“You’re entirely too ill-tempered and crass.”
The duke stared strangely at her.
Daria cleared her throat. Suddenly and very uncharacteristically warm, Daria shrugged from her cloak and draped the black fabric along the back of the chaise.
Feeling his stare on her, Daria looked up. “Is this all right?”
His cerulean-blue eyes glittered again. “Would it matter if I said no?”
“Probably not. I am warm.”
“You are warm,” he repeated softly.
She nodded. “And you strike me as a gentleman who doesn’t like dealing with ladies prone to fainting.”
“I don’t like dealing with any ladies, Miss Kearsley,” he said pleasantly. “Only the wicked ones, and despite your widow’s weeds, you’re missing the most essential piece for me—the dead husband part.”
“You are not very likeable, Gregory.”
He stared at her with patent mockery. “Tell that to Polite Society.”
“I’m not a gossip, and even if I were to tell them, they wouldn’t believe me.”
Of a certainty, her family would mourn a little bit less when Daria’s end came, and she was parted from the Duke of Argyll. As it was, Daria didn’t question fate but she was coming very close to regret at being married to a man so…vapid.
“All right, Miss Kearsley, I trust your brother isn’t so neglectful that he won’t at some point notice your absence and come to collect you.” He swirled a second drink in a distracted circle. “Unless that is the plan? Hmm? To trap me?” he asked without rancor. A product of all the scheming misses who’d jaded him into questioning anyone’s intentions.
Daria felt her first twinge of pity for the all-powerful Duke of Argyll.
He had, however, given her the window she needed. And unlike yesterday when she’d bumbled their first meeting with talk of fate, a curse, and their inevitable union, this time, Daria knew how to get through to him, a cynical duke who saw the world as a chessboard and everyone on the board as a pawn to be moved—logic.
He thought of no one but himself and, therefore, Daria needed to offer him something of value.
And she’d finally had an idea how to move their relationship along.
“Gregory,” she said softly. “I believe I have something that might be of value to you.”
Chapter 7
He’d intended to interrogate Miss Kearsley and swiftly send her on her way with a fair warning.
All that ended the minute she laughed.
To be precise, the moment his brother-in-law and partner,Cadogan—of all men—drew that rich, full-throated amusement from the emotionless chit’s blood-red lips.
He scowled.
Here she’d been in Argyll’s company, well, longer than he cared, and her face was as blank as a sheet of parchment. But a handful of moments with the rebarbative, supercilious Cadogan and she had crimson color spilling across her ghastly white cheeks.
Granted, Argyll hadn’t bestowed the full-force of his charm…correction, any force of his charm. That was neither here nor there. Attracting a woman’s attention wasn’t something he worked at. It…just—damn it, came naturally.
Or it had had. Until her.
Argyll swallowed hard and took a few intentional breathes.
This one stared directly at him with absolutely no emotion in her penetrating brown eyes.
That was, with the exception of one singular little lapse. Moments ago, Daria Kearsley’s eyes went all soft, distant, giving a dreamy air to the otherwise expressionless wallflower. It’d taken Argyll a whole three instances before he’d managed what Kilburn had naturally done.
