Chapter 13
After Argyll lifted his slumbering bride into his arms and carried her through the south-side entrance of his club and up to his chambers, he laid her upon the heavy carved tester bed. The French-style feather mattress scarcely dipped beneath the addition of her spare frame.
She rolled onto her left side.
He braced for her to wake.
But his wife slumbered like the dead she was all too fond of speaking of.
A snore fit to wake the d—No. A snore like a shot at dawn billowed from her lips. Lips still swollen, red, and wet from his kiss.
Resisting the temptation to join Daria in his bed—and swiftly join their bodies as one—he left her in the care of a respectable young lady’s maid, one whom his sister, Raina—thank God—had the foresight to send from her and Kilburn’s household.
He lingered too long, considering her curled form.
She stirred, and he took off.
That had been seven hours earlier.
Now seated in his office, sans jacket and with his cravat long discarded, Argyll pored over the week’s ledgers—for the second time.
Knock-knock-kn—
“Ent—”
His permission proved unnecessary. The insolent bastard on the other side barged through before Argyll could grant leave.
“DuMond,” he muttered. “Of course.”
The other man grinned. “Marriage has not improved your temper.”
Argyll gritted his teeth. “My temper didn’t need improving.” By God, I’m bloody affable. The charmer of all charmers.
“No.” DuMond availed himself of a wingback chair. “Your new temper, however, bears strict improvement.”
“Go to hell, DuMond.” He tossed his pen down. Ink droplets landed like black raindrops upon his previously meticulous books and mahogany desktop.
His business partner, dangerously close to finding himself delivered to Dynevor’s doorstep, looked bemusedly at the incriminating stains.
Looping both hands behind his head, DuMond reclined. “You strike me as frustrated.”
Anger blazed; tension snapped through him. “I bloody am,” he snapped. And you know why, that silent voice jeered. There was no place Argyll wanted to be more than in his bedchambers, with Daria beneath him, and each of them at least four orgasms into their wedding night.
So why are you here? Why did you settle her in your rooms and take off?
But Argyll knew the reason.
Amusement flickered across DuMond’s face. “There’s something that can help with that…”
Argyll’s nostrils flared. By God, he’d kill—
“A stiff drink,” DuMond said.
Hopping up, he made for the sideboard, grabbed a bottle and a glass, and returned.
With the fluid ease of a tavern landlord, he poured smoothly, slid the snifter past the ink splattering’s, and stopped it directly beneath Argyll’s nose.
Argyll stared, going cross-eyed. A hard brandy, whisky, gin—hell, any drink would settle his nerves. Not this time. Tonight, his club’s entire liquor stock wouldn’t make a bloody dent.
Cursing, he pushed aside the snifter. The amber contents swayed wildly, a perfect reflection of Argyll’s inner tumult.
DuMond reclaimed his chair and, by the bloody way he settled in, appeared in no rush to leave.
“Is there a reason you’ve interrupted me? A situation on the floors? A fight amongst the female staff?” Whatever it was, he’d have his partner be out with it, and then out of his bloody sight.
“Interrupted you?” DuMond’s tone dripped with amusement.
“Yes. I have work to attend.” To illustrate his point, Argyll grabbed the last ledger—he’d checked twice—and dragged it forward.
And unfortunately forgot the damned brandy he’d not wanted to begin with.
The snifter tipped, spilling the deuced talk drink onto Argyll’s April report.
Argyll flew to his feet with a force that sent his chair tumbling with a violent clatter.
“Christ!” Doing a quick sweep for the nearest fabric to save his work, and finding none, he snatched his shirt off.
Nerves raw, Argyl slapped the lawn fabric onto the puddle atop his books. “Damn it all to hell!” he raged.
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Agitation whipping through. His nerves were scraped raw.
“I’ve known you since Eton, Argyll.”
“I’m aware,” he snapped.
“And I don’t recall you ever with this level of…frustration.”
Yes, because he’d been bedding beauties since his dear departed papa brought Argyll his first conquest, as the debauched fellow called it.
This level of frustration wasn’t the sort a quick fuck would fix.
Because there is only one woman whom you want this night, the devil taunted Argyll with the truth he’d fought fully forming.
Randy as a lad, and painfully erect since he’d coaxed Daria’s first orgasm, Argyll could have seen to matters quick.
The wanton ladies on the club floors who paid for the privilege of sinning, those hot patrons who’d do anything he asked, and assuage this infernal ache that would not relent.
Cursedly, one delicate slip of a lady—a bloody virgin, at that—had seized his thoughts, and he could not claw her free of his mind.
Out of his mind, indeed.
