The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife (Lords of the Matrix Club #1)

by Jen YatesNZ

  Unable to sit still any longer, Rogan leapt once more to his feet and began pacing, his mind a raging mess of thoughts. She was right. But he couldn’t countenance it. Who on earth did a man ask to play such a role for him? How would he not want to murder the bastard afterwards? What if he demanded always to—share? How could he even broach such a scenario to his innocent wife, much less subject her to it?

  He couldn’t. He loved her too much.

  ‘I imagine you’re no stranger to such arrangements? In establishments like this they are relatively common—and with proclivities like yours you would have to be familiar with establishments like this—unless you’ve lived your life like a monk.’

  He’d never blushed so much in his damned life and certainly couldn’t understand why he was now, in the presence of a woman who’d sold her body for the pleasure of others, times without number.

  ‘Of course you haven’t,’ she went on when he didn’t answer. ‘But you’re selfish enough to inflict such a life on Jassie because you can’t countenance sharing her with another in order to make a happy marriage between the two of you possible.’

  Enough!

  ‘Dammit! Do you have nothing else to offer?’ he snarled, coming abruptly to his feet.

  ‘The only thing I can see that would help is some sort of physical intervention—’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  Dropping a small purse of gold on the table at her side he strode out of the room, snatched his hat and gloves from the stand inside the front door and let himself out into the street.

  Anger fueled his momentum down Half Moon Street. If he let go of anger there was nothing but desperation left and he wasn’t yet ready to deliver himself back into the black and destructive pit of hopelessness where he’d spent the last week. On Piccadilly he hailed a cab and directed it to Knightsborough’s house, the Matrix Club on Chapel Street.

  As he fumbled in his pocket for coin to pay the jarvey, he looked up at the house and a wave of revulsion washed over him. There was nothing he wanted within those walls, nothing that could fill the empty places in his soul or hide those places from his consciousness any more.

  Nothing could do that but Jassie. Jassie was in Neave and if she’d been in London he’d not seek her out anyway. But he had to do something to assuage the storm of fury, frustration and despair that wanted nothing so much as to avenge itself—somewhere—on someone.

  ‘To hell with it,’ he muttered then dropped several coins into the jarvey’s out-stretched palm. ‘Take me back to the corner of Piccadilly and St. James Street.’

  Maybe by the time he got there he’d have decided where to go.

  Gentleman Jackson’s? He could pummel it out of some poor unsuspecting bastard and probably kill him in the white heat of his aberration. In fact, he was pretty certain the kind of fight he felt inclined towards could best be found in a dark alleyway and had nothing to do with anything gentlemanly.

  Night had fallen by the time they’d maneuvered through the traffic on Piccadilly and as he alighted he thought he might just get his wish for real. Only a fool walked the streets at night, especially when everything about him from his dress to his mien screamed wealth and privilege. The fact he carried a knife in his boot and a hunger for violence in his heart would not be immediately apparent.

  Let them try. The thought was a snarl that almost erupted into words as he passed a rough looking cove whose shifty gaze followed him from beneath a grimy slouch cap. The scowl on his own face must have been deterrent enough for he made no move and Rogan came at last to St James Street. Since he was probably not in a suitable frame of mind for the boxing saloon it would have to be White’s.

  And alcohol. It was all that was left. As he approached the Club a carriage pulled up and a man alighted and when he stepped into the light shining from the bay window Rogan recognized his cousin, the Duke of Wolverton.

  ‘Wolf!’

  He turned and immediately a white smile slashed across his dark good looks.

  ‘Windermere. What the devil are you doing risking your life to the footpads of London?’

  ‘Taunting them to do their worst.’

  He let an evil grin twist his mouth and hoped he’d fool Dom that he was just talking up air.

  Wolverton’s brows twitched and his grin flashed again.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s go and find a game. I plan to fleece you blind tonight.’

  ‘You’ll have to get me drunk first,’ Rogan drawled back.

