Chapter 20
Irony lived strong.
He’d accepted he’d eventually have to get on with the finding-a-bride business, and getting an heir and a spare upon her—hardly fair to let all the responsibility of living to one chap, as had been the case for Argyll.
She’d have sought a generous allowance.
All the largest, finest cut diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds.
But here, his breathtaking bride, who trembled from merely the hint of his kiss upon her bared skin, knew—and wanted to speak about—a Nicolas Poussin work.
Swallowing a sigh, Argyll kissed the top of her spine. “My wife has a love of art?”
“No.”
He waited.
Alas, that was all she intended to say—no.
If it weren’t for the raging erection tucked between the crease of her buttocks, his silk robe a mockery of a barrier, he’d laugh.
Argyll angled her in his arms, sweeping her around to face him. “But you know this one, do you, little raven?”
Daria nodded and then laid her head against his chest.
He stroked her back, and a smile tugged. Leave it to him to have acquired the one piece of art his wife recognized.
All right. The only way to return to doing with and to his bride, the only thing he wanted this night, was to have it all out.
“I happened to be visiting Lord Devonshire at Chatsworth when I stumbled upon it, by chance.”
“By chance?”
“I erroneously arrived early for an event Devonshire was the host of.” Argyll neatly left out the event was one of the Bachelor Duke’s orgies. “In an attempt to occupy myself, I took in Devonshire’s vast collections.”
The long-ago day still remained clear as yesterday.
Or he’d attempted to. The minute visitors caught glimpse of Argyll making his way through Chatsworth, those lovers of art forgot quite what they did and flocked to him.
Why gaze upon two-thousand-year-old Roman busts when one had a living duke in their midst?
He’d found the furthest recesses and came upon a young father and his daughter, both in black, certainly mourning her mother.
The man’s hand rested upon one of the young girl’s shoulder.
They’d been the sole people in the whole of Chatsworth House actually absorbed in one of the creations.
He’d hung in the shadows, transfixed by some rarer form of art than Devonshire’s damned collection combined. And by a relationship not centered on power, lust, evil, or greed just…the quiet company of one another.
They’d never registered him watching.
When the gentleman started to speak, Argyll slipped off.
Argyll registered the soft, comfortable silence. And he found it not unwelcome. Pleasant even.
The majority of his days—and nights—were spent mingling with Polite—and Impolite—Society. Everyone wished a word, and he, well, he had two-fold for all of them. As it was, duke though he may be, he considered himself a businessman first.
He held his wife in his arms, both their gazes averted up. Their embrace not sexual but somehow intimate in a whole new way that scared the everlasting hell out of him.
Her quiet voice cut through. “Some years ago, Lord Landon invited me on an outing.”
Lord Landon. Again.
“Did he?”
She nodded. “Phineas has always been a very dear part of the family.”
She’d mentioned as much. Several times now.
Wait a moment…
“Phineas?”
“Yes. Lord Landon’s Christian name is Phineas.”
Fortunate for Argyll, his trusting wife failed to pick up on his amused shock at the notorious Lord Landon’s given name.
“Phineas escorted me to Chatsworth to see this very one.” She pointed her finger three times for emphasis.
His wife really had been truthful when she’d mentioned being familiar with scoundrels.
An annoying tic pulsed at the corner of his eye.
What manner of brother let a bloody sister near a rake like Landon?
Certainly not a good one. And also, the sort who let his sister sneak about and end up married to a far more caddish rake than the marquess—caddish rake being Argyll.
“He’s always been so very good about paying each Kearsley sister special attention.”
“Such is the way of a rake,” he snapped.
Daria frowned. “Phineas has never behaved untoward.”
Phineas again? A muscle in his jaw snapped to attention.
“He married your sister, did he not?”
“Yes, not very long ago in fact. Which I did mention.”
His gaze drifted to the ceiling, the window, anywhere else. “It wasn’t a question, Daria.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “Rhetorical queries are tricky for me.”
Argyll’s lips pulled. His previous agitation left him…and with Daria’s next question, appeared to find its way to her.
“Why does their being married suggest he behaved less than gentlemanly?”
One day he’d recall he’d married the only truly pure-hearted woman in the kingdom.
With that in mind, he enlightened her. “Given Landon married your sister, it is safe to say theirs was not always a platonic relationship.”
“How does that have anything to…?” Her words trailed off.
Daria slapped a palm against her mouth. Her visible shock was so real as to be adorable.
