Chapter 3
Everett recognized her immediately.
Sybil was wearing a blue gown that was cut indecently low across her generous breasts. So low, he swore he could see the faint pink crests of her nipples peeking over the decolletage.
By God.
The temptation to rise from his chair, stalk down the length of the table to where she was seated, and throw her over his shoulder to carry her away from any eyes that weren’t his was strong. Just as it was wrongheaded.
Bitterness sliced through Everett at the thought.
It was a damned shame a woman so disloyal could also be so bloody lovely at the same time.
Her chestnut hair was piled high in an elaborate knot, a few curls left free to frame her heart-shaped face.
At her throat, she wore a necklace of sparkling diamonds that he’d likely paid for along with the sinful silk evening gown.
His gaze lit for a moment on that wretched half-heart-shaped mole that never ceased calling to him before he wrenched it elsewhere.
Matching earrings glittered from her ears.
She wore a mask fashioned of the same shade as her dress, obscuring her delicate features.
It mattered not.
He knew it was her, and so did his damnable cock, which was already thickening in his trousers after three months of lying dormant. How he had failed to see her during the earlier days of the house party was a mystery likely explained by three factors.
First, he hadn’t expected her to be amongst the guests, for the coveted invitations were meant exclusively for members of the highly secretive Wicked Dukes Society.
Second, he’d also been quite thoroughly inebriated much of the time, thanks to the devilish concoctions of his good chum the Duke of Kingham.
Third, the prurient nature of the affair meant most ladies chose to wear masks to keep themselves anonymous.
Still, now that he had settled eyes upon her, Everett couldn’t look anywhere else.
She was the most beautiful woman in the room.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only gentleman aware of that painfully obvious fact.
She was flanked by men who were admiring the offerings on ostentatious display.
Including his own damned friend, Kingham, who was seated next to her.
Everett’s wife was presently flirting with the fellow seated at her left side. Smiling at him. Leaning closer and giving the bastard an excellent view down her bodice, along with Everett and anyone else casting a glance in her direction.
Damn her.
He gripped his fork so tightly it was a miracle the sterling utensil didn’t bend in half.
Lord Saunders was the chap to her left, unless Everett was mistaken.
He would have to see to it personally that the lecherous oaf had his membership revoked.
She laughed, and even the sound was tempting, reaching him from across the sea of revelers separating them at the sumptuous dinner that had been prepared for their delectation.
“Is something amiss?”
The feminine voice at his side interrupted Everett’s grim musings, and he turned to the mysterious lady who was his companion of the evening. He didn’t recall her from previous house parties, although she was undeniably lovely.
Pity he wasn’t interested in her. Pity he hadn’t been interested in anyone since he’d first set eyes upon the faithless woman he’d wed.
Instead, his traitorous cockstand belonged to Sybil alone.
A woman whose velvet-soft skin he could feel beneath his fingertips as he reached for his wineglass.
She was so damned intoxicating. Now that he’d touched her again, all he could think about was having her.
Having her every way he possibly could. Fucking her to oblivion until he had excised the poison of that wretched woman from his blood the only way he knew how.
“Nothing is amiss at all,” he reassured the lady at his side smoothly, just before gulping down half the excellent French wine within the goblet.
He was lying, of course.
Because damned well everything was wrong. He hadn’t expected his wife to suddenly appear at this house party, least of all in his bedroom. Indeed, he had been doing all within his power to keep her far away at Riverdale Abbey where she belonged.
To forget her very existence.
The latter had proved impossible, and no amount of drunken revelries of any sort had aided him in his quest. But now, she was here. Beneath this roof. Sitting at the same table. Flirting with other men, curse her.
“You seem quite interested in the conversation down the table,” the lady at his side commented wryly. “Perhaps my contribution is more tedious than I dared to fear.”
“Your conversation is eloquent and intriguing,” he assured her, a spear of guilt piercing him at her pointed observation.
He was being rude.
It was all Sybil’s fault.
