“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.
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.
