He flicked his fingers. “It is the way of the world.”
Daria stared blankly at him, this man whom she’d married.
Her whole life, she’d fixed on death and dying. She’d nurtured her curiosity of the macabre, enough to know the cold, ugly truth about people. The world. But hearing Gregory’s flippant response hit hard. Hearing him speak so ruthlessly of his own sisters, accentuated—further accentuated—the great chasm between their souls.
A belated sting of pain struck through her numb state. Blankly, she looked down at the corners of her shredded, lightly bleeding cuticles.
Gregory hooked an ankle over his opposite knee and drummed his fingertips along a gleaming leather boot. “Come, child, you sought to marry me because I’m a coldhearted, self-serving, bastard. Not even an hour wed and you’re trembling and tearful because I’m exactly what you took me for?” The smile that grazed his lips iced her from the inside out.
“I’m not crying,” she said, sharply; that faltering profession made the biggest fool of her.
The patronizing look he bestowed sent a dark haze across her vision.
It was only then Daria registered the warm wetness that tickled her face.
Horrified, she slapped her hands across her damp cheeks.
Gregory withdrew a crisp white kerchief from his jacket front. Wordlessly, he handed the linen square to Daria.
Avoiding her husband’s eyes, she took the linen offering. At least he hadn’t tendered some haphazard lie just to give Daria what shewantedto hear.
That attempt at reassurance didn’t help.
To preserve her dignity, Daria turned her shoulder. Unnerved by the heavy weight of his stare, she unfolded and refolded Gregory’s handkerchief into a more perfect square. Daria wiped the moisture from her cheeks. When she’d finished,she blew noisily into the black monogrammed letters of her husband’s name.
Chapter 11
“Married…to the Duke of Argyll?”
From the other side of the thick oak door panel, silence met Viscount St. John’s question.
Reclined against the wall opposite Viscount St. John’s office, with the bottom of his boot propped against the ghastly bright floral wallpaper, Argyll waited for it.
The moment his new bride discovered she’d been wrong and Argyll right, as usual. No sane nobleman would dare reject all the benefits that came from an alliance to—
“Argyll?” That thunderous shout rattled the door panels. Then came St. John’s scathing diatribe.
Argyll’s smug smile slipped, as did the heel of his shoe. His boot hit the floor with a sharp, loudclack.
An unbroken, agonizing sob split through St. John’s rabid rant. “No. My God, Daria,” the Dowager Viscountess St. John wailed. “What have you done?”
It turned out his enigmatic little wife had been right all along. The viscount was not at all pleased. An understatement at that.
Folding his arms at his chest, Argyll tapped his fingers against his elbows.
Thiswas what it felt like, then, being an average chap.
Unlike she’d done at their wedding earlier, his bride didn’t rush to Argyll’s defense.
Nor should she.
Whyshould she? The whole reason she’d wanted to wed him was to inflict maximum suffering upon her family, so they’d find solace in her death. He’d not spelled it out that way before. But now that hehad… He grimaced.
His pride continued to take a beating, and a rather violent one, that made up for years of only platitudes and fawning.
Another lady’s voice broke through the furor. “Perhaps we’ve misunderstood, Daria.”
Ah, Viscountess St. John. Argyll shuddered. The founder and ape-leader of the Mismatch Society, that organization of men-hating ladies. She’d managed to quell the chaos. The first quiet since Daria marched herself in alone, closed the door behind her, and stated calmly and clearly that she’d married.
