Free Dark Season by Joanna Lowell Page A

soured. Even if Daphne had borne a child, he couldn’t see those two comfortably settled in the nuptial bower. He’d thought the match doomed from the very beginning. He knew Daphne to be, for all her intelligence and charm, a vain and jealous woman. And he knew Bennington … well, he just knew Bennington. The man was, quite frankly, too handsome for his own good. Women had always thrown themselves at him, and he’d never seemed more deeply attached to one than another. He enjoyed them all. Isidore had always wondered if some secret financial difficulty had spurred him into the engagement. He’d never asked, and he’d never caught wind of any gossip that confirmed his suspicion. Daphne was certainly desirable enough to tempt a man into marriage, even if she hadn’t come with a substantial fortune. Maybe Bennington had simply fallen under her spell. He liked to fall under the spells of beautiful women. Usually it was all over in an evening’s enchantment. Isidore had known him to be so ensorcelled a hundred times … before and after he’d married Daphne. But he tended to be discreet. It could be Daphne was deceived and thought him faithful. He hoped so. But he rather doubted it. The lines in her face were most likely the signs of her disappointment. He wondered if she had strayed herself.
    “Well,” said Daphne, an ugly smile stretching her beautiful lips. “That
is
what’s expected of you. What you will do, of course, remains to be seen. We all play our roles with differing degrees of success. My life has not gone as I’d planned.”
    “Nor has mine.” He fumbled for the right words. He wanted to comfort Daphne, who suddenly seemed perilously close to tears. “We don’t always have complete control over what happens to us. There are greater forces at work.”
    “Sid,” she said. Her blue eyes were enormous, brimming. Her voice had faded to a whisper so low he could barely hear her. “What forces do you mean?”
    The sneer the question summoned was more for himself than for her. He’d wasted enough time with his mad, black thoughts about the devil. And he couldn’t really bring himself to mouth platitudes about a watchmaker God.
    “Chance,” he said flatly. “Contingency. The random unfolding of the universe. The forces of chaos. That’s all. Nothing grand. Nothing purposive.”
    “Sid.” Daphne didn’t seem to have listened. She was sitting up very straight, her hands on her lap. Staring at him. “Sometimes I think that I’m cursed. I think that she cursed me.”
    “Who?” he said, leadenly. He knew who. The room seemed suddenly suffocating. It smelled of old leather and dust and cooling, bitter, overdrawn tea. Shouldn’t there be flowers? Daphne could have insisted on a few bouquets to add just a little life and color and fragrance. He couldn’t sit still a moment longer.
    “Can I open the window? It’s a fine day,” he said and, without waiting for an answer, walked to a window, pulled apart the curtains, and lifted the sash.
    “Sid.” He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Do you think it’s possible?”
    “I think you’re mad,” he said. From the window he watched men in high-crowned hats walking smartly along the street. They were utterly, intractably sane. They didn’t look for the reflection of a raven-haired, black-eyed girl in every puddle, every shop window. He found himself crossing his eyes so he could see the windowpane rather than the scene outside. That dark blur was his own raven hair. Not hers.
    He heard a muffled sob and turned to catch Daphne in his arms. She pressed her small, soft body against him, and he stroked her hair, the silky strands touched with flame by the afternoon light that shone through the parted curtains. The sitting room door was open, and his eyes strayed to it. All he needed was a servant to pass that door. Or Bennington.
    “Daphne.” He thrust her back, hands on her shoulders. “That was cruel. I didn’t mean … We all went a little