Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [62]
All Beaumont would have needed to do was drop a word to the right party. Isobel Callon, for instance. She'd seize the delicious tidbit and make a campaign of it. She wouldn't need much encouragement to do so, because she hated Dain. Then, having sown the seeds, Beaumont could retire to England and enjoy his revenge at a safe distance…and laugh himself sick when letters arrived from his friends, detailing the latest events in the Dain-versus-Trent drama.
When the suspicion had first arisen, Dain had thought it far-fetched, the product of an agitated mind.
Now it made a good deal more sense than any other explanation. It did explain at least why jaded Paris had become so obsessed with one ugly Englishman's handful of encounters with one pretty English female.
He glanced at Jessica.
She was trying to ignore Nick and Harry's Steeds of Death performance by concentrating on her betrothal ring. She hadn't put her glove back on. She turned her hand this way and that, making the diamonds spark rainbow fire.
She liked the ring.
She had bought a red silk nightgown, trimmed with black. For her wedding night.
She had kissed him back and touched him. And she hadn't seemed to mind being kissed and touched.
Beauty and the Beast. That's what Beaumont would call it, the poison-tongued sod.
But in thirteen days, this Beauty would be the Marchioness of Dain. And she would lie in the Beast's bed. Naked.
Then Dain would do everything he'd been dying to do for what seemed an eternity. Then she would be his, and no other man could touch her, because she belonged to him exclusively.
True, he could have bought Portugal for what "exclusive ownership" was costing him.
On the other hand, she was prime quality. A lady. His lady.
And it was very possible Dain owed it all to the sneaking, corrupt, cowardly, spiteful Francis Beaumont.
In which case, Dain decided, it would be pointless— as well as a waste of energy better saved for the wedding night— to take Beaumont apart and break him into very small pieces.
By rights, Dain ought to thank him instead.
But then, the Marquess of Dain was not very polite.
He decided the swine wasn't worth the bother.
Chapter 10
On a bright Sunday morning on the eleventh day of May in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred Twenty-Eight, the Marquess of Dain stood before the minister of St. George's, Hanover Square, with Jessica, only daughter of the late Sir Reginald Trent, baronet.
Contrary to popular expectation, the roof did not fall in when Lord Dain entered the holy edifice, and lightning did not strike once during the ceremony. Even at the end, when he hauled his bride into his arms and kissed her so soundly that she dropped her prayer book, no clap of thunder shook the walls of St. George's, although a few elderly ladies fainted.
As a consequence, on the evening of that day, Mr. Roland Vawtry gave Francis Beaumont his note of hand for three hundred pounds. Mr. Vawtry had previously written and delivered other notes of varying amounts to Lord Sellowby, Captain James Burton, Augustus Tolliver, and Lord Avory.
Mr. Vawtry did not know where or how he would get the money to cover the notes. Once, a decade earlier, he'd gone to the moneylenders. The way that worked, he learned— and learning it had cost him two years of wretchedness— was, in a nutshell, that if they lent you five hundred pounds, you were obliged to pay back one thousand. He had rather blow out his brains than repeat the experience.
He was painfully aware that he would have no trouble covering his present debts of honor if he hadn't had to settle so very many others before he left Paris. He wouldn't have had the present debts at all, he reflected miserably, if he had learned his lesson in Paris and left off wagering on any matter involving Dain.
He had won exactly once, and that had not been much of a victory. He had lost two hundred pounds to Isobel Callon when she insisted Dain had lured Miss Trent to Lady Wallingdon's garden to make love to her.
Vawtry had simply won it back when Dain, contrary