At last, she found shelter in her rooms.
Panting and gasping for breath, she collapsed against another door panel.
Then she recalled the trouble that’d landed her in moments ago.
Restless, her entire body shaking, Daria made one last flight—this time for the grand four-poster with its sapphire and gold curtains drawn wide.
She launched herself face-first upon the feather-tick mattress, bouncing up and down lightly several times before her body settled.
Daria lay there for a minute, teeming with emotion, too many to identify or explain. They swarmed her. Until it was too much.
Daria screamed into her bedding, the heavy, silk damask coverlet drowning out her misery. She counted to one hundred.
Finally, relieved of some of the explosive energy, she turned her head to get a proper breath.
Misery, thy name is Daria.
Alone now, with no running left to be done—save back to her family—and clarity restored, her exchange with Gregory replayed in her mind, as vivid as the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet—remembered only because of her twin’s love of it.
Gregory, half-naked, stinking of spirits, his damp shirt hastily donned and some woman’s fingermarks upon his neck.
Pain stabbed at Daria’s breast, and she hated that she hurt over Gregory.
Fighting tears, she bit her recurrently bruised cuticle.
The low rumble of his smooth baritone filled her mind.
“…Hush now…”
The sound of his voice had steadied her then and had the same effect now.
What was it about his presence that soothed her soul?
“…Where is your rosewater, love…?”
Daria’s body trembled. He’d called her “love.” He’d known her favorite scent, and that she’d not worn it.
“…You place it here…”
Her eyes slid shut. She reflexively touched that place behind her ear that he’d kissed.
“…And here…”
She brushed her fingers over her neck; he had worshipped this part of her like a praying man.
Daria’s core throbbed, her body betraying her. Biting her lower lip, she rocked her hips into the mattress in a futile search for surcease.
But then, this was his power—a magnetism she had naively believed herself immune to.
That reminder brought her squarely back to earth. Daria collapsed into the mattress.
She’d always thought the ill-fated Romeo and Juliet ill-conceived. Love at first sight, and a willingness to surrender one’s life from but a short acquaintance. She stilled.
Assuredly, she did not love him—she could not. As for Gregory? Someday, after she passed, he’d fall in love.
But until then, they were married and seeing him in a state of dishabille, knowing after he’d shown Daria a magic she’d never believed possible, he’d then gone and spent their wedding day with a woman of great beauty, didn’t sting. It ripped her all the way open.
His kiss, the feel of his hands wrapped about her, gripping her buttocks, guiding her against him, and leading her to a blissful surrender had been…magic.
