you harmed her in any way…”
As if he would have harmed Nell. He worshiped the woman. He would sooner cut off his own hand than raise it against her. But that was none of the viscount’s concern. His marriage with Nell was private. It was between himself and Nell only. And it would not be ended so this pallid lord could take her for his own.
“One,” he began counting, “two. Leave.”
“No.”
The rage continued to boil as Sidmouth refused to retreat. Not even one step. Something inside Jack splintered for the first time since he had received the letter from Nell in which she had requested divorce. He stopped counting when he reached the viscount. His mind and his body were separated. His fist, with a will of its own, collided with Sidmouth’s nose.
There was the satisfying crunch of bone. Pain shot up his arm. He scarcely felt it. Blood spurted from the viscount’s face. His eyes were wide with shock as he clasped a hand over his bleeding nose, scarlet dripping through his fingers. Jack reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, withdrew his handkerchief, and whipped it at Sidmouth’s face.
“You are making a mess of my carpets, Sidmouth,” he told him dispassionately, feeling almost as if he watched the scene unfolding from another room.
The fury lingered within him. But he could not deny the sudden gratification rising. Hitting Sidmouth, drawing his blood, brought out the beast within him. In truth, he ought to have split the bastard in two for trespassing upon his wife. Time and distance did not matter. Nell was his marchioness, damn it all.
“Tom!”
Nell’s cry broke the shocked silence of the study. She raced across the chamber, in a shocking state of dishabille. Her dressing gown, nothing more. And though it was buttoned to her throat and the cream hem fluttered to the floor, Jack could not help but to take grim note of her bare feet and the manner in which she flew to her lover, throwing her arms around him.
Her hair was bound in a simple braid, worn over her shoulder. She had either learned of Sidmouth’s arrival in the midst of her toilette, or she could not be bothered with decency because her lover had already seen her thus. The implication of the latter had Jack flexing his aching fingers once more with a fresh urge to do violence.
She gasped as she gazed into her lover’s eyes. “Tom, darling, what happened to you?”
Tom darling.
He should never have gone away. Jack realized that now. He should have stayed where he was. Told her to hell with her ultimatums. He should have done anything other than what he had done.
“Needham punched me,” Tom whined, accusation in his nasally voice as he held Jack’s handkerchief to his gushing nose.
“My lord, how dare you?” She turned to Jack as she embraced her lover, as if to protect him from further blows. “You may have broken his nose, you beast!”
He hoped to God he had. It would serve Sidmouth right.
He flexed his fingers again. “I asked him to go, and he refused.”
Nell’s eyes widened. “That is no reason to attack him! My God, what is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with him? His wife—the woman he loved—had written to him with her intention to wed another man. According to what he had been able to glean from the servants upon his return, Nell and Sidmouth had been all but playing at husband and wife.
The thought made him ill.
It made him realize how Nell must have felt that long-ago night. At that awful, cursed house party. When she had entered his chamber. When she had caught him in flagrante delicto with Lady Billingsley. But what she had witnessed had not been what she had supposed.
And in this instance, he was quite certain Nell had been fucking Sidmouth. She held him in the way a lover would.
In the way she had once held him, damn it to hell.
“Needham?” Nell demanded then, her voice strident, cutting through his thoughts like a lash. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
“I will not have your lover beneath my roof,” he forced out. “I want him gone, my lady.”
Her nostrils flared. She was glaring at him as if she could slit his throat with nothing more than her eyes. “I want you gone, Needham.”
“Nell, my love,” Sidmouth spoke at last, caressing Nell’s spine in a motion that bespoke familiarity. “You must be calm, darling. It will not do to overset yourself.”
It required every modicum