Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [21]
She accepted a small slice of yellow cake with frothy white icing.
Dain let the fawning proprietor adorn his plate with a large assortment of fruit tarts, artistically arranged in concentric circles.
They ate their sweets in silence until Dain, having decimated enough tarts to set every tooth in his mouth throbbing, set down his fork and frowned at her hands.
"Have all the rules changed since I've been away from England?" he asked. "I'm aware ladies do not carelessly expose their naked hands to public view. I did understand, though, that they were permitted to remove their gloves to eat."
"It is permitted," she said. "But it isn't possible." She raised her hand to show him the long row of tiny pearl buttons. "I should be all afternoon undoing them without my maid's help."
"Why the devil wear such pestilentially bother-some things?" he demanded.
"Genevieve bought them especially for this pelisse," she said. "If I didn't wear them, she'd be dreadfully hurt."
He was still staring at the gloves.
"Genevieve is my grandmother," she explained. He hadn't met her. He'd arrived just as Genevieve had lain down for her nap— though Jessica had no doubt her grandmother had promptly risen and peeped through the door the moment she'd heard the deep, masculine voice.
The voice's owner now looked up, his black eyes glinting. "Ah, yes. The watch."
"That, too, was a wise choice," Jessica said, setting down her own fork and settling back into her business mode. "She was enchanted."
"I am not your little white-haired grandmother," he said, instantly taking her meaning. "I am not so enchanted with icons— even Stroganovs— to pay a farthing more than they're worth. To me, it's worth no more than a thousand. But if you'll promise not to bore me to distraction by haggling and trying to slay me with your eyes in between, I shall gladly pay fifteen hundred."
She had hoped to work him round by degrees. His tone told her he had no intention of being worked upon. Straight to the point, then— the point she'd decided upon hours ago, after catching the expression in his eyes when she'd let him examine her remarkable find.
"I shall gladly give it to you, my lord," she said.
"No one gives me anything," he said coldly. "Play your game— whatever it is— with someone else. Fifteen hundred is my offer. My only offer."
"If you would send Bertie home, the icon is yours," she said. "If you will not, it goes to auction at Christie's."
* * *
If Jessica Trent had comprehended the state Dain was in, she would have stopped at the first sentence. No, if she had truly comprehended, she would have taken to her heels and run as fast and as far as she could. But she couldn't understand what Lord Dain barely understood himself. He wanted the gentle Russian Madonna, with her half-smiling, half-wistful face and the scowling Baby Jesus nestled to her bosom, as he had not wanted anything in all his life. He had wanted to weep when he saw it, and he didn't know why.
The work was exquisite— an art sublime and human at once— and he'd been moved, before, by artistry. What he felt at this moment wasn't remotely like those pleasant sensations. What he felt was the old monster howling within. He couldn't name the feelings any better than he could when he'd been eight years old. He'd never bothered to name them, simply shoved and beaten them out of his way, repeatedly, until, like his schoolmates of long ago, they'd stopped tormenting him.
Having never been allowed to mature, those feelings remained at the primitive childlike level. Now, caught unexpectedly in their grip, Lord Dain could not reason as an adult would. He could not tell himself Bertie Trent was an infernal nuisance whom Dain