Chapter 27
Jealous.
The words scalded his gut even more than the pain of knowing she had, in fact, gone behind his back and spoken with Windham.
One of the things Vincent had come to like about Emma, damn her, was that she did not tiptoe around him like half of London did. She called a spade a spade, and even when her voice went quiet, she never treated him like some ducal beast that needed soothing before it gored the furniture.
Relieving, usually.
At present, awfully inconvenient.
If he admitted to jealousy, he would have to explain why. And since he had no interest in handing her that particular knife, he reached for the first lie that still had polish on it.
“I am not jealous,” he said firmly.
Stepping forward, Emma searched his face. “I think you are.”
He stuffed his sapphire cufflinks into the bag and scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then stay!” she implored.
Finished, he slung the bag over his shoulder. “I’ll be back in a few days.”
He headed out of the room, forcing his eyes fixed ahead, unable—unwilling—to look at her.
Her accusation had struck a little too close to the mark for comfort. It stung down to his bones that his own grand speech about her remarrying had come back to haunt him.
Had he truly believed his own words?
“Your Grace?” Weston asked from the corridor, confused.
“Send for the carriage,” Vincent said firmly. “I’m returning to London this evening.”
“Is there an emergency, sir?”
“Just get the carriage here,” Vincent ignored the question and uttered his directive. “I will be away for a few days.”
“Yes, sir,” Weston nodded to a waiting footman who went off. “Please send word if you need anything. Safe travels.”
Benedict’s townhouse in Grosvenor Square had an ivory stone facade, three handsome stories above the lower ground floor, and enough polish on its brass knocker to blind a lesser man at noon.
Inside, the place was grand without flaunting.
The lower floors held an elegant dining room, a smaller drawing room, and a music parlor done up in the sort of taste Benedict would have loudly denied possessing.
Above that was a fully stocked library, a palatial music room, and Benedict’s study, where the man himself plucked a glass from a tray and set it before Vincent.
“Never thought to see you again today, old boy,” Benedict said, his ordinarily playful gaze narrowing. “Is all well at home?”
For a moment, Vincent considered lying.
Then he took the glass, swallowed a mouthful of burning amber, and muttered, “No. It seems Windham was right. He has been exchanging letters with my wife.”
Benedict’s brows climbed. “And how did you react to that?”
Vincent glared at him.
“Never mind,” Benedict grimaced, dropping into the chair opposite. “I can guess. If you had reacted with anything resembling grace, you would not be in my house drinking my whisky.”
Pressing the thick glass to his temple, Vincent told him everything.
Well, nearly everything. He left out the knife, Ballard’s study, and the small matter of almost bleeding to death during his own ball, but confessed enough: the forced marriage, the arrangement, the promised annulment after three months, Emma’s reluctant place in all of it.
When he finished, Benedict leaned back. “And now you’d rather not seek the annulment.”
“I…” Vincent set the glass on the table and gazed into the shifting amber depths of the drink. “I merely feel blindsided she would already be planning the next stage of her life when this one has scarcely begun.”
“Is that what she said?” Benedict asked. “Ad verbatim, that she was planning her new life?”
“No…” Vincent confessed; the word felt like he was regurgitating broken glass.
“Ah! So you assumed.”
Eyeing his friend over the rim of the glass, Vincent mumbled, “I expected this tedious line of questioning from our lawman Tomstrong, not you. Need I remind, it was you who offered I take advantage of that palatial boxing room at Jackson’s and work this devilish twitch from my blood.”
“Oh, we’re getting to that,” Benedict assured, rising. “But first, I mean to hammer home the point that for such an unflappable man, you sure are, well… flappable. I don’t think you are as untouched by this girl as you would have the rest of us believe.”
“I feel deceived,” Vincent groaned, rolling his eyes. “No, I’m not falling headlong into suffocating love like some poetry-drunk undergraduate.”
“Perhaps not… but I think you’re heading that way. Maybe you fooled yourself into trotting down the Much Ado about Nothing lane, or maybe the plot changed while you were busy pretending not to read it—”
“Yes, something did change,” Vincent interrupted, slamming the glass down too hard. “And now I’m considering taking Windham up on that offer for that Dawn Appointment.”
