Chapter 20 #2
“Daria, that painting…” As one, they looked at the piece he’d now happily toss into the hearth. “It doesn’t depict mortality as a grim noose hanging about a person. It encourages a person to live in their moment, as others who once stood in that same place did.”
Daria’s lips formed a small surprised little moue he wanted to swallow with his mouth. She lifted her gaze and appraised the rustic scene once more. “I do like that interpretation.”
“Yes, well, I should have been with you at the time of your first viewing of it,” he muttered.
She smiled; that smile reached all the way to her eyes. “I believe I love it even more.”
They would agree to disagree.
Argyll wanted to rip it from his ceiling and use it as kindling.
“Why did you want it, Gregory?”
He contemplated the vibrant piece, all too happy to navigate away from talk of tragedy and death. “I saw a pair admiring the piece. I wouldn’t have stopped otherwise.”
“You wanted it only because someone else did?”
There was a frown in her voice.
Argyll shook his head. “No. It wasn’t that.” He carefully chose his words. “Not wanting to disturb the other viewers, I observed from afar. Poussin achieved harmony between human and nature.” His lips quirked in a wry twist. “One that won’t be found in England, or the whole word over, I venture.”
“It wasn’t until the piece was removed and installed there”—he pointed overhead—“that I noted its more somber note.”
There came a faint textured shush as Daria turned her head towards him.
His skin prickled with the feel of her piercing eyes on him.
“You do not sound like a man who doesn’t know anything about art, Gregory,” Daria murmured.
Her eyes urged him to speak.
Argyll tamped down a frustrated sigh.
The only art he wished to admire and worship was considerably nearer at hand.
Alas, his wife remained impervious to his attempts at seduction.
“I am no Renaissance man, Daria. The nearest I come is a familiarity with is Modi.” His smile was deliberately distracting.
She tipped her head. “What is I Modi?”
The question caught him. Not because it was innocent, but because it was exact. She asked what she meant, no more and no less.
With her, words were taken at their face value. And to his surprise, he found the clarity bracing—preferable, even, to the practiced evasions of the world he knew. It made it easier for him to disabuse his impressionable bride of the notion Argyll had any sort of artist’s mind.
“The last duke did me few favors, but early on he took away my research on Raphael and exchanged it with Raimondi’s engravings.”
He hid a grimace. The last person he wanted in his marital bed was his father.
Argyll rolled up onto his shoulder, and traced a fingertip along the little pout her lips formed. “They are of the wicked sort,” he spoke close enough so his breath brushed her air.
His blood stirred, thick and insistent. When had he ever wanted a woman as he did her?
“Your father did you no favors, Gregory.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Even in death, the late Argyll had contrived his most unforgivable interference.
It was official. He was never making love to his wife this day. Or, ever. He truly was losing his edge. Determined to divert his bride to the real business of the evening, he reached for her. “I’d rather we discuss my formative years at a later time,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
Daria sniffled.
Blanching, Argyll scrambled up to stop this before it started.
No. No. Do not do that.
Not on their wedding night.
Tears filled her eyes.
Too late.
Daria pushed herself onto her knees and tossed her arms tight around him.
Argyll grunted. His own limbs naturally came up, but otherwise hung there useless. He did not often speak of his childhood. When he did, the memories had a way of surfacing without warning—and never gently.
Argyll gave her several awkward pats. “It really is fine, love,” he said, the desperate edge in his voice not one he recognized.
“It truly is not, Gregory.” She shifted so she might face him fully. “Your father should never have exposed you to such things.”
He gave a slight shrug, the gesture practiced. “It was presented as ordinary. Expected. Fathers hastening what would come soon enough. Introductions. Books. Women.”
“Introductions?” Her voice faltered despite her effort to steady it. “How old were you?”
This time, Argyll dragged both hands through his hair. “Twelve? Thirteen?” Twelve. He’d been twelve.
She rose at once. “Twelve is not a man.” Fire lit her eyes as she spoke, bright and unyielding. “You were a boy. A child.”
“That distinction was not one he acknowledged,” Argyll said, attempting a tone of detachment that did not quite hold. “One most fathers do not.”
She began to pace, her steps sharp against the carpet, anger driving the movement. Her words emerged in low, furious fragments, cursed beneath her breath.
Argyll ran a hand over his face. He had stepped into this blindly.
She halted and turned back to him. “When I consider what was done to you,” she said quietly, every word measured and fierce, “I am filled with a fury I scarcely recognize. I would like to kill him.”
He stood and put himself between her and her next march back to the mirror. “Well fortunately for all of us, he died and did us that favor.”
“Your father was a monster,” she hissed.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said, drawing her near. “Like father like son. Now, if we—”
She pushed herself away. “You are not like him.”
Argyll sighed. “Isn’t that why you married me?”
That stopped her still. “There’s a difference between…between…”
“Yes?” he urged her to finish.
Daria placed both hands over her heart. “W-Would you do those things with our son?”
Our son.
Theirs.
His and Daria’s.
Hearing her mention and being forced to think of a child borne to them…didn’t strike the fear it ought.
For the first time in his life, it made Gregory think what manner of father he’d be. Oh, for certain he’d be a rotten one. But would he initiate him into the world of debauchery as his own sire had?
A feeling of distaste soured his stomach. For all his proclivities, he did not possess the perversities of his late sire. Could he abuse his wife as the duke had done? Drag a lad not much older than little Eris off to some brothel? Unequivocally, he could not.
“I would not, Daria. I won’t,” he said quietly. “I’m a rake, but I’m not…I’m not…”
“A monster.” Her murmur managed to make those two words an endearment.
He gave a tight nod.
The last bloody person he wanted to think about now, or ever, and especially not at this particular moment, was the late duke.
Argyll slid behind his wife and captured her on either side of her shoulders. “Now, if we can set aside all this talk, little raven.” Please. “As I’d greatly like return to the matter of seducing my wife.” He lowered his mouth.
He stopped. Had he truly believed his bride laconic? Here she was, in his arms, talking about art, and his father, and…who knew what else she had for him.
“How very practiced it all is,” she said softly, to herself. “Now, I understand why.”
His mind blanked.
A dark sensation stirred in his chest. He wanted none of this.
Not the excavation of pasts. Not the scrutiny of futures. Not the dangerous territory of imagined children.
He wanted one thing. The same thing he had always wanted from women.
To take her.
To lose himself in the uncomplicated certainty of it.
Sex was safe.
What was unfolding here—between him and Daria—was anything but.
“What about this, my beautiful defender?” he said silkily, deliberately avoiding those terms he’d tossed out as something more than they were.
“I’ve indulged you. Let me coax another orgasm from your sweet body, and if you still wish to talk…
” Argyll let the rest trail off, already knowing there’d be no further discussion.
Not on weighty matters or things that further opened them to one another.
Tonight, would be about pure, unadulterated sex.
Then, and only then, would he be able to claim his self-control from his stubborn bride.