Page 5 of My Darling Mr. Darling

Oh, yes—Her Grace had had someopinionson that front. And she’d been doing her damnedest to thrust wives upon both of them, which was half the reason John was entertaining the idea of keeping his. She’d even contrived a truly atrocious little epithet for him—Darling Darling, which was as insipid and saccharine as anything he’d ever heard. Worse still, she’d threatened to spread it about theTonin an effort to charm potential brides into becomingDarling’s darling.

Eventually, he would have to have a wife. But the thought of marrying a woman with whom he’d shared a few dances and light conversation had little appeal—and what purpose was there in choosing his own bride, when he had one convenient to hand already?

Or at least something adjacent to convenient-to-hand. Therewasthe small matter of actually securing her.

A trifling concern, now that he did, in fact, know where she was.

Grey snickered once more, a sardonic grin half-concealed behind his glass. “Don’t you think your aversion to marriage is a bit extreme, Alex?”

Alex sniffed disdainfully. “God save me from the zeal of newly converted. I’ll leave you to your raptures of connubial bliss, Grey, and thank you to refrain from dragging me down to it with you.” He lifted his glass in a mock salute. “May you drown in marital happiness—and leave us contented bachelors to our own devices here on dry land.”

A knowing chuckle rumbled from somewhere deep in Grey’s chest; a sound that suggested he’d gleaned some sort of arcane and mysterious knowledge that neither John nor Alex was yet privy to. “You’re the only bachelor here,” Grey said.

Petulantly, Alex snapped back, “John might as well be. He’s half a husband at best. It’s hardly worth acknowledging.”

Half a husband, John mused, as he listened to his friends bicker. Less even than that, if he were being honest. And that was the problem, really. For years he’d been caught in a sort of limbo, where he was neither husband nor bachelor. Two opposing realities existed, but he could live in neither until one had ceased to exist.

But Violet had lived in that same state just as long, and she had suffered so much worse than he for it. He was impatient, yes—but perhaps too much of his privilege had come at Violet’s expense. As much as it grated upon his nerves to be manipulated in the same manner that Grey manipulated everyone else, perhaps—just this once—it might be merited.

Violet had always deserved better.

And he heard himself speak, as if from a great distance: “Grey, I need you to do me a favor.”

Chapter Two

Violet rolled her eyes as Serena gathered up her skirts, picking gingerly along the garden path in her soft-soled slippers, which certainly had not been fashioned for such a task.

“Oh,” Serena said. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, I think my gown is caught—” She gave a muted squawk, and the awful sound of rending silk split the air.

Serena—recently the Marchioness of Granbury—was not well-suited to housebreaking. It had been ten years since Violet had last walked the grounds of what had once been her father’s London townhouse, but little had changed in the intervening time. Her feet still knew the path, the feel of the stones beneath her feet. The air, heavily scented with the perfume of roses, felt nostalgic as it whisked past her cheeks. Time had let the house largely alone, it seemed.

“Watch out for the thorns,” Violet said, a bit too late to be of any use, and then added beneath her breath, “Ididtell you to wear boots.”

“Don’t scold,” Serena said, her mouth forming a pretty moue as she surveyed the tattered hem of her gown. “What a pity,” she sighed. “I did actually like this one.”

“It doesn’t like you. Yellow makes you look sickly.” Good Lord, Violet would never understand the nobility—Serena had gone through half a dozen gowns in varying shades of yellow in the last months alone, just because she knew it piqued her husband, who did not favor the color on her. Three, she knew, had mysteriously ended up in the rag heap, two had been ‘ruined by a careless laundry maid’ and one had had an unfortunate encounter with the fireplace in his lordship’s library—though how the marquess had somehow confused a brilliant jonquil silk gown forkindlingwas anyone’s guess.

As they inched along the side of the massive house, Serena said, “I’m not certain that this is perfectlylegal.”

“Of course it is,” Violet whispered back, suppressing an aggrieved sigh. Perhaps she ought to have outlined the finer points of skulking beforehand, but she had thought that even Serena would have understood that one did not attempt to hold conversations during the act. “The house might not be mine any longer, but I still have a right to it.”Through marriage.

“Oh,” said Serena, and a blessed moment of silence passed as they ducked beneath the sill of the stillroom window. But as soon as they emerged near the terrace door: “Then why are we sneaking?”

“Well, I certainly don’t wishhimto know we were here.” Violet risked a peek through the windowpanes, but the interior of the house was dark and silent. This was the closest she had ever gotten to her goal—peering through the windows now and again under cover of darkness, attempting to establish the routine of the staff, the patterns that guided their movements.

Usually the butler, Wentworth, was the last to retire for the evening—except for Mr. Darling himself, who kept strange hours. But Wentworth was well into his sixties now, and the silver at his temples that she had remembered from her childhood has spread across the whole of his head since then, though it was growing sparse indeed. As Mr. Darling did not seem to entertain often—orever—there was no need for Wentworth to be up any later than half nine at the latest.

Which was why Violet and Serena had arrived at ten precisely. “Won’t his lordship miss you?” Violet inquired as she slipped past the terrace door and down the three wide steps that led to a tiny arbor made of an arched trellis wound through with tea roses. Beneath it, a weathered stone bench rested, moss growing thick upon its feet.

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.” Serena blew a loose lock of blond hair away from her face and tiptoed down the steps after Violet. “He says he’s trod upon my toes too often to risk dancing in public yet. Last I saw of him, he’d taken the duke and Mr. Darling up to the card room. I likely won’t be missed until midnight.”

She wouldn’t be missed by her husband, at least—but surely tongues would be wagging come morning about the marchioness who had disappeared from her own ball. Still, at least it had served the purpose of confirming Mr. Darling’s location—and securing it for the next few hours.

Violet tugged at the stone bench, but its feet seemed to have sunken into the soft earth beneath it, and it resisted her efforts to dislodge it. “Blast,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Help me lift this, won’t you? I hid a key beneath one of the feet years ago, but I can’t pull it up.”

“You hid a key?” Serena asked as she scurried over and lent her strength to the task, the fabric of her evening gloves catching on the rough stone.

“Well, of course. I assure you, if you should happen to take a midnight stroll through the garden only to return to find the house locked up tight behind you, you would hide a key, too.” Together they heaved, and at last the bench came clear of the earth, dragging a massive clod of dirt up along with the feet. “How had you imagined we were going to get inside?”