Chapter 3

It would have eased Jessica's mind, could she but have known, that she gave Lord Dain nightmares.

That is to say, his dreams started out well enough, with thoroughly lewd and lascivious activities. Since he'd often dreamt of females he wouldn't, awake, have touched with the proverbial long pole, the marquess was not alarmed about dreaming of Bertie Trent's irritating sister. On the contrary, Dain thoroughly enjoyed putting the supercilious bluestocking in her place—on her back, on her knees, and, more than once, in positions he doubted were anatomically possible.

The trouble was, every time, just as he was on the brink of flooding her virginal womb with the hot seed of latent Ballisters, something ghastly happened. In the dream, he would wake up. Sometimes he found himself sinking in a mire. Sometimes he was chained in a foul black cell, with creatures he couldn't see tearing at his flesh. Sometimes he was lying on a slab in a morgue undergoing an autopsy.

Being a man of considerable intelligence, he had no trouble understanding the symbolism. Every nightmarish thing that had happened was, metaphorically speaking, exactly what did happen to a man when a female got her hooks into him. He did not understand, however, why, in his sleep, his brain had to make such a ghoulish, bother about what he already knew.

For years he'd been dreaming about women he had no intention of becoming entangled with. Countless times, awake, he'd imagined that the whore he was with was a lady who'd caught his eye. Not very long ago, he'd pretended a voluptuous French tart was Leila Beaumont, and he'd come away quite as satisfied as if she had been that icy bitch. No, more satisfied, because the tart had made an excellent show of enthusiasm, whereas the real Leila Beaumont would have dashed out his brains with a blunt instrument.

Dain, in short, had no trouble distinguishing between fantasy and reality. He had met Jessica Trent and felt a perfectly normal lust. He lusted for virtually every attractive female he saw. He had a prodigious sexual appetite, inherited, he had no doubt, from his hot-blooded Italian whore of a mother and her family. If he lusted for a whore, he paid her and had her. If he lusted for a respectable female, he found a whore as a substitute, paid her, and had her.

That was what he'd done regarding Trent's sister. Or tried to do— because it still wasn't properly done.

The dreams weren't all that thwarted him. The incident at Vingt-Huit had not precisely killed his appetite for trollops, but it had left a sour taste in his mouth. He had not returned to Chloe to take up where he'd left off, and he hadn't taken up any other tart since. He told himself that Beaumond's voyeuristic tastes were hardly a reason for swearing off whores altogether. Nonetheless, Dain felt extremely reluctant to enter any room with any file de joie, which created a serious problem, since he was just fastidious enough to dislike having a female in a reeking Parisian alleyway.

Consequently, between uncooperative dreams and the foul taste in his mouth, he was unable to exorcise his lust for Miss Trent in the tried-and true fashion. Which meant that, by the time a week had passed, Dain's temper was badly frayed. Which was exactly the wrong time for Bertie Trent to tell him that the dirty, mildewed picture Miss Trent had bought for ten sous had turned out to be an extremely valuable Russian icon.

It was a few minutes past noon, and Lord Dain had moments earlier dodged the contents of a washtub, dumped from an upper-story window on the Rue de Provence. His attention on avoiding a drenching, he had failed to notice Trent trotting toward him. By the time the marquess did notice, the imbecile was already there, and well launched into his exciting revelations.

Dain's dark brow furrowed at the conclusion—or rather, when Bertie paused for breath. "A Russian what?" the marquess asked.

"Acorn. That is to say, not a nut sort of thing, but one of them heathenish pictures with a lot of gold paint and gold leaf."

"I believe you mean an icon," said Dain. "In which case, I fear your sister has been hoaxed. Who told her such rubbish?"

"Le Feuvre," said Bertie, pronouncing the name as "fooh-ver."

Lord Dain experienced a chill sensation in the environs of his stomach. Le Feuvre was the most reputable appraiser in Paris. Even Ackermann's and Christie's consulted him upon occasion. "There are countless icons in the world," said Dain. "Still, if it's a good one, she obviously got a bargain at ten sous."

