Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [66]
She knew he was taking her to Devon with the intention of leaving her there when he'd had his fill of her.
She knew she was asking for heartache to hope and try for more.
Most of the world— all but a handful of the wedding guests, certainly— viewed him as a monster, and her marriage to the Bane and Blight of the Ballisters as a narrow notch above a death sentence. But he was not a monster when he held her in his arms. And so Jessica couldn't stop herself from hoping for more of that, at least. And hoping, she was determined to try.
His gaze had slid away. He was rubbing his thumb over his knee, and frowning at it as though a wrinkle had had the audacity to appear in his trousers.
"I think we'd better continue this discussion later," he said. "I had not…Gad, I should think it was simple enough. It's not as though you're competing at university for a first in Classics or Mathematics."
Only for first in his black heart, she thought.
"When I do something, I want to do it well," she said. "Actually, I always want to be the best. I am terribly competitive, you see. Perhaps it comes of having to manage so many boys. I had to beat my brother and cousins at everything, including sports, or they wouldn't respect me."
He looked up— not at her, but at the coach window. "Amesbury," he said. "About bloody time, too. I'm starving."
* * *
What the Bane and Blight of the Ballisters was, at the moment, was terrified.
Of his wedding night.
Now, when it was too late, he saw his mistake.
Yes, he knew Jessica was a virgin. He could hardly forget it, when that had been one of the most mortifying aspects of the entire situation: one of Europe's greatest debauchees mindless with lust for a slip of an English spinster.
He had known she was a virgin just as he had known her eyes were the color of a Dartmoor mist, and as changeable as the atmosphere of those treacherous expanses. He knew it in the same way he knew her hair was silken jet and her skin was creamy velvet. He'd known it, and the knowing was sweet, when he'd looked down at his bride as they stood before the minister. She'd worn a silver-grey gown and a faint pink had glowed in her cheeks, and she was not only the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, but she was pure as well. He had known no other man had possessed her, that she was his and his alone.
He had also known he would bed her. He'd dreamt of it long and often enough. Moreover, having waited what seemed like six or seven eternities, he had made up his mind to do it properly, in a luxurious inn, in a big, comfortable bed with clean linens, after a well-prepared supper and a few glasses of good wine.
Somehow, he had neglected to take into account what being a virgin meant, beyond being untouched. Somehow, through all those heated fantasies, he'd left out one critical factor: No series of men had gone before him to make the way easy. He had to break her in himself.
And that, he feared, was just what he'd do: break her.
The carriage halted. Suppressing a desperate urge to scream at the coachman to keep on driving— until Judgment Day, preferably— Dain helped his wife out.
She took his arm as they started toward the entrance. Her gloved hand had never seemed so woefully small as it did at this moment.
She had insisted she was taller than average, but that wasn't the least bit reassuring to a man as big as a house, and likely to have the same impact when he fell upon her.
He would crush her. He would break something, tear something. And if he somehow managed not to kill her and if the experience did not turn her into a babbling lunatic, she would run away screaming if he ever tried to touch her again.
She would run away, and she would never again kiss him and hold him and—
"Well, stand me up and knock me down again— either a coal barge just hove into view or it's Dain."
The raucous voice jolted Dain back to the moment