  Wolverton clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Oh I’m sure that could be arranged,’ he laughed, and they entered the Club together, Rogan welcoming the distraction and the sense of being able to distance himself from the ugly churnings of his mind.

  They’d settled into a game with Lord Cholmondeley and Viscount Stapleton. The brandy flowed and Lady Luck had been as fickle as in fable, settling on the shoulder of first one and then another among them. But as the night grew late Wolverton began gaining the upper hand as he’d threatened right at the start and Rogan was sinking into a pleasantly numb place where nothing much mattered and he could forget most anything that did.

  A buffet on his shoulder and a loud drunken voice abruptly shattered his expensive-brandy-induced nirvana.

  ‘Windermere! Heard you finally got leg-shackled to the delectable Carlisle chit. What have you done with her? If you don’t want to be home tupping her after all perhaps I should go calling? She at Windermere House?’

  In a blinding instant Rogan erupted to his feet and gripped the offensive Lord Cockington by his neck cloth, pulling it tight until the man’s eyes bulged.

  ‘I say, Windermere,’ he croaked. ‘Only funning, old chap!’

  Wolverton rose, a little unsteadily to his feet, and carefully unclasped Rogan’s fingers from Cockington’s neck cloth.

  ‘He’ll apologize tomorrow. And so will you. If that don’t settle it prepare to meet us both on the field of honor.’

  He then turned to the two men still at the table.

  ‘That’ll be it for tonight, gentlemen. Windermere and I are leaving now.’

  Rogan struggled out of Dominic’s grip, turned his back on Cockington and waited like a stone statue while he settled with Cholmondeley and Stapleton. Then he followed his cousin out of the Club, feeling as if he walked in the center of a dark smothering cloud.

  With the assistance of the footman and the doorman from the Club they climbed into Wolverton’s carriage. Neither spoke until they were settled before the fire in Dominic’s study in Wolverton House on Bruton Street, a large pot of coffee between them.

  They’d downed a cup each of the rich brew when Dominic said, ‘Time to open the budget, Rogue. We’ve known each other all our lives and I’d have thought we knew pretty much all there is to know about one another. But there’s a dark part of you that you hold close to yourself; a dark place within you where you shut yourself off, even from your friends; from those who love you. Like your wife. You know my deepest ugliest secret. It’s probably even quite widely known that I’m hopelessly in love with your wife and would have made her mine long since—if she’d have had me—regardless that her heart is irrevocably yours.

  ‘I can deduce that whatever drives you to fuck up your life and the lives of those you love, has something to do with Jassie, or women in general, or a woman in particular.—For God’s sake, Rogue, what the devil goes on with you? You’re finally married to that woman and what are you doing?

  ‘It would seem that you strive to be where she is not! When I saw you together at the theatre that night the wall of resistance around yourself was almost tangible and no matter how bright her smile, how gay her laughter, the pain, the apprehension, the longing in her eyes when she looked at you was cruelly obvious. Probably not to anyone else, but to someone who loves her and only wants to see her happy, it was agony to watch.’

  ‘I ought to call you out.’

  Rogan stared moodily into the fire, trying to find the anger he should be
feeling at Dominic’s declaration of his love for Jassie. But the ugly fire of jealousy that had fueled his actions since leaving Half Moon Street, seemed to have sputtered out, leaving only cold, dead ashes.

  ‘Is that all you can say? If you doubted my honor in the matter we would’ve fought long since.’

  Wolverton fell back in his chair with a huff of exasperation.

  ‘God knows,’ he added, dropping his head back further to stare up at the ceiling, ‘I’d probably relish the chance to go a few rounds with you and hopefully punch some sense into you—or finish you off so I could have your wife. Much good it’d do me when it’s you she wants, you she loves. So—as there’s nothing else I can give her to make her happy I have to try and give her—you!’

