She paused, weighing her words, a feat he’d believed impossible.
Then…
“Yes. Also, Emmy will not marry you, Gregory.”
“Because my former partner, Craven, won’t allow it?”
That accounted for a not so small reason in his selection. With Mac Diggory back from the dead and throwing support behind his son, the Earl of Dynevor, and Latimer by default, Argyll had enough to contend with.
“Her family loves her too much to let you marry her, Gregory.”
“And what ofyourfamily?” he drawled. “Do they not hold you in the same esteem as Miss Caldecott’s family?”
“I love them too much not to marry you.”
That took a moment to untangle. “Ah, I see it. You’d be sacrificing yourself at the proverbial and literal altar.”
Miss Kearsley started to nod. She caught herself.
Too late.
Argyll laughed. God, the chit was fascinating in her own way. He’d give her that.
“I saw it, Gregory.Allof it.”
Had she been a flesh and blood woman with even a remote hint of passion in her veins, her cryptic tones would convey something other than their absolute nothingness.
“You sawusmarried. Me and…” He slanted a look down his nose. “You.”
There came no tears, nor visible recoil over his slight.
She nodded, and lifted her palms and shoulders in a shrug that said,Utter madness, but there you have it.
That was it? Concurrence on the offended lady’s part?
Boredom, suspicion,somethingcompelled him to remain.
Argyll folded his arms. “And what were we doing in this vision of yours, Miss Kearsley?”
“We were in a grand residence.”
Again, her gaze went distant. This time, as she spoke, she did so to only one of them. And it wasn’t Argyll. “I saw our wedding,” she murmured. “Three men whom you know well, were there. And two…” That crease of contemplation furrowed between her strongly arched eyebrows. “Nay,threewomen Two share the same face. And the other is darker. We were there together.” Her vacant eyes expanded. “It is your office. So floral. So light.”
The strangest, darkest unease settled in his bones.
He searched for some hint that she’d been set up by someone, that even now Argyll was at the center of some outrageous act a friend, a partner, or enemy were having at his expense.
The lady’s eyes came into focus on Argyll. She’d journeyed back from whatever far-off place she’d gone, and he along with her.
Miss Kearsley gripped him by the coat sleeve. “We do not have much time, Gregory.”
A fresh wave of disquiet shivered through him. He forced his rogue’s humor through. “The only promising idea there is it would be a short union.”
Sadness slipped into her eyes. “It is a no, then.”
Him married to her? A woman who favored widow’s weeds when she wasn’t even a widow. Who spoke in a flat, toneless way that raised the flesh of a fellow’s arm? Another shudder went through him.
“A firm, unwavering, definitiveno, Miss Kearsley.”
