgue undergoing an autopsy.

Being a man of considerable intelligence, he had no trouble understanding the symbolism. Every nightmarish thing that had happened was, metaphorically speaking, exactly what did happen to a man when a female got her hooks into him. He did not understand, however, why, in his sleep, his brain had to make such a ghoulish bother about what he already knew.

For years he’d been dreaming about women he had no intention of becoming entangled with. Countless times, awake, he’d imagined that the whore he was with was a lady who’d caught his eye. Not very long ago, he’d pretended a voluptuous French tart was Leila Beaumont, and he’d come away quite as satisfied as if she had been that icy bitch. No,
more
satisfied, because the tart had made an excellent show of enthusiasm, whereas the real Leila Beaumont would have dashed out his brains with a blunt instrument.

Dain, in short, had no trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. He had met Jessica Trent and felt a perfectly normal lust. He lusted for virtually every attractive female he saw. He had a prodigious sexual appetite, inherited, he had no doubt, from his hot-blooded Italian whore of a mother and her family. If he lusted for a whore, he paid her and had her. If he lusted for a respectable female, he found a whore as a substitute, paid her, and had her.

That was what he’d done regarding Trent’s sister. Or tried to do—because it still wasn’t properly done.

The dreams weren’t all that thwarted him. The incident at
Vingt-Huit
had not precisely killed his appetite for trollops, but it had left a sour taste in his mouth. He had not returned to Chloe to take up where he’d left off, and he hadn’t taken up any other tart since. He told himself that Beaumont’s voyeuristic tastes were hardly a reason for swearing off whores altogether. Nonetheless, Dain felt extremely reluctant to enter any room with any
fille de joie
, which created a serious problem, since he was just fastidious enough to dislike having a female in a reeking Parisian alleyway.

Consequently, between uncooperative dreams and the foul taste in his mouth, he was unable to exorcise his lust for Miss Trent in the tried-and-true fashion. Which meant that, by the time a week had passed, Dain’s temper was badly frayed.

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.

It was a few minutes past noon, and Lord Dain had moments earlier dodged the contents of a washtub, dumped from an upper-story window on the Rue de Provence. His attention on avoiding a drenching, he had failed to notice Trent trotting toward him. By the time the marquess did notice, the imbecile was already there, and well launched into his exciting revelations.

Dain’s dark brow furrowed at the conclusion—or rather, when Bertie paused for breath. “A Russian
what?
” the marquess asked.

“Acorn. That is to say, not a nut sort of thing, but one of them heathenish pictures with a lot of gold paint and gold leaf.”

“I believe you mean an
icon
,” said Dain. “In which case, I fear your sister has been hoaxed. Who told her such rubbish?”

“Le Feuvre,” said Bertie, pronouncing the name as “fooh-ver.”

Lord Dain experienced a chill sensation in the environs of his stomach. Le Feuvre was the most reputable appraiser in Paris. Even Ackermann’s and Christie’s consulted him upon occasion. “There are countless icons in the world,” said Dain. “Still, if it’s a good one, she obviously got a bargain at ten sous.”

“The frame’s set with a lot of little gems—pearls and rubies and such.”

“Paste, I collect.”

Bertie grimaced, as he often did when toiling to produce a thought. “Well now, that would be an odd thing, wouldn’t it? Sticking a lot of trumpery gewgaws onto a handsome bit of gold frame like that.”

“The picture I saw was framed in wood.” Dain’s head was beginning to pound.

“But that’s what’s so clever, ain’t it? The wood thing was part of the case they’d buried it in. Because it had been buried, you know. That’s why it was so god-awful disgusting. Ain’t it a laugh, though? That sly beggar, Champtois, hadn’t the least idea. He’ll be tearing his hair out when he hears.”

Dain was considering tearing Bertie’s head straight off his neck. Ten sous. And Dain had discarded it, had not given it more than a cursory glance, even while the dratted sister had pored over it with her curst magnifying glass.
She has an interesting expression
, she’d said. And Dain, distracted by the living female, had not suspected a thing.

Because there was nothing to suspect, he told himself. Bertie hadn’t half the brain of a peahen. He’d obviously got everything wrong, as usual. The “acorn” was merely one of those cheap saintly pictures every religious fanatic in Russia had in a corner of a room, with a daub of shiny paint on the frame and some bits of colored glass stuck on.

“Course, I’m not to tell Champtois,” Bertie went on in marginally lower tones. “I’m not to tell anybody—especially
you
, she said. But I ain’t a dancing bear, like I told her, and there wasn’t any ring in my nose that I could see, so I wouldn’t be led about by it, now would I? So I hopped straight out to look for you—and found you in the nick, because she’s going to the bank straight the minute Genevieve tucks away for her nap—and then it’ll be locked up in a vault and you’ll never get a proper look at it, will you?”

The Marquess of Dain, Jessica was well aware, was furious. He lounged back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, his obsidian eyes half-closed while his glance moved slowly round the coffee shop. It closely resembled the species of sullenly sulphurous look she had always imagined Lucifer bestowing upon his surroundings when he first came to after the Fall.

She was much surprised the gaze didn’t leave a trail of charred remains in its wake. But the patrons of the café simply looked away—only to look back again the instant Dain returned his brimstone displeasure to her.

Though she’d already made up her mind how to deal with the problem, Jessica was irritably aware that it would be easier if Bertie had been a trifle more discreet. She wished she hadn’t taken him along yesterday when she’d gone to collect the picture from Le Feuvre. But then, how could she have known beforehand that it was more than simply the work of an unusually talented artist?

Even Le Feuvre had been astonished when he went to work on it, and found the bejeweled gold frame within the decayed wooden one.

