Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [56]
"I shouldn't be ill tempered in the least," he said, "because I should never be so cork-brained as to let myself be bothered."
"You're the one who insisted upon the grand wedding at St. George's, Hanover Square," she said. "Then you left it all to me. You haven't made the smallest pretense of helping."
"I? Help?" he asked incredulously. "What the devil are servants for, you little nitwit? Did I not tell you to send the bills to me? If no one else in the household is competent to do the work, then hire somebody. If you want to be a wealthy marchioness, why don't you act like one? The working classes work," he explained with exaggerated patience. "The upper classes tell them what to do. You should not upset the social order. Look at what happened in France. They overthrew the established order decades ago, and what have they to show for it? A king who dresses and behaves like a bourgeois, open sewers in their grandest neighborhoods, and not a decently lit street, except about the Palais Royal."
She started at him. "I had no idea you were such a Tory snob. Certainly one couldn't tell, given your choice of companions."
He kept his gaze upon the horses. "If you're referring to the tarts, may I remind you that they're hired help."
The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of his bed partners. Jessica did not want to think about how he'd amused himself at night while she lay sleepless in her bed, fretting about the wedding night and her lack of experience— not to mention her lack of the Rubenesque figure he was so revoltingly partial to.
Gloomily certain that her marriage would be a debacle— no matter what Genevieve said— Jessica did not want to care whether she pleased him in bed or not. She could not get the better of her pride, though, and that feminine vanity couldn't bear the prospect of failing to captivate a husband. Any husband, even him. Neither of Genevieve's spouses had ever dreamt of straying, nor had any of the lovers she'd discreetly taken during her long widowhood.
But now was hardly the time to wrestle with that daunting problem, Jessica told herself. It made more sense to take the opportunity to get some practical matters sorted out. Like the guest list.
"I know where your female companions fit on your social scale," she said. "The men are another matter. Mr. Beaumont, for instance. Aunt Louisa says one may not invite him to the wedding breakfast because he isn't good ton. But he is your friend."
"You bloody well better not invite him," Dain said, his jaw hardening. "Buggering sod tried to spy on me when I was with a whore. Invite him to the wedding and the swine will think he's invited to attend the wedding night as well. What with the opium and drink, he probably can't get his own rod to stand to attention— so he watches someone else do it."
Jessica discovered that the image of Rubenesque trollops writhing in his lap wasn't nearly so agitating as what now appeared in her mind's eye: six and a half feet of dark, naked, aroused male.
She had a good idea of what arousal looked like. She'd seen some of Mr. Rowlandson's erotic engravings. She wished she hadn't. She didn't want so vivid an image of Dain doing with a voluptuous whore what the men in Rowlandson's pictures had been doing.
The picture hung in her mind, bold as the illuminations displayed during national celebrations, and it twisted her insides into knots and made her want to kill somebody.
She was not simply jealous, she was madly so— and he'd put her into this mortifying state with but a few careless words. Now she looked into the future, and saw him doing it again and again, until he made her completely insane.
She should not let him do it to her, Jessica knew. She should not be jealous of his tarts. She should thank her lucky stars for them, because he'd spend as little time as possible with