Argyll closed his eyes, trapped in the living hell.
Blood.
“The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead began to speak…”
The terror of searching Daria for a wound—her shrieks of sorrow and Argyll’s relief when his fingers found the hot wound at his left side.
His wife caught him as he swayed.
“Oh, who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?”
Her hands were warm and solid in his.
Then.
And now.
He focused on that. On her. On the feel of her fingers gripping his sleeve, her voice trembling as she called his name again.
Daria, his lifeline. His only reason for living and wanting to survive.
“Stay,” she whispered.
Then, and pause in her singing, to plead with him now.
I am, love.
He yearned to tell her that, so the worry clogging her voice and interrupting her song for him was no more.
A child’s loud whisper carried all the way through the closed panel of Argyll’s bedchambers. Not a whisper at all. “Did he die?”Eris.
“No, the Duke of Argyll is strong and he has your sister to care for him,” the dowager viscountess said. “He will live to be one-hundred.”
Lord St. John’s loud answering sigh absolutely did contain disappointment.
Argyll frowned and instantly regretted it.
“But Daria is singing him the death song.”
“All Daria’s songs are the death ones…” One of the Kearsley girls—his head was doing him no good at the moment.
A smile peaked through.
“Gregory.”
The bed dipped.
Struggling to open his eyes, it took him several attempts, and when he did—his breath caught.
Oh, God, he’d never seen a more beautiful sight. “Hullo, love,” he whispered.
Daria glared. “I am cross with you.”
He opened his mouth several times. “For living?”
