A determination which had failed him.
He had kissed another woman. That it had not been intentional did not matter. His self-loathing remained an acid in his gut, eating away at him.
“It was at Nell’s decree that I left,” he bit out, wondering why he bothered to defend himself to Sidmouth.
He owed the viscount nothing. Whilst Sidmouth owed him an apology for trespassing.
“Can you blame her?” Sidmouth sneered back. “You were always a skirt-chasing carouser, but what you did to Nell is beyond the pale. You could have spared her the humiliation of bedding another woman beneath her own roof. And one of her friends, no less.”
“Yes, a dreadful thing, is it not?” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice then. “One’s friend and one’s spouse?”
The viscount’s cheeks went ruddy at the thinly veiled suggestion in Jack’s words. “We were never friends, Needham. Indeed, I would be hard-pressed to suppose you friends with anything other than the bottle.”
That barb hit too close to the truth. Though in fact, they had been friends. No longer.
“You have precisely one minute to get out of this house, Sidmouth,” he growled. “Remain a second longer at your peril. As it is, keeping myself from thrashing you to within an inch of your life is costing me all the control I have remaining.”
But Sidmouth did not go.
“I will not leave Nell.”
Rage coursed through him. He strode forward, toward Sidmouth. His every intention to act the gentleman fled. “You have no bloody choice, Sidmouth.”
Sidmouth was not intimidated. He stood stoic. “What happened to your face, Needham?”
“None of your damned concern,” he gritted from between clenched teeth. “You have until the count of ten.”
“I am not going anywhere until I am reassured of her welfare.” Sidmouth stood stubborn, unrelenting. “I would wager those scratches on your face are from her, are they not? By God, if you harmed her in any way…”
As if he would have harmed Nell. He worshiped the woman. He would sooner cut off his own hand than raise it against her. But that was none of the viscount’s concern. His marriage with Nell was private. It was between himself and Nell only. And it would not be ended so this pallid lord could take her for his own.
“One,” he began counting, “two. Leave.”
“No.”
The rage continued to boil as Sidmouth refused to retreat. Not even one step. Something inside Jack splintered for the first time since he had received the letter from Nell in which she had requested divorce. He stopped counting when he reached the viscount. His mind and his body were separated. His fist, with a will of its own, collided with Sidmouth’s nose.
There was the satisfying crunch of bone. Pain shot up his arm. He scarcely felt it. Blood spurted from the viscount’s face. His eyes were wide with shock as he clasped a hand over his bleeding nose, scarlet dripping through his fingers. Jack reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, withdrew his handkerchief, and whipped it at Sidmouth’s face.
“You are making a mess of my carpets, Sidmouth,” he told him dispassionately, feeling almost as if he watched the scene unfolding from another room.
The fury lingered within him. But he could not deny the sudden gratification rising. Hitting Sidmouth, drawing his blood, brought out the beast within him. In truth, he ought to have split the bastard in two for trespassing upon his wife. Time and distance did not matter. Nell was his marchioness, damn it all.
“Tom!”
Nell’s cry broke the shocked silence of the study. She raced across the chamber, in a shocking state of dishabille. Her dressing gown, nothing more. And though it was buttoned to her throat and the cream hem fluttered to the floor, Jack could not help but to take grim note of her bare feet and the manner in which she flew to her lover, throwing her arms around him.
Her hair was bound in a simple braid, worn over her shoulder. She had either learned of Sidmouth’s arrival in the midst of her toilette, or she could not be bothered with decency because her lover had already seen her thus. The implication of the latter had Jack flexing his aching fingers once more with a fresh urge to do violence.
She gasped as she gazed into her lover’s eyes. “Tom, darling, what happened to you?”
Tom darling.
He should never have gone away. Jack realized that now. He should have stayed where he was. Told her to hell with her ultimatums. He should have done anything other than what he had done.
“Needham punched me,” Tom whined, accusation in his nasally voice as he held Jack’s handkerchief to his gushing nose.
“My lord, how dare you?” She turned to Jack as she embraced her lover, as if to protect him from further blows. “You may have broken his nose, you beast!”
He hoped to God he had. It would serve Sidmouth right.
He flexed his fingers again. “I asked him to go, and he refused.”
Nell’s eyes widened. “That is no reason to attack him! My God, what is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with him? His wife—the woman he loved—had written to him with her intention to wed another man. According to what he had been able to glean from the servants upon his return, Nell and Sidmouth had been all but playing at husband and wife.
The thought made him ill.
It made him realize how Nell must have felt that long-ago night. At that awful, cursed house party. When she had entered his chamber. When she had caught him in flagrante delicto with Lady Billingsley. But what she had witnessed had not been what she had supposed.
And in this instance, he was quite certain Nell had been fucking Sidmouth. She held him in the way a lover would.
In the way she had once held him, damn it to hell.
“Needham?” Nell demanded then, her voice strident, cutting through his thoughts like a lash. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
“I will not have your lover beneath my roof,” he forced out. “I want him gone, my lady.”
