Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(2)

She plucked the copy of The Times from the rose-inlaid, mahogany table and scanned the words on the front page; so familiar she’d already committed them to memory.

Duke of C in the market for his duchess, thrown over by the Lady AA, etc., etc.,

Offended by the blasted page, Daisy stuck her tongue out at the mocking words and threw the paper onto the table. Thwack! “Market for a duchess,” she muttered under her breath. “As though he’s hunting for a prime piece of horseflesh.”

The Duke of C. None other than the illustrious, sought after, Duke of Crawford. Sought after by all… She glanced down at the page once more. Well, not all. After all, the then Lady Anne Adamson had rejected his suit in favor of the roguish Earl of Stanhope. The fool.

A fool Daisy was indebted to. But a fool nonetheless.

With a growl of annoyance she grabbed for the embroidery frame. She picked up the needle and jammed it through the screen with such zeal she jabbed the sharp tip into the soft flesh of her index finger. “Blast.” She popped the wounded digit into her mouth and sucked the drop of blood. When she’d become invisible, she’d also taken to embroidering. She had been doing so for nearly seven years. She was as rubbish at it as she was at winning the heart of a certain duke.

With needle in hand, and greater care on her part, she pulled it through the outline of the heart…she wrinkled her brow…or, it was intended to be a heart. Now it bore the hint of a sad circle with a slight dip in the middle. She tugged the needle through once more with entirely too much zeal and stuck her finger again. “Double blast.”

Giving up on the hope of distraction, she tossed the frame aside where it landed upon the damning page with a quiet thwack. She hopped to her feet then made her way over to the hearth. A small fire cast soothing warmth into the chilled room. She rubbed her palms together and contemplated the flickering flames.

It shouldn’t matter what the scandal sheets reported about a certain duke in the market for a wife. She’d known it was an inevitability he would wed and had long ago accustomed herself to that sad, sorry truth that it would not be her but instead a flawless English beauty such as the Lady Anne. There had been whispers of a fabled heart pendant given by a gypsy and worn by the lady to win the heart of a duke. Nothing more than whispers from romantic ladies who believed in such silly talismans. It wouldn’t have mattered if Lady Anne had been in possession of an armoire full of magic pendants. With her golden blonde curls and a remarkably curved figure, she could have had any duke, marquess, or in the lady’s case—earl, she wanted. Unlike plump, unfortunately curved Daisy. To Auric, the 8th Duke of Crawford she was just as invisible to him as she was to everyone.

She picked her gaze up and stared at her reflection in the enormous, gold mirror. A wry grin formed on her too large lips. Odd, how a lady cursed with dark brown hair and a shocking amount of freckles, and of such a plump form should ever achieve the whole invisibility feat, and yet she had. “Now, I,” she said to the creature with enormous, brown eyes. “I require some enchanted object.” Nothing short of a gypsy’s charm would help her win Auric’s stubborn, blind heart.

Shuffling footsteps sounded in the hall, calling her attention. Her mother stood framed in the doorway gazing with an empty stare at the parlor, as though she’d entered a foreign world and didn’t know how to escape it. It was the same blank look and wan expression she’d worn since they’d learned of Lionel.

Her brother. Her protector. Defender. And champion. Smiling and tweaking her nose one day. The next, lost in the most brutal manner imaginable. With his senseless death, he’d taken her parents’ only happiness with them, and with his aching absence, left her invisible.

“Mother.” There was a pain that would never go away in knowing, as the living child, Daisy could never restore happiness to her mother’s world.

The marchioness blinked several times. “Daisy?”

“Yes.” As in the woman’s daughter and only surviving child.

“I…” Mother touched her fingertips to her temple as though she had a vicious megrim. “I have a bit of a headache.” She glanced about the room. “Is Aur—?”

“He is not here,” she interrupted. Following her husband’s death two years earlier, the Duke of Crawford had become the only person her mother left the privacy of her darkened chambers for. In his presence, she somehow found traces of the mother, hostess, and person she’d been before her, nay their, world had been torn asunder.

“He is not,” her mother repeated, furrowing her brow. With his visits, it was as though the cloak of misery she’d donned these years would lift, and the woman would show traces of the proper hostess she’d been once upon a lifetime ago. But with his departure, she’d settle into the fog of despair once again.

“No, Mama,” she said gentling her tone as though speaking to a fractious mare. Auric hadn’t been ’round in nearly a month. Three weeks and six days to be precise. But who was counting? “Surely you do not expect he’ll visit forever?” There was no reason for him to do so. “He’ll take a duchess soon.” She hated the way her heart tugged painfully at that truth.

A flash of lucidity lit the marchioness’ gray-blue eyes. “Do not be rude, Daisy.”

“I’m not being rude.” She was being truthful. Even as she longed to be the reason for his coming ’round, she’d long ago accepted that his visits were out of a ducal obligation to the dear friends of his late parents. And through it all, Daisy remained invisible. “His visits are merely an obligatory social call, Mother.”