Martine came to her feet, then just shook her head and sat back down again.
Phillip clamped his arms about his wife and dragged her to the small dressing room adjoining the bedchamber. He kicked the door closed with his booted foot. “Stop it, Sabrina, stop it.” He was shaking her until her neck snapped back.
She became rigid in his arms and he released her. She took a stumbling step backward. She opened her mouth, but he interrupted her.
“Your behavior is inexcusable. You won’t question what I do. Now you will take yourself quietly away from here, else I will seriously consider sending you to Dinwitty Manor to learn your place.”
“My place? I don’t have a place, Phillip. Now that I’ve seen how you’ve humiliated me, stripped me of even any pretense of worth—” She broke off. “You don’t even understand, do you?”
“I understand enough to want to thrash you,” he said low and grabbed her shoulders.
Sabrina drove her knee with all her strength into his groin. He dropped his hands and stared at her in amazement. “I’m a big man. You could have kicked me anywhere but there.” Then he doubled over in pain.
Sabrina ran from the small dressing room. She wouldn’t think about him holding himself, on his knees. She pulled the door open and, without another look at his mistress, fled from the bedchamber.
For several minutes Phillip thought death would be preferable to the exquisite bowing pain that had brought him to his knees. As the bouts of nausea slowly lessened, thank God, it was Sabrina’s death he thought about. He pulled himself shakily to his feet and walked slowly back into the bedchamber. Without a word, he pulled on his coat.
“You look whiter than a trout’s belly. What happened?”
“She kicked me in the groin,” he said as he grabbed his greatcoat.
“That is an extreme thing to do, but she was very angry, the little one.”
“She’ll regret it soon enough,” he said as he jerked on his gloves.
“You will beat her? Surely not, Phillip. She’s half your size. That would hardly be fair. Besides, you’re a gentleman. A gentleman wouldn’t beat his wife.”
He was already to her bedchamber door.
“But she’s in love with you,” Martine shouted. “She told you that.”
“Ha! It’s a girl’s infatuation, nothing more. Surely she lost that after I took her three times in one night and never once gave her pleasure. Yes, she’s over that. She’s just saying it by rote. It means nothing at all. Now I’m going to murder her.”
He turned at the door. “I will always have my freedom. I will always do just as I please. I’ll be back later, Martine.”
Martine sat back down on the bed and leaned back against the pillows, listening to his galloping footsteps on the stairs.
Lanscombe said not a word as his master jumped into the curricle and grabbed the reins. The furious working of the viscount’s jaw didn’t bode well for the viscountess. Like a frightened little animal, she’d flown down the steps, running full speed toward a hackney.
Ten minutes later the viscount pulled his stallions to a steaming halt.
“Stable them,” he said over his shoulder to Lanscombe as he took the front steps of the Derencourt town house two at a time.
“Where is the viscountess?” Phillip said the moment he saw Greybar.
“She returned just a short time ago, my lord. I believe she went up to her room.”
Phillip stopped in front of Sabrina’s bedchamber door. He turned the handle. The door was locked. The pulse pounded in his neck.
“Open the door, Sabrina.”
Her voice came back to him, loud and quite clear.
“Go away, Phillip. Go back to Martine. I don’t want to see you. Go away.”
“I’ll go back to Martine whenever it pleases me to do so,” he shouted, took a step back, raised his booted leg, and crashed it against the door. He heard splintering wood. He aimed one more kick nearer to the lock and the door flew open, straining at its hinges.
Sabrina stood with her back against the windows. She stared at him, standing there in her doorway, breathing hard. “Go away, Phillip. Go away.”