Heat surged upward, settling thick in his throat. So much for never feeling anything beyond lust for a woman…
His gaze locked on the scraps strewn about. He had not yet played cards with his wife—and now this man had.
Her meeting with the visiting duke had been far shorter—and yet here they sat, two children at play.
“Argy—”
Argyll sluiced the rest of Rothesby’s greeting with a murderous stare, and quickly looked away.
He turned a cool stare back to Daria.
If he looked at the man responsible for her laughter, he would end up making the next Duke of Rothesby a very happy fellow.
“Hello,Duchess,” Argyll said, sliding mockery into the title she despised.
“You are here!”
“Indeed,” he said, his voice hollow.
A sick weight settled within him.
That mesmerizing tilt of her crimson lips. Was it for Argyll? Or merely the remnants of another man’s charm?
A combination of both from his bewitching wife. He hated that he hadn’t a bloody clue. About anything. Some man was with Gregory’s wife and he was inert. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t think, couldn’t speak.
And here he’d ridden his horse to a slather to get to her.
Argyll composed his face into the mocking, indifferent mask this blasted woman had stripped him of. “I take it this is a happy meeting, Your Grace?”
By the smile she still wore—at the credit of another man—it was certainly the latter.
“Certainly.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why would it not be?”
Oh, I don’t bloody well know. Perhaps because there is another blasted rake alone with you out here…
Refusing to betray himself any further, Argyll inhaled slowly through his nose.
She stared at him—while she sat beside another confounded man.
Which reminded him.
“Get on your damned feet,” Argyll snapped.
“Gregory.”
He whipped his focus toward the interruption. “Are you chastising me, madam?”
“You misunderstand what is—”
“Argyll.” Rothesby rose to his feet—too damned easily at that. “A pleasure.”
The only way the word pleasure would ever be coupled with the bloody good-looking rogue was if it came from seeing him dead.
“Yes, you keeping my wife company out here alone on the terrace, I’m certain it has been quite the pleasure.”
The good-looking bastard lifted a hand. “Whoa, chap.”
“Don’t you bloody well ‘whoa, chap’ me, Rothesby,” he hissed, coming apart at the seams. Argyll had bloody invented whoa, chap—that meaningless fluff reserved for when an errant husband chose precisely the wrong moment to appear.
