Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [78]
Dain's hard mouth quirked up. Jessica flipped through the pages. "'A little she strove, and much repented, / And whispering "I will ne'er consent"— consented.'"
A stifled chuckle. But she had him, Jessica knew. She settled down onto the sofa and skipped ahead to the second canto, where she'd left off reading the night before.
The sixteen-year-old Don Juan, she explained, was being sent away because of his affair with the beautiful Donna Julia, wife of the fifty-year-old gentleman.
Then Jessica began to read aloud.
At Stanza III, Dain left the fireplace.
By the eighth stanza, he was sitting beside her. By the fourteenth, he had arranged himself into an indolent sprawl, with a sofa pillow under his head and a padded footstool under his feet. In the process, his crippled left hand had in some mysterious manner managed to land on her right knee. Jessica pretended not to notice, but read on— about Don Juan's grief as his ship sailed from his native land, and of his resolve to reform, and of his undying love for Julia, and how he would never forget her or think of anything but her.
"'"A mind diseased no remedy can physic— " / Here the ship gave a lurch, and he grew sea-sick."'"
Dain snickered.
"'"Sooner shall Heaven kiss earth— "(here he fell sicker) / "Oh Julia! What is every other woe?— (For God's sake let me have a glass of liquor; Pedro, Battista, help me down below.)"'"
If she'd been reading alone, Jessica would have giggled, as she'd done last night. But for Dain's benefit, she spouted Don Juan's lovesick declarations with a melodramatic anguish that grew increasingly distracted as the hero's mal de mer got the better of undying love.
She pretended not to notice the large body shaking with silent laughter, so close to hers, or the occasional half-smothered chuckle that sent a tickling breeze over her scalp.
"'"Beloved Julia, hear me still beseeching!" / (Here he grew inarticulate with retching.)'"
The breeze tickled the top of her ear, and she did not have to look up to be aware of her husband leaning nearer, looking over her shoulder at the page. She read on into the next stanza, conscious of his warm breath on her ear and of the vibrations his low, rumbling chuckle set off inside her.
"'No doubt he would have been more pathetic,— '"
"'But the sea acted as a strong emetic,'" he gravely finished the stanza. Then she let herself look up, but his gaze slipped away in the same instant and the expression on his harshly handsome face was inscrutable.
"I can't believe you bought it and never read it," she said. "You had no idea what you were missing, did you?"
"I'm sure it was more amusing hearing it read in a ladylike voice," he said. "Certainly it's less work."
"Then I'll read to you regularly," she said. "I shall make a romantic of you yet."
He drew back, and his inert hand slid to the sofa. "You call that romantic? Byron's a complete cynic."
"In my dictionary, romance is not maudlin, treacly sentiment," she said. "It is a curry, spiced with excitement and humor and a healthy dollop of cynicism." She lowered her lashes. "I think you will eventually make a fine curry, Dain— with a few minor seasoning adjustments."
"Adjustments?" he echoed, stiffening. "Adjust me?"
"Certainly." She patted the hand lying beside her. "Marriage requires adjustments, on both sides."
"Not this marriage, madam. I paid— and through the nose— for blind obedience, and that is precisely— "
"Naturally, you are master of your own household," she said. "I have never met a man more adept at managing everything and everybody. But even you can't think of everything, or look for what you've never experienced. I daresay there are benefits you've never imagined to having a wife."
"There's only one," he said, his eyes narrowing, "and I assure you, my lady, I've thought of it. Often. Because it's the only damned thing— "
"I devised a remedy for your indisposition