I have this setup working in VMware WS running on Windows hosts. The NIC is installed but nothing except Vmware Bridge Protocol is bound to this NIC. This NIC is bridged to a Virtual Adapter. Any guest can use this Virtual adapter and access the Network via that Virtual Adapter despite of the fact, that the host cannot communicate over this Interface (at least not via TCP/IP).
Via this setup I can bind NICs exclusively to a guest, without compromising the host, e.g. to test firewall appliances (where I don't want the host to be reachable from the Internet) or because I don't want the host to have routes to the guest network, which is only needed for the guest.
Does the same work on Linux hosts? I currently have no real Linux host running and would like to know that before I install a physical Linux host just to find out, if it works. And if does not work to have to revert that host to Windows afterwards.