Free Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase

see.”
    “I do.” She shook her head sadly. “I fear your reputation will never recover.”
    He felt a prickle of uneasiness. He ignored it and, with a laugh, glanced about him at their fascinated audience. “ Cara mia , it is your own rep—”
    “The Marquess of Dain has been seen in the company of a lady ,” she said. “He has been seen and heard wooing her.” She looked up, her silver eyes gleaming. “It was lovely. I had no idea Italian was so…moving.”
    “I was talking about drains,” he said tightly.
    “I didn’t know. Neither did anyone else, I’m sure. They all think you were making love.” She smiled. “To nitwit Bertie Trent’s spinster sister.”
    Then, too late, he saw the flaw in his reasoning. Then he recalled Esmond’s remark about the legendary Genevieve. Everyone here would believe the chit followed in her grandmother’s foot-steps—a femme fatale —and the curst Parisians would believe he’d fallen under her spell.
    “Dain,” she said in a low, hard voice, “if you do not release my hand this instant, I shall kiss you. In front of everybody.”
    He had a ghastly suspicion he’d kiss her back—in front of witnesses—Dain, Beelzebub himself, kissing a lady—a virgin . He crushed his panic.
    “Miss Trent,” he said, his own tones equally low and hard, “I should like to see you try.”
    “By gad,” came an obnoxiously familiar voice from behind Dain. “I had to go nearly to that blasted Bwy Bullion—and it ain’t exactly what you wanted, I know, but I tried one myself first, and I daresay you won’t be disappointed.”
    Oblivious to the tension throbbing about him, Bertie Trent set a small cigar box down upon the table one inch from Dain’s hand. The hand still clasping Miss Trent’s.
    Bertie’s gaze fell there and his blue eyes widened. “Deuce take you, Jess,” he said crossly. “Can’t a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?”
    Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.
    Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. “Don’t pay it any mind, Dain. She does that to all the chaps. I don’t know why she does it, when she don’t want ’em. Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa’s. Go to all the bother of catching a mouse, and then the confounded things won’t eat ’em. Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up.”
    Miss Trent’s lips quivered.
    The hint of laughter was all that was needed to shrivel and crush and beat the tumultuous mixture inside Lord Dain into frigid fury.
    He had commenced his formal education by having his head thrust into a privy. He had been mocked and tormented before. But not for long.
    “Fortunately, Trent, you have the knack of arriving in the very nick of time,” he said. “Since words cannot express my relief and gratitude, actions must speak louder. Why don’t you toddle round to my place after you take your irresistible sister home? Vawtry and a few others are coming by for a bottle or two and a private game of hazard.”
    After enduring Trent’s incoherent expressions of delight, Lord Dain took his cool leave of the pair and sauntered out of the shop, grimly determined to hold Bertie Trent’s head under until he drowned .
     
     
    Even before Lord Dain arrived home, the eye-witness reports of his tête-à-tête with Miss Trent were moving swiftly through the streets of Paris.
    By the time, close to dawn, his private orgy of drinking and gambling had broken up—and Bertie, a few hundred pounds the poorer, was being carried by a brace of servants to his bed—wagers were being made regarding the Marquess of Dain’s intentions toward Miss Trent.
    At three o’clock in the afternoon, Francis Beaumont, encountering Roland Vawtry at Tortoni’s, bet him one hundred fifty pounds that Dain would be shackled to Miss Trent before the King’s Birthday in June.
    “Dain?” Vawtry repeated, his hazel eyes widening. “ Wed? To a gentry spinster? Trent’s sister?