Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [49]
On the morning of the fifth day, he woke fully, and more or less recovered. That was to say, the fire and throbbing were gone. His left arm refused to move, though. It dangled uselessly at his side. There was feeling in it, but he couldn't make it do anything.
The physician returned, examined, made wise noises, and shook his head. "I can find nothing wrong," he said.
He summoned a colleague, who also found nothing wrong, and summoned another, with the same result.
By late afternoon, Dain had seen eight medical men, all of whom told him the same thing. By then, Dain was beside himself. He had been poked and questioned and muttered over for most of the day, and spent a great deal of money on physicians' fees to no purpose.
To cap it off, a law clerk arrived minutes after the last quack left. Herbert delivered the message the clerk had brought just as Dain was attempting to pour himself a glass of wine. His eye upon the note on the silver salver, Dain missed the glass, and splattered wine on his dressing gown, slippers, and the Oriental carpet.
He hurled imprecations, as well as the salver, at Herbert's head, then stormed out of the drawing room and on to his own room, where he worked himself into a fury trying to unseal and unfold the note with one hand. By then, he was so enraged, he could scarcely see straight.
There was little enough to see. According to the note, Mr. Andrew Herriard wished to meet with His Lordship's solicitor on behalf of Miss Jessica Trent.
Lord Dain's insides turned to lead.
Andrew Herriard was a famous London solicitor with an extensive clientele of powerful expatriates in Paris. He was also a pillar of rectitude— incorruptible, loyal, and indefatigable in serving his clients. Lord Dain was aware, as were a great many people, that beneath the lawyer's saintly exterior loomed a steel trap with jaws and teeth a shark would envy. The trap was reserved primarily for men, because Mr. Andrew Herriard was a gallant knight in the service of the weaker sex.
It didn't matter to the solicitor that the law was squarely on the side of male prerogative, and that a woman, to all intents and purposes, had no rights under that law and nothing she could call her own, including her offspring.
Herriard created the rights he believed women were entitled to— and got away with it. Even Francis Beaumont, devious swine that he was, could not touch the tenth part of a farthing of his wife's income, thanks to Herriard.
This was because Herriard's approach, when a fellow balked at outrageous demands, was to subject the poor sod to an endless stream of barristers and petty litigation, until the sod caved in from sheer exhaustion, was ruined by legal fees, or was carried, screaming, to a lunatic asylum.
Miss Trent, in short, was not only going to make Lord Dain crawl, but she would have Herriard do the dirty work for her, and have it all done legally, with not a loophole for Dain to wriggle out of.
"There is no animal more invincible than a woman," Aristophanes had said, "nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless."
Ruthless. Vicious. Fiendish.
"Oh, no, you don't," Dain muttered. "Not via go-betweens, you demon spawn." He wadded the note into a tight ball and hurled it at the grate. Then he stomped to his writing desk, grabbed a sheet of notepaper, scrawled an answer, and shouted for his valet.
* * *
In his note to Mr. Herriard, Dain had declared that he would meet with Miss Trent at seven o'clock that evening at her brother's house. He would not, as Herriard had requested, send his solicitor to meet with hers, because the Marquess of Dain had no intention, he wrote, "of being sworn, signed, and bled dry by proxy." If Miss Trent had terms to dictate, she could bloody well do it in person. If that didn't suit, she was welcome to send her brother to Dain, who would be happy to settle the matter at twenty paces— with both combatants armed this time.
Given the last suggestion, Jessica decided it would be best if Bertie spent the evening else-where. He still had no idea what had happened.
She had