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He hurried over to intercept her.
A bloodcurdling scream came from behind him.
It startled Joseph, loosening his grasp. The raga-muffin broke free, and was off like a shot.
But Dain charged at the sam
e moment and, catching the shoulder of his filthy jacket, hauled the brat to a stop. “See here, you little—”
Then he broke off, because the boy had looked up, and Dain was looking down…into sullen black eyes, narrowed above a monstrous beak of a nose, in a dark, scowling face.
Dain’s hand jerked away.
The boy didn’t move. The sullen eyes widened and the scowling mouth fell open.
“Yes, lovely,” came a strident female voice at the edges of the waking nightmare. “That’s your pa, just like I said. Just like you. Aren’t you, my lord? And isn’t he just like you?”
Hideously like. As though the space between them were not air, but five and twenty years, and the face below his own, looking back from some devil’s mirror.
And it was the voice of Satan’s own whore he’d heard, Dain knew, even before he met Charity Graves’ malevolent gaze—just as, when he saw that malevolence, he knew she’d done this on purpose, as she’d done everything, including bringing this monstrous child into the world.
He opened his mouth to laugh, because he must, because it was the only way.
Then he remembered they were not alone upon a nightmare island in Hell, but upon a public stage, enacting this ghastly farce before an audience.
And one of the spectators was his wife.
Though a lifetime seemed to have passed, it was but a moment, and Dain was already moving, instinctively, to block Jessica’s view of the boy. But the brat had also come out of his daze and, in the same instant, darted away into the crowd.
“Dominick!” his accursed mother screamed. “Come back, lovey.”
Dain’s gaze shot to his wife, who stood about twenty feet away, looking from the woman to him—then beyond, to the mob into which the boy had disappeared. Dain started toward her, sending a glance in Ainswood’s direction.
Drunk he may be, as usual, but the duke got the message. “By gad, is that you, Charity, my flower?” he called.
Charity was hurrying toward the carriage—toward Jessica—but Ainswood had moved quickly. He caught the bitch by the arm and firmly drew her back. “By heaven, it is you,” he loudly announced. “And here I thought you were still locked up in the asylum.”
“Let me go!” she screeched. “I got something to say to Her Ladyship.”
But Dain had reached his wife’s side by this time. “Into the carriage,” he told Jessica.
Her eyes were very wide, very grave. She threw a look toward Charity, whom Ainswood was hustling away, with the assistance of several comrades who’d also grasped the situation.
“She isn’t right in the head,” said Dain. “It’s not important. Into the carriage, my dear.”
Jessica sat rigidly in the carriage, her hands tightly folded in her lap. She remained so, her mouth compressed in a taut line, while the vehicle lurched into motion, and she did not utter a syllable or change her frigid posture thereafter.
After twenty minutes of riding with a marble statue, Dain could bear it no longer. “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “I promised you would not be embarrassed in public, I know. But I didn’t do it on purpose. I should think that was obvious.”
“I know very well you didn’t sire the child on purpose,” she said icily. “That is rarely the first thing a male thinks of when he’s tumbling a trollop.”
So much for hoping she hadn’t been able to see the boy’s face.
He might have known. Her keen eyes missed nothing. If she could discern a priceless icon under inches of mold and dirt, she could easily spot a bastard at twenty paces.
She had seen, beyond a doubt. Jessica would not have judged the matter on a tart’s words alone. If she hadn’t seen, she would have given Dain a chance to defend himself. And he would have denied Charity’s accusation.
But now there would be no denying the blackamoor skin and the monstrous nose—visible, easily identifiable for miles. No hope of denying, when Jessica had observed as well that the mother was fair, green-eyed and auburn-haired.
“And it is no good trying to pretend you didn’t know the child was yours,” Jessica went on. “Your friend Ainswood knew, and he moved quickly enough to get the woman out of the way—as though I were a half-wit, and could not see what was before me. ‘Asylum,’ indeed. It’s the lot of you who belong in Bedlam. Running about like overwrought hens—and meanwhile the boy gets away. You had him.” She turned to him, her eyes flashing angry reproach. “But you let him go. How could you, Dain? I could not believe my eyes. Where the devil were your wits?”
He stared at her.
She turned back to the window. “Now we’ve lost him, and heaven only knows how long it will take to find him again. I could just scream. If I had not gone with you to the churchyard, I might have been able to catch him. But I could scarcely walk, let alone run—and I must not contradict you in public, so I could hardly shout, ‘After him, idiot!’ in front of your friends—even if it had not been too late, anyhow. I cannot recollect when I’ve seen a little boy take off so fast. One moment he was there. The next, he’d vanished.”
