Chapter 11 #2
Argyll picked his way around his words the same way a man facing the hangman’s noose would. One wrong word and Daria’s little sister would skewer him alive.
“Well, Argyll?” Eris regarded him steadily.
“Daria asked I remain here while she spoke with the viscount,” he said very carefully.
“She also prepared me for St. John’s response.
” She’d have the last laugh on this one—if she were the laughing sort.
“Neither she, nor St. John…” Of yet. “Has given me leave to think she might be at risk.” He paused.
“Unless you believe she might be?” He honed his eyes on the talkative child.
“Oh, yes.”
His vision went dark. Argyll surged to his feet.
“But he won’t be able to withhold her warmed chocolate and two marshmallows as long as she’s with you.”
Eris caught him in his tracks with his fingers on the door handle.
His shoulders loosened. “Only two marshmallows seems like a punishment in and of itself.”
“Marshmallows are expensive, Argyll.” She looked at him like he’d lost his head. “Can you imagine having six sisters, a mother, and small babes, all in need of marshmallows?”
Argyll mulled a moment. “It’d bankrupt a fellow.”
“Exactly,” she said, drawing the word out.
She patted the spot beside her. Argyll retook his seat.
They sat with their first silence.
While the conversation on the other side of the door continued, Argyll glanced down at Eris.
She’d taken to chewing a nail. A brief, rare, and horrific moment of wistfulness hit him as he recalled Raina and Millie when they’d been small and defiant…
and easy. They’d been so bloody much easier as girls who craved marshmallows and peppermints and not…
young women who’d discovered the worst about their brother, and were bent on punishing him for it.
“Why…why…I just need to understand why, Daria.”
They looked at St. John’s office door together.
The predictable chap had moved on from suitable fury to impassioned grief. Curiosity—and it was only curiosity—compelled Argyll to return Eris back to the earlier information she’d dropped.
“Anyhow, a dark-haired chap with dark blue eyes. Am I to gather there’s been a certain gentleman whom—?”
“My sister favors?” She gave him a thorough once-over. Her final look said, despite their brief camaraderie, she still found Argyll wanting. “Or favored? Considering you are married?”
“Yes, we are married.” Argyll flashed his most charming smile.
Little Eris remained as implacable as her elder, bewitching sister.
His grin slipped. His pride was taking a solid caning this day. A resistance to Argyll’s charm must be a Kearsley-sister thing.
Argyll got back to the pressing point. “And yes, was there a certain chap you saw Daria with instead of myself? Since according to your own admission, I’m not the lady’s sort,” he said smoothly. “So maybe there is another fellow who might have been?”
Eviscerating, Eris’s tiny eyebrows curved downward.
Oh, hell.
Argyll didn’t realize he scrabbled with his cravat until he caught Eris staring. He abruptly stopped himself.
“Argyll, Daria is my sister. Do you actually believe I’ll spill her secrets to you, a new husband whom I’ve only now met, and whom my brother, mother, and Aunt Sylvia disapprove of?”
Argyll took that in. “That is a fair point.” He looked at the lady who kept on skewering him with her eyes. “However, given Daria married me, she approves in some way.”
“She might not if I tell her you’re trying to have me spill her confidences.”
That shut him up quick.
God, she’d be the first female to step into Parliament. He’d wager ghastly sums on it at rival gaming hells, shut them down, and end the feud with one bet alone.
Eris tapped a contemplative finger against her chin. “Maybe it’s because you look like an angel and remind her of death.”
“A compliment?”
“A fact.” She snorted. “You’ve checked a mirror, certainly too many times. You don’t need me to tell you about your appearance.”
His lips twitched.
“I take it Daria has always been fascinated with the macabre?” Shocking.
“As long as I’ve known her.” She paused. “Which is my whole life.”
An image slipped in of Daria as a girl Eris’s age; her big, dark haunting eyes would’ve swallowed her small face, and she’d have taken everything in with them.
“And it is not the macabre.” Eris’s voice startled him from his egregious lapse into wistfulness. “It is death.”
“Isn’t that the same?”
Creases formed in her little brow. “Of course not.”
“I see.” He didn’t see at all.
From her aggrieved tone, one might think Argyll suggested the earth was flat.
Eris patted the top of his hand. “Daria will explain it to you.”
Gads, for a child, the girl saw vastly too much.
“Clayton…”
They both froze.
Daria had claimed command of the conversation with the viscount.
The widest, most wicked smile he’d ever seen—which was saying a good deal—tilted Eris’s lips. “Watch this,” she mouthed.