And naturally, because the piece, when Le Feuvre had finished with it, was pretty and shiny and sparkling with gems, Bertie had become very excited. Too excited to listen to reason. Jessica had tried to explain that telling Dain would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Bertie had
pshish
ed and
pshaw
ed and told her Dain wasn’t that sort of bad sport—not to mention he probably had a dozen such of his own and could buy another dozen if he liked.

Whatever the Marquess of Dain had, Jessica was certain it wasn’t anything like her rare Madonna. And though he had looked bored when she showed it to him today, and congratulated her in the most patronizing manner, and laughingly insisted on accompanying Bertie and her to the bank to scare off any would-be robbers, she knew he wanted to kill her.

After the icon had been locked away in a bank vault, it was Dain who’d suggested they stop here for coffee.

They’d scarcely sat down before he’d sent Bertie out to find a type of cheroot that Jessica strongly suspected didn’t exist. Bertie would probably not be back before midnight, if then. For all she knew, he’d hie to the West Indies in search of the fictitious cigar—precisely as though Dain truly were Beelzebub, and Bertie one of his devoted familiars.

The brother out of the way, Dain had just silently warned the café’s patrons to mind their own business. If he took her by the throat and choked her to death then and there, Jessica doubted any one of them would leap to her rescue. She doubted, in fact, that any of them would dare utter a peep of protest.

“How much did Le Feuvre tell you the thing was worth?” he asked. It was the first word he’d uttered since giving the coffee shop owner their order. When Dain entered an establishment, the proprietor himself rushed out to attend him.

“He advised me not to sell it right away,” she said evasively. “He wished to contact a Russian client first. There is a cousin or nephew or some such of the tsar’s who—”

“Fifty pounds,” said Lord Dain. “Unless this Russian is one of the tsar’s numerous mad relations, he won’t give you a farthing more than that.”

“Then he must be one of the mad ones,” said Jessica. “Le Feuvre mentioned a figure well above that.”

He gave her a hard stare. Gazing into his dark, harsh face, into those black, implacable eyes, Jessica had no trouble imagining him sitting upon an immense ebony throne at the very bottom of the pits of Hades. Had she looked down and discovered that the expensive polished boot a few inches from her own had turned into a cloven hoof, she would not have been in the least amazed.

Any woman with an ounce of common sense would have picked up her skirts and fled.

The trouble was, Jessica could not feel at all sensible. A magnetic current was racing along her nerve endings. It slithered and swirled through her system, to make an odd, tingling heat in the pit of her belly, and it melted her brain to soup.

She wanted to kick off her shoes and trail her stockinged toes up and down the black, costly boot. She wanted to slide her fingers under his starched shirt cuff and trace the veins and muscles of his wrist and feel his pulse beating under her thumb. Most of all, she wanted to press her lips to his hard, dissolute mouth and kiss him senseless.

Of course, all such a demented assault would get her would be a position flat on her back and the swift elimination of her maidenhead—very possibly in full view of the café’s patrons. Then, if he was in a good humor, he might give her a friendly slap on the bottom as he told her to run along, she reflected gloomily.

“Miss Trent,” he said, “I am sure all the other girls at school found your wit hilarious. Perhaps, however, if you would stop batting your eyelashes for a moment, your vision would clear and you would notice that I am not a little schoolgirl.”

She hadn’t been batting her eyelashes. When Jessica did play coquette, it was purposely and purposefully, and she was certainly not such a moron as to try that method with Beelzebub.

“Batting?” she repeated. “I never
bat
, my lord. “This is what I do.” She looked away toward an attractive Frenchman seated nearby, then shot Dain one swift, sidelong glance. “That isn’t batting,” she said, releasing the instantly bedazzled Frenchman and returning to full focus upon Dain.

Though one could hardly believe it possible, his expression became grimmer still.

“I am not a school
boy
, either,” he said. “I recommend you save those slaying glances for the sorts of young sapskulls who respond to them.”

The Frenchman was now gazing at her with besotted fascination. Dain turned and looked at him. The man instantly looked away and began talking animatedly with his companions.

She recollected Genevieve’s warning. Jessica couldn’t be certain Dain had any active thoughts of reeling her in. She could see, however, that he’d just posted a No Fishing sign.

A thrill coursed through her, but that was only to be expected. It was the primitive reaction of a female when an attractive male displayed the usual bad-natured signs of proprietorship. She was hammeringly aware that her feelings about him were decidedly primitive.

On the other hand, she was not completely out of her mind.

She could see Big Trouble brewing.

It was easy enough to see. Scandal followed wherever he went. Jessica had no intention of being caught in the midst of it.

“I was merely providing a demonstration of a subtle distinction which had apparently escaped you,” she said. “Subtlety, I collect, is not your strong point.”

“If this is a
subtle
way of reminding me that I overlooked what your gimlet eyes perceived in that dirt-encrusted picture—”

“You apparently did not look very closely even when it was clean,” she said. “Because then you would have recognized the work of the Stroganov school—and would not have offered the insulting sum of fifty quid for it.”

His lip curled. “I didn’t offer anything. I expressed an opinion.”

“To test me,” she said. “However, I know as well as you do that the piece is not only Stroganov school, but an extremely rare form. Even the most elaborate of the miniatures were usually chased in silver. Not to mention that the Madonna—”

“Has grey eyes, not brown,” Dain said in a very bored voice.

“And she’s almost smiling. Usually they look exceedingly unhappy.”

“Cross, Miss Trent. They look exceedingly ill tempered. I suppose it’s on account of being
virgins
—of experiencing all the unpleasantness of breeding and birthing and none of the jolly parts.”