Chapter 9
One of the key pieces of Argyll’s plan to marry the Duke of Craven’s sister-in-law had included getting a man of the cloth in his employ.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the—” Lord Lyon stood in Argyll’s office, looking around before fixing his gaze directly on Argyll. The disheveled chaplain attempted to continue. “Sight of G-ha-ha—” But then he burst out laughing, unable to maintain the solemnity.
He should have chosen better.
Suppressing irritation, he looked to his soon-to-be-wife to gauge her reaction to the partially—all right, more than partially—drunk chaplain.
Argyll’s bride remained still; her features revealed nothing.
Another woman would have wept copious tears at such an execrable affair. Daria stared past the spectacle Lyon made, as though refusing him the dignity of a reaction. Her composure bespoke an impressive amount of strength. It touched off a reluctant admiration for his bride.
Miss Delia Kearsley tore to her feet. Her cheeks flushed with indignation.
Poise and calm did not seem to be a shared family trait.
“May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest—” She jabbed an accusatory finger at Lyon, her voice trembling with outrage. “A minist’ring angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling.”
Millie attempted to soothe her fast friend. “You may find some consolation in it being a wedding and not a funeral performed.”
Kilburn snorted. “For Argyll, it may as well be.”
That only made Lyon laugh harder, tears brimming in his eyes, shoulders shaking with mirth.
Argyll and everyone else present turned on the earl with sharp, chilling glares. Tension thickened the air.
Miss Delia Kearsley’s broke from her Shakespearean performance. “I don’t understand?” her voice crept up into a question.
Raina, looking daggers at her husband, who did a poor job of feigning contrition, stood. “Might I remind each of you marriage is a sacred affair. You scoundrels will be on your best behavior.” She landed her displeasure on Lyon.
Precisely where it belonged…
His eyebrows dipped. Wait one bloody moment.
“You are looking at me?” Argyll sputtered. “Why in hell are you not putting that anger where it belongs?” He slashed a hand at Lyon. “This one couldn’t even sober himself up—”
“I’m perfectly sober,” Lord Lyon said, but a slight slur made a liar of the bastard. “If you would, show me some grace as I was pulled from bed—”
“Where you were decidedly not sleeping,” Millie unnecessarily reminded the room again.
“Enough! From all of you.” Raina pinned the latest mischief makers with a blistering stare. “Lord Lyon, resume the proceedings.”
The rumpled rogue clicked his boot heels together and nearly spilled over his own drunken feet.
For the love of God.
Argyll closed his eyes. This time, Lyon resumed officiating Argyll and Daria’s union with some semblance of solemnity.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God…”
With his gaze, he found Daria; the lady remained as smooth as a perfectly poured brandy.
God, what an unshakeable creature. His stare sharpened, fixed on her proudly erect carriage. The steadiness of her palms she pressed together.
His body tightened. What would it take to rouse Miss Unflappable Daria Kearsley into abandoning her composure?
Only, as he consumed her with his gaze, he found the same uncertain glint she’d walked into the room wearing.
“…join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate…”
She wanted to run. The urge to bolt, even now bled from her eyes the way ink did a flimsy piece of parchment.
The question remained. Why didn’t she? With any other marriage-minded lady, there’d be no mystery. Wealth, power, and the title Duchess of Argyll had driven women to compete for that coveted role, women more beautiful than his soon to be wife.
For that matter, if either of their wedding pair were taking flight, Argyll was the candidate to do so.
Kilburn wasn’t wrong earlier.
“…signifying unto us the mystical union…”
Argyll, a confirmed rake with an abhorrence for attachments and a particularly strong loathing of the marital state should be riddled with horror and mourning his bachelorhood.
“…that is betwixt Christ and his Church…”
No person, neither man nor woman readily exposed themselves to shame. They just did not.
This one had almost done so, and for Argyll’s undeserving arse no less. The unknown fascinated him. She mystified him.
Somber was the lady’s natural state. Her iron-straight black hair and waxen pallor did not recommend her, nor did her abilities as a conversationalist, but her intrepidity called to him like a primal mating call.
His gaze stayed locked on a masterfully composed Daria.
“…which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence…”
He’d believed stoical to be her only state.
“…and first miracle that he wrought…”
She’d gone and proven him wrong in the best possible way.
