Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [16]
"I'm thinking of taking up art," Dain went on while Beaumont gasped for breath. "I'm thinking of titling my first work 'Portrait of a Dead Man.'"
Beaumont made a choked sound.
Dain eased his grip a fraction. "There was a remark you wished to make, swine?"
"Can't…kill me…cold blood," Beaumont gasped. "Guillotine."
"Quite right. Don't want to lose my head on your filthy account, do I?"
Releasing the neckcloth, Dain drove his right fist into Beaumont's face, then his left into his gut. Beaumont crumpled to the floor.
"Don't annoy me again," Dain said. And he left.
* * *
At the same moment, Jessica was sitting on her grandmother's bed. This was the first chance they'd had for an extended conversation, without Bertie fussing and fretting about. He'd departed about an hour ago for one pit of vice or another, at which point Jessica had ordered up some of his best cognac. She had just finished telling Genevieve about her encounter with Dain.
"An animal attraction, obviously," said Genevieve.
With that, Jessica's small, desperate hope— that her inner disturbances had been a feverish reaction to the effluvium emanating from the open gutter in front of Champtois' shop— died a quick, brutal death.
"Damn," she said, meeting her grandmother's twinkling silver gaze. "This is not only mortifying, but inconvenient. I am in lust with Dain. Of all times, now. Of all men, him."
"Not convenient, I agree. But an interesting challenge, don't you think?"
"The challenge is to pry Bertie loose from Dain and his circle of oafish degenerates," Jessica said severely.
"It would be far more profitable to pry Dain loose for yourself," said her grandmother. "He is very wealthy, his lineage is excellent, he is young, strong, and healthy, and you feel a powerful attraction."
"He isn't husband material."
"What I have described is perfect husband material," said her grandmother.
"I don't want a husband."
"Jessica, no woman does who can regard men objectively. And you have always been magnificently objective. But we do not live in a utopia. If you open your shop, you will doubtless make money. Yet the family will turn their backs upon you, your social credit will sink, Society will pity you— even while they bankrupt themselves to buy your wares. And every coxcomb in London will be making indecent proposals. Yes, it shows courage to undertake such an endeavor when one is in desperate straits. But you are not desperate, my dear. I can support you well enough, if it comes to that."
"We've been over this ground time and again," Jessica said. "You're not Croesus, and we both have expensive tastes. Not to mention that you'll only create more ill will in the family— while I shall seem a great hypocrite, after insisting for years that you owe none of us a farthing, and we're not your responsibility."
"You are very proud and brave, which I respect and admire, my dear." Her grandmother leaned forward to pat Jessica's knee. "And assuredly, you are the only one who understands me. We have always been more like sisters or very best friends than grandmama and grandchild, have we not? It is as your sister and friend that I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in."
Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac. "This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry shark."
"Then use a harpoon."
Jessica shook her head.
Genevieve sat back against the pillows and sighed. "Ah well, I shall not nag you. It is most unattractive. I shall simply hope his reaction to you was nothing like yours to him. That is a man who gets what he wants, Jessica, and if I were you, I should not want him to be the one reeling in the line."
Jessica suppressed a shudder. "No danger of that. He doesn't want anything to do with ladies. According to Bertie, Dain views respectable women as a species of deadly fungus. The only reason he spoke to me was to amuse himself by trying to shock me out of my wits."
Genevieve chuckled. "The watch, you mean. That was a delicious birthday surprise.