Gregory assessed her hurting family. “Unless my wife would prefer refreshments?” Inscrutable, he looked to Daria for confirmation.
Yes! I want us to stay. I want you to meet the rest of my sisters and…
She opened her mouth to tell him.
That isn’t the marriage you promised him, nor even expected for yourself.
Daria faltered.
No. But I wanted it…Not his love, but some camaraderie between him and her siblings.
Unfortunately, she’d only recognized that buried truthnow.
Tears burned her throat.
A low growl reverberated around the room.
“What my sister would have liked is a proper wedding breakfast to go with a proper wedding, Argyll,” Clayton flayed.
The dowager viscountess dashed away a tear and sent her son a pleading look.
“No, she wouldn’t have,” Daria said quietly. “I asked for this day to go exactly as it did. His Grace has done only as I’ve requested.”
“Daria.” Her brother took her by the shoulders and leaned down to shrink the enormous height difference between them. “Surely you see this is killing me.”
Her heart wrenched. “Please don’t,” she whispered. Not Clayton. Not the brother who’d also stepped into the role of father and shouldered the weight of their family—with support and love. His sorrow would break her.
“Where will you live?”
“I…I…” Confounded by that question she should have considered; she turned to the duke.
“My wife will live with me.”
The hard, possessive quality to that statement unfurled a different kind of heat; this one began low in Daria’s belly.
His heated eyes locked with Daria’s, holding her frozen in a charged moment only they two lived in.
Her brother shattered the moment. “Your manor in Mayfair? One of your bloody country seats?”
“Clayton,” Sylvia chided.
It was a sign of Clayton’s erratic emotions that the sound of his wife’s voice failed to reach him.
“I’m not much for the country, St. John.” Gregory gave a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “More of a London fellow. As my business demands, I have full-time residence at my club. We’ll reside there.”
Clayton stared vacantly at the duke. “Forbidden Pleasures.”
Her mother’s and Sylvia’s gasps caught collectively.
And yet all Daria could hear were two words: Forbidden. Pleasures.
A space not frequented by the polite members of society.
Hidden away at Forbidden Pleasures, rather than in a ducal manor where lords or ladies currying her husband’s favor paid call—those same members who’d cut her with glances and words.
Warmth bloomed at her sternum; Daria briefly covered her face with her hands and squeezed her shoulders tight to keep joy-filled laughter in.
Heaven.