Her nostrils flared. She was glaring at him as if she could slit his throat with nothing more than her eyes. “I want you gone, Needham.”
“Nell, my love,” Sidmouth spoke at last, caressing Nell’s spine in a motion that bespoke familiarity. “You must be calm, darling. It will not do to overset yourself.”
It required every modicum of his will to tamp down his steadily rising anger. He forced himself to look upon Nell alone. “Since this is my home and you are my wife, that is an impossibility. I will not be leaving. Sidmouth, however, must go. At once.”
“He is bleeding,” Nell spat, looking at him as if he were a monster.
By God, he felt like one.
She brought out the worst in him.
He shrugged. Sidmouth could catch the first boat across the River Styx as far as he was concerned. “He will stop bleeding.”
“How dare you be so unfeeling?” she demanded. “You may have broken Tom’s nose with your foolish antics. And what have you accomplished with your needless violence? I still loathe you, and I still intend to divorce you so I can marry Tom whilst I am young enough to bear him children.”
If she had been trying to soothe him into doing her bidding, Nell had chosen the wrong words. The wrong bloody words. The hands at his sides were once more clenched into fists.
“There will be no divorce, and I can only hope I did break Sidmouth’s nose. I will break his nose and the nose of any other man who dares to attempt to take you from me. You are mine, Nell. Mine.”
Her chin tipped up. “I understand. Like a dog with a bone, now that I may be taken from you, you want me more. You are no better than a mongrel, my lord. You have not changed a bit.”
“See here, Needham, Nell is her own person,” blustered Sidmouth. “You cannot force her to endure this hated union. You have abandoned her for three years. We have a case.”
It was difficult indeed to take a man seriously when he was holding a square of linen over his mangled, bleeding nose.
“Of course she is her own person,” he snapped. “That has never been in dispute. However, the fact remains that she is my wife. Not yours, Sidmouth. Nor will she ever be yours. There will be no case. Neither will there be a divorce.”
Nell turned her back on him, facing her paramour. “Come, my darling. I will take you somewhere else so I can tend to your poor nose.”
“You will not.” Jack moved forward, catching Nell’s elbow and staying her when she attempted to shepherd her lover from the room. “You are going nowhere with him.”
She reeled as if he had struck her. “How do you dare, my lord? You lied to me, betrayed me with my own friend in this very house, and then you abandoned me for three years. I will be damned before I allow you to take my happiness from me.”
Her happiness?
Fucking hell.
“And I will be damned if I allow Sidmouth to take my happiness from me.” Because she was his happiness. She always had been. She always would be. Even if seeing her now, understanding that her hatred for him had only grown in his absence instead of lessening, nearly proved his undoing.
She would always be the only woman he had ever wanted.
The only woman he had ever loved.
“Your happiness? In making me miserable?” she asked.
“There is no need for further violence, Needham,” interrupted Sidmouth before Jack could respond.
“What are you saying, Tom?” Nell looked up into her lover’s face, clutching at his shoulders as if to keep him from fleeing. “You must remain precisely where you are. You have been desperately injured. Or if you must go, I will follow.”
Sidmouth dabbed at his nose, which was quite swollen and bruised, crusted in blood, though the flood had seemingly stopped. “I am perfectly well, my love. I will take lodging in the village. I shall not be far, I promise.”
These little mutterings between his wife and the viscount grated upon him. So, too, did the manner in which his wife clung to her lover.
“Why the village, Sidmouth?” he asked coolly. “Why not return to London altogether? I am happy to pay your passage.”
Sidmouth straightened. “I will not leave her here with you. I do not dare trust a man who would attack another without provocation.”
“Without provocation?” Jack sputtered. “I should think a man attempting to steal my wife from me is ample provocation.”
“Cease this madness!” Nell interrupted, her voice angry, her tone almost shrill. “Tom, you will stay here, and Needham, you will go to the devil where you belong.”
“If he stays,” he warned his wife, “I will not be held accountable for my actions. I will not stop at his lordship’s nose.”
While Nell was filled with bluster, Sidmouth was not.
He placated Nell with a soothing pat to her shoulder. “It is no trouble, my darling. I will not be far. In the next few days, we will sort this dreadful matter out, once and for all.”
“Yes,” Jack agreed somberly, his eyes never leaving Nell. “We shall.”
Chapter Three
Needham had attacked Tom.
Nell could still scarcely believe it.
The sight of poor Tom’s face, a river of blood gushing from his nose as he attempted to staunch the flow, would not leave her. She paced the confines of her private apartments once more. She had retreated here, following the wretched scene of an hour ago, needing to separate herself from her husband.
Needing time.
Distance.
A chance to clear her mind of the fog infecting it.
Tom had been lovely and gentlemanly as ever, of course. True to form, he had been more concerned with her than with his swollen nose. He had held her hand all the way to the door, promising he would return to call upon her on the morrow.
