Chapter 6
The Duke of Argyll caught clear sight of Daria. His inscrutable gaze locked with hers.
He could have dismissed Daria.
But he hadn’t. The nearly imperceptible way he’d notched his chin gave the permission, which granted her entrance into his stately home, worthy of a king. In fairness, the opulent residence had been a gift to one of the earlier Dukes of Argyll.
Daria found her path blocked by two well-tailored gentlemen.
She looked them over. Of like height, each muscle-hewn. Broad across the shoulders. Narrow waist. Thick thighs. The other not. Gentlemen in name, but that’s where certainty of that title started and ended with the two.
Their features set them apart. One more classically handsome, the other marked with a jagged scar that bisected his brow and cheek.
The orange glow cast by the gilded sconces sent shadows flickering over his unyielding face, giving him a ghoulish appearance. An aura of darkness surrounded the stranger.
Fortunately for Daria, she’d long been fascinated by ghouls and ghosts. Further, the more conventionally good-looking gentleman she recognized on account of his wife. Lady Faith Rutherford showed Daria a rare kindness.
“My lord,” she murmured. “I know your wife. She is a good woman.” Not so much as a crack appeared in the stoic marquess’s hard features.
Daria shifted her gaze to the other stranger. “I don’t know you.”
That caught the pair by surprise. They exchanged glances. But neither proved forthcoming.
Daria swallowed a sigh. Social pleasantries would forever allude her. She sank into a belated curtsy.
The nameless, marked stranger spoke for the two men. “Miss Daria Kearsley, I presume.”
She perked up. “His Grace mentioned me?” That could either be a very, very good thing. Or a very, very bad one.
The shadow of a smile ghosted Lord Rutherford’s lips.
“Meeting Argyll, are you?” Lord No-Name remarked, his voice an icy whisper.
“Is that a question?” She puzzled her brow. “I venture not, as you were with him when he signaled me inside?”
His punishing gaze grew razor sharp.
Blast with rhetorical questions. What was the purpose of them but to confuse?
A sharp bellow sounded from the other side of the intricate carved door panel. “Miss Kearsley!”
Something akin to shock—the very first of outward reactions—crossed their faces.
Daria sighed. “Was he in a foul mood prior to my arrival?”
“He’s worse now,” Lord No-Name said.
Another shout went up. “Now.”
“A pleasure,” Daria murmured, dropping a curtsy.
Neither gentleman made a move to leave. She lingered.
“What is it, Miss Kearsley?” Lord Rutherford asked in a gentling way that put Daria in mind of her brother, Clayton. “Is there something you require help with?”
If that were truly an offer, she had a whole list of favors she’d welcome assistance on. Alas, there remained the most pressing one—for now.
“Can you bring the duke up to scratch?” she said under her breath.
The marquess cupped a hand around his ear. “What was that?”
“I…would ask neither of you mention my being here,” she murmured. “It would be quite ruinous.”
“And yet here you are.”
The tread of angry footfalls sounded only a moment before the door was wrenched open. Sans jacket, cravat, and in nothing but his lawn sleeves. Snarling, the duke glared between the two men. “Kilburn, Rutherford, weren’t you just itching to leave?”
Ah, Lord Kilburn, the other gentleman. Both wore traces of amusement. Ghosts of smiles that transferred light.
Warmth radiated at the edges of her consciousness. Unblinking, she swiveled her focus to the grandiose space at the duke’s back.
The sight of the wedding.
“The friends,” she breathed.
This was the place she’d seen. Two men she’d envisioned.
“I beg your pardon?” Lord Kilburn’s crisp, gravelly tones broke the hold over Daria.
Three unforgiving gazes were locked on Daria.
Lord Rutherford—the Merciful One, as he existed in her mind—clapped a hand on Lord Kilburn’s shoulder. “I believe Argyll has this under control.”
“Doubtful,” his partner muttered.
Daria laughed.
Unfortunately, hers wasn’t the quiet, soft giggles every other lady affected, but the big, snorting sort. Daria’s mirth rarely struck hard, but when it did…
Yes, well it attracted the same bemused or horrified reactions of the three before her.
She got control of herself.
“Inside, Miss Kearsley,” the duke snapped.
As Daria entered, she felt his presence behind her; imposing and powerful. He closed the heavily engraved panel door without so much as a click.
