“What is happening is that I’m teaching you a lesson, Eastlake,” he drawled. “Men who raise their hands against women and do them violence deserve to be thrashed.”
The marquess’s balding pate was visible through his mussed white hair as he struggled into a sitting position. “Riverdale? What the devil do you think you’re doing? You cannot barge into my home like this and accost me.”
“Shut up,” Everett spat, lifting the riding crop and bringing it down on the man’s other shoulder.
Eastlake screamed like a piglet, and the sound was so gratifying, Everett wielded the crop yet again in rapid succession until the marquess was groaning, struggling to escape.
“My wife informed me that you’ve beaten both her and Lady Eastlake,” he explained, amazed at the calmness of his voice,when inside he was seething with roiling fury. “I find it only suiting that you should be beaten yourself to experience what it is like when someone who is stronger than you are decides to wield his power against you.”
He brought the riding crop down on the marquess’s back as the other man struggled to haul himself to safety on the opposite side of the bed.
“Are you mad?” the marquess gasped out.
“I’m perfectly sane.” He rounded the bed and delivered another sound thwack to the marquess. “Consider this your warning, Eastlake. If word travels to me that you have so much as raised a finger against your wife again, I will return, and I won’t stop until you’re a bloody, whimpering mess at my feet, begging me to end you.”
He brought the crop down again.
“Please,” the marquess begged. “Stop.”
Everett reached down and caught the blubbering fool by his nightshirt, hauling him up. “Do we have an understanding, Eastlake? I won’t just thrash you. I’ll ruin you in the eyes of polite society as well.”
“I understand, Riverdale. I c-completely understand,” Eastlake gasped. “Please. Leave me alone.”
The scent of stale piss suddenly filled the air.
Everett dropped the marquess back to the bed with disgust. “Never again. As a courtesy that you don’t deserve, Eastlake, I want you to know that I’ll be speaking with your marchioness before I leave here this morning. I’m planning to extend an invitation for her to join my mother and sister in London, along with the duchess and myself. I would imagine she will accept. It goes without saying that you won’t be welcome.”
Then he turned and stalked from the room.
Sybil had just leftthe dining room, still wondering where her husband was as she hadn’t spied him since the night before and she’d just completed her luncheon, when he appeared as if she had conjured him. He looked tired and windblown, stalking toward her in riding clothes, as if he had spent half the night astride a mount. He smelled of outdoors and mud and horse, and still, she didn’t think the vexing man had ever been more handsome.
“Your Grace,” she greeted him, curtsying despite the ribald nature of the house party.
“Madam.” He bowed with equal formality. “You are looking well this morning.”
She hadn’t slept particularly well following his abrupt departure from her room. Instead, she’d spent the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep, until she had finally given up and turned up the lamps to read. In reading, however, there had been precious little distraction.
She had passed pages without fully comprehending the words. In the end, she had passed out from sheer exhaustion close to dawn. By this point of the day, she was most assuredly flagging as surely as the curls her lady’s maid had coaxed into her ordinarily straight hair at her morning toilette.
“You are being polite for my pride’s sake, I suspect,” she said warily. “Although I do thank you for the pretense.”
He still felt very much like a stranger to her, despite the fact that they had shared a bed and he was her husband. She didn’t know what to make of him any more now than she hadon the day their paths had first crossed. Time had not, as was customary, given her the benefit of knowing him better. Quite the opposite. The more days and weeks that stretched on, the greater his enigma grew.
“Walk with me,” he said, extending his arm.
His countenance was serious. She hesitated.
“Please,” he added when she failed to do as he had requested.
Hesitantly, Sybil placed her hand in the crook of his elbow. They had exchanged heated words yesterday, and she didn’t know where they stood after his abrupt defection to his own room, even if he had left with what had seemed a tender kiss to her cheek before he’d gone.
His reaction to her revelation had troubled her. She hadn’t known what it had meant precisely. Now that he loomed at her side, she was no more assured of herself than she had been then.
“Where are we going?” she asked, searching for something to say that wouldn’t reveal he had her at sixes and sevens.
Riverdale was still her enemy after all. It seemed most unwise to show her weakness on the battlefield.
“Anywhere we have privacy,” he informed her, unsmiling.