All whilst Needham had hovered at the periphery, like a demon presiding over them, glowering and radiating disapproval. Nell had seen Tom off before hastening to her chamber, where she had promptly rung for a tray of tea and toast to settle her still-ailing stomach.
The tea and toast mocked her now from a low table, alongside a stack of leather-bound volumes. Three of them, in all. One for each year he had been gone. In her dudgeon, she had plucked them from their hiding place in her wardrobe.
She told herself she would not read them.
But a new, unrelenting curiosity had caught hold of her. Perhaps it was because he had returned. Perhaps it was because she had always wondered what her husband had been doing whilst he was abroad. His essays on travel had been well-received.
She had purchased them with no intention of ever cracking the spines.
Why had she bought them?
What would reading them accomplish?
What would remaining here, with the husband she no longer wanted, accomplish?
On a sigh, she crossed the room and sank into a chair. Of course, she had little choice but to remain where she was. Needham possessed all the power in this farce. A man could obtain a divorce with more ease than a woman, which had been why his agreement had been necessary.
But he had not agreed, had he?
She fixed a cup of tea and took a sip. His earlier words returned to her. Needham wanted an heir. Impossible. As she had told him, there would be no heirs. Because she would sooner welcome an asp into her bed than the Marquess of Needham.
The tea was sweet on her tongue. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather her wits. So much had happened in the course of a day. But she must not allow this to make her veer from her chosen path. She was not growing younger, and if she wanted the opportunity to become a mother, she needed her freedom from Needham.
At once.
But the Needham who had returned was not the same man who had left. She opened her eyes, her gaze settling upon the neat little stack of books once more. Perhaps if she wanted to understand him—if she had any hope of persuading him that divorce was the best option for the both of them—she ought to read. She ought to discover what he had been doing.
And with whom.
Nell picked up the first volume he had published, and she opened the book to its frontispiece. An Englishman Abroad. Not a terribly inventive title, she told herself. But it was as she flipped to the next page that she paused, on the dedication.
This book is inscribed to my wife.
By the time Jack finished meeting with his steward, it was near to dinnertime.
In spite of the wild house parties she had been throwing, it was apparent that Nell had taken great care in overseeing the management of the estate. The tenant farmers were happy. Their crops were excellent. Necessary repairs to Needham Hall had been made. Although the letters he had received from Jones during his travels had always suggested the same, hearing it for himself, overlooking the ledgers, and meeting Jones in person had been gratifying.
It had also made him realize how much he had missed not just Nell but Needham Hall as well.
Being back felt right.
All he had to do was find his wife.
After the altercation with Sidmouth, she had fled to her chamber. He had allowed it, of course. He was not particularly proud of having broken the nose of his wife’s lover. But he had to admit that, like returning to Needham Hall, planting Sidmouth a facer had also felt right.
He made his way to his chamber, thinking it odd indeed how, now that he had returned, it felt in some ways as if he had never been gone at all. He stopped at Nell’s door and knocked.
“Who is it?” came her suspicious call.
“Jack,” he told her.
“Go to the devil!”
He grimaced, trying the door and finding it latched. No surprise there. “Will you be joining me at dinner?”
“No.” Her clipped response was also expected.
She was angry with him. Likely, the blow he had dealt Sidmouth’s nose had not furthered his cause.
“I must speak with you, Nell,” he tried again. “You cannot remain in your chamber forever.”
“Yes I can.” Her
mulish insistence rang through the portal separating them. “I have no wish to see you ever again.”
Blast the woman. “You are being a child. Matters between us must be settled. I have kept my distance for three years, but that time is at an end now, and you must face that.”
Just as he had to face that his absence had been a mistake.
Silence met his pronouncement.
He knocked on the door, wincing as his sore knuckles connected with wood. “Nell. I am not going anywhere until you speak with me.”
“I have no wish to speak with you.” Her voice, whilst muffled, sounded nearer.
A good sign, mayhap?
“We must speak,” he tried again.
She made a sound of irritation low in her throat before the door opened a fraction, revealing she was still in her dressing gown. “What do you want, Needham?”
You.
He did not say that, however. It was too soon. There were too many unsettled emotions between them. Too much hurt.
He met her gaze. “I want to speak with you.”
“You have already spoken with me.” Her lips thinned into a grim line. “At length. There is nothing you have to say which I wish to hear, unless it is an apology for abusing Tom.”
His jaw tensed. “No apology is forthcoming. I would do it again, given half the chance. You will be wise to tell Sidmouth that as well. I will not countenance any more of his interference in our marriage.”
Defiance glittered in her brilliant eyes. “We have no marriage.”
It occurred to him then that they had spent more time apart than they had together.
“It is my intention to rectify what has happened between us,” he told her truthfully. “To move beyond the past. I want a marriage with you, Nell. I always have. That has never changed.”
Abruptly, she took a step in retreat, opening the door as she did so. “If you insist upon haunting my door, you may as well come inside. That way, we can put this discussion to rest at once.”
Her Missing Marquess Page 3
