She felt the impatient tug at the ties of her bodice, felt the fastenings give way, and it only made her impatient, too, to yield, to give whatever he needed. She felt his fingers trembling as they slid over the skin he’d bared, and she trembled as well, aching under his shatteringly gentle touch.
“Baciami.” His voice was rough, his touch a silken caress. “Kiss me, Jess. Again. As though you mean it.”
She lifted her hands and slid her fingers into his thick, curling hair and brought his mouth to hers. She kissed him with all the shameless meaning she had in her. She answered the bold thrust of his tongue as eagerly as her body answered the gentler ravishment of his caress, lifting and arching into him to press her aching breast against his big, warm hand.
This was what she’d needed, hungered for, from the moment she’d met him. He was a monster, but she’d missed him all the same. She’d missed every terrible thing about him…and every wonderful thing: the warm, massive, muscular body vibrating power, insolence, and animal grace…the bold, black eyes, stone-cold one moment and blazing hellfire the next…the low rumble of his voice, mocking, laughing, icy with contempt or throbbing with yearning.
She had wanted him from the start, without understanding what desire was. Now he’d taught her what it was and made her want more.
She broke away and, pulling his head down, kissed his beautiful, arrogant nose and his haughty brow and trailed her mouth over his hard jaw.
“Oh, Jess.” His voice was a moan. “Sì. Ancora. Baciami. Abbracciami.”
She heard nothing else, only the need in his voice. She felt nothing else, only the heat of desire pressed to her own heat. She was aware only of the taut power of his frame, and the warm hands moving over her while his mouth claimed hers again, and of the rustle of silk and cambric as he pushed up her skirts and slid his hand over her knee, and of the warmth of that hand grazing the skin above her stocking.
Then his hand tightened and froze and his warm body turned to stone.
His mouth jerked from hers, and startled, Jessica opened her eyes…in time to see the fire die in his, leaving them as cold as the onyx of his stickpin.
Then, too late, she heard as well: the swish of a gown brushing against shrubbery…and muffled whispers.
“It seems we have an audience, Miss Trent,” Dain said. His voice dripped scorn. Coolly he pulled her bodice back up, and yanked her skirts back down. There was nothing protective or gallant in the gesture. He made her feel as though, having had a look at and a sampling of what she had to offer, he’d decided it wasn’t worth having. She might have been a trumpery toy displayed upon Champtois’ counter, not worth a second glance.
And that, Jessica understood as she took in the chilling expression on his countenance, was what he wanted those watching to think. He was going to throw her to the wolves. That was his revenge.
“You know we’re equally to blame,” she said, keeping her voice low so that the onlookers couldn’t hear. “You helped get me into this, Dain. You can bloody well help get me out of it.”
“Ah, yes,” he said in carrying tones. “I am to announce our betrothal, am I not? But why, Miss Trent, should I pay the price of a wedding ring for what I might have,gratis?”
She heard gasps behind him, and a giggle. “I shall be ruined,” she said tightly. “This is unworthy of you—and unforgivable.”
He laughed. “Then shoot me.” And with one mocking glance at the figures standing in the shadows, he walked away.
His mind roiling with humiliation and rage, Dain made his way blindly through the garden, wrenched the locked gate from its hinges, and marched through the narrow alleyway and on down the street, and down the next and the next.
It wasn’t until he neared the Palais Royal that his breathing began to return to normal and black fury gave way to stormy thought.
She was like all the others—like Susannah, but worse, a better actress, and more crafty in setting the self-same trap. And he, with years of experience behind him, had walked straight into it. Again. To be snared in worse circumstances.
With Susannah, he’d simply stolen a peck on the cheek in view of her greedy family. This time, several of Paris’ most elite sophisticates had watched him make a cake of himself, heard him groaning and panting and babbling desire and devotion like a feverish schoolboy.
Even as a schoolboy, at thirteen, he had not behaved like a moonstruck puppy. Even then, he had not nearly wept with longing.
Oh, Jess.
His throat tightened. He paused and ruthlessly swallowed the burning ache, composed himself, and walked on.
At the Palais Royal, he collected a trio of plump tarts and an assortment of male comrades, and plunged into dissipation. Harlots and gambling hells and champagne: his world. Where he belonged, he told himself. Where he was happy, he assured himself.
And so he gambled and drank and told bawdy jokes and, swallowing his revulsion at the familiar smell of perfume, powder, and paint, filled his lap with whores, and buried his grieving heart, as he always did, under laughter.
Even before Dain’s laughter had faded and he’d disappeared into the garden’s shadows, Jessica was dragging herself from the black pit of humiliated despair into which he’d dropped her. There was no choice but to lift her chin and face the next moment and all the moments to come. She faced the onlookers, daring them to utter an insult. One by one, they turned their backs and silently retreated.
Only one came forward. Vawtry was shrugging out of his coat as, clutching her bodice to cover herself, Jessica leapt down from the sarcophagus. He hastened toward her with the coat.
“I tried,” he said unhappily, his eyes tactfully averted while she wrapped his coat about her. “I told them Dain had left alone and you had gone to look for your grandmother, but one of the servants had seen you enter the sun parlor…” He paused. “I’m sorry.”
“I should like to make a discreet exit,” she said, keeping her voice expressionless. “Would you be kind enough to find Lady Pembury?”
