“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 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 onegivesme 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 hadtrulycomprehended, 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 thrownher—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’sArs Armatoria, not Caesar’sDe Bello Gallico.
Consequently, he made a mistake.
