It took her a moment to grasp the implications of the command, and in that moment the world seemed to grow marginally brighter and her heart a cautious degree lighter. She shifted sideways to scrutinize his glowering profile. “That sounds shockingly…protective.”
“I paid for you,” he said coldly. “You’re mine. I look after what’s mine. I shouldn’t let Nick or Harry near him either.”
“By gad—do you mean to say I am as important a possession as yourcattle?” She pressed her hand to her heart. “Oh, Dain, you are too devastatingly romantic. I am altogether overcome.”
He brought his full attention upon her for a moment, and his sullen gaze dropped to where her hand was. She hastily returned it to her lap.
Frowning, he turned back to the horses. “That overgarment thing, the what-you-call-it,” he said testily.
“My pelisse? What’s wrong with it?”
“You filled it better the last time I saw it,” he said. “In Paris. When you burst into my party and bothered me.” He steered the beasts right, into a tree-lined avenue a few yards south of the guardhouse. “When you assaulted my virtue. Surely you remember. Or did it merely seem to fit better because you were wet?”
She remembered. More important,hedid—in sufficient detail to notice a few pounds’ shrinkage. Her mood lightened another several degrees.
“You could throw me into the Serpentine and find out,” she said.
The short avenue led to a small, thickly shaded circular drive. The trees ringing it shut out the rest of the park. In a short while, the five o’clock promenade would begin, and this secluded area, like the rest of Hyde Park, would be crammed with London’s fashionables. At present, however, it was deserted.
Dain drew the curricle to a halt and set the brake. “You two settle down,” he warned the horses. “Make the least bother, and you’ll find yourselves hauling barges in Yorkshire.”
His tone, though low, carried the clear signal of Obedience or Death. The animals responded to it just as though they were human. Instantly they became the most subdued, docile pair of geldings Jessica had ever seen.
Dain turned his moody black gaze upon her. “Now, as to you, Miss Termagant Trent—”
“I love these pet names,” she said, gazing soulfully up into his eyes. “Nitwit. Sapskull. Termagant. How they make my heart flutter!”
“Then you’ll be in raptures with a few other names I have in mind,” he said. “How can you be such an idiot? Or have you done it on purpose? Look at you!” He addressed this last to her bodice. “At this rate, there won’t be anything left of you by the wedding day. When was the last time you ate a proper meal?” he demanded.
Jessica supposed that, in Dain’s Dictionary, this qualified as an expression of concern.
“I did not do it on purpose,” she said. “You have no idea what it’s like under Aunt Louisa’s roof. She conducts wedding preparations as generals conduct warfare. The household has been in pitched battle since the day we arrived. I could leave them to fight it out among themselves, but I should not care for the result—and you would detest it. My aunt’s taste is appalling. Which means I have no choice but to be involved, night and day. Then, because it takes all my will and energy to maintain control, I’m too tired and vexed to eat a proper meal—even if the servants were capable of making one, which they aren’t, because she’s worn them to a frazzle, too.”
There was a short silence. Then, “Well,” he said, shifting a bit in his place, as though he were not altogether comfortable.
“You told me I should hire help,” she said. “What good will that do, when she’ll interfere with them as well? I shall still be involved—and driven—”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” he said. “She’s bothering you. I’ll make her stop. You should have told me before.”
She smoothed her gloves. “Until now, I was unaware you had any inclinations to slay dragons for me.”
“I don’t,” he said. “But one must be practical. You’ll want all your strength for the wedding night.”
“I cannot think why I should need strength,” she said, ignoring a host of spine-tingling images rising in her mind’s eye. “All I have to do is lie there.”
“Naked,” he said grimly.
“Truly?” She shot him a glance from under her lashes. “Well, if I must, I must, for you have the advantage of experience in these matters. Still, I do wish you’d told me sooner. I should not have put the modiste to so much trouble about the negligee.”
“Thewhat?”
“It was ghastly expensive,” she said, “but the silk is as fine as gossamer, and the eyelet work about the neckline is exquisite. Aunt Louisa was horrified. She said only Cyprians wear such things, and it leaves nothing to the imagination.”
Jessica heard him suck in his breath, felt the muscular thigh tense against hers.
“But if it were left to Aunt Louisa,” she went on, “I should be covered from my chin to my toes in thick cotton ruffled white monstrosities with little pink bows and rosebuds. Which is absurd, when an evening gown reveals far more, not to mention—”
“What color?” he asked. His low voice had roughened.
