“I have a prob—” What he’d intended to say died on his tongue. Argyll snarled at the pair seated before him. “Get the hell out.”
DuMond’s dark brows dipped. Anyone else might have been intimidated. Not Argyll—he was spoiling for a fight.
Unfortunately, Lady Rutherford was determined to deprive him of it.
“Your Grace,” she said sweetly, rising from her husband’s lap. “We are quite well. How are you?”
Sweetness? Argyll sneered. False as painted smiles and courtly vows.
“I said get the—”
DuMond rose slowly to his feet, cracking his knuckles as he did. “Try again.”
“Please,” Argyll bit out, “get the hell out.”
DuMond took a furious step from behind the desk. His wife—the same wife Rutherford had once suggested Argyll relieve of her maidenhead years earlier—laid a calming hand upon her volatile husband’s arm.
Argyll was fit to be tied.
He had always favored bindings. As far as proclivities went, his tastes had been precise, deliberate. Confined to the bedroom. Always of his choosing. Always withhimholding the reins—leather, silk, cravat drawn tight.
Always the one doing the binding.
Never the one bound.
And yet here he stood—newly acquainted with a virgin, scarcely married—and she had him twisted into knots he did not recognize.
Husband and wife murmured together in low, intimate tones—a blissful tableau of bucolic devotion. They held hands like naïve sweethearts, untouched by disappointment or betrayal.
It was unnerving. Nauseating. Bloody infuriating.
Argyll tapped his fingers against his thigh.
DuMond bent to kiss his wife.
At least one of them was kissing his wife.
Why the devil shouldDuMondbe enjoying matrimony while Argyll languished in misery was a question he refused to entertain?
“Are you two finished?” he demanded, jaw locked, slicing clean through the moment.
DuMond turned slowly, his narrowed gaze suggesting friendship hung by a thread. “By God, Argyll—”
“Rex.”
That single softly spoken sound of DuMond’s name from his wife lips was all it took to command the poor chap.
His lip curled.
A wife.
God help him if he ever became—
He started.
Haven’t you already?the devil in his head taunted.
Sweat beaded Argyll’s brow.
