Chapter 8
Born somewhere in the middle of an enormous family, one could simultaneously exist surrounded by a sea of garrulous, loving, teasing kin, but also on the fringe of it all. Even though she often chose silence during their great rumpuses, she’d still been part of something larger. Joyous. Comforting.
A family.
It’s all she’d known, and Daria hadn’t properly considered how bleak and awful it was no longer living with a big, loving hoard of Kearsleys.
Until this moment, on a different fringe of a different family. One that would soon be hers.
Unless Gregory’s partners had their way and talked him out of the duke’s momentary lapse in sanity—as they clearly did at the front of the room.
From where they spoke in hushed tones, they’d stolen no fewer than eleven looks in Daria’s direction. Sometimes it was both gentlemen who did so. Other times, it was one or the other.
Now twelve.
This time, it was Lord Kilburn who leveled his intense gaze on Daria.
Her tummy tightening, Daria angled her toes inward, wishing he’d look away.
It came to her. Perhaps she’d offended them by not acknowledging their stares.
Daria lifted her fingers in a small wave and forced a smile. Ultimately, it took a great deal, usually the unexpected, to elicit a natural one.
A flicker of suspicion turned the earl’s already dark eyes even darker.
He turned his focus back to the duke and Lord Rutherford, and an exchange that’d taken on a greater intensity.
Picking up on emotions and social cues was a challenge for Daria, but as a sister who’d grown up amidst quarreling kin, an argument she recognized all too well.
Not once did Gregory look Daria’s way.
Not one person of his circle and social station would dare support his marriage to a widely disdained wallflower like Daria.
Positioned beside the same seats where she and Gregory discussed and eventually negotiated the terms of their union, she took in the lengthy debate going on at the duke’s desk.
Lord Kilburn and Lord Rutherford angled their big frames away from Daria, but the stiff set to their shoulders and angry countenances made it clear they abhorred the idea of her marrying the illustrious Duke of Argyll, even more than the gentleman himself.
For his part, he’d only acknowledged her presence once with a brief tilt of his head when she’d first entered, before he’d gone back to speaking with his partners.
His partners, putting up a very determined campaign to talk sense into the duke, must have heard something.
Then Daria detected it.
“I most certainly will not.” Even raised in anger, the lady’s songbird voice was lyrical as a lark.
The door burst open with violent force enough to challenge the door’s well-oiled hinges.
And the singularly most beautiful, elegant woman Daria ever set eyes upon swept forward with the regal grace begetting her angel’s persona.
“What is the meaning of this?” She placed hands on her rounded hips, drawing Daria’s attention to the fact the pale-haired beauty was with child.
Even the trio of alpha gentlemen knew better than to interrupt the lady’s fury. “No one sought to notify me of my own brother’s impending marriage?”
The Duke of Argyll’s sister.
Of course. There could be no doubting Zeus’s children were parallel images of masculine and female perfection and beauty.
“My favorite sister,” Gregory stretched his hands out. “What an unexpected—”
“Yes, given you have excluded me, it would be unexpected, wouldn’t it?” the lady snapped.
“I heard that!” The door burst open a second time, this time with a shockingly greater force, from the most unexpectedly diminutive figure behind such power. “Favorite sister.”
A third pale-blonde specimen of beauty. Smaller. Younger. But with enough fury and fire in her matched blue eyes to rival the suddenly sheepish trio at the duke’s desk.
Spreading his arms wide and his palms up, Gregory swept forward. “You heard incorrectly, Millie. Raina is my favorite eldest sister.”
The golden whirlwind stopped alongside the young woman. It was like holding up a mirror to the same lady living in two separate times. “Stuff it, Gregory.”
“And we ‘heard incorrectly,’ Gregory?” Gregory’s eldest sister released a snort; she managed elegance even with a snort. “Someone’s charm is slipped in his old age.”
A mindful servant drew the panel shut behind the volatile party.
Lady Millie swept an impressively scathing look over her brother; her brother who also happened to be one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. “I’d say he never had as much charm as he and the world let on, and that his title and occupation account for all his fanfare.”
Lords Rutherford and—wonder of wonders—Kilburn both laughed.
A splotchy red suffused the duke’s cheeks.
Why…why…the duke blushed. And for the first time, Daria wished she had the skill of her sister Cora, a master with pastels and pencils, just so Daria might capture this glimpse of vulnerability from a man whom she’d previously taken as a block of stone that couldn’t be cracked.