She may be still now. But the game was up. She’d revealed her hand, and the truth couldn’t be concealed. The curious woman he’d taken as emotionally detached was anything but.
As Lord Lyon droned on from the Book of Prayers, Argyll reveled in his newfound good fortune. Under the very even surface of his raven-haired bride dwelled a passionate, fiery creature to be tamed. Argyll drew a measured breath in through his nose.
She was as hot as a banked fire, just needing to be stirred. And I am the man to so stir her. As those flames caught, his lust snarled awake.
This morn, she’d come alive in her full-throated defense of Argyll. Granted, on his undeserved account. Every charge levered by his family and friends was the bloody honesty he appreciated them for. No person, neither man nor woman, readily exposed themselves to shame. They just did not.
Certainly, there’d never been one amongst the prideful lot he kept company with.
Daria was the one. A rarity in so many ways, in every way. She almost revealed she’d asked him to marry her. No, if it weren’t for his interruption, she would have.
She’d been about to lay herself all the way open and tell them she’d asked Argyll to marry her.
And for it, she’d been met with a debacle of a service. One that Lyon, Kilburn, and, hell, even the lady’s own sister turned into a farce. It mattered not that order had been restored—
“…to be honourable among all men and…and….”
Argyll’s vision narrowed to a pinprick.
The drunkard better get himself to rights.
“…nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal l-lusts and appetites, like b-b-brute beasts that have no understand—ha-ha—”
The bible slipped from Lord Lyon’s shaking fingers and hit the floor with a formidable thwack as the fellow descended into a paroxysm of amusement, with Kilburn joining in.
At his side, Daria remained stoic through great humiliation.
Rage tore through Argyll’s veneer of civility.
“Bloody hell, that is enough!” he thundered. “I said enough.”
He needn’t have bothered with the second warning. A deathly still had already blanketed the room.
A vein at his temple throbbed.
Not once had he lost control. Not as a lad. Not as a man. Not as a lover.
Never.
Argyll braced his hands behind his back and breathed.
“Let me be clear. The next guest in this room to make light, laugh, or so much as crack a smile…” The glacial look he gave the room, the very one he’d been beaten by the late duke until perfected. “You will rue the day.” Argyll bunched his hands behind his back. “The same goes for interruptions…”
The rest of that order dwindled as his future sister-in-law shot a hand up like an eager-to-please student in the schoolroom.
“Yes?” he said awkwardly.
“What of Daria?”
Confounded, he stared at the peculiar-in-her-own-way miss. It took a moment to register this was the first she’d not gone off spouting Shakespeare. He looked to his bride for help—and froze.
A radiant, otherworldly smile adorned her lips.
An ethereal splendor clung to her fine-boned features.
Her smile, as rare as snow in April, leant an equally magical quality to his mystical bride.
His eyes grew shuttered. His breath grew shallow.
Her smiles were so elusive that she rendered them like carefully chosen gifts for only worthy recipients.
And this vast, unfettered, abounding tilt of her narrow lips, more exquisite than the one Kilburn elicited, made a man feel like a conqueror of kingdoms.
Made a man feel like a conqueror of kingdoms?
By God, I am…waxing poetic.
“Ah, the duke discovered the quandary,” Delia said. “Whether the ordinance against smiles applied to Daria.”
He’d discovered whole host of concerns, all surrounding his bewitching bride and whatever spell she’d cast.
The prattling Kearsley, how she’d forevermore be referred to, filled a void he had no interest in having filled. “On account Daria is no longer smi—”
“I do not require any clarification,” he said succinctly.
“You are certain?” the unhelpful girl volunteered.
“Quite.”
Argyll’s stare stayed fastened on the woman about to be his duchess; that was if the infernal proceedings ever reached a middle and end.
For the buffoonery surrounding the ceremony, with her head lifted, dainty chin tipped at a proud angle and statuesque shoulders squared in quiet defiance, she possessed the carriage of no mere duchess, but of a bloody queen.
Knocked on his arse by the realization, he barely kept his feet.
Of all men, Argyll had neglected to see the lady’s unvarnished grace and compelling beauty.
Now, with the same rakish gaze that’d failed him before, he corrected his error and drank his fill of the elegant breadth of her shoulders, the clean line of her neck, the unyielding curve of her lips.
Argyll imagined the moment he seized that crimson flesh and left her mouth marked and damp from the ferocity of his ministrations.
His pulse knocked loudly in his ears.