Her Missing Marquess (Wicked Husbands #5) - Scarlett Scott Page 0,7

room which had not changed much since he had last used it, aside from the notable absence of any of his personal effects. There were more relics of his father’s than he had recalled, and far too many pastorals and hunting scenes gracing the walls. The furniture was all from last century. And the stale scent on the air suggested Nell had not used it whilst he had been gone. Small mercies, he supposed.

“I do not understand, Needham,” Sidmouth said now. “Nell wrote to you of our plans, and she said you agreed.”

“I agreed we needed to speak,” he corrected, irritated at the man’s insistence upon familiarity. “I agreed I would return so we could discuss the nature of our marriage. However, I did not agree to a divorce so she could marry you.”

Sidmouth looked like a lad watching his puppy being drowned in a river. “That is not what Nell said.”

“Perhaps Nell should have read the letter I sent her more carefully,” he suggested, trying and failing to tamp down his rage. “Perhaps you ought to find a lady who is not already married to become your wife.”

Sidmouth pinned him with a glare, teeming with the same fury Jack had no doubt was reflected in his eyes. “You abandoned her.”

“I returned.”

“She despises you.”

Hearing this news from his wife’s lover made Jack flinch. Of course, he knew she hated him. She had already told him so. And he knew all the reasons why.

His lip curled. “That is unfortunate for her. However, marriages have been existing regardless of the tender emotions of the men and women involved for centuries. A loveless union is hardly anything new.”

Sidmouth’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I love her, damn you. Let her go. Let her be happy.”

Would Sidmouth make Nell happy? The notion gave Jack pause. Somehow, it had been easier to ignore the relationship his wife had built with the viscount before the man stood before him.

“You are in good company,” he told the viscount grimly. “I love her, too.”

Though the emotion did him not one whit of good.

Sidmouth frowned. “If you love her, you have the devil’s own way of showing it. No man who would spend the last few years on the Continent rather than at Nell’s side is worthy of her.”

Jack had never been worthy of her. He knew that. When they had first met, he had been a no-account wastrel more concerned with getting his prick wet and drinking himself to oblivion than aught else. Not much had changed after they had married, aside from his falling deeper into drink and his determination to remain faithful to their vows.

A determination which had failed him.

He had kissed another woman. That it had not been intentional did not matter. His self-loathing remained an acid in his gut, eating away at him.

“It was at Nell’s decree that I left,” he bit out, wondering why he bothered to defend himself to Sidmouth.

He owed the viscount nothing. Whilst Sidmouth owed him an apology for trespassing.

“Can you blame her?” Sidmouth sneered back. “You were always a skirt-chasing carouser, but what you did to Nell is beyond the pale. You could have spared her the humiliation of bedding another woman beneath her own roof. And one of her friends, no less.”

“Yes, a dreadful thing, is it not?” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice then. “One’s friend and one’s spouse?”

The viscount’s cheeks went ruddy at the thinly veiled suggestion in Jack’s words. “We were never friends, Needham. Indeed, I would be hard-pressed to suppose you friends with anything other than the bottle.”

That barb hit too close to the truth. Though in fact, they had been friends. No longer.

“You have precisely one minute to get out of this house, Sidmouth,” he growled. “Remain a second longer at your peril. As it is, keeping myself from thrashing you to within an inch of your life is costing me all the control I have remaining.”

But Sidmouth did not go.

“I will not leave Nell.”

Rage coursed through him. He strode forward, toward Sidmouth. His every intention to act the gentleman fled. “You have no bloody choice, Sidmouth.”

Sidmouth was not intimidated. He stood stoic. “What happened to your face, Needham?”

“None of your damned concern,” he gritted from between clenched teeth. “You have until the count of ten.”

“I am not going anywhere until I am reassured of her welfare.” Sidmouth stood stubborn, unrelenting. “I would wager those scratches on your face are from her, are they not? By God, if