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.
“Landonsaid 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.
