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,” shesaid, 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, andfinallyliving.
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 façade—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.