“Lord above…” Benedict sighed while pushing away from his chair. “Come on. Let’s get your sorry self to the gymnasium before you run off to do something apple-pated.”
Stripped to the waist and gloved, Vincent stepped into the square already simmering. Parliament had left him trapped for three days among old lords, new schemes, and men who spoke of taxing the poor as calmly as ordering claret.
But beneath all that sat Emma’s letters to Windham, burning hotter than he wanted to admit. Jealousy, betrayal, pride—whatever name he gave it, the feeling needed somewhere to go.
The first rounds passed in a blur of sweat, breath, and the hard crack of leather against flesh. Vincent came in too fast at first, letting temper drive his fists until Benedict’s steady footwork forced sense back into him.
By the fifth round, he knew his friend was not trying to beat him so much as tire the anger out of him.
By the tenth, Vincent’s chest burned, sweat dripped into his eyes, and Benedict finally left his middle open for one fatal heartbeat. Vincent pounced.
The baron stumbled into the ropes and flung both hands up, “I give, I give, I need my ribs unbroken to breathe! Good god, man, are your hands made from anvils? And you claim you don’t spar?”
Catching the knot of his glove between his teeth, Vincent tugged it loose and wiped the wet hair from his eye. “Forgive me. I had a great deal of irritation to work off.”
“Ah, yes, the five-foot spitfire with red hair and green eyes.” Benedict rubbed his side, grinning through the pain. “I would suggest working off that irritation in the bedchamber, but that would make a mockery of your grand, noble plan to set her free.”
“Perhaps that is your modus operandi,” Vincent cracked his neck while reaching for his water, “but not every war can be ended between a lady’s thighs.”
“And that is the precise reason not to marry,” Benedict mock-shuddered. “All problems ought to be solved there. Makes life far tidier.”
“Spoken like a true rake,” Vincent snorted.
Easing down to the floor, he drew his knees up and let the bottle dangle from his hand. Now that his blood had cooled, shame crept in and sat heavy.
Their first-ever quarrel as husband and wife. And he’d made a thorough hash of it. Worse still, what right had he to be so furious at Emma for doing the very thing he had, in so many words, assured her she would one day be free to do?
Because I don’t want to see her with another man. Especially not that golden-haired toff.
Vincent had never considered himself a violent man. Efficient, perhaps. Decisive when necessary. But the very thought of Windham near Emma, taking her hand, reading her words, imagining himself the next lord in her bed… set something black moving under his skin.
Where the devil had this possessiveness come from? They should have sated their lust by now; he’d all but taken her already. So why this all-consuming, ever-growing obsession with this chit?
Christ, she was no chit, was she.
“So, what’s your grand plan here then, aye?” Benedict asked, dangling against the ropes. “There’s an event coming up, and you’ll both be expected to attend.”
“That blasted Hawthorne Park Garden Party,” Vincent groaned.
“A staple of the Season,” Benedict shrugged a single shoulder. “The crème de la crème of the ton shall be present, all ready to stare holes through London’s most reclusive duke and his sudden duchess.”
“For more gossip.”
“For sustenance,” Benedict corrected, plucking a towel from his bag. “Deny the ton a scandal and half of Mayfair would perish before supper.”
Getting to his feet, Vincent rolled his neck one last time. “So, what would the great Baron of Tomstrong do? Feed them or let them starve?”
With his brows so high they almost vanished in his hairline, Benedict sent him a rakish grin. “You’re asking me?”
Rolling his eyes, Vincent shook his head, “Coming from a man who was caught tangled in a curtain when he ran from tupping a lord’s wife—”
“Allegedly!”
“—who then wore that same sheet as a toga to the next week’s masquerade—”
Benedict flung his towel at Vincent. “Allegedly.”
Shaking his head, Vincent once again wondered what to do with Emma—and felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under him when nothing came to mind.
For once, he had no plan. No tidy route. No villain to hunt, no lock to pick, no ledger to steal.
Only a wife he’d pushed away, a marquess he wanted to break in half, and a scandal waiting at Hawthorne Park.