Daria found comfort in the familiar.
It’d always been that way for her.
Since she was a small girl, Daria herself organized her wardrobe. Her process was meticulous. Her gowns were hung in an order of: morning dress, day dress, carriage dress, dinner dress, ballgown, and nightshifts.
Then, of course, there came a separate corner of Daria’s wardrobe where she filed away the lesser donned opera dress and supper dress. Within those subsets, her gowns were arranged by fabric type. Never starched muslin, rough-laced collars, or heavily stiffened brocade. And within those distinct pairings, she’d created a system where they hung by color shades: onyx black descending to the lightest shade of grey—at least it existed in her trousseau.
Every morn, Daria rose at the exact same time: twelve minutes past five o’clock. She lay reflecting on her coming day for fifteen minutes. From there, she went about her morning ablutions—also in a strictly followed order.
She broke her fast in the fourth upholstered dining chair. To her right sat Brenna. Cora sat directly across from Daria.
Her morning meal consisted of one boiled egg, two pieces of plain toast, a serving’s worth of strawberries or raspberries—and a glass of chocolate.
On this first morn in her new home, and a new seat at a different—an even longer Hepplewhite table, noticeably different in so many ways, but only one that truly mattered.
She skimmed her gaze along each silk damask upholstered mahogany chair.
Empty. Every last one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-eighteen-nineteen-twenty-twenty-one-twenty-two-twenty-three, and twenty-four of them.
Dropping an elbow onto the table and resting her palm upon her hand, Daria pushed her crested silver fork around her dish with her other hand. Her gaze snagged on her tired, blood-shot eyes reflected in the regretfully placed mirror above the loaded sideboard.
Seated here by herself in this sun-burnished, cheerfully painted room, she’d never been more miserable her life.
When her father died, through the anguish, Daria had her siblings. Her mother. Clayton’s friends who’d become family. They’d had one another and held one another, and helped each other to the other side of grief.
Daria searched her sad eyes around the silent breakfast room.
Here, there was no one. No one aside from footmen, too bulked in muscle to properly fit their—or any uniform—and looking more like dangerous guards in costume than actual servants. There was one un-bewigged man stationed at every corner, two who flanked the sideboard, and two who stood sentry behind the leather-padded armchairs at the heads of the table. As if they were prepared to slay an interloper who stepped forward to claim what was not theirs.
One of those distinguished places was reserved for her husband.
“…No…You are my bride. We are nothing in the eyes of the law and church until I bed you…”
And there it was.
Her morning misery came in some part from the gaping hole left by her family’s absence, and in larger part by her horrible, terrific, wretchedly miserable wedding night.
“…I do not want you coming to my bed after you’ve spent the day in some woman’s arms, Gregory…”
Daria dragged her fork down the middle of her untouched plate, punishing herself with the discordantscreechof metal meeting porcelain.
It didn’t help.
Her misery was of her own making.
She’d assumed the worst of Gregory.
On their wedding day, she’d accused him of bedding another woman.
She’d told him she’d not give him a babe, a child he needed, and one he’d noted as a term of their marrying.
She’d been the cruel one.
“…You are attempting to punish me for, as you see it, being unfaithful…?”
His stillness in that moment, the flash of shock in his eyes, confirmed how deeply her accusations hurt him.
Daria flexed her hands; her fork clattered upon her dish.