She found her voice. “How dare you turn something beautiful into something torrid, Your Grace?”
He also refrained from mentioning that was the very nature of his work. “Your Grace, am I?”
Going up on tiptoe, she surged forward so fast that he edged back.
“Phineas loves Anwen!” She slapped a palm against his chest. “Yes, Gregory—love.”
That usually reliable organ shifted queerly beneath her touch. Again. It was too much.
His lashes dipped. “I do not recall saying anything, to merit your hand upon me, little dove.”
His gaze lingered on her palm.
And yet—
Her touch was welcome. Wanted.
Their breathing came together in a noisy, uneven rhythm.
The room thinned to the fine space between them.
Her eyes, opaque and veiled so often, now acted like windows into her soul. A dazed confusion had stolen away her ire.
His muscles seized, then held.
Those irises he’d dismissed as a dull brown were anything but. As rich and dark as fresh umber, but the light played with softer shades of caramel and copper flecks.
Her voice reached him, soft and sad. “Phineas took me to Chatsworth after my father died.”
His erection wilted.
“Not right after.” She studied her hands. “I did not leave my home for a more than a year. Mama and Clayton insisted I must and…at first, I didn’t want to go, but then I…I didn’t know how to. But I also didn’t want to be with my family.”
Bereft, Daria sank onto the edge of the mattress. She sat so forlorn, and his chest tightened.
It was when he made another discovery about his wife. Her brevity belonged to those who didn’t know her. For those she did feel comfortable with, she’d spill her soul to.
Argyll eyed the door. Before now, he hadn’t taken himself for a coward.
“We were all so sad, and we absorbed one another’s misery.”
As her sorrow spilled to him, he understood what she spoke of. He contemplated the window.
“Phineas.”
Frowning, he leveled his focus squarely on Daria.
“Phineas was part of us but removed in a way the Kearsleys were.”
A wistful smile graced her lips.
For bloody Phineas.
His body drew taut.
She uttered the cad’s name like a reverent prayer. And the sole reason Argyll gave a damn either way was because no rake worth his weight in seduction wanted to spend his wedding night listening to his wife extolling some other man’s—at that, a fellow rake’s—virtues.
Exits forgotten, Argyll sat down hard beside his wife.
Even as her slender form bounced at being displaced, she remained caught in a memory that’d started with her father’s death and found its way to dreamy-eyed mention of bloody Lord Landon.
Daria flopped onto her back and stared at this unlikely piece that linked them.
“He didn’t talk. We didn’t talk. We just stood shoulder to shoulder taking in the Arcadian pastoral.
” She shook her head. “I don’t know how long we stood.
Forever maybe. Both of us in black, he, my other big brother, with his hand resting upon my shoulder. ”
Argyll stilled.
A weird vibration filled his ears as he lay hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with his wife.
Impossible.
What were the chances the little girl in black had become the Lady in Black?
Null.
Ouden.
Zéro.
“Why this painting and not the others you saw this day?” he asked, not sure where the question came from. What did it matter?
“Oh, we only saw this one.”
“Just the one?”
She nodded. “Phineas…”
“And you?”
She gave another little bob of her head. “Phineas and I.”
Phineas, yet again.
It became increasingly clear—Argyll was going to have to accustom himself to hearing Landon’s name and often.
“He reminded me the painting was not about death but rather the living, and their reflections of their own mortality,” she said.
Argyll didn’t move. Movement felt dangerous.
“Landon said that?”
He felt her nod.
He narrowed his eyes on the painting through the wisdom the Marquess of Landon imparted.
Argyll breathed deep, filling his lungs slowly. “And you were how old when your father died?”
“Twelve. He…”
Argyll waited.
“He choked on a plum pit.”
Oh, Christ.
“I walked in the breakfast room as it happened and…”
“And you saw it?” he finished for her.
Daria nodded. “Yes.”
He closed his eyes and absorbed every word.
Something slow and unrelenting compressed under his ribcage.
This here, this bloody damned moment, was exactly why Argyll preferred his shallow, rather hollow existence.
One didn’t have to converse on and think about, say, a young girl who watched her father die, went into mourning, hadn’t known how to get out of mourning, and then received bloody fucking guidance from the likes of Lord Landon on mortality.
The entire reason his bride insisted on black was because of Landon.
Argyll sucked in a breath through his nose.
It was settled.
I’m going to kill someone.
Phineas. Him. He’d start with him.
When he trusted himself to speak without losing his bloody mind, he looked at his wife. She lay silent, her big eyes on him.