Her gaze landed on the flatweave Aubusson rug and Daria stilled. A shiver touched her, delicate as a remembered dream. At its center bloomed hand-embroidered roses, pink peonies, dahlias, carnations, green chrysanthemums. Daria drifted nearer, walking as if in her sleep.
“There.”
Daria angled herself forward. “Hmm?”
The Duke of Argyll stabbed a finger at the leather sofa.
While the gentleman went to the sideboard and poured whiskey into a snifter, Daria briefly considered the buttoned sofa near the French-style fireplace.
That heavy masculine piece, along with his dark Chippendale pedestal desk and leather armchairs before it at odds with the pastoral scenes adorning his floor and walls.
It was an amalgamation of delicate and soft.
Heavy and light. Everything about the Duke of Argyll: from every cleverly wielded word spoken, to each posture struck, down to the adornments chosen for this space were done so by design.
Argyll shifted. “Now—” His gaze locked on Daria in the same spot she’d been occupying.
He frowned. “I wasn’t clear, Miss Kearsley? Sit.”
Daria inched her hood back the rest of the way. “I’m not a dog.”
“No, you’re not, Miss Kearsley,” He tossed back a large swallow and grimaced. “Dogs listen.”
When he resumed his duties at the sideboard, he did so muttering and mumbling to himself.
Daria eyed him dubiously.
This shouting, sloppy bully was truly the Duke of Argyll? The same gentleman ladies tossed their kerchiefs at and nobles of all ages wished to emulate?
And I’m the mad member of Polite Society?
He contemplated the vast bottles there with far greater seriousness than he had the whole of their exchanges about marriage.
The duke reached; his fingers lingered. He grabbed a different decanter.
With his snifter, and the second she took to be hers, he adroitly plucked a crystal decanter to go with them. The duke, his bounty firmly in hand, joined her.
They stood opposite one another, at a kind of crossroads. Setting his bounty down on the gleaming rose-inlaid table, the duke poured two drinks. He took the darker one and shoved the other towards Daria.
She eyed the pale amber contents with their ruddy tint, then shook her head.
“Sit. Don’t sit. Drink or don’t. Do whatever the hell you want, Miss Kearsley.” He chuckled. “And you want to be my wife?” He lifted his glass in mock toast.
“Because you expect compliance in your wife?” she asked curiously. “For her to behave as… How was it you described it? A dog?”
“You were the one who brought up dogs, Miss Kearsley.” He motioned his snifter back and forth between them. “I just mentioned one of their favorable attributes.”
“Is that favorable to you in your female companions? Being biddable and well-trained.”
“Why?” Swirling the contents of his glass, he perched a hip along the back of the settee. “Will you transform yourself for me?”
“I couldn’t if I wished to, and I have no wish to be compliant and biddable.”
“Shocking, Miss Kearsley.”
That sounded like sarcasm.
Given their current level of engagement, and the longest they’d gone without his hurling insults or trying to run from Daria, she wasn’t inclined to ask and upset their balance.
Argyll drummed his fingertips against the sides of his glass.
While he studied her, Daria examined him in like return.
From within the hearth, a fire raged; the cool blue flames cast an ethereal white over the duke’s handsome features.
Up close, his long lashes were even longer than her first take and a shade darker than his slightly longer-than-fashion-dictated, pale blond hair.
If she were one moved by a man’s handsome face, the duke would certainly have stolen her heart long before now.
“Perhaps you’re not such an innocent after all,” he noted.
Daria tipped her head. “I don’t understand?”
He chuckled. “A woman playing at virgin would say that.”
As confused as fascinated, Daria found herself sliding onto the upholstered armchair near his sofa. “Why would a woman pretend to be a virgin?”
Stretching out, he let his legs fall open and peered at Daria from under impossibly long lashes. When the duke next spoke, he purred like a panther. “You are entirely too comfortable around a man in a state of dishabille.” He touched his eyes on a place beyond her.
Daria angled her head, straining for a better look.
Her eyes alighted on the midnight-black evening coat, matched black waistcoat, and cravat draped along the back of his leather armchair.
“Ah, because you’re missing your jacket,” she said, again facing him.
“Given you were properly attired when I saw you at the window and hastily disrobed before I arrived, your current state strikes me as more manufactured. The same way you opted to drink whiskey from a brandy snifter.”
The duke exploded upright. “Manufactured?”
“As in, you did it with the sole intention of—”
“I know what manufactured means, Miss Kearsley.” A dull flush ran the sharp line of the duke’s cheekbones.
“Then, why did you—?”