"The frame's set with a lot of little gems—pearls and rubies and such." "Paste, I collect."

Bertie grimaced, as he often did when toiling to produce a thought. "Well now, that would be an odd thing, wouldn't it? Sticking a lot of trumpery gewgaws onto a handsome bit of gold frame like that."

"The picture I saw was framed in wood." Dain's head was beginning to pound.

"But that's what's so clever, ain't it? The wood thing was part of the case they'd buried it in. Because it had been buried, you know. That's why it was so god-awful disgusting. Ain't it a laugh, though? That sly beggar, Champtois, hadn't the least idea. He'll be tearing his hair out when he hears."

Dain was considering tearing Bertie's head straight off his neck. Ten sous. And Dain had discarded it, had not given it more than a cursory glance, even while the dratted sister had pored over it with her curst magnifying glass. She has an interesting expression, she'd said. And Dain, distracted by the living female, had not suspected a thing.

Because there was nothing to suspect, he told himself. Bertie hadn't half the brain of a peahen. He'd obviously got everything wrong, as usual. The "acorn" was merely one of those cheap saintly pictures every religious fanatic in Russia had in a corner of a room, with a daub of shiny paint on the frame and some bits of colored glass stuck on. "Course, I'm not to tell Champtois," Bertie went on in marginally lower tones. "I'm not to tell anybody—especially you, she said. But I ain't a dancing bear, like I told her, and there wasn't any ring in my nose that I could see, so I wouldn't be led about by it, now would I? So I hopped straight out to look for you—and found you in the nick, because she's going to the bank straight the minute Genevieve tucks away for her nap—and then it'll be locked up in a vault and you'll never get a proper look at it, will you?"

The Marquess of Dain, Jessica was well aware, was furious. He lounged back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, his obsidian eyes half-closed while his glance moved slowly round the coffee shop. It closely resembled the species of sullenly sulphurous look she had always imagined Lucifer bestowing upon his surroundings when he first came to after the Fall.

She was much surprised the gaze didn't leave a trail of charred remains in its wake. But the patrons of the cafe simply looked away—only to look back again the instant Dain returned his brimstone displeasure to her.

Though she'd already made up her mind how to deal with the problem, Jessica was irritably aware that it would be easier if Bertie had been a trifle more discreet. She wished she hadn't taken him along yesterday when she'd gone to collect the picture from Le Feuvre. But then, how could she have known beforehand that it was more than simply the work of an unusually talented artist?

Even Le Feuvre had been astonished when he went to work on it, and found the bejeweled gold frame within the decayed wooden one.

And naturally, because the piece, when Le Feuvre had finished with it, was pretty and shiny and sparkling with gems, Bertie had become very excited. Too excited to listen to reason. Jessica had tried to explain that telling Dain would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Bertie had phished and pshawed and told her Dain wasn't that sort of bad sport— not to mention he probably had a dozen such of his own and could buy another dozen if he liked.

Whatever the Marquess of Dain had, Jessica was certain it wasn't anything like her rare Madonna. And though he had looked bored when she showed it to him today, and congratulated her in the most patronizing manner, and laughingly insisted on accompanying Bertie and her to the bank to scare off any would-be robbers, she knew he wanted to kill her.

After the icon had been locked away in a bank vault, it was Dain who'd suggested they stop here for coffee.

They'd scarcely sat down before he'd sent Bertie out to find a type of cheroot that Jessica strongly suspected didn't exist. Bertie would probably not be back before midnight, if then. For all she knew, he'd fly to the West Indies in search of the fictitious cigar—precisely as though Dain truly were Beelzebub, and Bertie one of his devoted familiars. The brother out of the way, Dain had just silently warned the cafe's patrons to mind their own business. If he took her by the throat and choked her to death then and there, Jessica doubted any one of them would leap to her rescue. She doubted, in fact, that any of them would dare utter a peep of protest.

"How much did Le Feuvre tell you the thing was worth?" he asked. It was the first word he'd uttered since giving the coffee shop owner their order. When Dain entered an establishment, the proprietor himself rushed out to attend him.

