Mr. Tobin raised a brow at their hostess. “Indeed, Nell? Others would swear it’s the other way around.”
It was Maggie’s glum experience that neither women nor men pleased one another. “How can anyone truly please another?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“They say pleasure can be taught,” Mr. Tobin said, his eyes and tone suggesting an entirely naughty meaning hidden behind his polite words and gentlemanly exterior.
He wanted to bed her. Dear heavens, once she would have been too naïve to note the subtle hints. But Simon had changed that for her. Now she knew the workings of men and women, and it all just left her feeling horridly empty.
“Perhaps,” she allowed, “but only if one wants to be taught.”
Mr. Tobin inclined his head and retreated a few inches, apparently understanding that she was not a society wife ripe for the plucking. “Eloquently spoken, my lady.”
“Shall we have a drawing room game?” Nell asked their small assembly at large then, trying to steer the conversation in a safer direction.
“I bloody well despise games of all sort,” offered Mr. Sedgewick, a well-known artist whose talent rivaled that of Burne-Jones. He was as thin as he was tall, his slight frame belied by a raffish air.
Maggie laughed at his response, grateful for the distraction of Nell’s house party. At least here she could tamp down the worry, the fear, the ache in her heart for a time. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.
“I’ve heard you don’t despise chamber games, Sedgewick,” ribbed Lord Montford, whose most recent poetry volume had set tongues wagging and books flying from the shelves.
The ladies tittered and the men snickered.
Mr. Sedgewick pressed a hand to his heart, affecting an air of affront. “Truly, Montford, I’m shocked at the suggestion. I fear you’ve got it all bollixed up, and the man in question is truly Mr. Tobin.”
Nell made a dismissive gesture with her hand, ever the imperious hostess. “Gentleman, please do calm yourselves. I’ll not have blood drawn in my drawing room unless it’s for a worthy cause.”
“Pray tell us, Nell. What is your idea of a worthy cause?” Mr. Tobin gave Maggie a rascal’s grin. “I’ve a notion to impress Lady Sandhurst, and if bloodletting is required, I’ve no compunction.”
Oh dear. She supposed she ought to have known that Nell’s gathering might take a wicked turn. But she simply wasn’t prepared for flirting and feigned courting. She wished she could simply stop loving Simon as easily as he’d disappeared. Life would have been much simpler. Easier, for certain.
“Poetry impresses me,” she returned. As did a strong man, an honorable man. One willing to fight for her. Simon had not fought. He’d given up and rode away. Perhaps it was better in the end. He never could have loved her, just as she never could have stopped loving him. Love had proven to give her all the joy of a festering wound.
“A recitation is in order,” Nell demanded. “Jonny, you must recite one of your poems for us if Lady S. shall not.”
Mr. Tobin obliged her by standing. “Very well. You win, Nell, just as you always do.”
But before he could begin, a commotion could be heard just beyond the drawing room. A door flung open. Lady Needham’s butler stood there, attempting to bar the path of an unseen foe behind him.
“Lord Sandhurst,” he announced grimly.
Maggie’s head swirled. It couldn’t be. Had she heard correctly? A gasp caught in her throat as the butler moved to reveal the man standing behind him. He was tall, slightly disheveled and most certainly not wearing evening finery. In fact, he was muddied and looked as if he’d just slid from his horse after a two-hour ride. He was thinner than she recalled, his face a trifle more gaunt and covered in whiskers, though handsome as ever.
It was him. Like a ghost, he loomed over them, his green gaze scanning the faces of those in attendance until he reached her. The breath seeped from her lungs. Simon had finally returned.
Nell was the first to react. “Sandhurst, whatever are you doing here?”
“I’m here for my wife,” he all but growled.
He had come for her. She wanted to rejoice, run into his arms and kiss him. But she remained seated, wary, watching him. Because he was too late. Far too late in remembering he had a wife. And she had already closed and locked the door inside herself. She wasn’t about to give him the key.
