Or at least maimed.
She frowned at him. “Smugness ill suits you, Needham.”
“So does being cuckolded,” he shot back in frosty diction.
His accusation nettled. “Indeed? Well, betrayal makes me bilious. Come any nearer, and I shall vomit all over you.”
“Charming as ever, Lady Needham.” He bowed with a courtly air that belied the strange intimacy of the moment.
She gritted her teeth against another wave of nausea. “How many times must I repeat myself before you get out? If you insist upon speaking with me, let it be after I am dressed.”
His gaze flicked over her, assessing. And damn him, but she felt that stare like a caress. How was it possible for her to feel something for him after everything that had happened? Where did that most unwanted frisson of desire, unfurling down her spine, emerge from?
Those emerald eyes seemed to linger upon her breasts. “Perhaps you forget I have already seen every inch of you, darling wife.”
Even as dreadful as she felt, her nipples had hardened at his stare, and his words sent a surprising bolt of heat through her. “I hope your memory is pristine, my lord, because you shall never see me again in such a state. Nowget out.”
He flashed her a half grin. The sort that once had made her ache to kiss him. “How wrong you are, wife. I cannot get an heir on you if I cannot see you.”
I cannot get an heir on you.
Those words seemed to take all the air from the room.
Shock robbed her of the ability to speak. With another lingering look, he turned and sauntered across her chamber, heading for the door joining their apartments.
“There will be no heirs from me!” she called after him at last.
But it was too late. By the time she found her tongue, Needham had already closed the door, leaving her alone. Her stomach heaved.
Nell scarcely made it to the chamber pot in time.
STRANGELY, OF ALLthe homecomings Jack had envisioned—and there had beenmany, after his decision had been reached—he had failed to imagine one involving a debauched house filled with guests, a drunken Nell dancing on the table, and facing the man who had been warming his wife’s bed in his absence.
A man who had once been his friend.
He clasped his hands behind his back to keep the temptation to plant Viscount Sidmouth a facer at bay. “You cannot remain here.”
Sidmouth’s jaw tightened. “If I cannot remain, Nell shall come with me.”
Nell.
Her given name was a small reminder of this man’s familiarity with Jack’s own wife. “Lady Needham shall remain in residence with me. Need I remind you which of us is her husband and which of us possesses all the rights where she is concerned?”
They were in the study, a room which had not changed much since he had last used it, aside from the notable absence of any of his personal effects. There were more relics of his father’s than he had recalled, and far too many pastorals and hunting scenes gracing the walls. The furniture was all from last century. And the stale scent on the air suggested Nell had not used it whilst he had been gone. Small mercies, he supposed.
“I do not understand, Needham,” Sidmouth said now. “Nell wrote to you of our plans, and she said you agreed.”
“I agreed we needed to speak,” he corrected, irritated at the man’s insistence upon familiarity. “I agreed I would return so we could discuss the nature of our marriage. However, I did not agree to a divorce so she could marry you.”
Sidmouth looked like a lad watching his puppy being drowned in a river. “That is not what Nell said.”
“Perhaps Nell should have read the letter I sent her more carefully,” he suggested, trying and failing to tamp down his rage. “Perhaps you ought to find a lady who is not already married to become your wife.”
Sidmouth pinned him with a glare, teeming with the same fury Jack had no doubt was reflected in his eyes. “You abandoned her.”
“I returned.”
“She despises you.”