"He advised me not to sell it right away," she said evasively. "He wished to contact a Russian client first. There is a cousin or nephew or some such of the tsar's who—"

"Fifty pounds," said Lord Dain. "Unless this Russian is one of the tsar's numerous mad relations, he won't give you a farthing more than that."

"Then he must be one of the mad ones," said Jessica. "Le Feuvre mentioned a figure well above that."

He gave her a hard stare. Gazing into his dark, harsh face, into those black, implacable eyes, Jessica had no trouble imagining him sitting upon an immense ebony throne at the very bottom of the pits of Hades. Had she looked down and discovered that the expensive polished boot a few inches from her own had turned into a cloven hoof, she would not have been in the least amazed.

Any woman with an ounce of common sense would have picked up her skirts and fled.

The trouble was, Jessica could not feel at all sensible. A magnetic current was racing along her nerve endings. It slithered and swirled through her system, to make an odd, tingling heat in the pit of her belly, and it melted her brain to soup.

She wanted to kick off her shoes and trail her stockinged toes up and down the black, costly boot. She wanted to slide her fingers under his starched shirt cuff and trace the veins and muscles of his wrist and feel his pulse beating under her thumb. Most of all, she wanted to press her lips to his hard, dissolute mouth and kiss him senseless.

Of course, all such a demented assault would get her would be a position flat on her back and the swift elimination of her maidenhead— very possibly in full view of the cafe's patrons. Then, if he was in a good humor, he might give her a friendly slap on the bottom as he told her to run along, she reflected gloomily.

"Miss Trent," he said, "I am sure all the other girls at school found your wit hilarious. Perhaps, however, if you would stop batting your eyelashes for a moment, your vision would clear and you would notice that I am not a little schoolgirl."

She hadn't been batting her eyelashes. When Jessica did play coquette, it was purposely and purposefully, and she was certainly not such a moron as to try that method with Beelzebub.

"Batting?" she repeated. "I never bat, my lord." This is what I do" She looked away toward an attractive Frenchman seated nearby, then shot Dain one swift, sidelong glance. That isn't batting." she said, releasing the instantly bedazzled Frenchman and returning to full focus upon Dain. Though one could hardly believe it possible, his expression became grimmer still.

"I am not a schoolboy, either," he said. "I recommend you save those slaying glances for the sorts of young sap skulls who respond to them."

The Frenchman was now gazing at her with besotted fascination. Dain turned and looked at him. The man instantly looked away and began talking animatedly with his companions.

She recollected Genevieve's warning. Jessica couldn't be certain Dain had any active thoughts of reeling her in. She could see, however, that he'd just posted a No Fishing sign.

A thrill coursed through her, but that was only to be expected. It was the primitive reaction of a female when an attractive male displayed the usual bad-natured signs of proprietorship. She was hammeringly aware that her feelings about him were decidedly primitive.

On the other hand, she was not completely out of her mind.

She could see Big Trouble brewing.

It was easy enough to see. Scandal followed wherever he went. Jessica had no intention of being caught in the midst of it.

"I was merely providing a demonstration of a subtle distinction which had apparently escaped you," she said. "Subtlety, I collect, is not your strong point."

"If this is a subtle way of reminding me that I overlooked what your gimlet eyes perceived in that dirt-encrusted picture—"

"You apparently did not look very closely even when it was clean," she said. "Because then you would have recognized the work of the Stroganov school—and would not have offered the insulting sum of fifty quid for it."

His lip curled. "I didn't offer anything. I expressed an opinion."

"To test me," she said. "However, I know as well as you do that the piece is not only Stroganov school, but an extremely rare form. Even the most elaborate of the miniatures were usually chased in silver. Not to mention that the Madonna—"

"Has grey eyes, not brown," Dain said in a very bored voice.

"And she's almost smiling. Usually they look exceedingly unhappy."

"Cross, Miss Trent. They look exceedingly ill tempered. I suppose it's on account of being virgins—of experiencing all the unpleasantness of breeding and birthing and none of the jolly parts."