Simon was in a grim mood. He’d just had to ride across the countryside in the dark and muck to find Maggie. He was cold and miserable whilst there she sat, looking brilliantly beautiful in a black evening gown with diamonds in her red hair and a man at her side. By God. He knew he’d been gone for a time, but did that give his wife the right to cavort with a gaggle of lecherous poets? Of course it didn’t. He was going to rip off one of Tobin’s arms and beat him with the bloody thing.
Nell was gaping at him as if he’d grown a second head atop his shoulders. He wanted to shake the woman for her interference, the audacity she had to spirit his wife away. He had finally been able to return to Denver House. It had taken him some time, some railing and raging and bottles of whiskey. But he had returned because he’d known Maggie waited there for him. He had needed her sweetness, her warm embrace, the comfort of her ready passion and easy caring. Yes, by the time he had fought off the demons chasing him down and the fog of whiskey had lifted from his addled mind, he’d known he’d made a terrible mistake in leaving her in the first place. He needed her more than he needed air to breathe.
And then she had not been there. Coming home to Denver House, with its gaggle of ghosts, had been hell enough. Without Maggie there to welcome him, he’d been lost. At least Mrs. Keynes had known her whereabouts, for he may have well and truly lost his bloody mind if he hadn’t discovered where to find her.
So here he was, cooling his heels while the company stared at him in dazed bemusement. He wasn’t accustomed to being the odd man out, but none of that mattered now. He had come for his wife. He very well couldn’t not have her. He needed her. Desperately, he’d come to realize. He needed her to make him laugh again, to shore the loose pieces inside himself. But she remained seated, looking more as if she were about to leap into Tobin’s bloody embrace than his.
Damn it all. He’d returned to his senses too late.
“Welcome back, Sandhurst,” Nell said at last into the shocked silence that had descended over the drawing room’s inhabitants.
“Thank you.” The words felt rusty as he said them. He had been alone for many weeks, speaking to no one, lost in grief and blame and drink. “I apologize for intruding on your merriment.” There, that ought to do. He realized he’d bungled things a bit upon his entrance.
“Think nothing of it,” Nell said, smiling oddly at him. “You know I don’t stand on ceremony.”
Devil take it, did he look that poorly? He supposed he ought to have allowed his man to shave him. Suddenly, the audience felt as if it were going to rob his breath. He wanted to speak to Maggie. Alone. A glance in her direction found her watching him stiffly, her expression indecipherable.
“Lady Sandhurst,” he said to her, “might I have a word?”
Christ, he couldn’t wait to dispense with the formality, to take her in his arms and bury his face in her soft curls, to kiss her sweet mouth, to lose himself inside her body. He was expecting her compliance, so when she murmured something that sounded suspiciously like “no”, he was certain he’d misheard her.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, noting she remained immobile.
“No,” she said again, more loudly this time so that there was no mistaking it.
She was denying him, by God. He stared at her, dumbfounded. This was not what he’d imagined. Not at all. She turned her head away, gazing down into her lap as though she couldn’t bear to look at him. Tobin was smirking at him as if he’d already taken her to bed. Yes, he was going to tear off one of the bastard’s limbs, he decided, starting forward.
Perhaps he was a madman. He didn’t
know precisely who he was any longer, but he did know that he wasn’t about to let some fop of a poet run off with his wife. Who the devil did he think he was, sitting so near to her? Why, his bloody thigh was nearly touching her skirts.
“Haven’t you ever heard of propriety?” he asked Tobin, infuriated by the man’s insufferable air of smugness. “Your poetry is drivel, sir. Complete shite.”
He heard a few gasps at his lack of manners. He didn’t care. He’d been through nearly all the circles of hell, and he damn well wanted what he’d come here for. He stopped before Maggie, who was once again gazing at him with large violet eyes as if she didn’t know who he was and what he was about to do. But he supposed she was in good company, as neither did he.
He held out a hand to her. “Come with me, Maggie.”
Tobin stood, puffing out his chest in a barnyard cock style. “Leave the lady alone, Sandhurst.”
