She tipped her chin up, scoffing. “Hardly. I have no claim on you.”
He had also made that more than apparent. The Duke of Riverdale had no intention of being a faithful husband.
“You are correct in that, madam. You don’t. Now get out, if you please. I need to take a piss, and I’d rather do it without you listening.”
He was being coarse and vulgar, trying to shock her. It wasn’t going to work.
“No. Not until you hear what I’ve come to say.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Before she could protest or avert her gaze, he flipped back the bedclothes and rose, naked. Her eyes dropped of their own volition to his long, thick shaft standing proudly erect.
Heat flew over her. He stalked across the room, his buttocks flexing as he went.
“I want you to divorce me,” she blurted.
Everett could still seeSybil frozen in the vignette he hadn’t been meant to see, the one that had revealed to him—too late—who she truly was.
Sybil in her lovely wedding gown with the golden-haired footman. Taking him into her arms.
Her bloodylover.
All that time she had been smiling sweetly at Everett, presenting herself as the ideal woman, and she had been secretly dallying with a servant. No doubt she had been devastated at the prospect of having to leave the man behind. There had beentears on her cheeks, and Everett had overheard her telling the footman how much she would miss him and—in the greatest betrayal of all—that she loved him.
He’d been sick at the sight of their cozy farewell. Too shocked to confront the two of them. Instead, he had returned to the wedding breakfast and pretended as if he hadn’t just witnessed his wife of three hours in an intimate embrace with a servant.
A man she loved.
A man who wasn’t Everett.
A man who wasn’t even his equal.
The carriage ride to Riverdale Abbey had been one of the worst of his life. When they had arrived, he had done his duty in introducing her to his domestics.
And then he had left her, unable to bear the sight of her after her duplicity.
God, what a fool he had been, thinking she would make the perfect duchess. That he could ever trust a woman after Lydia. He ought to have learned his lesson well enough the first time.
For months, he had been seething over her betrayal, seeking to bury his fury in drink and distraction. The drink had been accomplished easily enough. The distraction, however, hadn’t. He simply had not possessed the desire necessary to lose himself in the soft, tender arms of a lover.
That was the irony of his present cockstand. Apparently, his prick wasn’t broken as he had begun to fear for its lack of proper interest in the women of his acquaintance. It only seemed to function inherpresence. Perhaps Sybil had cursed it. She had come like a wraith, had she not? To his one place of peace, Wingfield Hall, where another wild house party like those he had enjoyed on so many past occasions with his friends was meant to have finally destroyed the restraints of conscience yet keeping him from taking a lover himself.
It hadn’t.
And now, she was here. In his room. In his domain. Standing on the other side of the privacy screen. Unless she had blessedly slipped out of the bedchamber to grant him peace.
“Madam, have you gone?” he demanded.
“No. I will wait whilst you attend to your needs, much like you’ve been doing for the entirety of our marriage.”
He didn’t miss the sharpness in her tone. The rebuke. He might have laughed if he weren’t in the midst of a miserable conundrum at the moment. The sheer daring of the woman, acting as if she were the one who had been wronged after what she’d done.
“Consider this your final warning to spare yourself embarrassment,” he called, willing his cock to wilt.
He couldn’t piss in this state, damn it. And he did have to. Or at least, he’dhadto, before she’d brought that rebellious part of his anatomy back to life with her presence, her delectable breasts straining against that bodice, and her fuckingscent.
Her perfume was intoxicating. Vanilla and tuberose. There had been a time when he had wanted to smell it lingering on his pillow. When he had wanted her in his bed for days without end, knowing too well that he still wouldn’t have his fill of her.
