His frown deepened. “Jessica, you are humoring me. I am not a child. I have a strong aversion to being humored.”
“If you do not wish to be humored, then you should stop fussing about everything in the world and say plainly what the matter is.” She returned her attention to the wrestlers. “I am not a mind reader.”
“Fussing?” he echoed, his hand falling away from her. “Fussing?”
“Like a two-year-old who’s missed his nap,” she said.
“A two-year-old?”
She nodded, her eyes ostensibly upon the match, her consciousness riveted upon the out-raged male beside her.
He took one—two—three furious breaths. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Back to the carriage. Now.”
Dain did not make it to the carriage. He barely made it to the outer edge of the spectators, and the carriage was a good distance beyond, thanks to their late arrival and the mass of vehicles that had preceded them. Crested coaches were jammed against lowly farm wagons, and the disgruntled beings left to mind the cattle were relieving their vexations by quarreling loudly among themselves.
Having vexations of his own to relieve, and convinced he’d explode long before he found the carriage, Dain hurried his wife to the first unoccupied area he spotted.
It was a burial ground, attached to a tiny, crumbling church in which Dain doubted any services had been conducted since the Armada. The grave-stones, their inscriptions long since eroded by salt air, listed drunkenly in every direction but upright. Those, that is, making any pretense of standing. Nearly half had given up the attempt ages ago, and sprawled where they’d fallen, with the tall weeds huddled about them like pickpockets about a gin-sotted sailor.
“It’s as though the place didn’t exist,” Jessica said, looking about her and apparently oblivious to the big, angry hand clutching her arm as he relentlessly marched her along. “As though no one has noticed or cared that it’s here. How odd.”
“You won’t find it so odd in a moment,” he said. “You’ll wish you didn’t exist.”
“Where are we going, Dain?” she asked. “I’m sure this isn’t a shortcut to the carriage.”
“You’ll be very lucky if it isn’t a shortcut to your funeral.”
“Oh, look!” she cried. “What splendid rhododendrons.”
Dain did not have to follow her pointing finger. He’d already spotted the gigantic shrubs, with their masses of white, pink, and purple blooms. He’d also discerned the pillared gateway in their midst. He supposed a wall had once been attached to the gateway, either enclosing the church property or the property beyond. For all he knew, the wall might still be there, or parts of it, hidden by the thick mass of rhododendrons. All he cared about was the “hidden” part. The shrubs formed an impenetrable screen from passersby.
He marched his wife to the gateway and hauled her to the right pillar, which was better concealed, and backed her up against it.
“A two-year-old, am I, my lady?” He tore off his right glove with his teeth. “I’ll teach you how old I am.” He stripped off the other glove.
He reached for his trouser buttons.
Her glance shot to his hand.
He swiftly undid the three buttons of his small falls, and the flap fell open.
He heard her suck in her breath.
His rapidly swelling shaft was pushing against the fabric of his French bearer. It took him nine seconds to release the nine buttons. His rod sprang out, throbbing hotly at attention.
Jessica sank back against the pillar, her eyes closed.
He dragged up her skirts. “I’ve wanted you the whole curst day, drat you,” he growled.
He had waited too long to bother with drawer strings or anything like finesse. He found the slit of her drawers and thrust his fingers inside and tangled them in the silky curls.
He had but to touch her—a few impatient caresses—and she was ready, pushing against his fingers, her breathing quick and shallow.
He thrust into her, and scorching joy bolted through him at the slick, hot welcome he found, and the low moan of pleasure he heard. He grasped her bottom and lifted her up.
She wrapped her legs round him and, clutching his shoulders, threw back her head and gave a throaty laugh. “I’ve wanted you, too, Dain. I thought I’d go mad.”
“Fool,” he said. Mad she was, to want such an animal.
“Your fool,” she said.
“Stop it, Jess.” She was nobody’s fool, least of all his.
“I love you.”
The words shot through him and beat upon his heart. He couldn’t let them in.
