Chapter 22
Unlike the easygoing quality of the breakfast room, as Tremaine stalked along the McQuoid corridors, an intensity hung in the air like the sea right before Poseidon unleashed a violent squall.
Flanked on either side by his brother and Beaton, Tremaine kept his gaze fixed forward. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“He did not.” Hart’s voice was grim. “Just that you’d ignored his summons following your previous meeting and this would be the last opportunity to speak without the conversation taking place in the presence of your wife.”
Tremaine cursed so inventively even the most jaded sailor would have blushed.
As if Arran McQuoid would have just stayed gone on today of all days.
Tremaine had let himself be lulled into a false state of calm.
In celebrating with the McQuoid-Smiths, it’d been all too easy to slip back into the way it used to be with the noisy, loving lot.
Between the sibling banter and children hanging on to tales of the sea and . . . Linnie, he’d made a misstep.
Fuck. He’d even taken Winfield’s repartee as friendly.
This was what came from letting his guard down.
He firmed his jaw.
Linnie and his sense of guilt toward his innocent bride had overridden his logic. Since they’d been discovered in Hyde Park and she’d agreed to become his wife, he’d not even once thought about getting back to the sea, and why?
Because he’d become—and remained—absolutely obsessed with getting between her sweet thighs and claiming her body before any other man could.
This unhealthy absorption with his bride, his losing focus of his career at sea, was a mistake he’d not make with the McQuoid-Smiths again.
Fuck.
They reached the Earl of Abington’s office, and Tremaine stopped in his tracks.
The Marquess of Winfield, who’d been bonhomous and all affable grins before, now stood hard-eyed and with his arms folded at his chest like a centurion guard outside.
Tremaine peeled his lips back in a sneer. “What a fine show you put on for your wife and her family’s benefit.”
Lord Winfield looked down the length of his hawkish nose at him. “The same can be said for you, Tremaine.”
His nerves rubbed raw, Tremaine lowered his lashes, attempting to keep dread at bay. What exactly did the other man know versus what he suspected?
“You wonder if I know?” Winfield asked nastily. “You can rely on the fact that had I been informed before this, I’d have done everything to intervene on the lady’s behalf.”
Fuck.
His pulse racing, Tremaine did a swift sweep to ensure there weren’t additional ears about.
Too many people knew.
It’s only a matter of time . . .
Winfield proved gallingly foresighted. “She’ll eventually find out, and when she does, you can count on any of the warmth and smiles and affection bestowed by the lady dying a quick death.”
Tremaine’s hands shook slightly before he clenched them to conceal his disquietude.
By Winfield’s frosty grin, it was too late for Tremaine to hide.
“All right, Winfield, you’ve always had a reputation for being a cockalorum.
” Hart curled his lip in an impressive display of ducal contempt.
“You’ve said your piece; now stand aside.
” He dusted an imagined piece of lint from his sapphire-blue wool sleeve.
“That is, unless McQuoid in there requires protecting from my brother.”
Rage darkened the marquess’s already hate-filled stare.
With a grudging reluctance, Lord Winfield stepped aside so they might pass. “Joining him, Hart?” he jeered. “Who is the one who needs protecting now?”
Tremaine kept his cool. “Leave it, Hart,” he urged, his voice barely a whisper.
Hart had too long been the protective older brother to divorce from it now.
“Oh, fuck off, you sod,” the duke riposted. “My brother stepped into this hornet’s nest of traitors with but two of his men. Your family left him for dead once. I’ll be goddamned if I allow a McQuoid that satisfaction ever again.”
The four men fell into a stalemate.
Winfield stood down first.
Expressionless, the marquess silently stepped aside.
“I’ll scout out the room,” Hart murmured.
“Oh, come, do you really believe they’re going to kill me in the middle of the earl’s office on my wedding day to the man’s niece?” he asked impatiently.
“It would be the perfect day to kill a man whom none of them wanted to marry their female relation,” Beaton put forward.
“And it is not as though they’ve not tried to kill you before, little brother.”
Tremaine gnashed his teeth. Why the hell were his brother and pilot so clearheaded while Tremaine continued on with blunder after blunder? Had he learned nothing by now?
He nodded tersely.
Hart entered the room, did a search, and came back out, his body tense.
“Something you should be aware of,” his brother said quietly by way of greeting at the exact moment Tremaine detected a slight movement from within the room.
Tremaine stiffened as his gaze came into direct contact with the reason for his brother’s hostility.
“You,” Tremaine seethed, storming the room.
