“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 shedidfeel 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 stoodshoulder 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.
