Lord Kilburn and Lord Rutherford angled their big frames away from Daria, but the stiff set to their shoulders and angry countenances made it clear they abhorred the idea of her marrying the illustrious Duke of Argyll, even more than the gentleman himself.
For his part, he’d only acknowledged her presence once with a brief tilt of his head when she’d first entered, before he’d gone back to speaking with his partners.
His partners, putting up a very determined campaign to talk sense into the duke, must have heard something.
Then Daria detected it.
“I most certainly will not.” Even raised in anger, the lady’s songbird voice was lyrical as a lark.
The door burst open with violent force enough to challenge the door’s well-oiled hinges.
And the singularly most beautiful, elegant woman Daria ever set eyes upon swept forward with the regal grace begetting her angel’s persona.
“What is the meaning of this?” She placed hands on her rounded hips, drawing Daria’s attention to the fact the pale-haired beauty was with child.
Even the trio of alpha gentlemen knew better than to interrupt the lady’s fury. “No one sought to notify me of my own brother’s impending marriage?”
The Duke of Argyll’s sister.
Of course. There could be no doubting Zeus’s children were parallel images of masculine and female perfection and beauty.
“My favorite sister,” Gregory stretched his hands out. “What an unexpected—”
“Yes, given you have excluded me, it would be unexpected, wouldn’t it?” the lady snapped.
“I heard that!” The door burst open a second time, this time with a shockingly greater force, from the most unexpectedly diminutive figure behind such power. “Favorite sister.”
A third pale-blonde specimen of beauty. Smaller. Younger. But with enough fury and fire in her matched blue eyes to rival the suddenly sheepish trio at the duke’s desk.
Spreading his arms wide and his palms up, Gregory swept forward. “You heard incorrectly, Millie. Raina is my favoriteeldestsister.”
The golden whirlwind stopped alongside the young woman. It was like holding up a mirror to the same lady living in two separate times. “Stuff it, Gregory.”
“And we ‘heard incorrectly,’ Gregory?” Gregory’s eldest sister released a snort; she managed elegance even with a snort. “Someone’scharm is slipped in his old age.”
A mindful servant drew the panel shut behind the volatile party.
Lady Millie swept an impressively scathing look over her brother; her brother who also happened to be one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. “I’d say he never had as much charm as he and the world let on, and that his title and occupation account for all his fanfare.”
Lords Rutherford and—wonder of wonders—Kilburn both laughed.
A splotchy red suffused the duke’s cheeks.
Why…why…the duke blushed. And for the first time, Daria wished she had the skill of her sister Cora, a master with pastels and pencils, just so Daria might capture this glimpse of vulnerability from a man whom she’d previously taken as a block of stone that couldn’t be cracked.
As if he’d heard Daria’s silent revelation, Gregory glanced at Daria.
Lord Kilburn followed the duke’s attention.
And she’d wager the little time she had left on this earth that the duke’s friends and partners were behind the vicar’s delay, and subsequently her and Gregory’s nuptials.
She’d been the recipient of all manner of hostile stares, but something in this man’s chilled Daria to the morrow. An aura of death clung to the very air around him and every person in his path.
Shouts and wild cries from outside swiftly killed the rare moment of levity.
A third lady. Unlike the pair of golden ones, dark-haired. “The third lady,” she whispered.
Ignoring the protestations and weapons trained on her, Delia rushed into the fray. “I am very cross with you, Daria!”