His heart was a fist, beating mercilessly against his ribs.
Find him. Catch him.
She wanted him to go after the hideous thing he’d made with that greedy, vengeful slut. She wanted him to look at it and touch it and…
“No!” The word exploded from him, a roar of denial, and with it, Dain’s mind turned black and cold.
The small, dark face he’d looked into had turned his insides into a seething pit of emotion it had wanted every iota of his will to contain. His wife’s words had sent the lava spilling through the crevices.
But the frigid darkness had come, as it always did, to preserve him, and it smothered feeling, as it always did.
“No,” he repeated quietly, his voice cold and controlled. “There will be no finding. She had no business having him in the first place. Charity Graves knew well enough how to get rid of such ‘inconveniences.’ She’d done it countless times thereafter, I don’t doubt.”
His wife was staring at him now, her face pale and shocked, just as she’d looked when he told her about his mother.
“But wealthy aristocrats don’t come Charity’s way very often,” he went on, telling this tale in the same coldly brutal way he’d related his mother’s. “And when she found she was breeding, she knew the brat was either mine or Ainswood’s. Either way, she imagined she had a ripe pigeon to pluck. When the brat turned out to be mine, she didn’t waste a minute finding out the name of my solicitor. She wrote to him promptly enough, proposing an allowance of five hundred a year.”
“Five hundred?” Jessica’s color returned. “To a professional? And not even your mistress, either, but a common trollop you shared with your friend?” she added indignantly. “And one who had the babe on purpose—not a respectable girl got in the family way—”
“Respectable? Did you imagine, even for an instant, Jess, that I—gad, what? I seduced—lured an innocent—and left her breeding?”
His voice had begun to rise. Clenching his fist, he added levelly, “You know very well I had managed to avoid entanglements with respectable females until you exploded into my life.”
“Certainly I never imagined you would go to the bother of seducing an innocent,” she said crisply. “It simply hadn’t occurred to me that a trollop might have a babe through pure greed. Even now I have difficulty imagining a woman being so wrongheaded. Five hundred pounds.” She shook her head. “I doubt even the Royal Dukes support their by-blows in such luxury. No wonder you are so outraged. And no wonder, either, there is so much ill feeling between you and the boy’s mother. I had a suspicion she went out of her way to embarrass you. She must have heard—or seen—that you had your wife with you.”
“If she tries it again,” he said grimly, “I’ll have her and the guttersnipe she spawned transported. If she comes within twenty miles of you—”
“Dain, the woman is one matter,” she said. “The child is another. He did not ask to have her for a m
other, any more than he asked to be born. She was exceedingly unkind to use him as she did today. No child should be subjected to such a scene. Still, I strongly doubt she considers anybody’s feelings but her own. I noticed that she was far better dressed than her so-called ‘lovey.’ Dirt is one thing—little boys cannot remain clean above two and a half minutes—but there is no excuse for the child to wear rags, when his mother is garbed like a London high-flyer.”
She looked up at him. “How much do you give her, by the way?”
“Fifty,” he said tightly. “More than enough to feed and clothe him—and let her spend all she makes on her back on herself. But I daresay the rags were all part of her game: to make me appear the villain of the piece. Too bad I’m accustomed to the role, and that what other fools think does not concern me in the least.”
“Fifty a year is more than generous. How old is he?” Jessica demanded. “Six, seven?”
“Eight, but it makes no—”
“Old enough to notice his appearance,” she said. “I cannot excuse his mother for dressing him so shabbily. She has the money, and ought to know how a boy of that age would feel. Mortified, I don’t doubt—which is why he annoyed Joseph. But she does not consider the child, as I said, and all you have told me only convinces me she is an unfit mother. I must ask you, Dain, to set aside your feelings toward her, and consider your son. He is yours by law. You can take him away from her.”
“No.” He had smothered feeling, but his head had begun to pound, and his useless arm was throbbing. He could not freeze and smother physical pain. He could scarcely think past it. Even if he could have reasoned coolly, there was no explanation he could give for his behavior that would satisfy her.
He shouldn’t have tried to explain, he told himself. He could never make her understand. Above all, he didn’t want her to comprehend, any more than he wanted to himself, what he’d felt when he’d looked down into that face, into the devil’s mirror.
“No,” he repeated. “And stop fussing about it, Jess. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on coming to the bedamned wrestling match. By gad, I cannot seem to stir a foot when you are by without”—he gestured wearily—“without things going off in my face. No wonder I have a headache. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Women. Everywhere. Wives and Madonnas and mothers and whores and—and you’re plaguing me to death, the lot of you.”
