Miss Trent would certainly know why. And being a clever female, she would soon be obliged to admit she’d made a grave error in trying to play the Marquess of Dain for a fool. He had decided she would be obliged to admit it upon her knees. Then she would have to beg for mercy.
That was where matters seemed to have gone awry.
All she had done was give her brother one bored look and the guests another, and dropped a faintly amused glance upon Dain himself. Then, cool as you please, the insufferable creature had turned her back and walked out.
For six days, Dain had spent nearly all his waking hours with her accursed brother, pretending to be that dithering imbecile’s bosom bow. For six days, Trent had been yapping in Dain’s ears, nipping at his heels, slavering and panting for attention, and tripping over his own feet and any hapless object or human in his way. After nearly a week of having his nerves scraped raw by her brainless puppy of a brother, all Dain had accomplished was to find himself the object of Miss Trent’samusement.
“Allez-vous en,” he said in a very low voice. Denise and Marguerite instantly leapt up from his lap and darted to opposite corners of the room.
“I say, Dain,” Vawtry began mollifyingly.
Dain shot him one incinerating glance. Vawtry reached for a wine bottle and hastily refilled his glass.
Dain set down the pistol, stalked to the door and through it, and slammed it behind him.
After that, he moved quickly. He reached the landing in time to see Trent’s sister pause at the front door and look about for something.
“Miss Trent,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The angry baritone reverberated through the hall like low thunder.
She jerked open the door and darted through it.
He watched the door close and told himself to return to shooting the noses off the plaster cherubs on the ceiling, because if he went after her, he’d kill her. Which was unacceptable, because Dain did not, under any circumstances, sink to allowing any member of the inferior sex to provoke him.
Even while he was counseling himself, he was running down the remaining stairs and down the long hall to the door. He wrenched it open and stormed out, the door crashing behind him.
Chapter 5
Then he nearly trampled her down because, for some insane reason, Miss Trent wasn’t fleeing down the street, but marching back toward his house.
“Confound his insolence!” she cried, making for the door. “I shall break his nose. First the porter, now my maid—andthe hackney. It is the outside of enough.”
Dain stepped in her way, his massive body shielding the entrance. “Oh, no, you don’t. I don’t know or care what your game is—”
“Mygame?” She stepped back, planted her hands on her hips, and glared up at him. At least she seemed to be glaring. It was difficult to tell, given the large bonnet brim and the failing light.
The sun had not quite set, but massive grey clouds were submerging Paris in a heavy gloom. From a distance came the low boom of thunder.
“Mygame?” she repeated. “It’s your bully of a footman, following his master’s example, I collect—taking out his vexation on innocent parties. Doubtless he thought it a great joke to frighten away the hackney—with my maid inside the vehicle—and leave me stranded—afterstealing my umbrella.”
She turned on her heel and stalked off.
If Dain was interpreting this ranting correctly, Herbert had frightened away Miss Trent’s maid as well as the hired vehicle that had brought her here.
A thunderstorm was rapidly approaching, Herbert had taken her umbrella, and the chances of locating an unoccupied hackney at this hour in bad weather were about nil.
Dain smiled. “Adieu, then, Miss Trent,” he said. “Have a pleasant promenade home.”
“Adieu, Lord Dain,” she answered without turning her head. “Have a pleasant evening with your cows.”
Cows?
She was merely trying to provoke him, Dain told himself. The remark was a pathetic attempt at a setdown. To take offense was to admit he’d felt the sting. He told himself to laugh and return to his…cows.
A few furious strides brought him to her side. “Is that prudery, I wonder, or envy?” he demanded. “Is it their trade which offends you—or merely their being more generously endowed?”
She kept on walking. “When Bertie told me how much you paid, I thought it was their services which were so horrifically expensive,” she said. “Now, however, I comprehend my error. Obviously you pay by volume.”
“Perhaps the price is exorbitant,” he said, while his hands itched to shake her. “But then, I am not so shrewd at haggling as you. Perhaps, in future, you would like to conduct negotiations for me. In which case, I ought to describe my requirements. What I like—”