He withdrew almost completely, only to drive again, harder this time.
“You can’t stop me,” she gasped. “I love you.”
Again and again he stormed into her in hard, fierce thrusts.
But he couldn’t stop her.
“I love you,” she told him, repeating it at every thrust, as though she would drive the words into him, as he drove his body into hers.
“I love you,” she said, even as the earth shook, and the heavens opened up and rapture blasted through him like lightning.
He covered her mouth to shut out the three fatal words, but they were spilling into his parched heart even while his seed spilled into her. He couldn’t stop his heart from drinking in those words, couldn’t keep it from believing them. He had tried to keep her out, just as he’d tried not to need more from her than was safe. Futile.
He never had been, never would be, safe from her.
Femme fatale.
Still, there were worse ways to die.
And Carpe diem, he told himself, as he collapsed against her.
As he might have expected, Dain emerged from paradise and walked straight into a nightmare.
By the time they’d left the churchyard and begun hunting for their carriage, the ludicrous match had ended, ludicrously, in a technical dispute. The spectators were streaming out in all directions, a part of the mob heading toward the town proper and another part away toward the mass of vehicles.
A short distance from the carriage, Vawtry hailed him.
“I’ll wait in the carriage,” Jessica said, slipping her hand from Dain’s arm. “I cannot possibly be expected to conduct a rational conversation at present.”
Though he doubted he could, either, Dain managed a knowing chuckle. Letting her go on to the vehicle, he joined Vawtry.
They were soon joined by several others, Ainswood included, and in a moment Dain was caught up in the general indignation about the grievously disappointing wrestlers.
Vawtry was in the midst of reviewing the disputed throw when Dain noticed that Ainswood was not attending at all, but staring past him.
Sure the man was gawking at Jessica again, Dain bent a warning frown upon him.
Ainswood didn’t notice. Turning back, grinning, to Dain, he said, “Looks like your footman’s got himself a bit more than a handful.”
Dain followed the duke’s amused glance. Jessica was in the carriage, out of reach of His Grace’s leering gaze.
Meanwhile, though, Joseph—who, as first foot-man, danced attendance upon Lady Dain—was struggling with a ragged, filthy urchin. A pickpocket, by the looks of it. Sporting events attracted them, like the whores, in droves.
Joseph managed to get the ragamuffin by the collar, but the brat twisted about and kicked him. Joseph bellowed. The guttersnipe answered with a stream of profanity that would have done a marine credit.
At that moment, the carriage door opened, and Jessica started out. “Joseph! What in blazes are you about?”
Though well aware she could handle the contretemps—whatever it was—Dain was also aware that he was supposed to be the authority figure…and his friends were watching.
He hurried over to intercept her.
A bloodcurdling scream came from behind him.
It startled Joseph, loosening his grasp. The raga-muffin broke free, and was off like a shot.
But Dain charged at the sam
e moment and, catching the shoulder of his filthy jacket, hauled the brat to a stop. “See here, you little—”
Then he broke off, because the boy had looked up, and Dain was looking down…into sullen black eyes, narrowed above a monstrous beak of a nose, in a dark, scowling face.
Dain’s hand jerked away.
The boy didn’t move. The sullen eyes widened and the scowling mouth fell open.
“Yes, lovely,” came a strident female voice at the edges of the waking nightmare. “That’s your pa, just like I said. Just like you. Aren’t you, my lord? And isn’t he just like you?”
Hideously like. As though the space between them were not air, but five and twenty years, and the face below his own, looking back from some devil’s mirror.
And it was the voice of Satan’s own whore he’d heard, Dain knew, even before he met Charity Graves’ malevolent gaze—just as, when he saw that malevolence, he knew she’d done this on purpose, as she’d done everything, including bringing this monstrous child into the world.
He opened his mouth to laugh, because he must, because it was the only way.
Then he remembered they were not alone upon a nightmare island in Hell, but upon a public stage, enacting this ghastly farce before an audience.
