Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [104]
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 mother, 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,"