“You do us both great disrespect.” Overtaken by anger on his behalf, Daria swept into the middle of the room, her skirts whipping satisfyingly about her ankles. “You not only besmirch Gregory’s honor, but you will also treat me as a child, ignore my voice, and reject my decision?”
“Daria,” her sister spoke quietly, “if his own family feels so, that should be warning enough for you.”
Frustration and anger nearly blinded Daria, but not enough that she missed his friends’ pitying expressions.
They believed Daria nothing more than a hysterical woman. And yet she challenged them with words, while they and their fellow lords met with pistols at dawn and an aim to murder. The unfairness of it all.
She clenched and unclenched her hands on either side of her, fighting to control the emotion that threatened to overwhelm her, and took a different approach. “I am a wallflower with a modest dowry,” she said. “Gregory is a duke who wants for nothing,” Except loyal friends and family. “What reason would he have to force me into marriage?Hmm?” Daria looked pointedly at each of them.
She stopped on Lord Rutherford. Not because of any coldness in his gaze, but a warmer emotion. Then, so faint as to blink she would have missed it, the marquess nodded.
Taking a breath, Daria bowed her head in return.
At least, Gregory hadonetrue friend.
Encouraged, Daria addressed the rest. “You suspect something nefarious in Gregory’s motives, but there is none.” She brought her shoulders back. “In fact, you should know it wasn’t the duke who asked me—”
“To speak up on my behalf,” the duke called out loudly, drowning Daria out. “This touching, albeit unwarranted defense, comes entirely of her own volition.”
Confused, she blinked. “That wasn’t…”
Gregory brushed past his partners and sisters and joined Daria. Without a word, he united their hands.
A lightening-like flash surged from where they touched; his powerful fingers enveloped her smaller ones, conferring heatthat soothed corners of her being previously untouched and undiscovered—before now.
Daria stared unblinkingly at his long, sun-bronzed digits; her gaze honed on the very faintest dusting of gold hair upon his knuckles. Riveted, she drew his hand nearer. A prominent greenish-blue vein traversed a path from his littlest finger. It led like a point to a half-moon scar, white from age. She frowned. What was the story behind that mark? Angling it in the light to better aid her examination, she noted the defined line of a muscle that ran from his three middle fingers and the way those thin cords…eased when he pulled away.
Gregory tucked those same knuckles under Daria’s chin and tipped her gaze up. “Are we doing this, little raven?” he murmured, giving her a fleeting caress.
A foreign heat settled low in her belly, but it was a warmth a woman, even the most innocent of ones like herself, recognized as desire.
And desiring this man, her rake of a husband who left a trail of broken hearts in every ballroom and bedroom he passed through, threatened Daria far more than her eventual death in the coming days.
“Are we doing this?” Lord Lyon asked peevishly as no true man of God would.
Run.
Daria’s throat moved. “We are doing this.”
Chapter 9
One of the key pieces of Argyll’s plan to marry the Duke of Craven’s sister-in-law had included getting a man of the cloth in his employ.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the—” Lord Lyon stood in Argyll’s office, looking around before fixing his gaze directly on Argyll. The disheveled chaplain attempted to continue. “Sight of G-ha-ha—” But then he burst out laughing, unable to maintain the solemnity.
He should have chosen better.
Suppressing irritation, he looked to his soon-to-be-wife to gauge her reaction to the partially—all right, more than partially—drunk chaplain.
Argyll’s bride remained still; her features revealed nothing.
Another woman would have wept copious tears at such an execrable affair. Daria stared past the spectacle Lyon made, as though refusing him the dignity of a reaction. Her composure bespoke an impressive amount of strength. It touched off a reluctant admiration for his bride.
Miss Delia Kearsley tore to her feet. Her cheeks flushed with indignation.
Poise and calm didnotseem to be a shared family trait.
“May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest—” She jabbed an accusatory finger at Lyon, her voice trembling with outrage. “A minist’ring angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling.”