“That,” Hart muttered. “That is what you should be aware of.”
Not “that.”
Who.
Two of them, to be exact.
Tremaine glowered at the two gentlemen side by side in the middle of the room.
Neither bothered to bow.
“The fucking gall of you coming here, Culross,” Tremaine hissed. Snarling, he swung his hate-filled gaze on McQuoid. “And the fucking gall of you bringing him.”
From where he sat, Captain McQuoid inclined his head. “First, I’ll have anyone I want in this house, and whenever I want. This is my family’s residence, and Culross is a friend of the McQuoids, Tremaine.”
Hatred singed Tremaine’s veins. “I want him out.” Crazed as any animal, he couldn’t manage a shred of logic.
He turned his rage full-on at McQuoid. “You aligned yourself with another, and that day you chose Culross! Now, you demonstrate your perfidy once more, this time taking me away from my wife, your cousin, on our wedding day.”
A vein bulged in McQuoid’s forehead.
Ah, he’d struck a nerve. Tremaine drove the blade deeper. “Your loyalty to your own wants and Culross proves greater than constancy to your own family.”
McQuoid looked at Culross.
The other man nodded and then excused himself.
Hart and Beaton awaited their move from Tremaine.
He also gave them the sign to leave.
The minute their audience left, a footman raced to draw the panel shut, affording Tremaine and McQuoid privacy.
“What is it you want, McQuoid, that you’d summon me during my . . . ?”
McQuoid held out an envelope stamped with his seal.
Tremaine made no move to take it.
His former friend forced the ivory packet into his hand. “It’s yours. Consider it a wedding gift for you and Linnie.”
Curious, Tremaine slid a finger under the wax, unfolded the sheets inside, and read.
He went stock still.
What in hell?
Tremaine lifted his stunned gaze to McQuoid’s. “What is this?”
“Exactly what it says it is,” his former friend said bluntly. “Culross, Winfield, and I collectively agreed this was for the best . . . for you and for Linnie.”
With crisp, deliberate movements, Tremaine refolded the page and handed it back over. “You expect me to believe the same items you sought to leverage so I wouldn’t marry your cousin are now mine, free and clear?” He scoffed.
“They are,” McQuoid said quietly. “I want you far away from Linnie. Because I don’t trust for an English minute anything about your pursuit and marriage to Linnie was anything but a ploy to punish me and thwart an alliance between my cousin and Culross.”
Tremaine shuttered his expression.
“Nothing to say?” McQuoid taunted.
Keeping his features in an even mask, Tremaine brought his shoulders up in a shrug. “What should I say?”
“The truth,” he rejoined. McQuoid took in an audible breath.
He dropped his voice. “What I do trust is that the minute you have a ship to sail upon, you will be gone . . . from London and Linnie’s life.
And the greatest gift I can give her is the freedom she’ll have from you when you go, and the sooner that is, the better we all will be, especially Linnie. ”
Yes, she’d be far better off without him.
“Ah, yes,” Tremaine jeered. “But you are assuming the lady will want to be free of me.” He couldn’t give her his heart, but he would show her the wonder and bliss that came from sharing his bed. He’d leave her so sated she wouldn’t even be able to muster any regret if she tried.
“Eventually she will want you gone,” McQuoid said with a matter-of-factness that brought Tremaine’s spine back. “She’ll realize what you’ve done and see you for who . . .” He scraped a derisive glance up and down his person. “For . . . what you are. You’re a shadow of the man you used to be.”
“What does that make you, the one who turned me into that shadow, then?” he lashed.
A deep red spread across the other man’s cheeks and he briefly looked away. “This offering isn’t for you, Tremaine. It’s for Linnie. She just won’t understand the value of this gift until you’re gone.”
Without another word, McQuoid turned on his heel. The servant anticipated his master’s needs and drew the panel open so McQuoid could exit, leaving Tremaine.
Alone, he stared a moment at the envelope and then slowly tucked it inside the front of his jacket.
He’d had it all this day: He’d subverted an alliance between Culross and the McQuoids, and in doing so prevented McQuoid and his alliance at sea from coming after him.
He’d gotten the other men to have the construction of his ship restarted—immediately.
He had it all.
Why, then, did Tremaine’s victory leave him feeling hollow inside?
Something was amiss.
With her entire family strikingly taciturn or otherwise having taken their leave for the manor house, Linnie found herself conducting her own search for her husband and whoever had called him away.
Lord and Lady Abington’s servants proved useless.