“Mind your own bloody business, Tobin.” He looked back down at Maggie, forcing her to meet his gaze. He didn’t want to plead before everyone, but bloody hell he would. “Please, Maggie.”
“Whatever it is that you need to tell her can be said right here,” Tobin demanded, an annoying fly buzzing in his ear despite repeated attempts to swat it.
“No,” he said slowly, turning to his nemesis. “It cannot.”
Forget the arm. Before he even realized what he was about, he took a lusty swing at Tobin’s chin. And connected with a satisfying crunch of knuckles on bone. It smarted, but he was too pleased with his handiwork to pay it much mind. Tobin keeled backward, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Maggie gasped and shot to her feet, her eyes snapping with accusatory fire. “You’ve knocked Mr. Tobin out, you lout.”
Well, bloody hell. That wasn’t quite the response he’d been hoping for from her either, but it seemed that he didn’t have much choice. If he wanted to speak with her alone, there was only one way for it to get done. He bent, pressed his shoulder into her midriff and his arm behind her skirts, and hauled her into the air.
“Put me down at once,” she demanded, though her voice was a trifle muffled. She actually had the temerity to knock him on the arse with her fist.
He ignored her. He also ignored the men and women rushing to their feet and trying to stay his progress from the room. He wouldn’t allow it. Nothing was stopping him now. He may have completely ruined what little emotion Maggie had once felt for him, but he had come too far to offer an olive branch now.
Nell threw herself in his path, twin patches of scarlet staining her cheeks. “Sandhurst, you cannot simply carry her off as if you’re a Hun.”
“Of course I can,” he said simply, gesturing with his free hand to demonstrate the faulty quality of her logic. He already was carrying Maggie off, after all.
“Don’t be an oaf,” she said, walking backward as she continued to try—unsuccessfully—to halt his movement. “You mustn’t hurt her.”
“I promise not to hurt her,” he said solemnly, frowning at Nell. “You must know I’d never do that.”
She studied his face, her expression pinched, before nodding. “Very well. Take her to the study if you must.”
Maggie began pummeling his arse anew. “I don’t wish to speak with you,” she called out.
“You’re not,” he told her. “You’re speaking with the floor.” That simply earned him another swat. Good. Perhaps she wasn’t as immune to him as she would pretend. With a nod of thanks to Nell, he hauled his wife from the room.
Her husband was a maddening, arrogant, rude, heartless, blustering fool. Maggie pummeled him with all her might as she hung upside down. He’d tossed her over his shoulder as if she were a bundle of rags and was carting her about Nell’s home as if he were a vagabond about to abscond with the family silver. He wasn’t about to take her anywhere, not if she had a say in it. She gave him another sound swat as the blood rushed to her head and dizziness began to settle over her. Her ears hummed.
“Sandhurst, cease this nonsense. You’re behaving like a barbarian,” she shouted. Dear Lord, the servants were sure to be witnessing this inglorious display. Mortification heated her cheeks.
“Perhaps I am a barbarian,” he growled, stalking over a threshold and kicking a door closed at his back.
Good heavens. They were alone. “You certainly are,” she agreed. “Now cease carrying me about and put me down.”
As suddenly as he’d snatched her up, he crouched down. Her feet met with the carpeted floor of Nell’s study. At last. Heaving a breath, she stood and attempted to shake her dress back into order. Her silk was hopelessly crumpled. Her hands trembled as she righted the fall of her skirts. She was afraid to look up at him, afraid that doing so would ruin her defenses.
She still loved him. That much had not changed, even if he would never love her in return. She still ached at the way he’d left her, with no word, no warning, not even a change of heart. Not a single letter.
“There you are, on your feet again.” His voice was harsh with an indefinable emotion. “Why the devil won’t you look at me?”
She clenched her fingers. “You’re thundering at me.”
“Bloody hell,” he all but yelled, quite proving her point. “I’m doing no such thing.”
Ever arrogant, ever Simon. Bracing herself, she gazed up at him at last. “I won’t be hollered at, Sandhurst.”
