Chapter 22
“One more moment, Your Grace. There is but one more thing…”
Daria stayed still on her vanity bench while her new maid, Thea, affixed the final silver and sapphire hair comb into position.
The pretty girl screwed her mouth up in deep concentration. Then she drew her flexed fingers slowly back. “There,” she murmured.
Thea paused to assess her work.
Daria sat stiff through the inspection. Until the weight of silence scraped her nerves.
She hated the starers, as she’d come to call people who looked at her for no other reason than because Daria was Daria.
With this, being dressed in a new gown, finer and more eye-catching than any she’d worn in her entire adult life, and having a sole audience watching.
Tears welled in the kindly maid’s eyes. “You must see this, Your Grace.”
Daria’s toes curled so tight her arch cramped.
She gave her head a stiff shake.
Thea frowned.
I look ridiculous.
Daria bit the nail of her index finger, her thumb, and then caught what she was doing. Heart pounding, she stopped. The last thing she needed to do was attend her first ton function as the Duchess of Argyll sporting bloody fingers.
A faint tremor passed through her. The room felt suddenly too small, the walls closing in, the ceiling coming down.
What had she been thinking?
Daria shot a hand out and grabbed Thea’s hand, clutching it like a lifeline.
“His Grace wanted me to don the red dress,” she said, pleading with her eyes.
“I…I thought blue, and it shouldn’t be red.
” She’d stolen a word with Madame Amalie and asked that her gown be a blue creation on account of the duke favored blue. “His Grace…”
“Oh, Your Grace. Look.” Thea favored her with a gentle smile and gently urged her up onto her feet.
Blinking to clear the fog in her head, Daria managed to see herself in the full-length mirror.
Her freckle-faced maid stepped out of the viewing glass, leaving Daria to look.
Except, it wasn’t her.
In the glow of the firelight, sapphire silk clung and flowed in equal measure to a lightly curved figure, and a deep, daring neckline swept wide across her shoulders in a softened Grecian line.
This wasn’t one who hid herself in black and waited to die.
No, this woman…
There was something familiar to her. The palish quality of her skin and the curvature of a bluish-green vein which traversed her neck. The pronounced roundness to her dark eyes. In place of her usual gravity, light sparkled.
Tipping her head, Daria moved her palms over where the silken fabric drew taut at her waist.
Daria angled her head, trying to place the stranger.
This was a woman who was very much alive, and finally living.
Because of Gregory. Because he’d helped her see truths about herself, she hadn’t.
Her family had supported Daria’s leaning towards black and mourning. Oh, she’d known they’d taken it as a quirk, and done so out of love. All the Kearsleys had some individual curiosity that defined them, and they accepted one another.
That beautiful acceptance of one another had been one of the many things Daria loved about her family.
They’d always accepted that Daria wore black. That was just it—always. They’d never, not even when she’d marched to Mama when the six-month period of mourning ended and told her she’d wear black forever, regardless of what anyone thought. Not when she’d grown through the years. Or made her debut.
No one asked.
And no one wondered why.
Not even Daria.
But Gregory hadn’t needed to ask.
He’d known her…as he knew him.
And it still isn’t enough…
The column of Daria’s throat moved.
“The moment His Grace sees you,” Thea said softly. “he is going to fall in love with you all over again.”
Fall in love all over again. Oh, because everyone: the ton, the staff, the gossips, and thus the newspapers printed believed she and Gregory had fallen head over heels for one another.
Her expression grew wistful.
Why should the world not believe the illusion? They always saw the facade—as they’d done with Gregory.
There had been an overnight wedding between London’s most coveted bachelor and a peculiar wallflower, who brought him neither wealth nor connections. And a bridegroom who’d not left his bride’s side since.
It was the ultimate love match.
An accidental one.
Half of one.
But it was…a love match.
Just…Gregory did not love her.
The column of her throat moved; her eyes and hand went as one to Sardinian blue sapphires shaped in the delicate form of wings about her neck. At the center where the wings touched a black onyx.
His Sardinian blue
Her black.
She’d believed after their emotion-laden discussion, one where she’d bared her soul and he’d bared his, that he’d pull away; retreat from her.
But he hadn’t.