And she would begin paying the price for her scheming this very night. He could scarcely wait. To his rational mind, the notion of bedding her was equally attractive and repulsive. He didn’t want to consummate their marriage. Didn’t want to desire her. Not after what she had done.
But that didn’t seem to matter to the rest of him.
And so, he would take his pleasure from her, get her with child.
It had to happen at some point or another.
He’d known that when he had left her at Riverdale Abbey.
The notion had been at the edge of his every thought, word, and deed since then.
And yet, he hadn’t been willing to succumb to his base lust where she was concerned.
He’d been too furious with her, and his pride had been determined that the consummation could wait.
Her following him here and demanding his attention had changed that.
“What do you suppose?” his dinner companion asked him.
Everett hadn’t heard a word she’d uttered between her lament over the quality of her conversation and the question. He had been too caught up in his own mind. In thoughts of what was to come later that evening when he finally took his wife to bed.
“Yes,” he tried, hoping it was the correct answer. “I agree.”
The lady at his side gave him a shrewd look. “You didn’t hear a word I just said, did you?”
Was he that obvious?
Blast. He contained a sigh of frustration.
“I’m afraid I was thinking about the dessert course,” he prevaricated. “What do you think of the luscious cream ices we’ve arranged for this house party? Whitby settled upon an incredibly talented lady for the task. Runs a cookery school, I believe.”
That was all true. The cream ices that Whitby’s rumored ladylove had created were indeed divine. Everett had never tasted anything quite as delicious.
Outside of Sybil’s lips.
That thought was decidedly unwelcome, so he banished it to the ether where it belonged.
“I especially enjoyed the cream ice and cornets,” his companion said, either accepting his blatant falsehood or willing to forego a reckoning for the sake of polite manners.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed anything comparable before.
Cream ices are always served in molds. The royal icing and pistachios were a lovely detail as well. ”
“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, whilst sending another glance down the table in his wife’s direction.
And damn the woman if she wasn’t now flirting with the chap seated across from her at the table, a lecherous bastard if Everett had ever seen one. The man’s gaze was fixed upon her bubbies.
Everett well understood the lure. His wife’s curves haunted him in his sleep. Her shameless gown wasn’t helping matters. If King flirted with her, he was going to bloody well come to blows with one of his oldest, dearest chums.
“Do you know the lady in the blue gown?” his companion asked, a sharp note entering her voice.
He jerked his gaze back to her, guilt making heat creep up his throat. “We are acquainted.”
An extraordinary understatement, that. They were husband and wife.
Strangers. Soon to be lovers. Enemies. Once, he had thought she was what he had been looking for, someone to give him the heir he required, to warm his bed, to grant him companionship, someone he cared for.
She was witty and her mind was sharp, and they’d enjoyed conversing about everything from the stars to philosophy to poetry, from Shakespeare to Byron and back.
Until she had proven him wrong about his opinion of her, and with devastating consequences.
“It seems rather as if you are more than mere acquaintances,” his companion commented before taking a small bite of her haricot verts.
Everett withheld the sigh that wanted to emerge. He was being an arse to the woman at his side. A woman whose company, under ordinary circumstances, he would have enjoyed. Before he’d met Sybil. Before he’d married her. And well before she’d betrayed him.
She hadn’t been the first, of course.
But he vowed she would be the last, damn it.
The Earl of Wharton, seated across the table from Sybil, was dreadfully soused, and the Marquess of Saunders to her left was crowding her with his body. Lord Saunders smelled of hair grease, and he’d been ogling her breasts since the soup course.
The daring cut of her gown no longer seemed like such a fine idea, given her unfortunate dinner companions.
If only the sole friend she’d made during the house party, Lady Pink, as she’d decided to call her, given that lady’s requirement of anonymity, had been here to lend a listening ear and a kindly smile.
But Sybil suspected that dear Lady Pink had finally ventured off with the duke who had captured her eye and heart.
For neither Lady Pink nor the Duke of Richford was present this evening.
Good for Lady Pink, just as long as the duke didn’t dash her poor heart to bits.