Pen looked brittle enough to shatter. Furious as he was with her, Cam couldn’t bear it. He grabbed Leath’s arm. “Get out before I throw you out.”
Leath snatched free. “With pleasure.”
His boot heels clicked across the marble tiles, and then he was gone, leaving the ruins of Cam’s marriage behind him.
Pen watched Cam with a devastated expression. “I’m so sorry—”
He held up an astonishingly steady hand. In the last few seconds, he’d battened his raging, ferocious anguish into the dark depths of his soul. The same dark depths where his pathetic longing for parents who loved him still lurked. Even his voice was calm. Although flat and dead like a desert. “Just tell me where they’ve gone.”
“Cam—”
He sighed and grabbed Harry’s note from her shaking grasp. After reading the short message, he stared at Pen in shock. “The fool is taking Sophie Fairbrother to America?”
“He’s not—”
“I told you not to bother excusing his behavior—or yours.”
Her eyes flashed. “Cam, don’t go all ducal on me. We need to fix this.”
Her teasing about his ducal ways had—mostly—amused him. Now the reference grated. “As his lordship pointed out, you’ve done enough. Go to your room.”
Her mouth flattened with defiance. “I’m not a naughty child, Cam. I’m your wife.”
“More’s the pity.”
She whitened and staggered back, fumbling for the banister. Her eyes were like dull black coals in her strained face.
He sucked in a breath and struggled to rein in his anger. “That was unworthy. My apologies.” His jaw was so tight that every word felt carved from stone. He bowed stiffly. “We’ll discuss our future when I return.”
“You’re going after them?” she asked unsteadily.
“Of course I’m bloody going after them.” His attempt at control frayed almost before he’d told himself to settle down, for the sake of his pride if nothing else. “I need to stop Leath from killing Harry, much as the sod deserves it.”
He was Camden Rothermere, famous for his self-possession. How he longed to be that man again. Not this agonized, confused, enraged creature who wanted to march away from his wife and never see her again. And who wanted to seize her in his arms and kiss her and make her swear that everything he’d learned tonight was spiteful lies.
“I didn’t think you cared what happens to Harry,” she said heavily.
“I care that this scandal gets no worse than it bloody is already.”
Unfortunately that wasn’t nearly the whole truth. He cared about much more than that. He cared about Pen, although he intended to eradicate that affliction before the night was done. He cared for reckless, thoughtless Harry Thorne. He cared for silly, headstrong Sophie Fairbrother, who right now imagined the world well lost for love. She’d face a bitter awakening once she’d abandoned the privilege and protection of life as the Marquess of Leath’s sister.
Love! The world would be a better place if there was no such thing.
“This is my fault,” Pen said in a leaden voice.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. When the silence extended, she turned away with a despairing gesture.
He needed to leave if he meant to overtake Leath. But still he lingered to watch Pen climb the stairs. Her head was up, her shoulders were straight and her spine could double as a ship’s mast. But he didn’t misunderstand that if she’d dealt him a killing blow, he hadn’t been much kinder. If he had a heart, he’d feel sorry for her.
But he had no heart. She’d crushed it when she proved herself untrue.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Cam ran down the front steps. His phaeton waited, his two fastest horses restless after being roused from a warm stable before sunrise.
He wanted to concentrate on his immediate need to find that blockhead Harry Thorne and his brainless inamorata. Not to mention prevent Leath from committing murder and making this elopement a matter for the authorities. But he couldn’t help dwelling on the failure of his lifelong efforts to bury the old scandals. Scandal fattened on scandal, so all the stories about his mother and her taste for Rothermere brothers would do the rounds again.
Still, he’d rather think about scandal than about his duplicitous wife.