In the week since, he’d threaded every moment of his days with hers. Even though the hours he kept on the club’s floor tore him away from Daria at the latest of night, she opened her eyes to find him lying next to her.
Rolled up onto an elbow the way he did, studying her intently—as if he sought the answers there as to why he couldn’t love her.
And after, he kissed every corner of her until her body was fully awakened for him, Gregory made love to her.
Repeatedly. Wildly. Frenziedly; as if driving himself inside her, he could force the feelings Daria yearned for that he couldn’t give.
Because he did not feel them.
And this closeness was worse than had he drawn away.
Daria’s gaze fixed sightlessly in the mirror; her gaze caught at the place of a desperate—and erroneous—prophecy.
Madame Pomfre’s original prophecy had was always been thus.
Daria and Gregory had been destined for one another.
Her marriage would break her heart—and her.
She’d eventually die—and there’d be the one woman he’d been destined for who broke down the last of his walls.
And maybe that is my purpose here.
She squeezed her eyes tight.
Why she and Gregory were fated to be together.
He’d needed her.
To show him.
To free him from his past…
So he could have a future…
They were friends.
They were lovers.
But she wanted more.
So much more.
Moisture squeezed from the corners of her eyes. Those drops left a damp, solitary paths along her cheeks; marking the same one Daria was destined to follow.
“Your Grace?” her maid asked tentatively. “Do you not approve?”
Her breath grew shallow as grief sank its claws into her.
Daria’s heart proved unworthy of Gregory. And perhaps the Lord knew that, and gave her this cross to bear.
For Daria hated the nameless, faceless lady who’d steal the heart Daria hadn’t been able to coax.
Wrapping her arms about her middle, Daria hung tightly to herself.
“Your Grace?” Daria only half-heard her maid’s frantic call of her name and the echo of rushing footfalls.
Daria wanted all of her husband. She didn’t want to share him with anyone, even when she was a ghost and gone. She wanted their spirits to go on together.
She wanted every living moment with him. She wanted his laughter. His smiles. His arms around her. His body, buried deep within her. The sough of his breath against every inch of her skin. His casual caresses. The ones that burned.
The wound that would never heal ripped clear open as it did over and over, not because of Gregory’s cruelty, but because of his kindness.
Her husband with a glance and hours of knowing her, gathered things about Daria hadn’t about herself.
What he’d said struck sharp in the moment, but afterwards, it’d been as if a mourning veil had been lifted.
She’d been reborn, when she’d not even known she hadn’t been living.
Dimly registering her maid’s absence.
She caught sight of her face in the mirror.
“Oh, hell.”
Scrambling to her feet, Daria grabbed a linen square. Blowing her nose hard, she grabbed a clean scrap and wiped the remnants from her face.
She knew where her maid was gone.
The thunderous noise of footfalls announced her husband’s arrival before Gregory himself did.
Her husband exploded into the room; his features blazed with darkness. His chest rising and falling he did a fast sweep and found her.
Using the heel of his boot he shoved the door shut behind him, and sprinted over, catching Daria by her arms. “What is it?” he demanded, his voice hoarsened; fear tangled with rage.
“…I can only give you what I’m capable of, Daria…I like you I… care about you…”
Daria closed her eyes; a fresh tremble took hold.
Gregory dragged her into his arms. “What is it, love?” he pleaded, running his hands over her; searching for a hurt he wouldn’t find, because it was buried deep inside her breast. “Daria?”
He didn’t love her. But he cared and deeply.
Daria wrenched herself from her torpor. Wrapping her arms around him, she clung tight. “I am fine.”
“Liar.” The harsh rasp of breath hot against her cheek—soothing. Steadying.
Being in his arms, only in his arms, made her feel this way.
“I’m not.”
He stilled.
“Remember, Gregory,” she said, as his breathing settled into a smoother rhythm with hers. “I don’t bother with lying.”
A second hitched by.
The resonant thrum of Gregory’s chuckle moved through her. She absorbed his ease, taking it for her own.
Gregory just held her that way.
They held one another. Arms wrapped about each other.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” She wanted to. She wanted to give him this.
His body stiffened.
Daria interrupted him. “I’m doing this,” she said, knowing intuitively. “We’ve already gone over all the details with Lord Kilburn. I am ready.”
