The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(20)

As though she heard the thought, Sera moved in front of the other man, and Haven tried not to notice the way the action stung, whipping envy through him—the vision of his wife protecting another man. A man who continued to touch her with a certainty that could mean only one thing. Possession.

He’d known she was here, with an American. He’d been prepared for the idea that they were lovers. But the visual of it was a wicked blow.

“Ah,” the American drawled. “The duke arrives.”

“The husband arrives,” Haven replied, unable to bank the anger in his tone. And then, to his wife, “We are yet married, Seraphina.”

How was she so utterly calm? “Not in any way that matters.”

In every fucking way that mattered.

She added, “The silly laws of this nation may make me your chattel, Duke. But I will never play the role. I should think the last three years would have made that point well.”

He resisted the urge to spirit her away and show her just how well he could claim her. To make love to her so thoroughly that she screamed to be his. To lock her away and show her how well the role of wife could suit.

Instead, he took the nearest seat, at a low table in the dark corner, knowing she wouldn’t be able to see him as well as he could see her. Desperate to regain the upper hand, he willed his voice calm. His muscles still. Even as he wanted nothing more than to tear the tavern to pieces. “I shan’t be cuckolded,” he said.

Her spine straightened. “If only I had been able to say the same.”

Shame came, hot and unpleasant. He resisted it, redoubled his conviction, directing his attention to the American. “Remove your hands.”

For a moment, he wasn’t sure the other man would respond in any way but to level him with a long, superior look, one that Haven imagined had been taught to every young man in the colonies with a loathing for the king. After several seconds, however, he let go of Sera, spreading his hands wide with a too-loud laugh. “Far be it from me to suffer the fury of a husband scorned.”

“That door should have been locked,” she said, released from the touch of her lover. Sera headed to the bar at the end of the tavern, seemingly uninterested in the masculine posturing in which Haven could not help but engage. As though he were a much younger man. A much stupider one.

Not so much stupider.

He directed his scorn to the other man, who touched his wife with such casual comfort that there was no doubt of their intimacy.

She’d been unfaithful. He shouldn’t mind it. Shouldn’t have been surprised by it. After all, it had been years.

And he had been unfaithful, too.

Once. And not like this. Not with emotion.

Lie.

There had been emotion. The action had been full of anger. Full of punishment. All for Sera. Sera was the only woman who had ever had his emotions. Not that she would believe it.

Not that she would care.

“Don’t worry, Caleb,” she was saying, “Malcolm doesn’t believe himself scorned. For that to be the case, he would have had to have wanted the marriage from the start.”

He had wanted it. He’d wanted her.

He stayed silent as she moved around the bar to place a small glass on the counter and pour a healthy drink into it. “How did you find us?”

Malcolm hated that us. The way it cleaved her to another man. Instead of answering her, he asked a question of his own. “What in hell are you doing here?”

She raised a brow. “Here, London?”

There had been a time when he’d enjoyed her playing the ingenue. When it had made him feel a dozen times the man. No longer. “Here, in a damn pub.”

“We prefer the word tavern.”

We. “Call it whatever you like, but it’s a pub in the heart of Covent Garden, inhabited by a duchess with newfound skill in drinking.”

The American laughed, and Malcolm hated him a little more. “Should have called it The Drunken Duchess!”

And then Sera was laughing and Mal had the distinct desire to burn the place down. “I am deadly serious, Seraphina. Why are you here?”

She leaned back against the far wall, arms crossed over her chest, glass dangling in one hand. “I was born here.”

“No, you weren’t.”

She lifted a shoulder. Let it fall. “I was born in a coal town in the North Country, and reborn in Boston. Covent Garden’s a proper third to the trio, don’t you think?”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “You’re daughter to an earl.”

She smirked. “And you are the one who was so very insistent that my father’s title didn’t count, Your Grace. A title won at cards makes no kind of blue blood, not even when won from Prinny himself.”

The words stung with memory. “I never—”

She stopped the lie with a wave of her glass. “More importantly, Haven, why are you here?”

To rescue you.

Another lie. This woman didn’t need him. In all the time he’d sought her, he’d imagined her fearful. Weak. Ruined. This woman was none of those things. There was nothing cowering about her. Instead, she was all strength.

She was nothing like the woman he’d met on that long-ago night outside the Worthington ball. Except . . . she was. That woman had been bold and brash. She’d stood up to him. She’d drawn him in like a warm flame on a cold night. And for weeks afterward, her smart mouth had tempted him as much as her warm body had.