Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [115]
"Yes." He swallowed a gulp of stinging air. "I know, but I can't think it out. My brain…seizes up. Paralyzed." He forced out a short laugh. "Ridiculous."
"I had no idea," she said. "But at least you are telling me now. That is progress. Unfortunately, it is not very helpful. I am in a bit of a predicament, Dain. I am prepared to act, of course, but I could not possibly do so without informing you of the situation."
The clouds were spitting chill drops of rain, which the gusting wind spattered against his neck. He lifted his head and turned to her. "We'd better get back into the carriage, before you take a fatal ague."
"I am dressed very warmly," she said. "I know what to expect from the weather."
"We can discuss this at home," he said. "Before a warm fire. I should like to get there before the heavens open up and drench us."
"No!" she burst out, stamping her foot. "We're not discussing anything! I am going to tell you, and you are going to listen! And I don't give a damn if you contract a lung fever and whooping cough besides. If that little boy can bear the moors— on his own— wearing rags and boots full of holes, with nothing in his belly but what he can steal to put there, then you can bloody well bear it!"
Again the face flashed in his mind.
Revulsion, sour and thick, was rising inside him. Dain made himself drag in more air, in long, labored breaths.
Yes, he bloody well could bear it. He had told her weeks ago to stop treating him like a child. He had wanted her to stop behaving like an amiable automaton. He'd received his wishes, and he knew now he could and would endure anything, as long as she didn't leave him.
"I'm listening," he said. He leaned against the rock.
She studied him with troubled eyes. "I am not trying to torture you, Dain, and if I had a clue what your problem was, I would try to help. But that obviously wants a good deal of time, and there isn't time. At present, your son is more desperately in need of help than you are."
He made himself focus on the words, and push the sickening image to the back of his mind. "I understand. On the moors, you said. On his own. Not acceptable. Quite."
"And so you must understand that when I heard of it, I was obliged to act. Since you made it clear you didn't want to hear anything about him, I was obliged to act behind your back."
"I understand. You had no choice."
"And I should not distress you now, if I were not obliged to do something that you might never forgive."
He swallowed nausea and pride in one gulp. "Jess, the only unforgivable thing you can do is leave me," he said. "Se mi lasci mi uccido. If you leave me, I'll kill myself."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "I should never leave you. Really, Dain, I cannot think where you get such addled ideas."
Then, as though this explained and settled everything, she promptly returned to the main subject, and told him what had happened that day: how she'd stalked the beast to its lair— in Dain's own park, no less, where the little friend had broken into the summerhouse, and had been more or less living there for the last week at least.
Dain's sickness swiftly subsided, and the unendurable weight with it, swept away on a tide of shocked disbelief. The Demon Seed he'd planted in Charity Graves had been terrorizing his own village, skulking about his own park— and Dain had heard not so much as a whisper about it.
Speechless, he could only gape at his wife while she briskly related her capture of the boy, and went on to describe the encounter with the gutter-snipe's mother.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere about them had darkened ominously. The spitting rain had built to a steady drizzle. Under it, the spray of feathers and ribbons adorning her bonnet had sagged and collapsed, to cling soggily to the brim. But Jessica was as oblivious to the state of her bonnet as she was to the fiercely gusting wind, the fine beating rain,