“Cease calling me by my title, will you?” He frowned down at her, ferocious in his pique. “I won’t have you acting as if we’re strangers.”
“But we are strangers,” she countered, allowing her gaze to run over his face, at once hauntingly familiar and yet also different. He had not eaten well in his absence. His cheeks were nearly sunken, his powerful frame reduced to a wiriness he hadn’t before possessed. His hair was longer than ever, his whiskers in desperate need of trimming. He looked, for himself, awful. But yet still so very handsome. Still so very beloved. “I am sure I never knew you at all, my lord.”
His eyes burned into hers, unrelenting. “Have you forgotten just how well you know me?”
His question stirred a month-long-buried ache within her. She didn’t want to think about making love with him, for it would reduce her to a puddle of weakness. She couldn’t be weak before him now. He had left her, hurt her. She would not forgive so hastily. If ever she could.
She raised her chin, a small show of defiance. “There are other ways of knowing a man. Those are the ways I speak of, and I certainly never knew you as I’d thought I did.”
“I daresay the same could be said for you, madam,” he returned, his tone as cold as Wenham Lake ice. “I’ve scarcely been gone, and already you’re cavorting with poets and rakes.”
She gasped at his effrontery. “Cavorting? How dare you?”
“What else would you call it, my dear?” He caught her elbow and dragged her against his body in a punishing grip. “I need to know something. Is Tobin bedding you?”
His crudeness took her by surprise. She had dreamt of Simon returning to her, but she had not dreamt of this cruel stranger with the taunts and the dead eyes. He had come back to her as the same man he’d been in his study that awful night, someone almost frightening to her.
“Of course not,” she denied. “How could you suggest such a horrid thing?”
“I’m a man, darling. I know the ways of the world. Why would you come to Nell’s if you weren’t seeking a man for your bed once I’d gone?”
The “darling” he’d used for her sounded empty, a mere husk. If she had been hurt before, she was devastated now, crushed by his accusations and his desire to see the worst in her. “I am not Lady Billingsley,” she told him fiercely. “Nell has told me everything, you know.” It had been a small comfort, learning that the paragon who had taken Simon away from her was, in fact, a mere mortal after all. A deceptive, manipulative mortal who had done her best to ruin that which was not hers. “I would not betray what we shared.”
“I’m more than aware that you’re nothing like
Eleanor.” His stare remained hard upon her, his touch hot even through the layers of her gown and undergarments. “You speak as if our marriage is at an end. We are inextricably bound to one another, Maggie.”
She shook her head, sadness threatening to crush her heart. “We are wed, yes. But there’s no reason why we cannot continue to live separate lives just as we’ve done throughout most of our union.”
When she would have extricated herself from his touch, he held fast. “To hell with living separate lives. I forbid it.”
She had a notion to knock him over the head with a heavy object. His superciliousness knew no bounds. Had he truly believed she would fling herself into his arms when he had treated her as if she were no more significant to him than a piece of furniture? “You can’t simply return after disappearing for an entire month and expect me to act as if you’ve never been gone.”
“I didn’t disappear.” His brows snapped together, making him appear even more grim than he had before. “I took some time to get my bloody head back into working order.”
Did he not realize how agonizingly long the month had been during which she’d had no word, no hope he’d ever come back to her? She searched his gaze, trying to understand him. “You left me without word.”
“I needed to, Maggie. After what happened the night of Eleanor’s death, I didn’t trust myself not to hurt you.” The admission appeared to be difficult for him to make. His expression was pained, his voice tinged with something like regret.
But her ice would not melt so easily. “Why could you not have at least left me a letter? Some sort of explanation as to where you’d gone? When or if you’d return? I feared the worst.”
“I wasn’t thinking properly. Everything was a jumble in my mind, but the last thing I ever wanted was to do you harm. I had to leave as quickly as possible. I didn’t trust myself, not after what had happened with Eleanor and not after I practically threw you to the floor in my study.”
Her Lovestruck Lord: 2 (Wicked Husbands) Page 19