Free Dark Season by Joanna Lowell

first bite. “Your cook is truly a treasure. I could eat a dozen.”
    Daphne smiled a real smile.
    “I’m sure you could,” she said, giving him a look of frank appraisal. “I don’t know where you put it all. It’s unfair you should look like that. You’ve seen Warren Cowper? He’s produced the most alarming pair of jowls. Robert Abergavenny has gained a pound around the middle for every hair he’s lost off the top. Now that you’ve come back, you’ve put all the bloated bachelors to shame. I saw Lord Averly at the Puttnams’ musicale turning down the éclairs in favor of a watercress sandwich.”
    “And you lay this culinary heresy at my doorstep?” Isidore polished off his piece of tart and returned the empty plate to the table.
    “You cut an impressive figure.” Daphne poured him more tea, bending over the pot. Isidore couldn’t help but take in an even more generous view of her considerable endowments. She had a tiny port wine stain on her left breast just peeking out above the silk. It was shaped rather like a heart. How convenient. He nearly rolled his eyes. She looked up at him through her lashes.
    “Do you have any idea how many questions I’ve had to field about your intentions? Does Lord Blackwood intend to stay in London? Does Lord Blackwood intend to marry this season? Does Lord Blackwood prefer blonds or brunettes?” She paused. “Or redheads?”
    Isidore crossed his legs and leaned back on the settee. He remembered that a man had to be wary of Daphne. Daphne delighted in her powers of attraction. She flirted shamelessly then tried to flay you alive.
    “It’s because of my figure, is it?” He shrugged. “I’ve always been possessed of it. The debutantes managed to restrain themselves in the past.”
    “Now you are … unattached.” Daphne’s coquetry vanished. She regarded him somberly.
    “I spent years in London unattached,” he reminded her. “My engagement to Phillipa was brief.”
    “Formally,” she replied. “But it was obvious to everyone your affections were engaged. Even before you admitted it to yourself.”
    He let this pass.
    “Phillipa knew,” said Daphne. “I used to think she rather took advantage of you. Before the engagement, of course. Then I realized she reciprocated your love.”
    “Of course,” echoed Isidore. He felt increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. But he’d asked for it. He should have taken her cue and begun to discuss the demerits of his cook. Daphne’s gaze was too keen. He couldn’t imagine what she was trying to get at. He looked at her blandly.
    “So do you?” Daphne glanced down then up again, as though trying to surprise a new expression on his face. “Intend to marry?”
Or are you still mourning Phillipa?
The unspoken question hung between them.
    “Marry?” He laughed. “That’s what’s expected of me, isn’t it? London in the spring. Castle Blackwood in the summer. A wife for all seasons. An heir for the future.”
    He saw Daphne flinch and cursed himself. Six years of marriage and she was still childless. The fault wasn’t necessarily hers, if one could speak of fault in such cases. But it couldn’t be easy. He wondered if this was the source of the strain he detected whenever she mentioned Ben. Isidore had lived his life in broad emotional strokes—love and hate, devotion and fury, joy and despair. Those were sentiments he understood. He didn’t consider himself particularly sensitive to nuance. But he couldn’t help but feel that there was a subtle undercurrent of unhappiness in the Bennington household.
    The longer he sat across from Daphne, the more he began to notice the little changes time had wrought. The light lines around her lips had been carved by frowns. She didn’t move with the same fluid, boneless grace that he remembered. She was more awkward in her skin. As though something had shaken her confidence, her sense of who she was.
    He wasn’t surprised Daphne and Bennington’s union had