“I don’t care what they think.Andiamo.”
Her hand firmly imprisoned in his, he started walking, and she had no choice but to go with him—or be dragged along.
He was leading her to the entryway.
Jessica was looking frantically about her, debating whether it would do any good to scream for help, when a loud crash came from the cardroom. Then someone screamed and several others shouted and there were more loud crashes. And in the next instant, everyone in the ballroom was rushing toward the noise.
Everyone except Dain, who merely picked up his pace and continued toward the entrance.
“It must be a fight,” she said, trying to pull her hand free. “A riot, by the sounds of it. You’ll miss the fun, Dain.”
He laughed and tugged her through the entryway.
Chapter 7
Dain knew the house. It had belonged to the previous Marquess of Avory, and had been the scene of more than one drunken orgy. It was promising to become one of the most notorious residences in Paris when the marquess had met his untimely death. That had been about two years ago, and the furnishings were vastly different now. Still, Dain had no trouble recognizing the small sun parlor on the ground floor whose French doors opened into the garden.
That was where he took Jessica.
To negotiate.
Because—as heshouldhave expected and prepared for—matters were not proceeding as he’d planned.
He had planned to wreak havoc and mayhem. Within five minutes of his arrival, he’d found that the combined pride of the Ballisters and Usignuolos wouldn’t let him.
No matter how much he was goaded, he would not be reduced to behaving like an animal.
Not in front of her, at any rate.
He had remembered the scornful look she’d given her brother two weeks ago, and the contemptuously amused look she’d given Dain himself, and how it had made him behave like a complete idiot.
He’d tried to forget it, but every moment and emotion of the episode was branded upon his mind: humiliation, rage, frustration, passion…and one stunning moment of happiness.
He had experienced a host of disagreeable emotions this evening…and forgotten them all the instant he’d danced with her.
She’d been slender and supple and light in his arms. So easy to hold. Her skirts had swirled about his legs, and he’d thought of slim white limbs entangled with his amid the rustle of sheets. Her scent, the provocatively innocent blend of chamomile soap and Woman, had whirled in his head, and he’d thought of pearly skin glimmering in the light of a single candle and long black hair tumbled upon a pillow…and himself wrapped in her clean, sweet womanliness, touching, tasting, drinking her in.
He had told himself these were ludicrous fantasies, that clean, sweet women did not lie in his bed and never would, willingly.
But she had seemed willing enough to dance with him. Though she couldn’t have enjoyed it, and must have had a typically underhand feminine motive for seeming to, she’d made him believe she did and that she was happy. And when he’d gazed into her upturned countenance, he’d believed, for a moment, that her silver-grey eyes had been glowing with excitement, not resentment, and she had let him draw her closer because that was where she wanted to be.
It was all lies, of course, but there were ways to make certain lies half-true. Dain knew the ways. She, like every other human being since the Creation, had a price.
Consequently, all he had to do was find out what it was and decide whether he was willing to pay.
He led her to a corner of the garden farthest from the blazing lights of the house. Most of the late Lord Avory’s collection of Roman artifacts was still picturesquely strewn among the shrubbery, doubtless because it would cost a fortune to move the mammoth pieces.
Dain picked his companion up and sat her upon a stone sarcophagus. Standing upon an ornate base, it was tall enough to bring them nearly eye to eye.
“If I do not return very soon,” she said tightly, “my reputation will be in tatters. Not that you care, certainly. But I warn you, Dain, that I will not take it docilely and you—”
“My reputation is already in tatters,” he said. “Andyoudon’t care.”
“That is completely wrong!” she cried. “I tried to tell you before: I do sympathize, and I was willing to help mend matters. Within reason, that is. But you refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time—usually the wrong one.”
“Whereas women are capable of holding twenty-seven contradictory notions simultaneously,” he returned. “Which is why they are incapable of adhering to anything like a principle.”
He took her hand and began to peel off her glove.
