Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(14)

She dropped a hasty curtsy. “If you’ll excuse me, I should allow you to return to your duchess hunting and I—”

“Never tell me.” He lifted a single eyebrow. “Your mother is motioning to you?”

Daisy pointed her eyes to the ceiling once more. “You’re insufferable,” she muttered. With that, she spun on her heel and left him laughing in her wake.



Oh, the great big lummox.

Daisy stomped away and sought out the precise row of seven chairs tucked at the back, central portion of Lord and Lady Harrison’s ballroom.

They were either completely devoid of logic or deliberately cruel to place the partnerless ladies at the center of the ballroom, in the exact spot every bored lord and lady’s eyes were inevitably drawn to, if for no other reason than because of its obvious location.

She claimed an empty seat and glanced down the empty row. It was a lonely night for wallflowers.

She tapped her canary yellow slipper upon the marble floor. And that was another thing altogether. There really should never be such an inglorious class as wallflowers. Why, as long as gentlemen existed, every young lady should be partnered in at least one set. Then considering the Duke of Crawford’s rather mocking dismissal, perhaps the dream of chivalry had been dealt the death knell.

Daisy glanced down at the very empty card dangling from her wrist. That was not to say she craved just any partner. She didn’t want just any gentleman. Quite the opposite. She wanted a certain one. The great big lummox who really didn’t deserve her regard—and yet had it anyway, because of the man he once was, and the man she knew he could be.

The man who now searched the crowded ballroom.

“Probably for his next duchess,” she muttered under her breath. He’d not confirmed her supposition, but he hadn’t had to. She’d well known that Auric, a man who so valued responsibility and honor as to visit almost weekly the family of his late friend, would, of course, see to his ducal obligations. He’d wed a proper blonde miss, have an heir and then a spare, and live his perfectly boring ducal life.

With another woman.

Absently, she touched a finger to her bare neck. It spoke to her desperation that she’d hang her hope of Auric, Duke of Crawford, upon the charm given out by a gypsy. Why, the gypsy probably had all number of heart pendants she gave to silly, romantic, young ladies in the market for a husband who also happened to be dreaming of love. She suspected the madness in pinning her happiness to that bauble, all to win Auric’s heart, stemmed from a desire to return to a time when she had known happiness. Since Lionel’s limp body had been returned to them, forever silenced, a perpetual cloud had followed her family. The kind of thick sadness that no smile or silly jest could cut through.

She scanned the crowd and found her mother precisely where Auric had last motioned. The marchioness stood off to the right side of the room with a blank-eyed stare as Lady Marlborough prattled on at her side. She didn’t remember the last time Mother had smiled. Daisy sighed, not giving in to the wave of self-pity that threatened to consume her. She was best to focus her attention on where it belonged.

Auric.

…Who now stood conversing with Lady Windermere and her pretty blonde, blue-eyed daughter, Lady Leticia.

Daisy wrinkled her nose. Really, did every young English lady possess golden ringlets and those pale blue eyes? Auric bent over Lady Leticia’s hand and dashed his name upon her card. “Humph,” she mumbled.

And that was quite another thing. He well knew Daisy loved to dance the waltz. He had, in fact, served as de facto tutor when the miserable French bugger hired by her parents had boxed her ears for possessing not even a smidgeon of talent. Auric and Lionel had fashioned themselves as her dance instructors and had taken turns waltzing her about the room until she no longer stomped all over their toes. Yet, he’d reserve the dull minuets and reels for Daisy and one of those outrageously wonderful waltzes for those other ladies.

Did he not care that every other young woman would settle for the miserable Duke of Crawford for the sole reason that he was a step away from royalty? Whereas Daisy wanted him for the man he was. No, those young ladies likely didn’t care that Auric was serious and hardly ever laugh— He tossed his head back and laughed at something Lady Leticia and her mother said. The deep rumble echoed through the ballroom. “Humph,” she mumbled again. If she were to do anything as outrageous as laugh in that belting, unrestrained way, she’d have garnered all manner of nasty stares. But he, as a duke, was permitted such freedoms as great big laughs.

Even if it was a fake laugh.

Unlike Lady Leticia and any of the other duchess-minded ladies, Daisy remembered the deep, alluring sound of it. Slow and quiet as though he weighed what he’d heard and gave it his special attention.

The orchestra plucked the beginning strands of a quadrille. She picked up her fan and tapped her arm in rhythm to the beat of the lively dance.

“I have been searching for you, Daisy.”

She started at the unexpected appearance of her mother. “I tore my hem,” she lied. Though she strongly suspected her perpetually sad mother lied as well. She’d not been searching her out. She no longer seemed to remember that she’d had a second child. Her heart had died with Lionel.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked, her words eerily devoid of inflection.

“Oh, indeed.” The lie came easy. Daisy didn’t begrudge her mother the aching sorrow she cloaked herself in. First, she’d lost her only son and then her husband just a few years later. She understood loss perhaps better than anyone. Daisy darted her gaze about the room and found Auric, alone once more, his remote stare trained on some unknown spot in the vast ballroom.