“Yes, yes, of course. Thank—”
The door slammed behind Dain.
Chapter 20
At two o’clock in the morning, Lord Dain emerged from his bath. Then he was obliged to don his dressing gown and slippers and look for his wife because, as he might have expected, she was not in bed, where she was supposed to be.
He tried the South Tower first, but she was not hovering at Dominick’s bedside. Mary was there, dozing in a chair. The boy was sound asleep, sprawled on his belly, the bedclothes kicked into a heap at the foot of the bed.
Grumbling under his breath, Dain untangled the sheets and blankets and briskly tucked them about his son. Then he gave the oblivious brat a pat on the head and left.
A quarter of an hour later, he found Jessica in the dining room.
Wrapped in her black and gold silk dressing gown, her hair carelessly piled and pinned atop her head, she stood before the fireplace. Her fingers cupped the bowl of a brandy snifter and she was gazing up at the portrait of his mother.
“You might have invited me to get drunk with you,” he said from the doorway.
“This was between Lucia and me,” she said, her eyes still upon the picture. “I came to raise a glass in her honor.”
She lifted her glass. “To you, my dear Lucia: for bringing my wicked husband into the world…for giving him so much of what was best in you…and for giving him up, so that he would live and grow up into a man…and I would find him.”
She swirled the amber liquid in the glass, and sniffed appreciatively. Then, with a small sigh of pleasure, she brought it to her lips.
Dain stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “You don’t know how lucky you were to find me,” he said. “I am one of the few men in western Europe who could afford you. That, I have no doubt, is my very best brandy.”
“I did take your wine cellar into account when I weighed your assets and liabilities,” Jessica said. “It may well have tipped the scales in your favor.”
She gestured with the glass at the painting. “Doesn’t she look splendid there?”
Dain walked to the head of the table, sat in his chair, and studied the portrait. Then he got up and moved to the sideboard and considered it from that angle. He examined it from the doorway leading to the Musicians’ Gallery, from the windows, and from the foot of the long dining table. Finally he joined his wife before the fireplace, folded his arms over his chest, and broodingly surveyed his mother from there.
But no matter what angle he viewed her from or how long and hard he stared, he no longer hurt inside. All he saw was a beautiful young woman who had loved him in her own temperamental way. Though he would never know the full truth of what had happened twenty-five years ago, he knew enough, believed enough, to forgive her.
“She was a handsome article, wasn’t she?” he said.
“Exceedingly so.”
“One can hardly blame the Dartmouth blackguard for making off with her, I suppose,” he said. “At least he stayed with her. They died together. How that must have infuriated my father.” He laughed. “But I don’t doubt ‘Jezebel’s’ son infuriated him far more. He couldn’t disown me because he was too great a snob to leave his precious heritage in the vulgar hands of a sprig of the cadet branch. The great hypocrite couldn’t even destroy her portrait—because she was part of the Ballisters’ history, and he, like his noble ancestors, must preserve everything for his descendants, like it or not.”
“He didn’t even throw out your toys.”
“He threw me out, though,” Dain said. “The dust had scarcely settled behind my mother when he packed me off to Eton. Gad, what an obstinate old idiot. He could have cultivated me, won me over with the smallest effort. I was eight years old. Completely at his mercy. Clay in his hands. He could have molded me just as he liked. If he wanted revenge on her, that was the way to get it—and get the kind of son he wanted at the same time.”
“I’m glad he didn’t mold you,” Jessica said. “You would not have turned out half so interesting.”
He looked down into her smiling countenance. “Interesting, indeed. The Bane and Blight of the Ballisters, Lord of Scoundrels himself. The greatest whoremonger in Christendom. A cocksure, clod-pated ingrate.”
“The wickedest man who ever lived.”
“A great gawk of a lummox. A spoiled, selfish, spiteful brute.”
She nodded. “Don’t leave out ‘conceited clodpole.’”
“It does not matter what you think,” he said loftily. “My son believes I am King Arthur and all the knights of the Round Table rolled into one.”
“You are too humble, my dear,” she said. “Dominick is convinced that you are Jupiter and the entire pantheon of Roman deities rolled into one. It is thoroughly nauseating.”
“You don’t know what nauseating is, Jess,” he said with a laugh. “I only wish you might have seen the animate pile of filth I encountered at the Golden Hart Inn. If the thing had not spoken, I might have mistaken it for a moldering heap of refuse, and pitched it into the fire.”
