Benedict eyed his wife’s younger sister as she swirled about the floor. The girl was undeniably beautiful, but her features seemed watered-down versions of the ones he’d found so arresting in her sibling. Her nose was too small, her eyes too doll-like, her rosebud mouth lacking the sensual generosity of Georgiana’s.

Not that he’d been thinking about the damned woman’s mouth.

Not more than once or twice a day, at any rate.

He wanted to divorce her, not sleep with her.

Actually, that wasn’t true. He wanted to do both of those things. Divorce her. And sleep with her. But only one of them was going to happen. Bedding the prickly Miss Caversteed was not in the cards, even if she was, technically, at this very moment, his wife. That way, as Shakespeare so rightly put it, lay madness.

He was going to sort out this mess, then find someone far less complicated with whom to sate his seething lust, because every one of his finely honed battle instincts told him that tangling with Georgiana Caversteed would only lead to trouble.

He scanned the edges of the room impatiently. “Not her. I was looking for the other one.”

Alex’s dark brows rose in question.

“I’ll tell you about it later.”

Benedict hadn’t yet told his two closest friends about his impromptu marriage. Miss Caversteed had honored her promise to send five hundred pounds to Seb, but Benedict had waved it off as the proceeds of a lucky run at the card tables and promptly sent it off to his brother to help with the more pressing bills on the Morcott estate. His profits from the Tricorn always went to helping John claw back what their profligate father had lost.

He’d returned to his rooms above the Tricorn determined to tell his friends everything when Alex had invited him to come out, and since there was a good chance that his unwanted wife would be present at tonight’s event, Ben had agreed. If all went well, they’d be laughing about the whole thing over a game of cards and some good French brandy before the week was out.

The only reason to stay married to a woman like Georgiana Caversteed would be to take advantage of her immense fortune, which, God knew, he needed. Her money could pay off the mountain of debt his father had left behind, save Morcott Hall, and secure the livelihood of every worker who relied on the estate to survive.

She could have been the answer to his prayers. And yet in one of the great ironies of the universe, which Benedict had come to accept as his due, he’d simultaneously married the richest woman he’d ever met and signed away his ability to get a single penny from her, all within the space of ten minutes.