"Speaking on behalf of virgins everywhere, my lord," she said, leaning toward him a bit, "I can tell you there are a host of jolly experiences. One of them is owning a rare work of religious art worth, at the very minimum, five hundred pounds."

He laughed. "There's no need to inform me you're a virgin," he said. "I can spot one at fifty paces."

"Fortunately, I'm not so inexperienced in other matters," she said, unruffled. "I have no doubt Le Feuvre's mad Russian will pay me five hundred. I'm also aware that the Russian must be a good client for whom he wishes to make a shrewd purchase. Which means I should do considerably better at auction." She smoothed her gloves. "I have observed many times how men's wits utterly desert them once auction fever takes hold. There's no telling what outrageous bids will result." Dain's eyes narrowed.

At that moment, their host sallied forth with their refreshments. With him were four lesser minions who bustled about, arranging linens, silver, and crockery with painful precision. Not a stray crumb was allowed to mar a plate, not a trace of tarnish smudged the flawless sheen of the silver. Even the sugar had been sawed into perfect half-inch cubes—no small feat, when the average sugar loaf was somewhere between granite and diamonds on the hardness scale. Jessica had always wondered how the kitchen help managed to break it up without using explosives.

She accepted a small slice of yellow cake with frothy white icing.

Dain let the fawning proprietor adorn his plate with a large assortment of fruit tarts, artistically arranged in concentric circles.

They ate their sweets in silence until Dain, having decimated enough tarts to set every tooth in his mouth throbbing, set down his fork and frowned at her hands.

"Have all the rules changed since I've been away from England?" he asked. "I'm aware ladies do not carelessly expose their naked hands to public view. I did understand, though, that they were permitted to remove their gloves to eat."

"It is permitted," she said. "But it isn't possible." She raised her hand to show him the long row of tiny pearl buttons. "I should be all afternoon undoing them without my maid's help."

"Why the devil wear such pestilentially bothersome things?" he demanded.

"Genevieve bought them especially for this pelisse," she said. "If I didn't wear them, she'd be dreadfully hurt." He was still staring at the gloves.

"Genevieve is my grandmother," she explained. He hadn't met her.

He'd arrived just as Genevieve had lain down for her nap—though Jessica had no doubt her grandmother had promptly risen and peeped through the door the moment she'd heard the deep, masculine voice.

The voice's owner now looked up, his black eyes glinting. "Ah, yes. The watch."

"That, too, was a wise choice," Jessica said, setting down her own fork and settling back into her business mode. "She was enchanted."

"I am not your little white-haired grandmother," he said, instantly taking her meaning. "I am not so enchanted with icons—even Stroganovs —to pay a farthing more than they're worth. To me, it's worth no more than a thousand. But if you'll promise not to bore me to distraction by haggling and trying to slay me with your eyes in between, I shall gladly pay fifteen hundred."

She had hoped to work him round by degrees. His tone told her he had no intention of being i worked upon. Straight to the point, then—the point she'd decided upon hours ago, after catching the expression in his eyes when she'd let him examine her remarkable find. "I shall gladly give it to you, my lord," she said. "No one gives me anything," he said coldly. "Play your game—whatever it is—with someone else. Fifteen hundred is my offer. My only offer."

"If you would send Bertie home, the icon is yours," she said. "If you will not, it goes to auction at Christie's."

If Jessica Trent had comprehended the state Dain was in, she would have stopped at the first sentence. No, if she had truly comprehended, she would have taken to her heels and run as fast and as far as she could. But she couldn't understand what Lord Dain barely understood himself. He wanted the gentle Russian Madonna, with her half-smiling, half-wistful face and the scowling Baby Jesus nestled to her bosom, as he had not wanted anything in all his life. He had wanted to weep when he saw it, and he didn't know why.

The work was exquisite—an art sublime and human at once—and he'd been moved, before, by artistry. What he felt at this moment wasn't remotely like those pleasant sensations. What he felt was the old monster howling within. He couldn't name the feelings any better than he could when he'd been eight years old. He'd never bothered to name them, simply shoved and beaten them out of his way, repeatedly, until, like his schoolmates of long ago, they'd stopped tormenting him.

