Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [55]
"Jessica, pray look out the window," she said.
Jessica set down her pen upon the writing desk where she'd been battling with the wedding breakfast menu, rose, and went to the window. Upon the street below she saw a handsome black curricle. It was attached to two very large, very temperamental black geldings, which Bertie was struggling mightily to hold. They were snorting and dancing restlessly about. Jessica had no doubt that in a very few minutes they'd be dancing on her brother's head.
"His Almighty Lordship says he will not leave the house without you." Aunt Louisa's voice throbbed with outrage. "I advise you to hurry, before those murderous beasts of his kill your brother."
In three minutes, a seething Jessica had a bonnet upon her head and her green pelisse snugly fastened over her day frock.
In another two, she was being helped onto the carriage seat. Or shoved was more like it, for Dain promptly flung his huge body onto the seat, and she had to wedge herself into a corner to avoid his brawny shoulder. Even so, in the narrow space it was impossible to escape physical contact. His useless left hand lay upon his thigh, and that muscled limb pressed brazenly against hers, as did the allegedly crippled left arm. Their warmth penetrated the thick fabric of her pelisse as well as the muslin frock beneath, to make her skin tingle.
"Comfortable?" he asked with mocking politeness.
"Dain, this curricle is not big enough for the two of us," she said crossly. "You're crushing me."
"Maybe you'd better sit on my lap, then," he said.
Suppressing the urge to slap the smirk off his face, she turned her attention to her brother, who was still fumbling about the horses' heads. "Confound you, Bertie, get away from there!" she snapped. "Do you want them to mash your skull upon the paving stones?"
Dain laughed and gave the beasts leave to start, and Bertie hastily stumbled back to the safety of the sidewalk.
A moment later, the curricle was hurtling at a breakneck pace through the crowded West End streets. Jammed, however, between the high, cushioned side of the carriage seat and the rock-hard body of her demonic betrothed, Jessica knew she was in small danger of tumbling out. She leaned back and contemplated Dain's Steeds from Hell.
They were the worst-tempered horses she'd ever encountered in her life. They fussed and snorted about and objected to everything and everybody that strayed into their path. They tried to trample pedestrians. They exchanged equine insults with every horse they met. They tried to knock over lampposts and curb posts, and strove to collide with every vehicle that had the effrontery to share the same street with them.
Even when they reached Hyde Park, the animals showed no signs of tiring. They tried to run down the workmen finishing the new archway at Hyde Park Corner. They threatened to stampede down Rotten Row— upon which no vehicle but the monarch's was permitted.
They succeeded in none of their fiendish enterprises, however. Though he waited until the last minute, Dain quelled all attempts at mayhem. To Jessica's mingled annoyance and admiration, he did so without seeming to make the slightest effort, despite having to drive with only one hand.
"I suppose there wouldn't be any challenge in it," she said, thinking aloud, "if your cattle behaved themselves."
He smoothly drew the right one back from imminent collision with the statue of Achilles and turned the satanic beasts westward into the Drive. "Perhaps your ill temper has communicated itself to them, and they're frightened. They don't know where to run, what to do. Is that it, Nick, Harry? Afraid she'll shoot you?"
The beasts tossed their heads and answered with evil horsey laughter.
Leave it to Dain, she thought, to give his horses Lucifer's nicknames. And leave it to him to own animals who fully merited the names.
"You'd be ill tempered, too," she said, "if you'd spent the last week wrestling with guest lists and wedding breakfast menus and fittings and a lot of pestering relatives. You'd be cross, too,