“You’re not. You’re upset—”
“I was.” She shrugged. “And now I’m not.”
Gregory eased away and assessed for himself.
If there weren’t a grander sign of his regard that he’d postpone the meeting between she and Emmy. This for Gregory was the surest way to convey his closest form of love to her.
“Also, this is Emmy,” she reminded. “She is my dear friend.”
He didn’t say anything to that.
“I’m not worried about the duke.”
Gregory grunted. “You should be.”
Leaning up on tiptoe she kissed away his scowl.
Growling his approval, Gregory glided his fingers along her jaw, and parting her lips, he seized control. With his mouth, he kissed her deeply.
It was over too quick.
“Furthermore, husband, you will be there.” With him at her side, she could brave a ton event.
Daria’s belly fluttered.
Daria smiled softly up at him. “You adorn your halls in crimson and gold, but your chambers, your sanctuary where none other dare come, are this sapphire blue because it is your favorite.”
Something altered in his eyes. His gaze lingered, and she felt it then—not appraisal, but something far more powerful. She had chosen this gown for him. He knew it, and it had, if not changed him, changed something between them.
A light shifted in his eyes.
She frowned. Had she been wrong?
“Daria, I am unable to accompany you tonight,” he murmured; his smooth baritone contained more than a trace of regret. “I thought that was clear.”
Daria stared at him. This was one of those moments where she’d heard wrong and needed a bit to process. “What?”
Gregory brushed the backs of his knuckles along her cheek.
She shoved his hand away. “It most certainly was not clear. You did not say it and I would not have missed it if you did,” she said, her heart racing.
“The only way the meeting takes place is if I’m not in attendance the same time as the Caldecotts. I’ll be along after the exchange.”
She raced to take it all in.
After.
What was he even saying?
Her mind couldn’t keep up.
Through a fast-rising panic, she blurted the only words she had. “I don’t want to go alone. I want to be there with you…” She sounded like a petulant child, and she was behaving as such.
His expression grew strained. “We do not have to do this.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door. “I’ll speak with Kilburn. There’ll be another way.”
He was willing to abandon all, because she was afraid to face down the ton?
Daria stayed him before he left. “Wait!” She didn’t deserve him. “I was taken aback. You know I struggle a bit when things are not as expected.”
Gregory’s eyes locked with hers. His slight pause told her; he needed her to do this. But he was also willing to abandon all for her.
Then, his gaze moved over her.
“My God,” he whispered, his voice a low drag.
Her stomach churned. “What?” Another uncertainty she could not stand.
Unblinking, he flicked his gaze the length of her silver beaded bodice.
“You are a vision, little raven.” He curled a hand at her waist; the heat and heavy weight of his palm penetrated the luxuriant silk, and drew her into his arms. “How could I fail to see you all these months?” he whispered against her ear huskily. “This fabric I did not see.”
“No.”
Daria trembled with want for him.
She lifted her gaze. “Maybe it is because we did not attend the same ton events?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes grave and confused. “That is precisely why. Because that is the only excuse for you proposing to my wretched arse.”
“I had it made for you,” she whispered before their lips touched.
His body stilled. The corded muscles of his chest coiled.
When he didn’t respond fast enough, she shifted on her slippered feet.
“My dress,” she clarified, suddenly shy and embarrassed at her announcement. “I know it is silly. But—”
Gregory’s kiss came violent. As his lips met her mouth, he bent her body to his will and sent the curve of her back arching over her vanity.
A short while later, Gregory handed Daria inside his crested carriage. “Be assured,” he was saying. “Kilburn went over the list himself. Three times. We have men stationed inside whose sole purpose is to send word if there’s any changes. You are safe. You’ll be safe there.”
“I know,” she said.
A faint line appeared between his brows.
“Unless you’d rather I not know?”
The ghost of a smile appeared in place of his earlier frown. Her husband signaled to the footman.
“Gregory,” she said softly, when he went to shut her door.
“Yes?”
“I love you,” she whispered.
Gregory’s mouth opened and closed several times.
She absolved him of guilt with a smile. “You needn’t say it back. I’m only saying it because I love you.”
“Uh…” A flush hit his high, noble cheekbones, “Good evening.” He shut the door.
And with his inarticulate anti-rake response, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.