Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [87]
Barely three days wed, and the great jackass was abandoning her. For his friends. For a wrestling match.
She got up, pulled off her modest cotton night-gown, and stalked, naked, to her dressing room. She found the wine red and black silk negligee and put it on. She slipped into the black mules. She shrugged into a heavy black and gold silk dressing gown, tied the sash, and loosely draped the neckline so that a bit of the negligee peeped above it.
After running a brush through her hair, she returned to her bedchamber and exited through the door that opened into what Mrs. Ingleby had called the Withdrawing Chamber. At present, it housed part of Dain's collection of artistic curios. It also adjoined His Lordship's apartments.
She crossed the huge, dim room to the door that led to Dain's rooms. She rapped. The muffled voices she'd heard while approaching abruptly ceased. After a moment, Andrews opened the door. As he took in her dishabille, he let out a gasp, which he quickly turned into a small, polite cough.
She turned a sweet, artless smile upon him. "Ah, you haven't gone yet. I am so relieved. If His Lordship can spare a minute, I need to ask him something."
Andrews glanced to his left. "My lord, Her Ladyship wishes— "
"I'm not deaf," came Dain's cross voice. "Get away from there and let her in."
Andrews backed away and Jessica strolled in, glancing idly about her while she made her way slowly into the room and around the immense seventeenth-century bed to her husband. The bed was even larger than hers, about ten feet square.
Dain, in shirt, trousers, and stockinged feet, stood near the window. He was glaring down at his traveling case. It stood open upon a heavily carved table which she guessed had been built about the same time as the bed. He would not look at her.
"It is a…delicate matter," she said, her voice hesitant, shy. She wished she could command a blush as well, but blushes did not come easily to her. "If we might be…private?"
He shot a glance at her, and back to the valise almost in the same instant. Then he blinked, and turned his head toward her once more, stiffly this time. Slowly he surveyed her, up and down and up again, pausing at the revealing neckline of her dressing gown. A muscle jumped in his cheek.
Then his face set, hard as granite. "Ready for your nap, I see." He glowered past her at Andrews. "What are you waiting for? 'Private,' Her Ladyship said. Are you deaf?"
Andrews left, closing the door after him.
"Thank you, Dain," Jessica said, smiling up at him. Then she stepped closer, took a handful of starched and neatly folded neckcloths from the valise, and dropped them on the floor.
He looked at her. He looked at the linen upon the floor.
She took out a stack of pristine white handkerchiefs and, still smiling, threw them down, too.
"Jessica, I don't know what game you're at, but it is not amusing," he said very quietly.
She collected an armful of shirts and flung them onto the floor. "We have been wed scarcely three days," she said. "You do not desert your new bride for your sapskull friends. You will not make a laughingstock of me. If you are unhappy with me, you say so, and we discuss it— or quarrel, if you prefer. But you do not— "
"You do not dictate to me," he said levelly. "You do not tell me where I may and may not go— or when— or with whom. I do not explain and you do not question. And you do not come into my room and throw temper fits."
"Yes, I do," she said. "If you leave this house, I will shoot your horse out from under you."
"Shoot my— "
"I will not permit you to desert me," she said. "You will not take me for granted as Sherburne does his wife, and you will not make all the world laugh at me— or pity me— as they do her. If you cannot bear to miss your precious wrestling match, you can jolly well take me with you."
"Take you?" His voice climbed. "I'll bloody well take you, madam— straight to your room. And lock you in, if you can't behave yourself."
"I