Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [129]
Vawtry let go of the door and the icon and rolled sideways to get her off him.
She wouldn't be shaken loose. She dug her nails into his scalp, his face, his neck. He tried to roll on top of her. She thrust her knee into his groin. He jerked away and folded up onto his side, clutching his privates.
She had just grabbed his hair again, in order to dash his skull to pieces upon the marble tile, when she felt a pair of strong hands wrap around her waist and haul her up, off Vawtry, off the floor altogether.
"That's enough, Jess." Her husband's sharp tone penetrated her mindless fury, and she left off struggling to take in the world about her.
She saw that the great door stood open and a crowd of servants stood frozen just within it. In front of the mob of statues was Phelps…and Dominick, who was holding the coachman's hand and gazing up slack-jawed at Jessica.
That was all she saw, because Dain swiftly swung her up over his shoulder and marched through the screens passage and into the Great Hall.
"Rodstock," he said, without pausing or looking back, "the vestibule is a disgrace. Have someone see to it. Now."
* * *
Once his wife was safely in her bath, with Bridget tending her and two sturdy footmen posted at the entrance to her apartments, Dain returned to the ground floor.
Vawtry, or what was left of him, lay on a wooden table in the old schoolroom, with Phelps standing guard. Vawtry's nose was broken and he'd lost a tooth and sprained a wrist. His face was caked with dried blood and one eye was swollen shut.
"All in all, you got off easy," Dain said, after surveying the damage. "Lucky she hadn't a pistol on her, aren't you?"
By the time he'd carried Jessica to her room, Dain had figured out what had happened. He'd seen the icon lying on the vestibule floor. He'd heard about the fire as he rode up to the house. He could put two and two together.
He did not have to interrogate his son to understand that Vawtry and Charity Graves were partners in crime.
Dain did not bother to interrogate Vawtry now, either, but told him what had happened.
"You let a greedy strumpet with great, fat udders turn you into a blithering idiot," Dain contemptuously summarized. "That's obvious enough. What I want to know is where you got the idea the thing was worth twenty thousand pounds. Confound it, Vawtry, couldn't you tell just by looking at it that it was worth five at most— and you know no pawnbroker would pay even half that."
"No time…to look." Vawtry was having a hard time getting the syllables around his swollen gums and mashed lips. His utterance sounded like "Oh— die— ooh— rook," but with Phelps' help, Dain was able to interpret.
"In other words, you never saw it before this night," said Dain. "Which means someone told you about it— Bertie most likely. And you believed him— which is imbecilic enough, for no one in his right mind listens to Bertie Trent— but then you had to go and tell Satan's own whore. And she, you have discovered, would sell her firstborn for twenty thousand quid."
"You was foolish, no mistake," Phelps chimed in mournfully, like a Greek chorus. "She sold her boy for only fifteen hundred. Now, don't you feel like a bit of a chucklehead, sir? Meanin' no offense, but— "
"Phelps." Dain turned a baleful eye upon his coachman.
"Aye, me lord." Phelps gave him a wide-eyed look that Dain did not believe for one minute.
"I did not give Charity Graves fifteen hundred pounds," His Lordship said very quietly. "As I recall, you most sensibly suggested that you head to the back of the inn, to prevent her escape in case she eluded me. I assumed you'd been too late and she'd fled. You did not volunteer information to the contrary."
"Her Ladyship were worrit the ma might make a fuss in front of the tyke," Phelps said. "Her Ladyship didn't want him upset no more than he was like to be already with you chargin' in. So she told me to give the gal some quietin' money, Her Ladyship said, 'n she could spend it how she liked. So she spent it on quietin' the ma, 'n wrote