Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [118]
"If you run away," Dain said fiercely, "I shall hunt you down. I shall follow you to the ends of the earth."
If she could manage not to topple over in shock when he had threatened to kill himself on her account, she could manage it now, she told herself.
"Yes, I know that," she said. "But your father was a miserable, bitter old man who married the wrong woman, and you are not. Obviously she was high-strung— and that's where you get it from— and he made her wretched. But I am not in the least high-strung, and I would never permit you to make me wretched."
"Just as you will not permit that bedamned female to take her Satan's spawn to wicked London."
Jessica nodded.
He leaned back against the desk and directed a glare at the carpet. "It does not occur to you, perhaps, that the child may not wish to leave its— his— mother. That such an event may…" He trailed off, his hand beating against the edge of the desk as he sought the words.
He didn't have to finish. She knew he referred to his own case: that his mother's desertion had devastated him…and he hadn't altogether recovered yet.
"I know it will be traumatic," Jessica said. "I asked his mother to try to prepare him. I suggested she explain that where she was going was much too dangerous for a little boy and it was better to leave him where he would be safe, and where she was sure he'd be provided for."
He shot her one quick look. Then his gaze dropped again to the carpet.
"I wish it were true," Jessica said. "If she truly loved him, she would never subject him to such a risk. She would put his welfare first— as your own mother did," she dared to add. "She did not drag a little boy off on a dangerous sea voyage, with no assurance she could provide for him— if, that is, he managed to survive the journey. But her case was tragic, and one must grieve for her. Charity Graves…Ah, well, in some ways she is a child herself."
"My mother is a tragic heroine and Charity Graves a child," Dain said. He pushed away from the edge of the desk and moved behind it, not to the chair but to the window. He looked out.
The storm was abating, Jessica noticed.
"Charity wants pretty clothes and trinkets and the attention of all males in the vicinity," she said. "With her looks and brains— and charm, for she has that, I admit— she might have been a famous London courtesan by now, but she is too lazy, too much a creature of the moment."
"Yet this creature of the moment is single-mindedly bent upon my icon, you informed me on the way home," he said. "Which she has never seen. And for whose existence she relies upon the word of a village looby who heard it from someone else, who heard it from one of our servants. Yet she is convinced the thing is worth twenty thousand pounds. Which amount, she told you, was the only counteroffer you could make— and you had better make it in sovereigns, because she had no faith in paper. I should like to know who put this twenty thousand pounds into her head."
Jessica joined him at the window. "I should, too, but we haven't time to find out, have we?"
With a short laugh, he turned to her. "We? It isn't 'we' at all, as you know perfectly well. It's 'Dain,' the pitiable, henpecked fellow who must do exactly as his wife tells him, if he knows what's good for him."
"If you were henpecked, you would obey me blindly," she said. "But that is not the case at all. You have sought an explanation of my motives, and you are now attempting to deduce Charity's. You are also preparing to deal with your son. You are trying to put yourself in his shoes, so that you may quickly make sense of any troublesome reactions and respond intelligently and efficiently."
She drew closer and patted his neckcloth. "Go ahead. Tell me that I'm 'humoring' you or 'managing' you or whatever other obnoxious wifely thing I am doing."
"Jessica, you are a pain in the arse, do you know that?" He scowled at her. "If I were not so immensely fond of you, I should throw you out the window."
She wrapped