It was as though Eris sent out a silent signal for the rest of the Kearsleys. The quick pitter-patter of soft-slippered heels echoed from all over.
As one, a bevy of girls from Delia on to another two Kearsleys swarmed either side of St. John’s door. Egad, Argyll surrounded by a gaggle of virtuous misses? He shuddered. He’d finally landed himself in a hell on earth.
Ears pressed against various parts of the panel, the trio managed to simultaneously stare at Argyll.
“Yes.” Delia jabbed a damning finger his way. “Him.”
Argyll tensed. Here it came. The end of his sorry existence, fittingly delivered at the hands of vengeful, innocent young ladies.
Salvation came in the unlikeliest forms for a previously confirmed bachelor like Argyll—his wife.
“Clayton, I have sat here while you blustered.”
Argyll’s brows flew up.
“Bl-blustered!” Staid St. John went a’tripping over himself. “By God—”
“Clayton.”
A firm, governess-delivered use of the fellow’s Christian name cut him down.
Argyll nodded slowly. Impressive. And here he’d cast doubts upon her abilities as a duchess. The saucy, stalwart minx had been born for the role.
“When I came to speak with you, Mother, and Sylvia, I anticipated you’d respond in this hysterical way.”
A strange strangled gargling emerged from the viscount’s offices.
Feeling more than a twinge of sympathy for a fellow chap, Argyll stole a concerned peek at his fellow keyhole conspirators.
Giggles filled the corridor.
His commiseration proved fickle. Argyll found himself smiling along with the Kearsley sisters and resumed his post.
“I am a grown woman, Clayton. I know my own mind. I know what I want.”
“And in what world would someone like you who loves deeply, who is dedicated to her family, friends, and good in the world marry a self-serving, raffish bastard like—?”
“That is enough!”
Daria’s rare raised voice sent Argyll sitting upright.
“Knowing how deeply you love me, I have allowed you your fit. I have allowed you to say terrible things about Gregory, things I shouldn’t have tolerated,” Oh, no, she’d been right to. Argyll really was that bad—worse. “But this is where I draw the damned line. You know nothing about the duke.”
“And you do.”
“I know more about him than you do,” she shot back.
Argyll slowly nodded his head in appreciation. Neat sidestep.
“The Duke of Argyll is not some fortune hunter who requires my dowry. In fact, he is industrious. Certainly, more than you. Where you manage properties and monies bequeathed you for generations based on nothing but your name, Gregory took it upon himself to create a business.”
Were he not seated, Daria’s ardent, articulate, bold, full-throated defense would’ve knocked him on his arse.
“A gaming hell, Daria! A gaming hell.”
“A club frequented by gentlemen whom you rub shoulders with at ton events and functions. And a key element you are forgetting is that those who attend have the choice to, unlike your tenants who’ve been born to—”
“I am a fair, just, and generous landowner.”
“Yes,” Daria said with that stoic calm that’d first repelled but now fascinated him. “Fortunately for them, you are. That does not negate the fact that you did not establish, with your own two hands, a business of your own.”
Argyll’s jaw slipped.
“She’s good,” Eris whispered. “Is she not?” Hands clasped to her chest, her eyes filled with adoration. She had the look of a proud mama.
Unnerved out of his bloody mind, he couldn’t even nod for the girl’s benefit. Even though a nod and far more were merited in terms of praise for Argyll’s passionate defender.
“Think of all the rakes and rogues who ruin ladies for their doweries. He did not do that. In fact, he allowed me the right to retain mine.”
“How generous of him,” St. John spat.
“Can you not hear how pompous you’re being, Clayton?”
“Daria,” the dowager viscountess attempted her first intervention.
Brother and sister ignored the matron.
St. John’s voice crept up. “I’m pompous?”
“Yes. Your closest friends, men who are like brothers to you: Lord Scarsdale, Lord Landon, Lord—” Daria stopped abruptly.
An odd tension filled the quiet.
“It is all right,” Lady St. John said softly. “My late husband was a rogue. You are correct to include mention of him.”
“Thank you for your help, dear wife,” the lady’s current husband muttered.
As for Argyll’s stirring wife, Daria pressed her point. “They were all rogues and yet you thought them fine to not only keep company with, but allow your sisters to interact with quite freely, and in Anwen’s case, you supported her marriage to one of them.”
Wait a moment. What was this? Landon? Scarsdale? Argyll frowned. The late Norton? He’d assumed St. John mingled with the dull sort.
And Argyll’s wife, how had she put it? Interacted quite freely with those raffish bastards?
“…I stumbled upon him and his friends in various stages of undress…”
Annoyance stirred.
“That is different!” the viscount sputtered.