Chapter 16
The following morning, Argyll strode past the guards stationed outside DuMond’s office and used the emergency key to let himself in.
“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 with him holding 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 na?ve 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 should DuMond be 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.
The truth struck with vicious clarity. He was already ensnared. Already compromised. All because of a woman he had known less than a handful of days. A woman who looked at him one moment as though he were something to be adored and in the next like an object to be feared.
His chest tightened, the sensation unfamiliar and unwelcome. He crushed it down at once.
This, this, was not tenderness. It was irritation. Annoyance. A reaction to disorder. Nothing more.
And yet, standing there amid DuMond’s absurd domestic contentment, watching a man kiss his wife as though it were the most natural thing in the world, Argyll felt an unfamiliar tightening in his chest.
It’s bloody annoyance. Nothing more.
A breathy giggle emerged from the marchioness.
Argyll beat his hand harder and more loudly against his leg. It certainly wasn’t envy. He ceased his tapping.
He had never begrudged other men their pleasures. Matrimony merely happened to be one he had always considered grossly overrated.
Still, the ease of it, the unthinking intimacy, set his teeth on edge.
Not because he wanted that.
Never that.
But because, for the first time in his life, something had been taken from him without his consent: his detachment.
His fingers curled loosely at his side. He forced them to relax.
How absurd—to feel unsettled over a woman he had known scarcely a handful of days. A woman who looked at him now with uncertainty, as though she feared she had misjudged the bargain she’d struck.
He would not become ridiculous.
Sentiment was a vice like any other—pleasant in moderation, ruinous when indulged. And Argyll had always prided himself on knowing precisely when to walk away.
This…discomfort would pass. It always did.
He merely needed distance.
And perhaps a reminder—sharp and immediate—of exactly who he was.
Argyll jolted. The thin grasp of self-control he never lost didn’t have a thing to do with his wife. Not exactly, per se. Rather, he was sexually frustrated. Frustrated at being denied. He wasn’t emotionally entangled. He knew better than DuMond and Kilburn.
“Argyll?”
His face heated, Argyll whipped his focus to the astounded pair staring at him. “I didn’t say anything!”
“I did not say you did. I was asking if you were all right.”
Argyll squeezed the bridge of his nose.
Mad. I’m going completely mad.
Husband and wife exchanged a look.
Lady Rutherford went up on tiptoe and whispered something to her husband. Whatever it was elicited a smile from the previously jaded gaming hell owner.
DuMond eased a finger along the curve of Lady Faith’s cheek then kissed her tenderly on the lips.
Tender kisses. Argyll pulled a face.
“Spare me,” he mumbled.
DuMond, never lifting his gaze from Lady Faith, angled his head slowly—without breaking contact—until he looked directly at Argyll.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Argyll was spoiling for a fight. Craved it. There was a whole volcano of coiled tension inside him, and throwing fists felt like the only thing that might release it. At least, at present.
The other thing—the only thing he truly wanted—was to bury himself deep inside his new wife.
Bride, he corrected grimly, grinding his teeth.
She was still his bride.
“Your Grace?”
Argyll cursed violently and jumped. At some point—while he’d been lost, yet again, in thoughts of his vexing wife—the lovebirds had ceased their murmured cooing. Lady Faith and DuMond now stood near the front of the room.
Without a word, Argyll reached for the door handle, intent on expediting her departure.
DuMond clamped a hand over his, broad, unyielding, and strong enough to halt him with ease.
“Answer the lady,” DuMond said, his voice silk…and menace, for those inclined to hear it.
Argyll and DuMond had enjoyed plenty of rows during boyhood—and later, at university—where they had tested their respective skill in the fighting ring. Argyll had always emerged the victor.
The only person I wish to come out on top of…
He cut the thought off and sketched a bow DuMond could not fault.
“Good day, Lady Faith,” he said smoothly.
Marquess and marchioness exchanged one of those private looks—known only to the happily married—that Argyll rather despised.
Lady Faith cleared her throat. “I asked after the duchess.”
“What of her?” Argyll snapped, his brows drawing together.
“I would say out of politeness,” she replied, in a cloying sweetness clearly designed to grate. “But I am concerned for the lady, as she’s married you.”
“She is fine,” he bit out. “Better than fine.”
He knew precisely what Lady Faith was about: provoking him for sport. Well, she and her besotted husband had already had more than their fill.
“Splendid,” the irritating love of his friend’s life said, a small smile dancing on her lips. “Every bride wishes to be…fine. Or—how did you put it? Better than fine—the day after her wedding.”
Argyll’s nostrils flared.
This time, DuMond neatly edged him away from the door and ushered his wife outside with efficient haste. Even the most devoted husband knew when his wife had pressed too far.
The instant she was gone, DuMond turned the lock.
“Well?”
Fine. Better than fine. What a bloody answer. Lady Faith had been right to find amusement in it.
Argyll did not wait for an invitation. He strode to the sideboard, surveying his options.
He selected DuMond’s best bottle, wrenched the cork free with his teeth, spat it to the floor, and downed a solid quarter in one pull.
“Yes,” DuMond said dryly, returning to his desk. “Do help yourself.”
The quick rush of spirits did nothing to help. Riotous tension snapped through his nerve endings.
Argyll took another deep drink. This was the difficulty with a dissolute existence—spirits had long ago ceased to offer comfort. At least not in circumstances such as these.
He brought the bottle down on the table with enough force to shatter the glass.
“No worries,” DuMond drawled. “You’d nearly finished the bottle anyway.”
What, precisely, was happening to him?
Argyll was calm. Rational. Bloody affable. Emotionally detached in all things. Even in sex, he maintained absolute mastery of himself.
His brow dipped. Marriage, it seemed, had not been his most inspired decision.
A restless energy took hold. Desperate to rid himself of the unsettling sensation, Argyll began to pace, carving a steady path across the room. His gaze flicked from the wide window overlooking the gaming hell below to the crown of DuMond’s head.
She had climaxed—and still she had walked away from him.
He had required servants to escort desperate, pleading wantons from his chambers before. Never once had he been denied.
Lady Faith had been well within her rights to laugh outright at his earlier answer regarding his new wife.
Daria had hungered for his touch. She had trembled beneath his hand. She had been slick and wanton where he’d stroked her twice, once to completion—and still she had rejected him.
Argyll stopped short.
No woman had ever rejected him. Not even the games he had played with his stepmother—scandalous though they were—had ended without her satisfaction.
Lady.
That, right there, was the distinction.
Argyll knew nothing of polite, respectable ladies whose virtue remained intact.
And now he had married one.
After a blundered wedding night, he was left with a wife who was still—damn her—a virgin.
Argyll’s gaze landed on DuMond, perched at the edge of his desk, arms folded across his chest.
“I take it this concerns your new wife.”
It was not a question.
Someone understood. Argyll had come to the right place.