“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 anattempt,” 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.
Chapter 4
Dain had given Miss Trent more than enough opportunity to see her error. His warnings could not have been clearer.
In any case, to hesitate in such a situation was to indicate doubt, or worse, weakness. To do so with a man was dangerous. To do so with a woman was fatal.
And so Lord Dain smiled and leaned nearer yet, until his great Usignuolo nose was but an inch from hers. “Say your prayers, Miss Trent,” he told her very softly.
Then he slid his hand—his big, dark,barehand, for he had removed his gloves to eat and hadn’t put them back on—down the sleeve of her pelisse until he came to the first button of her frivolous pearl grey gloves.
He popped the tiny pearl from the buttonhole.
She glanced down at his hand, but didn’t move a muscle.
Then, aware that every eye in the place was fastened upon them, and the noisy conversations had sunk to whispers, he began to talk to her in Italian. In the tones of a lover, he described the weather, a grey gelding he was thinking of selling, and the condition of Parisian drains. Though he had never tried or needed to seduce a woman, he’d seen and heard other poor sods at that game, and he reproduced their ludicrous tones to a nicety. Everyone about them would think they were lovers. And all the while, he was working his way swiftly down toward her wrist.
She never made a murmur, only glanced now and then from his face to his hands with a frozen expression he interpreted as speechless horror.
He might have interpreted more accurately had he felt inwardly as self-possessed as he seemed outwardly. Outwardly, his expression remained sensuously intent, his voice low and seductive. Inwardly, he was disturbingly aware that his pulse had begun to accelerate at about Button Number Six. By Number Twelve, it was racing. By Number Fifteen, he had to concentrate hard to keep his breathing steady.
He had relieved whores beyond counting of frocks, stays, chemises, garters, and stockings. He’d never before in his life unbuttoned a gently bred maiden’s glove. He had committed salacious acts beyond number. He’d never once felt so depraved as he did now, as the last pearl came free and he drew the soft kid down, baring her wrist, and his dark fingers grazed the delicate skin he’d exposed.
He was too busy searching Dain’s Dictionary for a definition of his state—and too confused by what he read there—to realize that Miss Jessica Trent’s grey eyes had taken on the drunkenly bewildered expression of a respectable spinster being seduced in spite of herself.
Even if he had comprehended her expression, he wouldn’t have believed it, any more than he could believe his untoward state of excitement—over a damned glove and a bit of feminine flesh. Not even one of the good bits, either—the ones a man didn’t have—but an inch or so of herwrist, plague take her.
The worst was that he couldn’t stop. The worst was that his passionately intent expression had somehow become genuine, and he was no longer talking in Italian about drains, but about how he wanted to unbutton, unhook, untie every button, hook, and string…and slip off her garments, one by one, and drag his monstrous blackamoor’s hands over her white virgin’s flesh.
And while in Italian he detailed his heated fantasies, he was slowly peeling the glove back, exposing a delicately voluptuous palm. Then he gave one small tug toward her knuckles. And paused. Then another tug. And paused. Then another tug…and the glove was off. He let it fall to the table, and took her small, cool, white hand in his great, warm one. She gave a tiny gasp. That was all. No struggle. Not that it would have made the least difference to him.
He was overwarm and short of breath, and his heart pounded as though he’d been running very hard after something. And just as though he had done so and got it at last, he was not about to let it go. His fingers closed around her hand and he gave her a fierce look, daring her to try—justtry—to get away.
He found she was still wearing the same wide-eyed expression. Then she blinked and, dropping her gaze to their joined hands, she said in a small, breathless voice, “I’mverysorry, my lord.”
Though still not properly in control of his own respiration, Dain managed to get the words out. “I have no doubt you are. But it’s too late, you see.”
“I do.” She shook her head sadly. “I fear your reputation will never recover.”
He felt a prickle of uneasiness. He ignored it and, with a laugh, glanced about him at their fascinated audience. “mia Cara, it is your own rep—”
“The Marquess of Dain has been seen in the company of alady,” she said. “He has been seen and heard wooing her.” She looked up, her silver eyes gleaming. “It was lovely. I had no idea Italian was so…moving.”
“I was talking about drains,” he said tightly.
