Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [107]
He blinked once. Then his mouth curled into the horrid smile. "You are telling me it is my duty. May I remind you, madam, that you— that no one— tells me— "
"That boy is in trouble," she said. "His mother will be the ruin of him. I have explained this to you every way I could, but you refuse to listen. You refuse to trust my instincts about this, of all matters, when you know I have brought up, virtually single-handed, ten boys. Which includes having to deal with dozens of their beastly friends as well. If there is one thing I understand, my lord, it is boys— good ones, horrid ones, and all the species in between."
"What you can't seem to understand is that I am not a little boy, to be ordered about and told my curst duty!"
She was wasting her breath. She turned back to the mirror, and took out the last of the pins.
"I am tired of this," she said. "I am tired of your mistrust. I am tired of being accused of manipulating and patronizing and…bothering. I am tired of trying to deal with a consistently unreasonable man as though he were a reasonable one. I am tired of having every effort to reach you thrown back at me with insult."
She took up her brush and began drawing it through her hair with slow, steady strokes. "You don't want anything I have to offer, except physical pleasure. Everything else is a vexation. Very well, then. I shall cease vexing you. There will be no more attempts at that laughable thing, a rational adult discussion."
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Certainly not. There will be the icy silence instead. Or the reproachful silence. Or the sulking. The same pleasant manner, in short, to which you treated me the last ten miles to Athcourt."
"If I was disagreeable, I beg your pardon," she said composedly. "I shall not behave so again in future."
He came up to the dressing table and set his right hand down upon it. "Look at me," he said, "and tell me what that's supposed to mean."
She looked up into his rigidly set countenance. Emotion churned in the depths of his eyes, and her heart ached for him, more than ever. He wanted her love. She'd given it. Today she'd declared it, in no uncertain terms, and he had believed her. She had seen that in his eyes as well. He had let the love in and— though he hadn't been sure what to do with it, and probably wouldn't be sure for months, years maybe— he hadn't tried to thrust it away.
Until Charity Graves made her spiteful entrance.
Jessica was not about to spend more weeks working on him, only to have her efforts flung in her face the next time someone or something set him off. He would have to stop viewing the present— and her especially— through the warped spectacles of the past. He would have to learn who his wife was and deal with that woman, not the general species, Female, he viewed with such bitter contempt. He would have to learn it all the hard way, because she had a more urgent problem to spend her energy upon at present.
Dain was a grown man, ostensibly able to look after himself and presumably capable of sorting matters out rationally…eventually.
His son's situation, however, was far more perilous, for little boys were entirely at the mercy of others. Someone must act on Dominick's behalf. It was all too clear that the someone must be Jessica. As usual.
"What it means is that you win," she said. "It goes your way from now on, my lord. You want blind obedience. That is what you'll get."
He treated her to another mocking laugh. "I'll believe that when I see it," he said. Then he stalked out.
* * *
It took Dain a week to believe it, though he saw it and heard it every day and every night.
His wife agreed with everything he said, regardless how imbecilic. She would dispute nothing, regardless how much he goaded her. She was perfectly amiable, regardless how obnoxious he was.
If Dain had been in the least superstitious, he might have believed that another woman's soul had entered Jessica's beautiful body.
A week with this amiable, blindly obedient stranger left him acutely uncomfortable.