Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [133]
"You don't know what nauseating is, Jess," he said with a laugh. "I only wish you might have seen the animate pile of filth I encountered at the Golden Hart Inn. If the thing had not spoken, I might have mistaken it for a moldering heap of refuse, and pitched it into the fire."
"Phelps told me," she said. "I went downstairs while you were bathing and cornered him when he was on his way out. He described the state Dominick had been in, and how you faced it and dealt with it, yourself…with your own two hands."
She slipped her arm through is, through the one that his own fears and need had paralyzed, and a little boy's greater fears and need had cured. "I did not know whether to laugh or cry," she said. "So I did both." Silver mist shimmered in her eyes. "I am so proud of you, Dain. And proud of myself," she added, looking away and blinking hard, "for having the good sense to marry you."
"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Sense had nothing to do with it. But I will give you credit for making the best of a situation that would have driven any normal female to leap, screaming, from the top of the nearest tower."
"That would have been unforgivably gauche," she said.
"It would have meant admitting defeat, you mean," he said. "And that you cannot do. It isn't in your nature. As Vawtry has learned, to his everlasting mortification."
She frowned. "I know I took advantage of him. In spite of everything, he was too much the gentleman to fight back properly. All he could do was try to shake me off. But I should not have taken advantage if the curst fool had let go of the icon. Then, by the time he finally did, I was much too overwrought to stop smashing him. If you had not come when you did, I fear I might have killed him." She leaned her head against his brawny upper arm. "I do not think anyone else could have stopped me."
"Yes, we big, mean lummoxes have our uses," he said. He scooped her up and carried her to the dining room table. "Luckily, I had both arms working by then, else I doubt even I could have managed it." He plunked her down upon the gleaming wood surface. "What I should like to know, though, is why my levelheaded wife hadn't the common sense to keep at least a few servants with her, fire or no fire."
"I did," she said. "But Joseph and Mary were up in the South Tower, too far away to hear anything. I should not have noticed Vawtry myself, if he hadn't come down the main staircase. But I had gone down to the ground floor to watch for you. Someone had to be there when you arrived, to make Dominick feel welcome. I wanted to be the one. I wanted to prove I was looking forward to his arrival." Her voice quavered. "I wanted to reassure him and— and give him a h-hug."
He tilted up her chin and gazed into her misty eyes. "I hugged him, cara," he said softly. "I took him up in front of me on my horse, and I held him close, because he is a child, needing reassurance. I told him I would take care of him…because he was my son. And I told him you wanted him, too. I told him all about you— that you could be kind and amazingly understanding, but that you wouldn't tolerate any nonsense." He smiled. "And when we came home, the first thing Dominick saw was active, incontrovertible proof of that last. You proved that Papa was telling the truth, and Papa knows everything about everybody."
"Then I shall hug Papa." She wrapped her arms about his waist and laid her head against his chest. "I love you, Sebastian Leslie Guy de Ath Ballister. I love you, Lord Dain and Beelzebub, Lord Blackmoor, Lord Launcells, Lord Ballister— "
"That's too many names," he said. "We've been wed more than a month. Since it appears that you mean to stay, I might as well give you leave to call me by my Christian name. It is preferable, at any rate, to 'clodpole.'"
"I love you, Sebastian," she said.
"I'm rather fond of you, too," he said.
"Immensely fond," she corrected.
Her dressing gown was sliding down from her shoulders. He hastily drew it up. "Immense may well be the word for it." He glanced down at where his