And one of the spectators was his wife.
Though a lifetime seemed to have passed, it was but a moment, and Dain was already moving, instinctively, to block Jessica’s view of the boy. But the brat had also come out of his daze and, in the same instant, darted away into the crowd.
“Dominick!” his accursed mother screamed. “Come back, lovey.”
Dain’s gaze shot to his wife, who stood about twenty feet away, looking from the woman to him—then beyond, to the mob into which the boy had disappeared. Dain started toward her, sending a glance in Ainswood’s direction.
Drunk he may be, as usual, but the duke got the message. “By gad, is that you, Charity, my flower?” he called.
Charity was hurrying toward the carriage—toward Jessica—but Ainswood had moved quickly. He caught the bitch by the arm and firmly drew her back. “By heaven, it is you,” he loudly announced. “And here I thought you were still locked up in the asylum.”
“Let me go!” she screeched. “I got something to say to Her Ladyship.”
But Dain had reached his wife’s side by this time. “Into the carriage,” he told Jessica.
Her eyes were very wide, very grave. She threw a look toward Charity, whom Ainswood was hustling away, with the assistance of several comrades who’d also grasped the situation.
“She isn’t right in the head,” said Dain. “It’s not important. Into the carriage, my dear.”
Jessica sat rigidly in the carriage, her hands tightly folded in her lap. She remained so, her mouth compressed in a taut line, while the vehicle lurched into motion, and she did not utter a syllable or change her frigid posture thereafter.
After twenty minutes of riding with a marble statue, Dain could bear it no longer. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I promised you would not be embarrassed in public, I know. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I should think that was obvious.”
“I know very well you didn’t sire the child on purpose,” she said icily. “That is rarely the first thing a male thinks of when he’s tumbling a trollop.”
So much for hoping she hadn’t been able to see the boy’s face.
He might have known. Her keen eyes missed nothing. If she could discern a priceless icon under inches of mold and dirt, she could easily spot a bastard at twenty paces.
She had seen, beyond a doubt. Jessica would not have judged the matter on a tart’s words alone. If she hadn’t seen, she would have given Dain a chance to defend himself. And he would have denied Charity’s accusation.
But now there would be no denying the blackamoor skin and the monstrous nose—visible, easily identifiable for miles. No hope of denying, when Jessica had observed as well that the mother was fair, green-eyed and auburn-haired.
“And it is no good trying to pretend you didn’t know the child was yours,” Jessica went on. “Your friend Ainswood knew, and he moved quickly enough to get the woman out of the way—as though I were a half-wit, and could not see what was before me. ‘Asylum,’ indeed. It’s the lot of you who belong in Bedlam. Running about like overwrought hens—and meanwhile the boy gets away. You had him.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing angry reproach. “But you let him go. How could you, Dain? I could not believe my eyes. Where the devil were your wits?”
He stared at her.
She turned back to the window. “Now we’ve lost him, and heaven only knows how long it will take to find him again. I could just scream. If I had not gone with you to the churchyard, I might have been able to catch him. But I could scarcely walk, let alone run—and I must not contradict you in public, so I could hardly shout, ‘After him, idiot!’ in front of your friends—even if it had not been too late, anyhow. I cannot recollect when I’ve seen a little boy take off so fast. One moment he was there. The next, he’d vanished.”
His heart was a fist, beating mercilessly against his ribs.
Find him. Catch him.
She wanted him to go after the hideous thing he’d made with that greedy, vengeful slut. She wanted him to look at it and touch it and…
“No!” The word exploded from him, a roar of denial, and with it, Dain’s mind turned black and cold.
The small, dark face he’d looked into had turned his insides into a seething pit of emotion it had wanted every iota of his will to contain. His wife’s words had sent the lava spilling through the crevices.
But the frigid darkness had come, as it always did, to preserve him, and it smothered feeling, as it always did.