He slammed his drink down on table between them. The stem snapped under that force. Crystal tinkled, heralding the mournful loss of the glass.
As the duke fetched himself a new glass, a cryptic silence descended over the office.
The tick-tock tick-tock of the gilded Charles Baltazar clock punctuated each passing second until his return.
The Duke of Argyll possessed a dangerous air to him, and yet…in the same way Lord Kilburn’s aura failed to menace, so too did Gregory’s.
When he reclaimed his seat, Daria pushed her hood all the way off. “I should also mention I have a brother,” she said, loosening the fastenings of her cloak.
His Grace snorted. “Not a very good one.”
“On the contrary, he is the best.”
“That is doubtful, given you’re keeping private company with London’s worst rake.”
“Who, for that matter, is not fully decent,” she added.
“Are you asking me to dress for your sensibilities, Daria?”
He sounded amused.
“No.” She stared at him in confusion. “I’m merely pointing out you’re not only the worst rake, you’re also only partially attired, which is undoubtedly even worse.”
The duke stilled. A glimmer sparkled in his eyes, a radiant brightness that transformed the duke’s jaded visage.
Daria’s chest leapt in the oddest way. Her heart jumped and hovered in a place other than where the organ should beat.
What was this sensation? Not unlike the otherworldly sensation to come with her premonitions.
Except where those portended darkness, a mystifying light folded around her.
“Miss Kearsley,” the duke’s murmuring swirled around the dazzling sensation.
Daria fought her return from whatever splendorous place she’d landed.
“Miss Kearsley?”
Daria didn’t want to return. She wanted to stay—
“Miss Kearsley!”
The Duke of Argyll stared at her, his gaze absent of its usual annoyance and disdain. In their place, a flicker of some emotion she couldn’t identify, only that it left Daria dizzied all over again.
“Your brother?” he said impatiently. “Is a tedious bore and keeps company with equally staid fellows. What has he anything to do with your edification on rakes?”
He’d returned to the same underwhelming allure of before.
“I stumbled upon him and his friends in various states of—”
Argyll slammed a hand down on the arm of the sofa. The leather gave a noisy snap. “Good God, Miss Kearsley!” A muscle bulged at the edge of his temple.
“I’ve offended you.”
“Too many times to count,” he said. “Offering a chap marriage, while mentioning he reminds you of your beloved brother isn’t going to fetch you a husband, sweet.”
“Oh, you don’t remind me of my brother.”
“That is reassuring, little rav—”
“You’re entirely too ill-tempered and crass.”
The duke stared strangely at her.
Daria cleared her throat. Suddenly and very uncharacteristically warm, Daria shrugged from her cloak and draped the black fabric along the back of the chaise.
Feeling his stare on her, Daria looked up. “Is this all right?”
His cerulean-blue eyes glittered again. “Would it matter if I said no?”
“Probably not. I am warm.”
“You are warm,” he repeated softly.
She nodded. “And you strike me as a gentleman who doesn’t like dealing with ladies prone to fainting.”
“I don’t like dealing with any ladies, Miss Kearsley,” he said pleasantly. “Only the wicked ones, and despite your widow’s weeds, you’re missing the most essential piece for me—the dead husband part.”
“You are not very likeable, Gregory.”
He stared at her with patent mockery. “Tell that to Polite Society.”
“I’m not a gossip, and even if I were to tell them, they wouldn’t believe me.”
Of a certainty, her family would mourn a little bit less when Daria’s end came, and she was parted from the Duke of Argyll. As it was, Daria didn’t question fate but she was coming very close to regret at being married to a man so…vapid.
“All right, Miss Kearsley, I trust your brother isn’t so neglectful that he won’t at some point notice your absence and come to collect you.
” He swirled a second drink in a distracted circle.
“Unless that is the plan? Hmm? To trap me?” he asked without rancor.
A product of all the scheming misses who’d jaded him into questioning anyone’s intentions.
Daria felt her first twinge of pity for the all-powerful Duke of Argyll.
He had, however, given her the window she needed.
And unlike yesterday when she’d bumbled their first meeting with talk of fate, a curse, and their inevitable union, this time, Daria knew how to get through to him, a cynical duke who saw the world as a chessboard and everyone on the board as a pawn to be moved—logic.
He thought of no one but himself and, therefore, Daria needed to offer him something of value.
And she’d finally had an idea how to move their relationship along.
“Gregory,” she said softly. “I believe I have something that might be of value to you.”