As if he’d heard Daria’s silent revelation, Gregory glanced at Daria.
Lord Kilburn followed the duke’s attention.
And she’d wager the little time she had left on this earth that the duke’s friends and partners were behind the vicar’s delay, and subsequently her and Gregory’s nuptials.
She’d been the recipient of all manner of hostile stares, but something in this man’s chilled Daria to the morrow. An aura of death clung to the very air around him and every person in his path.
Shouts and wild cries from outside swiftly killed the rare moment of levity.
A third lady. Unlike the pair of golden ones, dark-haired. “The third lady,” she whispered.
Ignoring the protestations and weapons trained on her, Delia rushed into the fray. “I am very cross with you, Daria!”
That was when Delia realized she and Daria were not alone. Her younger sister surveyed the trio of commanding gentlemen and then discreetly crept her hand into Daria’s.
“Where we are,” she said from the corner of her mouth, “there’s daggers in men’s smile.”
Daria looked from her bridegroom to his friends. “They are not smiling, Delia.” What was she seeing?
Her twin spoke from between gritted teeth. “I know, Daria. That is the point. Their smiles are false.”
Catching Daria’s wrist, Delia dragged them away from gathering. “What do you do here, Daria?”
“It behooves me to point out everyone passing by the window is of the same question,” Gregory drawled.
Daria and her twin glanced at the floor-to-ceiling lead panels they’d accidentally positioned themselves at.
Snatching the embroidered curtains on one side, Delia dragged the drapes closed. “The fool doth think he is wise,” she muttered as she saw to the other panels, “but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
The duke sputtered. “I beg your pardon?”
Gregory’s youngest sister whispered for all the room to hear. “I like her.”
Daria and Delia ignored the affronted duke and resumed communicating, without words, where eyes and expressions were all they needed.
“I like both of them,” Lady Millie clarified in awestruck tones.
Delia’s lighter gaze bled with hurt and a sense of betrayal that cut Daria to the core. Daria willed her to forgive.
Delia looked away.
She was besieged by a grief so great that the only thing to keep Daria on her feet was the feel of her sister’s hand still clasped in her own.
As long as she held firm, they remained close, their connection secure.
The world didn’t understand Daria, but her sister was the other half of her soul.
There could be no world Daria lived in where Delia shut her out.
Daria lightly squeezed her twin’s hands. “Though those that are betray’d, Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.” Please forgive me.
“Be not as extreme in submission as in offence.” Delia freed her fingers from Daria’s.
As her beloved sister turned and finally paid note of their audience, a vicious spasm wracked Daria’s heart.
Delia skimmed her gaze past Gregory’s golden angel sisters, lingered her attention very briefly on Lords Kilburn and Rutherford, and then, ultimately, settled on the duke.
Gregory’s hard lips formed a rake’s smile. The one that melted every heart—except Daria’s.
By the suspicion and ice to frost Delia’s eyes, her sister was of like opinion on that affected charm.
“All is not well,” Delia said, never taking her furious gaze from Daria’s betrothed. “I doubt some foul play.”
As if the Great Bard himself orchestrated a real-life play for her Shakespearean-loving sister, there came a hard knock at the door. A moment later, a well-built gentleman, all in disheveled black and several inches shorter but bulkier in muscle, entered.
“You’re late, Lyon,” Argyll said with the lofty impatience his title afforded him.
The gentleman’s garments bore wrinkles, and his unfolded cravat hinted at a man who’d been reluctantly pulled from bed.
What a… peculiar bunch of men her husband-to-be called friends. Each carried an air of mystery and darkness about their person, but something far more—stories. Unknown ones that likely they were alone privy too. Without a doubt, they’d existed in darkness.
“Forgive me.” As he approached, Lord Lyon sounded anything but apologetic. “I had vastly more entertaining things to do this morning.” When he reached the duke’s pedestal desk, he tossed down a tattered and worn book.
Delia cast Daria a questioning glance, one Daria avoided, lest she be forced to admit she didn’t have a clue as to the fellow’s identity.
“Doubtful,” Gregory’s youngest sister muttered, briefly attracting the gentleman’s attention. “I’d place a wager at Forbidden Pleasures you were off bedding some beauty.”
Millie explained for Daria’s benefit, “That is Lord Lyon, the Clandestine Chaplain. And that ridiculous nickname has nothing to do with his performing clandestine marriages, which you can probably tell by his state of un—”
Lady Raina slid a palm over the girl’s mouth.