Читать онлайн «Lord of Scoundrels»
Автор Loretta Chase
LORETTA CHASE
LORD OF
SCOUNDRELS
Thanks to: Sal Raciti, for the choice Italian phrases; Carol Proko Easton, for the loan of her splendid books on Russian icons; Cynthia Drelinger, for computer processing my pencil hieroglyphics; and my husband, Walter, and our friend, Owen Halpern, for an unforgettable journey through England’s beautiful west country.
Contents
Prologue
In the spring of 1792, Dominick Edward Guy de Ath…
Chapter 1
“No. It can’t be,” Sir Bertram Trent whispered, aghast. His…
Chapter 2
Above the whirring and clicking of the automaton, Jessica heard…
Chapter 3
It would have eased Jessica’s mind, could she but have…
Chapter 4
Dain had given Miss Trent more than enough opportunity to…
Chapter 5
Then he nearly trampled her down because, for some insane…
Chapter 6
On the afternoon following Madame Vraisses’ party, an unhappy Roland…
Chapter 7
Dain knew the house. It had belonged to the previous…
Chapter 8
The shot threw Dain back against his chair, which crashed…
Chapter 9
On the way to Calais, Dain had ridden with Bertie…
Chapter 10
On a bright Sunday morning on the eleventh day of…
Chapter 11
Jessica’s dinner appeared about twenty minutes after the mill. Her…
Chapter 12
Despite the unplanned-for pause at Stonehenge, Dain’s carriage drew up…
Chapter 13
Jessica wasn’t sure when exactly she’d become aware she was…
Chapter 14
“Hell and damnation,” Dain muttered as he gingerly withdrew from…
Chapter 15
Andrews entered then, and the first footman, Joseph, with him.
Chapter 16
Half an hour after he’d stormed into his bedroom and…
Chapter 17
At two o’clock that afternoon, Dain stood with his wife…
Chapter 18
An accomplished strumpet Charity Graves certainly was, Roland Vawtry thought.
Chapter 19
Mrs. Ingleby had told Jessica that when Athcourt had been enlarged…
Chapter 20
At two o’clock in the morning, Lord Dain emerged from…
About the Author
Praise
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
In the spring of 1792, Dominick Edward Guy de Ath Ballister, third Marquess of Dain, Earl of Blackmoor, Viscount Launcells, Baron Ballister and Launcells, lost his wife and four children to typhus.
Though he’d married in obedience to his father’s command, Lord Dain had developed a degree of regard for his wife, who had dutifully borne him three handsome boys and one pretty little girl. He’d loved them insofar as he was able. This was not, by average standards, very much. But then, it wasn’t in Lord Dain’s nature to love anybody at all.
What heart he had was devoted to his lands, particularly Athcourt, the ancestral estate in Devon. His property was his mistress.She was an expensive one, though, and he wasn’t the wealthiest of men. Thus, at the advanced age of two and forty, Lord Dain was obliged to wed again and, to satisfy his mistress’s demands, to marry pots of money.
Late in 1793, he met, wooed, and wed Lucia Usignuolo, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Florentine nobleman.
Society was stunned. The Ballisters could trace their line back to Saxon times. Seven centuries earlier, one of them had wed a Norman lady and received a barony from William I in reward. Since then, no Ballister had ever married a foreigner. Society concluded that the Marquess of Dain’s mind was disordered by grief.
