Chapter 21 #3
Before Argyll could give them the distance, they both needed, Daria got onto her knees. Unrelenting, she grabbed his hand and used a mighty strength too great for her being to drag him back. “I saw us, Gregory. From the start. I saw your office and the people present the day we were married.”
Gritting his teeth, Argyll easily divested himself of her hold. “You sought a love match with the dashing Duke of Argyll.” He forced a bitter laugh. “That’s what this was always about.”
“No. Just the opposite. I didn’t find you dashing. I found you despicable.”
At her raw honesty, a smile threatened through the storm.
Hope flared in her eyes.
He shuttered his face. How did this woman see so much?”
“I envisioned the worst sort of fate as your wife. Sorrowful and bleak, and it’s only because I did not know you, Gregory,” she entreated with that expressive gaze.
Had he truly believed her eyes blank. They were mirrors into her soul.
“If I didn’t believe you to be cruel and shallow, I would never have married you. ”
“That does not make sense, Daria,” he said, his voice raised, his control breaking.
“Because I lacked true knowledge, my reason filled the void with the worst possible conclusion. I was not imagining falsely—I was reasoning from incomplete premises.”
“Descartes,” he said between his teeth. “Brenna would be proud.”
He realized his misstep too late.
Her eyes widened. “See! This is who you are.”
This was spiraling. He fought to retain a hold over it.
“A man familiar with Descartes,” he drawled, fighting with his whole soul for a shred of nonchalance. “Let me assure you, it is part of all good gentlemen’s edification.”
She of course, ignored him.
“I was so focused on the end and assuming my whole life was twisted,” she spun her finger in a quick rotating circle. “Up with death through the curse, I failed to see marrying you was never about me dying.”
Do not ask.
“What was it about then, Daria?”
“It was about me living and loving fully before I die, with the one I’m meant to spend my days with.”
Argyll stared.
She nodded slowly. “You.”
Something dangerous, more tempting than any sin of the flesh, stirred within.
His mind recoiled. “I told you this would happen.”
Daria nodded; sending her dark hair cascading over her shoulder. “You were right.”
In addition to her ability to apologize, his wife could also concede when wrong.
He would have laughed if his body allowed for any emotion other than abject horror.
Is it horror…or is it fear…
“But you were wrong in believing I’d fall for you for superficial reasons.” Resplendent in her nudity, Daria drifted closer; she both Venus and Eve, offering all he yearned for.
No! Not her love. Her body.
“I am in love with you for the man you are, Gregory. The one who never corrects the world from the terribly wrong way in which they’ve come to see you. You are a good man. A man who had a terrible father, but who became a great man because of it. Not a wastrel.”
“Do you know how many women I’ve fucked? How many sad wives I seduced. The men I’ve made cuckolds of?”
Unflappable, she shook her head. “I don’t know those numbers, nor do I need to.” Daria stole his damp hands with her cool ones. “I know the reason you did those things, and inside you know, as well, Gregory.” She squeezed him tightly.
Argyll tore free of her.
Argyll banged his head repeatedly against his hands. “You are not in love with me. You are in love with fucking me.”
“No.”
They both frowned.
“That is to say, I do enjoy making love with you, Gregory, but I am also in love with you.”
“I need no clarification on that, madam.” He scraped a leering gaze over her glistening, naked body.
Argyll only cost himself with that look. This need for her ravaged him.
She saved him from himself. “I do not like when you use that word.” Daria frowned. “It is crass. I’d ask you to find some other way to shock me.”
Any other moment, he’d have leapt at that as an invitation his innocent wife didn’t know she’d issued.
Jaw clenching, Argyll strode to the washbasin. “You are confused, Daria.” Grabbing a cloth, he hastily washed his cock.
“I was before.” She paused. “But only about what the curse was leading me to; what it was offering me…what it was offering us,” she said softly.
“You were wrong before, madam.” He favored her with a frosty smile. “You are wrong now.” Argyll angrily stuffed his length inside his trousers and refastened them.
“You are afraid.”
“Enough, madam!” he thundered the same moment a hard pounding sounded at the entrance.
Her expression shattered.
Argyll closed his eyes against it.
Argyll took a steadying breath—his efforts in vain. “Yes?” he called at the door panel.
“Kilburn and DuMond need you.”
He took in a steadying breath. “Please, inform them I’ll be along shortly.”
When he looked at Daria, he’d finally regained control. “Daria,” he began somberly. “I did not want to marry you,”
Tears filled her eyes. The first on account of her own suffering, and not his or others she worried after.
Oh, Christ.
Pain bloomed behind his ribs and he wanted to cut himself open for hurting her.
“I wasn’t finished, Daria,” he said, his voice strained.
“I did not want to marry you because I knew you would be hurt.” That bore correcting.
“I knew I would hurt you.” Every admission he gave her; he lay a strip upon his own flesh with an invisible lash.
“I was wrong to wed you. The truth is, I wanted you and I married you, not because I love you, but because I’m selfish.
I wanted you more than I worried about how you would suffer. ”
He glanced away a moment.
When he returned, Daria stood drawn tight into herself; her shoulders erect, her body near breaking.
Because of me…
His hands flexed, and then stilled.
“I can only give you what I’m capable of, Daria,” he said, offering her more than he’d ever any woman. “I like you. I… care about you. I do not want to see you hurt.” He grimaced. “More than I already have,” he allowed.
“I’m aware this situation for you will likely be untenable.” He forced a slow exhale from his nose. “I can’t offer you the things you deserve, need, and want. I will set you free if that is what you need to not be further hurt.”
A weight settled in his chest.
Was he truly the man saying these things? Making these allowances?
His gaze fixed on Daria’s soft, arresting face.
Argyll stared over the top of her head.
“I cannot… free you completely, and I…” He forced himself to speak the unpardonable.
“Will at some point require an heir. I cannot leave what I’ve built to someone who will squander it as my father did.
” How profane—to speak of his own needs when she stood pale, silent, and stark before him.
“But I will see you settled wherever it is you wish to live,” With whomever.
He could not. He found himself guilty of the same transgressions he’d made against her—breaking their unwritten contract. There was no world in where he could grant her leave to love another, make love to another, to bestow her smile and treasured laugh—
“Whatever you want,” he substituted, his voice pitched from the horror of even imagining her with someone else.
His selfishness proved his moral rot.
“But for now, I do need you to remain. My family, the club, you, everything is imperiled. And I require—”
“An alliance with the Duke of Craven, Gregory,” the sorrow and quiet acceptance threatened to undo him.
Unable to meet her tragic eyes any longer, he nodded. “I will speak with you after about what your role entails.”
She nodded.
A partner in his scheme. Not the friend and devoted wife she’d allowed herself to become for him in a whisper in time.
Argyll rubbed at the ache in his chest.
Argyll waited.
He waited for her to say something.
Waited for himself to find something better to say than all of this.
Except, words finally failed him.
All these years of debauchery and a hard life lived to discover only now, himself capable of caring about someone more than he cared about himself.