Alone. Alone. Alone.
A devil in her head drummed that reminder home.
Her breath coming faster, Daria sidestepped guest after guest, their smiles as ghastly as their merriment, and claimed what little freedom she could upon the parquet floor.
Alone—
No!
Do not think of it.
Gregory.
“Your Grace!”
Gregory.
“But a word, Your Grace?”
Gregory.
“A moment, Your Grace!”
Gregory.
His name repeated in her head, keeping her from collapsing beneath the weight of those calls.
A guest knocked into her. The gentleman’s hurried apologies replaced the reassuring echo of her husband’s name.
Daria wanted to clap her hands over her ears and shut out the noise, the obsequious regrets, her heart hammering. She jolted her shoulder away from the man and took off in the opposite direction.
All around her, men and women who had never acknowledged her now called out greetings—or rather, greetings to a duchess.
The Duchess of Argyll.
It was someone else. It was not her.
And yet it was.
Now she was this woman, and so she existed as two: the woman she had been, the one she preferred, who found peace in quiet corners and familiar faces, and this stranger, this monster people flocked to for no other reason than the title now affixed to her otherwise same name.
A hot flush swept over her body.
Desperate. Desperate for escape. Desperate for air.
She grabbed the nearest drink proffered by a handsomely uniformed servant. Champagne sloshed in the crystal flute as her fingers wavered. She set it down hard upon the nearest empty surface.
A faint tinkling threaded through the roar—mocking giggles, shattered glass.
Daria’s heart slammed painfully into her rib cage.
And then—air. Precious air.
She found her way through the den and out the other side, into muffled quiet, her body slick with faint moisture, still burning hot.
Daria walked and kept walking.
The quiet enveloped her like a gentle hug. It did not fully calm her, but it settled the frantic, incoherent noise in her head.Somehow, she found her way outside to blessed spring air. It touched her; cool, comforting.
