Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [19]
Though she'd already made up her mind how to deal with the problem, Jessica was irritably aware that it would be easier if Bertie had been a trifle more discreet. She wished she hadn't taken him along yesterday when she'd gone to collect the picture from Le Feuvre. But then, how could she have known beforehand that it was more than simply the work of an unusually talented artist?
Even Le Feuvre had been astonished when he went to work on it, and found the bejeweled gold frame within the decayed wooden one.
And naturally, because the piece, when Le Feuvre had finished with it, was pretty and shiny and sparkling with gems, Bertie had become very excited. Too excited to listen to reason. Jessica had tried to explain that telling Dain would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Bertie had pshished and pshawed and told her Dain wasn't that sort of bad sport— not to mention he probably had a dozen such of his own and could buy another dozen if he liked.
Whatever the Marquess of Dain had, Jessica was certain it wasn't anything like her rare Madonna. And though he had looked bored when she showed it to him today, and congratulated her in the most patronizing manner, and laughingly insisted on accompanying Bertie and her to the bank to scare off any would-be robbers, she knew he wanted to kill her.
After the icon had been locked away in a bank vault, it was Dain who'd suggested they stop here for coffee.
They'd scarcely sat down before he'd sent Bertie out to find a type of cheroot that Jessica strongly suspected didn't exist. Bertie would probably not be back before midnight, if then. For all she knew, he'd hie to the West Indies in search of the fictitious cigar— precisely as though Dain truly were Beelzebub, and Bertie one of his devoted familiars.
The brother out of the way, Dain had just silently warned the café's patrons to mind their own business. If he took her by the throat and choked her to death then and there, Jessica doubted any one of them would leap to her rescue. She doubted, in fact, that any of them would dare utter a peep of protest.
"How much did Le Feuvre tell you the thing was worth?" he asked. It was the first word he'd uttered since giving the coffee shop owner their order. When Dain entered an establishment, the proprietor himself rushed out to attend him.
"He advised me not to sell it right away," she said evasively. "He wished to contact a Russian client first. There is a cousin or nephew or some such of the tsar's who— "
"Fifty pounds," said Lord Dain. "Unless this Russian is one of the tsar's numerous mad relations, he won't give you a farthing more than that."
"Then he must be one of the mad ones," said Jessica. "Le Feuvre mentioned a figure well above that."
He gave her a hard stare. Gazing into his dark, harsh face, into those black, implacable eyes, Jessica had no trouble imagining him sitting upon an immense ebony throne at the very bottom of the pits of Hades. Had she looked down and discovered that the expensive polished boot a few inches from her own had turned into a cloven hoof, she would not have been in the least amazed.
Any woman with an ounce of common sense would have picked up her skirts and fled.
The trouble was, Jessica could not feel at all sensible. A magnetic current was racing along her nerve endings. It slithered and swirled through her system, to make an odd, tingling heat in the pit of her belly, and it melted her brain to soup.
She wanted to kick off her shoes and trail her stockinged toes up and down the black, costly boot. She wanted to slide her fingers under his starched shirt cuff and trace the veins and muscles of his wrist and feel his pulse beating under her thumb. Most of all, she wanted to press her lips to his hard, dissolute mouth and kiss him senseless.
Of course, all such a demented assault would get her would be a position flat on her back and the swift elimination of her maidenhead— very possibly in full view of