Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [53]
He stared at her, afraid to trust his hearing.
"The answer is yes," she said impatiently. "Do you think I'm such a sapskull as to say no, and let you off scot-free?"
He found his voice. "I knew that was too much to hope."
She approached him. "What will you tell your friends, Dain? Something about marriage being less bother than having me chasing after you and shooting you, I suppose."
She lightly touched his coat sleeve, and the small gesture made his chest constrict painfully.
"You ought to put it in a sling," she said. "Make a show of it. Not to mention you'll be less likely to damage it accidentally."
"A sling would spoil the line of my coat," he said stiffly. "And I don't need to make a show of or explain anything."
"Your friends will roast you unmercifully," she said. "I should give anything to hear it."
"I shall announce our betrothal to them tonight, at Antoine's," he said. "And they may make what they like of it. It's nothing to me what those morons think. Meanwhile, I advise you to run along and pack. Herriard and I have business to discuss."
She stiffened. "Pack?"
"We'll leave for England the day after tomorrow," he said. "I'll see to the travel arrangements. We'll be married in London. I won't have a mob descending upon the Dartmoor countryside and agitating the cattle. We can leave for Devon after the wedding breakfast."
Her eyes darkened. "Oh, no, you don't," she said. "We can be wed here. You might allow me to enjoy Paris for a while at least, before you exile me to Devon."
"We will be wed in St. George's, Hanover Square," he said. "In a month's time. I'll be damned if I'll plead with the sodding Archbishop of Canterbury for a special license. The banns will be read. And you may enjoy London in the interim. You are not staying in Paris, so just put that idea out of your head."
The idea of the Marchioness of Dain living in the stewpot he called home on the Rue de Rivoli made his flesh creep. His lady wife would not sit at the table where half the degenerates of Paris had caroused and eaten and drunk until they were sick— and retched upon carpets and furniture. She would not embroider or read by the fire in a drawing room that had housed orgies the Romans would have envied.
He made a mental note to order a new mattress for the ancestral bed in Devon, and to have all the present bedclothes and hangings burnt. He would not have the Marchioness of Dain contaminated by the objects amid which he'd fathered a bastard upon Charity Graves.
"I have had a perfectly wretched time in Paris, thanks to you," she said, her grey eyes sparking. "You might at least allow me to make up for it. I should not dream of expecting you to live in my pocket, but I should think I might be permitted to go to parties and enjoy my newly redeemed honor and— "
"You can go to parties in London," he said. "You may have as grand a wedding breakfast as you like. You may buy all the frocks and fripperies you like. What the devil do you care where you are, so long as I pay the bills?"
"How can you be so insensitive?" she cried. "I do not wish to be hustled away from Paris as though I were a mortifying secret."
"A secret?" His voice rose. "In St. George's, Hanover Square? How much more bloody public and respectable can this infernal match be?"
He looked over her head at Herriard, who was at the table, tucking papers into