Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [33]
"I know," Genevieve said soothingly. "Believe me, dear, I know." She stripped off the rest of the garments— Jessica being incapable of doing much besides babbling and staring stupidly at the furniture— wrapped her in a dressing gown, planted her in a chair by the fire, and ordered brandy.
* * *
About half an hour after Jessica Trent had fled him, Lord Dain, drenched to the skin and clutching a mangled bonnet, stalked through the door a trembling Herbert opened for him. Ignoring the footman, the marquess marched down the hall and up the stairs and down another hall to his bedroom. He threw the bonnet onto a chair, stripped off his dripping garments, toweled himself dry, donned fresh attire, and rejoined his guests.
No one, including the tarts, was audacious or drunk enough to seek an accounting of his whereabouts and doings. Dain seldom troubled to explain his actions. He was accountable to nobody.
All he told them was that he was hungry and was going out to dinner, and they were at liberty to do as they pleased. All but Trent, who was incapable of any action beyond breathing— which he did with a great deal of noise— accompanied Dain to a restaurant at the Palais Royal. Thence they proceeded to Vingt-Huit, and discovered it had closed down that very day. Since no other establishment offered Vingt-Huit's variety, the party broke up into smaller groups, each seeking its own choice of entertainment. Dain went to a gambling hell with his pair of…cows and Vawtry and his cow.
At three o'clock in the morning, Dain left, alone, and wandered the streets.
His wanderings took him to Madame Vraisses', just as the guests were beginning to leave.
He stood under a tree, well beyond the feeble glimmer of a lonely streetlamp, and watched.
He'd brooded there for nearly twenty minutes when he saw Esmond emerge, with Jessica Trent upon his arm. They were talking and laughing.
She was not wearing a ridiculous bonnet, but a lunatic hair arrangement even more ludicrous. Shiny knots and coils sprouted from the top of her head, and pearls and plumes waved from the knots and coils. The coiffure, in Dain's opinion, was silly.
That was why he wanted to rip out the pearls and plumes and pins…and watch the silky black veil ripple over her shoulders…white, gleaming in the lamplight.
There was too much gleaming white, he noted with a surge of irritation. The oversize ballooning sleeves of her silver-blue gown didn't even have shoulders. They started about halfway to her elbow, primly covering everything from there down— and leaving what should have been concealed brazenly exposed to the view of every slavering hound in Paris.
Every man at the party had examined, at leisure and close quarters, that curving whiteness.
While Dain, like the Prince of Darkness they all believed him to be, stood outside lurking in the shadows.
He did not feel very satanic at the moment. He felt, if the humiliating truth be told, like a starving beggar boy with his nose pressed to the window of a pastry shop.
He watched her climb into the carriage. The door closed and the vehicle lumbered away.
Though no one was by to see or hear, he laughed under his breath. He had laughed a great deal this night, but he couldn't laugh the truth away.
He'd known she was trouble— had to be, as every respectable female was.
"Wife or mistress, it's all the same," he'd told his friends often enough. "Once you let a lady— virtuous or not— fasten upon