She wouldn’t be shaken loose. She dug her nails into his scalp, his face, his neck. He tried to roll on top of her. She thrust her knee into his groin. He jerked away and folded up onto his side, clutching his privates.
She had just grabbed his hair again, in order to dash his skull to pieces upon the marble tile, when she felt a pair of strong hands wrap around her waist and haul her up, off Vawtry, off the floor altogether.
“That’s enough, Jess.” Her husband’s sharp tone penetrated her mindless fury, and she left off struggling to take in the world about her.
She saw that the great door stood open and a crowd of servants stood frozen just within it. In front of the mob of statues was Phelps…and Dominick, who was holding the coachman’s hand and gazing up slack-jawed at Jessica.
That was all she saw, because Dain swiftly swung her up over his shoulder and marched through the screens passage and into the Great Hall.
“Rodstock,” he said, without pausing or looking back, “the vestibule is a disgrace. Have someone see to it.Now.”
Once his wife was safely in her bath, with Bridget tending her and two sturdy footmen posted at the entrance to her apartments, Dain returned to the ground floor.
Vawtry, or what was left of him, lay on a wooden table in the old schoolroom, with Phelps standing guard. Vawtry’s nose was broken and he’d lost a tooth and sprained a wrist. His face was caked with dried blood and one eye was swollen shut.
“All in all, you got off easy,” Dain said, after surveying the damage. “Lucky she hadn’t a pistol on her, aren’t you?”
By the time he’d carried Jessica to her room, Dain had figured out what had happened. He’d seen the icon lying on the vestibule floor. He’d heard about the fire as he rode up to the house. He could put two and two together.
He did not have to interrogate his son to understand that Vawtry and Charity Graves were partners in crime.
Dain did not bother to interrogate Vawtry now, either, but told him what had happened.
“You let a greedy strumpet with great, fat udders turn you into a blithering idiot,” Dain contemptuously summarized. “That’s obvious enough. What I want to know is where you got the idea the thing was worth twenty thousand pounds. Confound it, Vawtry, couldn’t you tell just by looking at it that it was worth five at most—and you know no pawnbroker would pay even half that.”
“No time…to look.” Vawtry was having a hard time getting the syllables around his swollen gums and mashed lips. His utterance sounded like “Oh—die—ooh—rook,” but with Phelps’ help, Dain was able to interpret.
“In other words, you never saw it before this night,” said Dain. “Which means someone told you about it—Bertie most likely. And youbelievedhim—which is imbecilic enough, for no one in his right mind listens to Bertie Trent—but then you had to go and tell Satan’s own whore. And she, you have discovered, would sell her firstborn for twenty thousand quid.”
“You was foolish, no mistake,” Phelps chimed in mournfully, like a Greek chorus. “She sold her boy for only fifteen hundred. Now, don’t you feel like a bit of a chucklehead, sir? Meanin’ no offense, but—”
“Phelps.” Dain turned a baleful eye upon his coachman.
“Aye, me lord.” Phelps gave him a wide-eyed look that Dain did not believe for one minute.
“Idid not give Charity Graves fifteen hundred pounds,” His Lordship said very quietly. “As I recall, you most sensibly suggested that you head to the back of the inn, to prevent her escape in case she eluded me. I assumed you’d been too late and she’d fled. You did not volunteer information to the contrary.”
“Her Ladyship were worrit the ma might make a fuss in front of the tyke,” Phelps said. “Her Ladyship didn’t want him upset no more than he was like to be already with you chargin’ in. So she told me to give the gal some quietin’ money, Her Ladyship said, ’n she could spend it how she liked. So she spent it on quietin’ the ma, ’n wrote a note, tellin’ the gal to take it ’n go to Paris ’n have a good time.”
“Paris?” Vawtry sat up abruptly.
“Said the fellers there’d like her better and treat her kinder ’n them hereabouts. ’N I guess the gal liked the idea, cuz she lit up purty, ’n said Her Ladyship weren’t a bad sort. ’N I was to tell Her Ladyship that she done what Her Ladyship said—tole the boy some’at or other like Her Ladyship asked her to.”
…it was better to leave him where he would be safe…and provided for. Jessica had told the whore what to say and the whore had done it.
Then Dain saw how much trust his wife had placed in him. If she hadn’t, she would have come with him, no matter what he said or did. But she’d trusted…that he’d make the boy feel safe, and make Dominick believe that what he’d been told was true.
Perhaps, Dain thought, his wife knew him a great deal better than he knew himself. She saw in him qualities he’d never discerned when he’d looked into a mirror.
If that was the case, he must believe she saw qualities in Charity he’d never suspected were there. Charity must possess something like a heart, if she’d taken the trouble to prepare Dominick for her desertion.
Jessica had also said that Charity was a child herself.
That seemed true enough. Plant an idea in her head, and she would run away with it.
He found himself grinning at Vawtry. “You should have found another bauble to distract her with,” Dain said. “Something safer to scheme and dream about. She’s a child, you know. Amoral, unprincipled. At present, she has fifteen hundred pounds in her hands, and she’s forgotten all about the icon—and you. She’ll never know—or if she hears, she won’t care—that you risked your life and honor for…” Dain gave a short laugh. “What was it, Vawtry? Love?”
Beneath the bruises and lumps and caked blood, Vawtry’s countenance turned a very dark red. “Shewouldn’t. Shecouldn’t.”
