Chapter 4
The night was not getting off to a promising start. That went for Daria’s second attempt to meet with the Duke of Argyll, and, well, her whole “courtship” of the gentleman itself.
“Out of the carriage. Now.”
Emmy lingered a moment at the door of the hackney. “I am sorry, Daria,” she said softly.
Daria waved away her worrying. Neither Emmy nor any woman need make apologies for domineering men.
She stared on regretfully as Emmy was escorted back towards the Caldecott townhouse by a burly man better suited to the role of guard than footman.
Emmy’s eldest living sister, Edith, Duchess of Craven, collected her sister by the arm.
As Emmy scurried off and disappeared from sight, the heavily pregnant duchess paused.
The Duke of Craven conversed with a pair of tall, impressively built men in coal-black uniforms. Daria glanced past them to Edith.
Night’s darkness did nothing to conceal the older woman’s regretful expression before she closed the door behind her.
Daria sighed. Selfishly, she’d wished to have her friend there for company. Not for Daria’s actual appointment. Just…there in the carriage, waiting. So that someone was there when Daria’s meeting concluded.
She rapped the ceiling, signaling it was time to go. Settling back onto her bench, Daria gathered the wool riding blanket and set it down across her lap. While she fiddled with the fabric, she sang quietly under her breath.
“…The wind doth blow today, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true…”
She frowned. Whyever, weren’t they going? Daria lifted a fist and gave a harder, sharper rap.
The faint light cast by the street lamps glow dimmed, then sputtered out and, along with its light, the little warmth conferred by the blanket.
The Duke of Craven’s powerful figure filled the doorway. “Unquiet as the grave, you are not, Miss Kearsley,” he said coolly.
Her appreciation for Emmy’s frosty-eyed brother-in-law improved some. “You know the ballad.”
He sharpened a dangerous stare on her. “Miss Kearsley, I’ve not come to exchange discourse with you on children’s songs.”
“I do not suggest The Unquiet Grave for a young babe, Your Grace.” And here, men believed they knew everything. “I would recommend you The Fox, as it is a cautionary tale…”
The duke caught the top of the carriage and slung himself inside.
Her words trailed off as he settled onto the opposite bench.
The door slammed shut, leaving Daria alone with Emmy’s notoriously evil brother-in-law.
One of the benefits to come from knowing details of one’s demise was that one didn’t shirk from shadows or figures cloaked in danger.
If Daria were, however, one to fear anything, the Duke of Craven would be it. Between the ice-cold ruthlessness in his otherworldly blue eyes and golden hair, he possessed the dazzling good looks of God’s favored but fallen angel, Lucifer.
And right now, the devil was mightily displeased with her.
Craven. Argyll. She sighed her boredom. Get in line, Your Grace.
A glacial glint iced his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Yawning?”
At his blank stare, Daria glanced about. “Leaving?” In fact, she pushed her cloak open and consulted the timepiece fastened to the front of her gown. She really did need to be going. “If you’ll—”
“With my sister-in-law,” he gritted out.
Ah. Understanding dawned. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to answer, Your Grace.”
“You are not at liberty to answer?” he spoke each syllable in a slow, rhythmic staccato.
His lips curled. Rage would be preferable to the empty grin he gave.
Alas, having survived and thrived amongst six sisters and an older brother, it would take a great deal more to throw her off.
The duke dropped his fake smile. “Where are you going?”
Daria pressed her palms together. “I—”
“Never tell me,” he sneered. “You are not at liberty to answer?”
She lifted her eyebrows a fraction. “Perhaps you have the vision too.”
“A joke?” Angry color suffused his cheeks. “Do you find this amusing?”
“Not at all.” Given the bombastic duke didn’t appear capable of a sincere smile, she wouldn’t have—if she were the diverting sort—wasted humor on him.
At her silence, the duke draped his arm along the back of his seat. He drummed his fingertips in a way meant to menace.
For all the ways the Duke of Argyll professed Craven to be a former friend and enemy, the two gentlemen, in addition to their titles, seemed to possess similarly dark personalities and peculiar ideas of what qualified something as entertaining.
A crackling of energy shrunk Daria’s vision. A sharp bolt of white flickered like lightening behind her eyes. That consuming force tugged Daria further from herself. She heard nothing. Saw nothing. But knew…
Perhaps those similarities and shared pasts and futures accounted for what she knew would come to be.
Daria blinked slowly. “We will be friends,” she murmured. “All of us.” Her sight came into clear focus.
The duke abandoned all pretense of politeness and patience. “I’ve heard you are dicked in the nob, Miss Kearsley. Despite the rumor of your reputation, I’ve allowed your relationship with Miss Caldecott anyway.”
