Chapter 10
In a day’s time, Daria had cornered Gregory, the Duke of Argyll.
She’d shared the prophecy of their marriage—and her death—with him.
Been called mad. Proposed marriage to him, despite that. Then been cruelly mocked for it.
She’d been insulted.
Rejected—twice.
She’d urged Gregory not to marry Emmy, the lovely, warm-hearted woman he actually wanted for his wife, and to marry her instead.
Then, in order to get him to do so, Daria suggested she could arrange an alliance between Gregory and the Duke of Craven.
With her family—exception being, Delia—none the wiser, she’d sneaked off.
She’d secretly married London’s most outrageous rake. In a ceremony officiated by a certainly inebriated rogue.
But this would be the most difficult part.
She had to tell Clayton.
An unbearable bridge she’d built and now must cross.
Daria could not bring herself to move.
“Is the plan to wait until St. John heads out for the evening and discovers us seated outside his residence?”
Then there was her irreverent husband, who found every moment of life deserving of a quick quip or sardonic laugh.
Daria considered him. “Are you always this cavalier?”
“Life is not meant to be taken seriously, Daria.”
Please let that be a joke. She had the devil of a time sorting out the variety in people’s views on what constituted a jest. Her stomach sank. “You actually mean that?”
“I’m being deadly serious.” A crooked smile touched his lips. “See what I did there?”
“Sadly, yes.” What an exhausting way to go through life. She’d already tired of his flippancy.
Her heart settled into an unsteady rhythm. “Is there anything in life you are not flippant about?” Please, let the answer be—
“Life is not meant to be taken seriously, Daria.”
Not that. Please do not let that truly be his answer.
She allowed several beats of silence.
She had thought him flippant, but this…was far worse. She would spend the remainder of her limited years tethered to man who met gravity with apathy.
“Is this about your fear you’ve upset your brother?
” Gregory didn’t give her a chance to answer, which was fine as Daria wasn’t even sure she could.
“I know that was your intention, my dear, but be assured. No man in his right head would find upset in being connected through marriage to a duke. At that, you’ve secured the title of duchess. ”
Gregory had all the answers. Or he thought he did. How much else did that go for where he was concerned?
Gregory scrubbed a hand down the side of his neck. “As such, I fail to see the source of your fear.”
“You would.”
He narrowed his eyes.
When she’d been but nine and, in the schoolroom, she and her sisters received a stern lecture from their sharp-mouthed instructor.
While her sisters quaked at the older woman’s menacing tones, Daria laughed, and loudly at that.
She hadn’t been able to help contain the great big gasps.
Nor, afterwards, could she explain why, when gripped with fear, she’d done so.
Daria sighed. People mistook her plain-speak as mockery. People mistook her in general. Her garments didn’t make sense—to them. Her passions were considered peculiarities. Aside from Delia, not a soul understood her. Delia, whom she’d shared bedchambers with for the entirety of their lives.
“Would you stop?” she hissed. A whorl of charged emotions swirled in her breast. “I have to speak with my brother.” Whose heart will be broken from this day forward.
“You are one of five sisters.”
“Six,” she gritted out. You know him not at all. He knows you even less.
Gregory removed a heavy-looking gold chain from inside his jacket and brandished a watch with seal and key.
“Even better.” Squinting, he angled the timepiece towards the light of the window.
Did he fail to realize he required spectacles?
Or were his pride and vanity so great he feared detracting from his handsome looks?
Each question raised and revelation made about her new husband set her stomach muscles into fresh knots.
The rising morning sun reflected off the intaglio gem, briefly blinding her.
Daria shut her eyes quick. When she opened them, she found Gregory stuffing the piece back into his interior pocket.
“Why?” she asked quietly.
“I’m ascertaining how long exactly it is we’ve been waiting out here, little raven. The answer is too long. I have business to attend to. Meetings…”
While he rambled on a list of things more important than Daria’s impending meeting with her family, Daria’s belly twisted. I’ve gone and bound myself to a man who is a coldhearted stranger.
She interrupted him. “I wasn’t asking about your timepiece, Gregory.” She made herself say his name. It did a tiny bit in making him more man than mere stranger. “I meant what does being one of six sisters have to do with telling my brother we are married?” she asked quietly.
Gregory frowned.
He frowned. Him?
Why, of a sudden, did he not have a response?
An ugly thought seeded in her brain.
The acrid sting of bile burned the back of her tongue. “Because Clayton has my other sisters to marry off?” she quietly supplied. “Is that what you mean?” Please don’t let that be what you mean.
His expression shifted, barely.
What upside-down world was this where Daria had words and the glib Duke of Argyll remained stricken silent?
“I did not say that,” he murmured smoothly.
“No. That is why I’m asking you what you meant?”
His silence gave a damning affirmation.
A trembling started in her toes and climbed fast.
She fought to contain that rapid spiral. As a girl she hadn’t been able to, but she’d come to master those riotous moments. This was the greatest challenge she’d confronted in more years than she could remember.
“Is that how you view your sisters?” Daria’s couldn’t contain her desperation. “Like objects there to enhance your power and wealth?”
He released a beleaguered sigh. “This is a tiresome line of questioning, my stricken bride.”
Stricken. Fury nearly blinded her. Daria leveled her gaze on her husband’s bored features.
That is what he wants. Do not forget that.
Being one of seven siblings was all that managed to keep her from lighting into him.
“As you will.” Daria edged her chin up. “Consider me tiring, my predictable husband.” Aghast, his eyebrows shot up. She thrilled in her upper hand. “I asked you a question.”
He flicked his fingers. “It is the way of the world.”
Daria stared blankly at him, this man whom she’d married.
Her whole life, she’d fixed on death and dying.
She’d nurtured her curiosity of the macabre, enough to know the cold, ugly truth about people.
The world. But hearing Gregory’s flippant response hit hard.
Hearing him speak so ruthlessly of his own sisters, accentuated—further accentuated—the great chasm between their souls.
A belated sting of pain struck through her numb state. Blankly, she looked down at the corners of her shredded, lightly bleeding cuticles.
Gregory hooked an ankle over his opposite knee and drummed his fingertips along a gleaming leather boot.
“Come, child, you sought to marry me because I’m a coldhearted, self-serving, bastard.
Not even an hour wed and you’re trembling and tearful because I’m exactly what you took me for?
” The smile that grazed his lips iced her from the inside out.
“I’m not crying,” she said, sharply; that faltering profession made the biggest fool of her.
The patronizing look he bestowed sent a dark haze across her vision.
It was only then Daria registered the warm wetness that tickled her face.
Horrified, she slapped her hands across her damp cheeks.
Gregory withdrew a crisp white kerchief from his jacket front. Wordlessly, he handed the linen square to Daria.
Avoiding her husband’s eyes, she took the linen offering. At least he hadn’t tendered some haphazard lie just to give Daria what she wanted to hear.
That attempt at reassurance didn’t help.
To preserve her dignity, Daria turned her shoulder.
Unnerved by the heavy weight of his stare, she unfolded and refolded Gregory’s handkerchief into a more perfect square.
Daria wiped the moisture from her cheeks.
When she’d finished, she blew noisily into the black monogrammed letters of her husband’s name.