“No,” he repeated quietly, his voice cold and controlled. “There will be no finding. She had no business having him in the first place. Charity Graves knew well enough how to get rid of such ‘inconveniences.’ She’d done it countless times thereafter, I don’t doubt.”
His wife was staring at him now, her face pale and shocked, just as she’d looked when he told her about his mother.
“But wealthy aristocrats don’t come Charity’s way very often,” he went on, telling this tale in the same coldly brutal way he’d related his mother’s. “And when she found she was breeding, she knew the brat was either mine or Ainswood’s. Either way, she imagined she had a ripe pigeon to pluck. When the brat turned out to be mine, she didn’t waste a minute finding out the name of my solicitor. She wrote to him promptly enough, proposing an allowance of five hundred a year.”
“Five hundred?” Jessica’s color returned. “To a professional? And not even your mistress, either, but a common trollop you shared with your friend?” she added indignantly. “And one who had the babe on purpose—not a respectable girl got in the family way—”
“Respectable? Did you imagine, even for an instant, Jess, that I—gad, what? I seduced—lured an innocent—and left her breeding?”
His voice had begun to rise. Clenching his fist, he added levelly, “You know very well I had managed to avoid entanglements with respectable females until you exploded into my life.”
“Certainly I never imagined you would go to the bother of seducing an innocent,” she said crisply. “It simply hadn’t occurred to me that a trollop might have a babe through pure greed. Even now I have difficulty imagining a woman being so wrongheaded. Five hundred pounds.” She shook her head. “I doubt even the Royal Dukes support their by-blows in such luxury. No wonder you are so outraged. And no wonder, either, there is so much ill feeling between you and the boy’s mother. I had a suspicion she went out of her way to embarrass you. She must have heard—or seen—that you had your wife with you.”
“If she tries it again,” he said grimly, “I’ll have her and the guttersnipe she spawned transported. If she comes within twenty miles of you—”
“Dain, the woman is one matter,” she said. “The child is another. He did not ask to have her for a m
other, any more than he asked to be born. She was exceedingly unkind to use him as she did today. No child should be subjected to such a scene. Still, I strongly doubt she considers anybody’s feelings but her own. I noticed that she was far better dressed than her so-called ‘lovey.’ Dirt is one thing—little boys cannot remain clean above two and a half minutes—but there is no excuse for the child to wear rags, when his mother is garbed like a London high-flyer.”
She looked up at him. “How much do you give her, by the way?”
“Fifty,” he said tightly. “More than enough to feed and clothe him—and let her spend all she makes on her back on herself. But I daresay the rags were all part of her game: to make me appear the villain of the piece. Too bad I’m accustomed to the role, and that what other fools think does not concern me in the least.”
“Fifty a year is more than generous. How old is he?” Jessica demanded. “Six, seven?”
“Eight, but it makes no—”
“Old enough to notice his appearance,” she said. “I cannot excuse his mother for dressing him so shabbily. She has the money, and ought to know how a boy of that age would feel. Mortified, I don’t doubt—which is why he annoyed Joseph. But she does not consider the child, as I said, and all you have told me only convinces me she is an unfit mother. I must ask you, Dain, to set aside your feelings toward her, and consider your son. He is yours by law. You can take him away from her.”
“No.” He had smothered feeling, but his head had begun to pound, and his useless arm was throbbing. He could not freeze and smother physical pain. He could scarcely think past it. Even if he could have reasoned coolly, there was no explanation he could give for his behavior that would satisfy her.
He shouldn’t have tried to explain, he told himself. He could never make her understand. Above all, he didn’t want her to comprehend, any more than he wanted to himself, what he’d felt when he’d looked down into that face, into the devil’s mirror.
“No,” he repeated. “And stop fussing about it, Jess. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on coming to the bedamned wrestling match. By gad, I cannot seem to stir a foot when you are by without”—he gestured wearily—“without things going off in my face. No wonder I have a headache. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Women. Everywhere. Wives and Madonnas and mothers and whores and—and you’re plaguing me to death, the lot of you.”