“Tom!”
Nell’s cry broke the shocked silence of the study. She raced across the chamber, in a shocking state of dishabille. Her dressing gown, nothing more. And though it was buttoned to her throat and the cream hem fluttered to the floor, Jack could not help but to take grim note of her bare feet and the manner in which she flew to her lover, throwing her arms around him.
Her hair was bound in a simple braid, worn over her shoulder. She had either learned of Sidmouth’s arrival in the midst of her toilette, or she could not be bothered with decency because her lover had already seen her thus. The implication of the latter had Jack flexing his aching fingers once more with a fresh urge to do violence.
She gasped as she gazed into her lover’s eyes. “Tom, darling, what happened to you?”
Tom darling.
He should never have gone away. Jack realized that now. He should have stayed where he was. Told her to hell with her ultimatums. He should have done anything other than what he had done.
“Needham punched me,” Tom whined, accusation in his nasally voice as he held Jack’s handkerchief to his gushing nose.
“My lord, how dare you?” She turned to Jack as she embraced her lover, as if to protect him from further blows. “You may have broken his nose, you beast!”
He hoped to God he had. It would serve Sidmouth right.
He flexed his fingers again. “I asked him to go, and he refused.”
Nell’s eyes widened. “That is no reason to attack him! My God, what is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with him? His wife—the woman he loved—had written to him with her intention to wed another man. According to what he had been able to glean from the servants upon his return, Nell and Sidmouth had been all but playing at husband and wife.
The thought made him ill.
It made him realize how Nell must have felt that long-ago night. At that awful, cursed house party. When she had entered his chamber. When she had caught himin flagrante delictowith Lady Billingsley. But what she had witnessed had not been what she had supposed.
And in this instance, he was quite certain Nell had been fucking Sidmouth. She held him in the way a lover would.
In the way she had once heldhim, damn it to hell.
“Needham?” Nell demanded then, her voice strident, cutting through his thoughts like a lash. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
“I will not have your lover beneath my roof,” he forced out. “I want him gone, my lady.”
Her nostrils flared. She was glaring at him as if she could slit his throat with nothing more than her eyes. “I wantyougone, Needham.”
“Nell, my love,” Sidmouth spoke at last, caressing Nell’s spine in a motion that bespoke familiarity. “You must be calm, darling. It will not do to overset yourself.”
It required every modicum of his will to tamp down his steadily rising anger. He forced himself to look upon Nell alone. “Since this is my home and you are my wife, that is an impossibility. I will not be leaving. Sidmouth, however, must go. At once.”
“He is bleeding,” Nell spat, looking at him as if he were a monster.
By God, he felt like one.
She brought out the worst in him.
He shrugged. Sidmouth could catch the first boat across the River Styx as far as he was concerned. “He will stop bleeding.”
“How dare you be so unfeeling?” she demanded. “You may have broken Tom’s nose with your foolish antics. And what have you accomplished with your needless violence? I still loathe you, and I still intend to divorce you so I can marry Tom whilst I am young enough to bear him children.”
If she had been trying to soothe him into doing her bidding, Nell had chosen the wrong words. The wrong bloody words. The hands at his sides were once more clenched into fists.
“There will be no divorce, and I can only hope I did break Sidmouth’s nose. I will break his nose and the nose of any other man who dares to attempt to take you from me. You are mine, Nell.Mine.”
Her chin tipped up. “I understand. Like a dog with a bone, now that I may be taken from you, you want me more. You are no better than a mongrel, my lord. You have not changed a bit.”
“See here, Needham, Nell is her own person,” blustered Sidmouth. “You cannot force her to endure this hated union. You have abandoned her for three years. We have a case.”
