Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [73]
Here were Beauty and the Beast with a vengeance, Dain thought as he met his reflection in the mirror.
"If I'm not better," he said, "I shall use your lap as a pillow all the way to Devon."
She laughed and left the room.
* * *
At half past seven o'clock in the morning, two miles past Amesbury, Dain was leaning against a monolithic stone on a rise overlooking the Salisbury Plain. Below and beyond spread an undulating blanket of green with a few rectangular patches of bright yellow rape fields. A small number of houses dotted the landscape, along with the occasional lonely heard of sheep or cattle, all looking as though some giant hand had idly strewn them. Here and there, the same careless hand had stuck a cluster of trees against the horizon or thrust it into the cleavage between the gently swelling slopes.
Dain grimaced at his choice of metaphors: blankets and cleavage and big, clumsy hands. He wished he hadn't swallowed the mugful of odoriferous liquid Jessica had given him. The instant he'd begun to feel better, the itch had started again.
He hadn't had a woman in weeks…months.
If he didn't get relief soon, he would have to hurt somebody. A lot of somebodies. Beating Ainswood had not relieved the condition one iota. Drinking himself blind had only deadened the itch temporarily. Dain supposed he could find a proper-sized whore between here and Devon, but he had a disagreeable suspicion that wouldn't do much more good than fighting or drinking.
It was his slim, woefully fragile wife he wanted, and hadn't been able to stop wanting from the instant he'd met her.
The place was quiet. He could hear the swish of her carriage dress when she moved. The teasing rustle was coming nearer. He kept his eye on the vista straight ahead until she paused a few feet away.
"I understand that one of the trilithons fell not so very long ago," she said.
"Seventeen hundred ninety-seven," he said. "A friend at Eton told me about it. He claimed the stone toppled over in fright the day I was born. So I checked. He was wrong. I was a full two years old at the time."
"I daresay you beat the true facts into your schoolfellow." She tilted her head back to look at him. "Was it Ainswood, I wonder?"
Despite a walk in the brisk morning air, she looked tired. Too pale. Shadows ringed her eyes. His fault.
"It was someone else," he said shortly. "And you're not to think I brawl with every fool who tries to exercise his feeble wit upon me."
"You don't brawl," she said. "You're a most scientific fighter. Intellectual, I should say. You knew what Ainswood would do before he knew it himself."
She moved away, toward a fallen stone. "I'd wondered how you would manage it, with but one arm." She dropped her umbrella onto the stone and posed, fists clenched, one held closer to her body. "How, I asked myself, can he shield himself and strike simultaneously? But you didn't do it that way." She ducked her head to the side, as though dodging a blow, and backed off. "It was dodge and retreat, luring him on, letting him waste his strength."
"It wasn't hard," he said, swallowing his surprise. "He wasn't as alert as he might have been. Not nearly so quick as he is when sober."
"I'm sober," she said. She leapt onto the stone. "Come, let's see if I'm quick enough."
She was wearing an immense leghorn hat, with flowers and satin ribbons sprouting from the top. It was tied under her left ear in an enormous bow. The carriage dress was the usual fashionable insanity of flounces and lace and overblown sleeves. A pair of satin straps buckled each sleeve above the elbow, so that her upper arms appeared to be made of balloons. The satin cords lacing up the lower sleeves ended in long tassles that dangled from the middle of her forearms.
He could not remember when he'd seen anything so ludicrous as this silly bit of femininity gravely poised upon a stone in approved boxing stance.
He walked up to her, his mouth quivering. "Come down, Jess. You look like a complete addlepate."