  Rogan continued to stare at the fire, hatred for himself burning deeper, gnawing at his guts—like maggots on rotten meat. The analogy was particularly apt, he thought hazily. He was rotten—no other word for it.

  Damn the coffee.—It was allowing him to think and feel again just when he’d reached a state of numbness that had been quite restful. Half an hour ago he’d not have registered the pain in Wolverton’s voice or felt the depths of his own shame for inflicting it. But what could he say? What could he change?

  He was as he was.

  ‘You need more coffee,’ Dominic stated. ‘Drink up and answer me some questions.’

  He watched closely while Rogan drank down more of the coffee then unsteadily set the cup back on its saucer.

  ‘Whaddya want ta know.’

  ‘I want to know why you allowed Jassie to reach the age of twenty-five before taking her to wife when you’ve loved her all your life. I want to know what changed and finally brought about that marriage so precipitately. And I want to know why you’re not with her now; why you’re drinking yourself into a stupor night after night and adding fuel to the gossip mill that is already grinding exceedingly fine without you feeding it yet more grist. I want to know what the fuck is wrong with you, Windermere!’

  That again? Was this where he had to tell his story yet again? Expose the truth of who he was to his cousin and best friend and risk that friendship? Who would pick him up out of the gutter if not His Grace, the Duke of Wolverton? Who had more right to know the answer to the questions he posed than Dominic who’d loved Jassie so honorably and so hopelessly for so long?

  ‘I’m damned,’ he growled at last.

  ‘Why? How?’ Dominic demanded.

  Rogan gulped the rest of his coffee, replaced his cup then sat forward in his chair with elbows on his knees and head in his hands. It should be easy now. He’d told the damned story so many times in the last few weeks but still the words wouldn’t form in his brain, let alone pass his lips.

  ‘Answer me one question then,’ Dominic said patiently. ‘What stopped you from offering for Jassie all those years?’

  And so the story began to pour from him once again, encouraged by questions from Dominic, until Rogan lost himself in the telling and spared nothing. In the end it was easy, his tendency to over-think and censor as he talked was completely obliterated by the excessive amount of alcohol floating in his blood, the warmth of the fire and the realization there was nothing he couldn’t tell Wolverton and no one he trusted more unless it was Jassie herself. He only stumbled into silence when he arrived at the point of his visit to Madame Lady Bouvier.

  Dominic waited while Rogan collected himself, his green eyes watchful and filled with shadows. What the hell was he thinking? He’d said little enough while Rogan had spewed his guts like some puling little fool still in the nursery. He didn’t want to say any more. The futility of it, the utter despair that had sent him reeling back into the street from Madame Lady Bouvier’s house was lurking, waiting to engulf him once again.

  ‘And did the Madame have any words of wisdom for you?’

  Dominic’s words were quiet, almost gentle, as if he knew the pain inherent in the answer.

  Rogan caught back a snarl, turning it into a growl of assent, then watched as a log fell apart in the grate, its center glowing with a fiery echo of the fury in his heart.

  ‘What?’

  ‘First she suggested I could ask someone else to sire my son—on Jassie.’

  ‘I take it that met with a brick wall of resistance?’

  Too restless to stay sitting any longer, Rogan surged, albeit unsteadily, to his feet and began prowling about the room, fingering the curios that every Duke since the first had collected on their world travels and perched in peculiar places about the room.

  ‘What else did she suggest?’ Dominic persisted, his words slow and careful as if coaxing a reluctant child.

  Rogan scowled at him then came back to lean on the mantel and kick at the grate with his boot.

  ‘Rogue? You might as well spill this. It’s only a tiny crumb after all the rest.’

  ‘You never did know how to leave a man any pride, did you, Your Grace?’

  ‘Resorting to name-calling never worked either,’ Dominic bit straight back, a wry twist to his mouth.

  Rogan dragged a hand through his hair then collapsed back into his chair.