For the lethal aura about him, his concern for Emmy shone through. “Because you love her.”
His jaw slackened. He put it swift to rights.
“You needn’t answer,” she said. “It wasn’t a question.”
“I am doing the talking, Miss Kearsley.”
“We both are.” She wrinkled her brow. “That is the very nature of a discussion.”
“Is that what you believe?” His lips pressed into a hard, white slash. “That we are having a discussion?”
How would he classify it? Daria opened her mouth to ask as much, recalled his earlier statement on their exchange, and thought better of it.
Her friendship with Emmy rested on this man’s magnanimity? What a cruel world.
“I’ve been patient with you, Miss Kearsley, for one reason alone—” Emmy. “Because I know you matter to my sister-in-law, Miss Kearsley. That and that reason alone accounts for my civility.”
This was civil? “I would not care to see you angry.”
“That is right, Miss Kearsley. You would not.”
For the first time in her presence, the duke appeared pleased.
Was Emmy certain her sister Edith belonged to a loving union? With a snarling fellow like the duke, it seemed highly dubious.
Abandoning his relaxed pose, he laid a forearm along the other and leaned over. “Let me be absolutely clear. If you attempt to harm Miss Caldecott—”
“I would never hurt Emmy.”
The duke continued over her interruption. “In any way. If you make her sad or scared. Lure her into harm, albeit unknowingly or intentional, I will end you.” He arched an eyebrow. “Have I made myself clear?”
“That is a rhetorical question, is it not?” She bloody despised them. Couldn’t a person just say whatever it was they meant?
The Duke of Craven’s mouth moved.
He found his voice. “Consider yourself warned, Miss Kearsley.”
With a last warning look, Emmy’s brother-in-law disembarked. Behind him, the door closed with a quiet, ominous click.
Words passed between the gentleman and Daria’s driver.
A moment later, her carriage lurched forward.
Daria briefly clenched her hands. In the course of her life, she’d been insulted too many times to count. She could have rebuilt the city of London on those disparagements alone. None offended her more, hurt her greater, than the Duke of Craven’s.
Unlike her sisters Anwen, Eris, Brenna, Cora, and her twin, Delia, Daria hadn’t ever been one to great shows of emotion. Not on account Daria didn’t feel. She did, deeply.
But communicating those feelings, well, that’d come to her as complex as a clock’s gears.
She did not express herself well, but she not only felt deeply, she loved even more so.
Nor was this a recent discovery. It’d been one of the reasons people, her own family even, considered her weird.
Oh, they loved her immensely. But she saw the looks they gave, the ones they didn’t even know they were giving.
For that reason, Daria should have anticipated the Duke of Argyll’s horrified response.
She’d wager the sea of criticisms against her were matched only by the plaudits Argyll received.
Though how she and he were a match in any way remained questionable.
It wasn’t for Daria to question her cursed future.
The soothing clip-clop of the horses’ hooves were at odds with the sharp rumble and grind of wheels that rolled over uneven surfaces. A noxious clatter of iron striking a divot set her nerves on edge.
What was worse, she’d had the entire night, morning, afternoon, and current evening to improve upon her next exchange, and she didn’t have a bloody idea how to convince him they were meant for one another.
Last night couldn’t have gone worse. Considering she’d been armed with details about her future bridegroom, marriage, and fate, last night should have gone far more swimmingly than it had.
In terms of how things went, swimming hadn’t a thing to do with Daria’s exchange with Argyll.
Drowning would be more like it.
With a groan, Daria rested her head along the back of the bench.
She’d made an absolute muddle of last night’s meeting with the duke.
Whatever fate had planned for Daria and the duke, the fact remained that Gregory didn’t know anything but certain, indisputable facts: one, he’d the face and form of Adonis. Two, he possessed greater suave than Giacomo Casanova. And three, Casanovas did not marry Annes of Cleves like Daria.
When the carriage rolled to a stop outside Daria’s townhouse, she stayed tucked inside.
And now, despite the painstaking efforts that’d gone into tonight’s planning, she’d been foiled by the Duke of Craven.
What would Argyll say if he found out the favor Craven did him this night?
A dry smile formed on her lips.
No, she knew.
“Amicus meus, inimicus inimici mei.” The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Her driver grew impatient. “Miss?”
“Yes.”
Drawing her hood higher into place, she plotted a path inside that would not bring the Kearsley household down on her.
The driver drew the door open and handed Daria down.
She froze with one foot inside the carriage and the other on the smooth limestone pavement.
She’d been wrong.
The Duke of Craven hadn’t interfered and sent Daria back to her family’s household as any gentleman would.
Against his knowing, he’d delivered her to his enemy, and Daria’s future husband.