Argyll, the sinner. The man for whom sex was just sex. Currency. Appetite. Control.
Bloody laughable.
Ludicrous.
Impossible.
With a feral growl, he pounded his shirt into his books over and over.
“Might I suggest something?”
DuMond’s voice cut through the turmoil consuming Argyll. The haze lifted from his gaze, leaving behind a stark, damning clarity.
“What?” he snarled.
“Go bed your wife,” DuMond said bluntly.
The floor tilted under him. “It is not about my…” Wife. I have a wife. “My…” At that, a wife he was actively lusting after. It was provincial. It was beneath him in every way.
“Wife?”
Argyll swung his focus to DuMond. “Hmm?”
“I believe the word you’re searching for is ‘wife.’”
Argyll’s jaw flexed. “It is not about…about…” Daria. The intrepid warrior who had gone toe-to-toe with St. John in his defense. And Argyll—a man wholly undeserving of it. “Her.”
“I’m sure it is not.” DuMond reclined, a study in maddening calm; Argyll had never hated him more than in this moment. “Either way, my point is that you desire your wife and would be best served—”
“Not another word!” A dull flush sparked in his chest and climbed his neck. “Aren’t you on duty this evening?” Damn it all to hell, why had he torn off his damned shirt? He snatched it up and wrestled his way back into the sopping, wrinkled mess of fabric.
DuMond finally took the cue and stood. “Indeed. The floors are quieter than usual tonight, and Kilburn suggested I pay you a visit.”
“Oh, I bet he did.” His damned brother-in-law had always hated him. Argyll had maneuvered a match between Raina and the former assassin. Were the pair nauseatingly happy together? Entirely so. Had that earned him even a scrap of goodwill from his new business partner? Not an inch.
DuMond nearly took himself off.
Nearly.
His partner halted halfway across the room and turned, a faint frown touching his lips. “Are you concerned?”
“About my bride?” Argyll laughed, his first, honest to goodness, raucous bout of humor since Daria turned his life upside down.
Him uneasy about bedding a woman? “Trust me,” he said, between laughter.
“I have neither doubts or concerns about bedding my wife.” His amusement faded to a chuckle.
“I’ve had plenty of practice.” But never with a virgin.
God, she was going to be so tight around him.
Argyll dragged a breath in through his nose.
DuMond gave him a weird look.
“What?” he asked testily.
“I was referring to the fact club attendance is soft at this hour.”
Argyll drew taut. Bloody hell.
This time, DuMond roared with hilarity.
“Oh, sod off,” Argyll muttered, turning two middle fingers up.
His friend’s countenance grew serious. “Forgive me.”
That rare apology brought Argyll’s eyebrows creeping up.
DuMond ruined the olive branch with his next breath. “I have been in the same situation as you with my own wife.”
Tension snapping through him, Argyll unfurled to his full height. “Where I am?” he echoed in a silky warning. “Where exactly is it you think I am?”
“You’re navigating around a virtuous young lady,” DuMond said bluntly. “It is new. I needn’t point that out to you.”
Yes, he’d hated and steered clear of simpering misses like the plague.
But Daria? She wasn’t one of those pitiable sorts. Oh, she was as na?ve as the London day was long. She’d sought the title of duchess, but not for the other reasons avaricious debutantes did. Peculiar no longer seemed an apt description for his enigmatic wife.
“Being at sea,” DuMond said, snapping Argyll back. “It is very normal.”
Argyll scoffed. “I am not at sea.” Bloody preposterous for the other fellow to even say so. “Furthermore, our situations”—Argyll stalked across the room, jerking a hand between them as he went—“as you refer to them, are entirely different.”
DuMond rested a shoulder against the wall. “How so?”
“You knew your wife. You sampled her—”
DuMond had a hand clamped around his neck and Argyll against the door before the rest of those words left his mouth.
“Have a care,” he said through an icy smile.
The threat of death slipped through the other man’s false geniality conversationally.
Argyll’s entire body coiled for the fight. DuMond had given him his opening. But deuced, he’d made enough enemies from former friends and certainly couldn’t afford to lose another partner.
He nodded tightly.
The minute Dumond released his hold, Argyll scrubbed at his sore neck. “Bloody hell, I only referred to the fact you and the marchioness were well-acquainted in…matters. It’s why you went all romantic.” Poor chap.
“Is that what you believe? That because I’d known my wife intimately, I fell in love with her?”
Unable to make tails of the other man’s tones, he chose carefully. “Well, yes.”
His friend’s lips twitched. “As you are in the habit of falling in love with whatever lady you bed?”
“Of course not,” he scoffed. “It is different.”
“This I have to hear.”