  ‘She thought the cycle of my behavior needed to be broken and for that to happen a third party is needed. The idea of someone listening outside our door while I make love to my wife was—is anathema to me. Then she had an even better idea,’ he finished bitterly and fell to staring moodily into the smoldering embers of the fire again.

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That I—we—should ask someone we trust to join us,—ménage à trois, no less. It needs to be a man who is capable of overpowering me should I become physically agitated and she thought it would be more acceptable to Jassie if that man was to make love to her also, rather than just watch. It would seem less—more—Damn it!’

  The jagged scar down the side of Dominic’s face gleamed livid white against the darker hue of his skin.

  ‘It could work,’ he said quietly.

  ‘You think?’ The words erupted out of Rogan as he felt the fury gathering in his chest again, like a terrible festering bubo at the point of rupture.

  Dominic sighed, twisted his long fingers about the scrollwork on the arms of his chair then stood slowly and stretched like a large lazy beast.

  ‘Enough, I think,’ he said as his arms dropped back to his sides. ‘Our brains are too fuddled to think clearly tonight. Thank you for trusting me with—your story, Rogue. My head is now filled with a thousand thoughts and questions but any more is best left for tomorrow when we’re both a little more—lucid. I’ll get Grigg to show you to a room and we’ll leave any further discussion for the morning. We’ll think better then.’ For a moment his hand rested affectionately on Rogan’s shoulder then he added, ‘I have a much better understanding now of what drives you, Rogue. Thank you again for trusting me.’

  The day was well advanced when they met again over the breakfast table. Patchett, the Duke’s valet had attended Rogan and had come bearing a glass of cloudy liquid very similar to that which Deacon had prepared for him yesterday morning. He’d downed it without a peep and gratefully submitted to his other ministrations and if he still felt like a hunted fox who’d run into a blind dene and was all out of options at least he was clean-shaved and his neck cloth had been washed, ironed and expertly tied. He felt marginally back in control of his faculties.

  Dominic already sat at the table, the morning paper in his hands. He peered at Rogan over its tops.

  ‘Morning, Rogue. You’re looking remarkably chipper for someone who imbibed as much of the hard stuff as you did last night.’

  Rogan grimaced and surveyed the array of dishes on the sideboard. The aromas of bacon, hot toast and coffee made his mouth water and his stomach groan. When had he eaten last?

  ‘Well, Boney is finally on his way to St. Helena where he should have been put in the first place. Apparently the harbors at Brixham and Plymouth have been crowded with boats full of sightseers hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous one
-time Emperor. Amazing how quickly some can forget the thousands of good men of many nationalities whose lives were cut short because the Allies didn’t have the sense to incarcerate him safely the first time around. Pray we are not so careless this time.’

  Rogan settled at the table with a plate of bacon, eggs and fried potato cakes.

  ‘The little upstart should be stood against a wall and shot. No other man in history has caused more loss of life. He should be treated no better than a damned murderer.’

  Dominic folded the paper and laid it aside and they continued to discuss the brutal effects of the twenty years of constant warfare on the countries involved and how Britain in particular was left with her economy in ruins.

  ‘It’s where you should focus your energy now, Rogue,’ Dominic said, as they took their cups of coffee along the hall to the Duke’s study.

  Ensconced once again in the chairs where they’d sat last night, Rogan responded, ‘I agree. It’s time to take my seat in the House and accept my responsibilities—as my father did. But I have to do something about my marriage first or the gossip-mill will effectively scuttle anything worthwhile I might try to do.—I’m at the end of my rope, Dom. There’s nowhere left to turn.’

  ‘Except perhaps to trust your wife—who loves you unconditionally.’

  Rogan swirled the last of his coffee relentlessly round in his cup, then he looked up and directly into Wolverton’s dark green gaze.

  ‘And have you call me out every time you see me because you know how I’m using her? Abusing her? I can’t do it. To her, to me—or even to you. She shouldn’t have to live like that.’