Having never been allowed to mature, those feelings remained at the primitive childlike level. Now, caught unexpectedly in their grip, Lord Dain could not reason as an adult would. He could not tell himself Bertie Trent was an infernal nuisance whom Dain should have sent packing ages ago. It never occurred to the marquess to be delighted at present, when the nitwit's sister was prepared to pay—or bribe was more like it—him generously to do so.

All Dain could see was an exceedingly pretty girl teasing him with a toy he wanted very badly. He had offered her his biggest and very best toy in trade. And she had laughed and threatened to throw her toy into a privy, just to make him beg. Much later, Lord Dain would understand that this—or something equally idiotic—had been raging through his brain.

But that would be much later, when it was far too late.

At this moment, he was about eight years old on the inside and nearly three and thirty on the outside, and thus, beside himself.

He leaned toward her. "Miss Trent, there are no other terms," he said, his voice dangerously low. "I pay you fifteen hundred quid and you say, 'Done/ and everyone goes away happy."

"No, they don't." Her chin jutted up stubbornly. "If you will not send Bertie home, there is no business on earth I would do with you. You are destroying his life. No amount of money in the world will compensate. I should not sell the icon to you if I were in the last stages of starvation."

"Easy enough to say when your stomach is full," he said. Then, in Latin, he mockingly quoted Publilius Syrus. " 'Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.' "

In the same language she quoted the same sage, " 'You cannot put the same shoe on every foot.' " His countenance betrayed nothing of his astonishment. "It would appear that you have dipped into Publilius," he said. "How very odd, then, that so clever a female cannot see what is before her eyes. I am not a dead language to play in, Miss Trent. You are treading perilously close to dangerous waters."

"Because my brother is drowning there," she said. "Because you are holding his head under. I am not large enough or powerful enough to pull your hand away. All I have is something you want, which even you cannot take away." Her silver eyes flashed. "There is only one way for you to get it, my lord Beelzebub. You throw him back."

Had he been capable of reasoning in an adult fashion, Dain would have acknowledged that her reasoning was excellent—that, moreover, it was precisely as he would have done had he found himself in her predicament. He might even have appreciated the fact that she told him plainly and precisely what she was about, rather than using feminine guiles and wiles to manipulate.

He was not capable of adult reasoning.

The flash of temper in her eyes should have glanced harmlessly off him. Instead, it shot fast and deep and ignited an inner fuse. He thought the fuse was anger. He thought that if she had been a man, he would have thrown her—straight against the wall. He thought that, since she was a woman, he would have to find an equally effective way of teaching her a lesson.

He didn't know that throwing her was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. He didn't know that the lessons he wanted to teach her were those of Venus, not Mars, Ovid's Ars Armatoria, not Caesar's De Bello Gallico.

Consequently, he made a mistake.

"No, you do not see clearly at all," he said. "There is always another way, Miss Trent. You think there isn't because you assume I will play by all the dear little rules Society dotes upon. You think, for instance, that because we're in a public place and you're a lady, I'll mind my manners. Perhaps you even think I have a regard for your reputation." He smiled evilly. "Miss Trent, perhaps you would like to take a moment to think again."

Her grey eyes narrowed. "I think you are threatening me," she said.

"Let me make it as clear as you did your own threat." He leaned toward her. "I can crack your reputation in under thirty seconds. In three minutes I can reduce it to dust. We both know, don't we, that being who I am, I need not exert myself overmuch to accomplish this. You have already become an object of speculation simply by being seen in my company." He paused briefly to let the words sink in.

She said nothing. Her slitted eyes were glinting furious sparks.

"Here is how it works," he went on. "If you accept my offer of fifteen hundred, I shall behave myself, escort you to a cabriolet, and see that you are taken safely home."

"And if I do not accept, you will attempt to destroy my reputation," she said.

"It will not be an attempt," he said.

She sat up very straight and folded her dainty gloved hands upon the table. "I should like to see you try," she said.