“What of Daria?”
Confounded, he stared at the peculiar-in-her-own-way miss. It took a moment to register this was the first she’d not gone off spouting Shakespeare. He looked to his bride for help—and froze.
A radiant, otherworldly smile adorned her lips. An ethereal splendor clung to her fine-boned features. Her smile, as rare assnow in April, leant an equally magical quality to his mystical bride. His eyes grew shuttered. His breath grew shallow. Her smiles were so elusive that she rendered them like carefully chosen gifts for only worthy recipients.
And this vast, unfettered, abounding tilt of her narrow lips, more exquisite than the one Kilburn elicited, made a man feel like a conqueror of kingdoms.
Made a man feel like a conqueror of kingdoms?
By God, I am…waxing poetic.
“Ah, the duke discovered the quandary,” Delia said. “Whether the ordinance against smiles applied to Daria.”
He’d discovered whole host of concerns, all surrounding his bewitching bride and whatever spell she’d cast.
The prattling Kearsley, how she’d forevermore be referred to, filled a void he had no interest in having filled. “On account Daria is no longer smi—”
“I do not require any clarification,” he said succinctly.
“You are certain?” the unhelpful girl volunteered.
“Quite.”
Argyll’s stare stayed fastened on the woman about to be his duchess; that was if the infernal proceedings ever reached a middle and end.
For the buffoonery surrounding the ceremony, with her head lifted, dainty chin tipped at a proud angle and statuesque shoulders squared in quiet defiance, she possessed the carriage of no mere duchess, but of a bloody queen.
Knocked on his arse by the realization, he barely kept his feet.
Of all men,Argyllhad neglected to see the lady’s unvarnished grace and compelling beauty.
Now, with the same rakish gaze that’d failed him before, he corrected his error and drank his fill of the elegant breadth of her shoulders, the clean line of her neck, the unyielding curve of herlips. Argyll imagined the moment he seized that crimson flesh and left her mouth marked and damp from the ferocity of his ministrations.
His pulse knocked loudly in his ears.
Compelled, he wound his hungry focus to the modest line of her laced bodice, the cut of fabric dipped enough to reveal the clean, regal line of her collarbone. The deep hollows above those butterfly wings begged for a man’s mouth—his lips, tongue, teeth all required in the conquest of that unchartered territory.
Argyll’s.
His breathing grew shallower, and he stopped his roguish examination. She belonged to him this night, and every one thereafter.
He traced his path lower to where her black satin gown pulled the eye invitingly to a sleek, taut midriff.
Lusting after your own bride, a voice needled. How vulgar.
“Argyll?”
Nerves frayed, Argyll backed away quick.
Lyon caught him before he tripped on his feet. “Whoa, there.”
Argyll rolled his shoulder away from his bloody chaplain. “If you say anything about me being ready to run, Lyon,” he snarled, “I’ll be hiring a new man of the cloth to perform your bloody burial services.”
“You think I’d mention you jilting your bride during your wedding ceremony?” Even the bloody irreverent Lyon drew up in affront. “I wouldn’t offend your bride so, Your Grace.”As you just did.
Unspoken, the charge hovered damningly.
Argyll’s posture stiffened.
