Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(33)

She took them, trailing her finger over the heart ornamentation at the center of each intricate piece. A heart. Not the fabled piece whispered about by ladies eager for the title of duchess. This great symbol that revealed itself time and time and time again, a necklace, her horrendous embroidery frames, and now…Auric’s gift.

He stuck his elbow out once more. “Now, on to find the necklace to match your hair combs.”

Daisy fiddled with her reticule and dropped them inside. As she took his arm once more, the skies opened up, pouring rain down. Blast, damn, and double damn. She stole a glance up at the bilious clouds overhead.

Auric leaned down. Her heart started as he pulled the hood of her cloak back into place. “I’m afraid the weather does not intend to cooperate with your efforts to find this particular necklace.”

She glanced across the street toward where her maid hurried toward them. With a sigh, she allowed Auric to guide her back to her carriage. They moved quickly through the street.

Her coachman waited with the door opened. Agnes scrambled inside the carriage.

Daisy lingered, loathe for the moment to end. “Thank you, Auric,” she purred.

He inclined his head. The steady rain soaked his chestnut hair and proceeded to run in rivulets down his eyes, his aquiline cheeks, and hard mouth. And yet, despite that, he remained wholly elegant, coolly beautiful. This is what Poseidon, that great and powerful Greek God of the sea, would look like when he emerged from the underwater depths. She sighed.

“Daisy?”

He really was quite magnificent. “Yes, Auric?” More than any man had a right to be.

“Unless you care to die of chill, I suggest you get inside the carriage, my lady.” With that, he all but tossed her inside.

As the driver closed the door behind her, she peered out at his retreating frame as he made his way across the street to his own waiting horse. Daisy rested her chin in her hand and smiled.





Chapter 7

Daisy ran her fingers along the edge of the wrinkled, crimson stained handkerchief she’d stuffed into her reticule earlier that day. She studied the initials stitched in gold upon the fabric. In her first quest to locate the Heart of a Duke pendant, she’d instead found herself with injured palms, a red nose, and a handkerchief belonging to Auric, but no necklace. Seated at the edge of the bed, she stared wistfully down at the slip of cloth in her hands. Though not the fabled bauble, the embroidered cloth belonged to Auric and for that, it mattered. Daisy raised his kerchief to her nose and froze mid-motion. She groaned and dropped her head back. “I am a pathetic miss.” She’d gone and become one of those mooning sorts.

A knock sounded at the door. She yanked her head up swiftly. “Yes?”

Her maid poked her head inside the room. “The marchioness is awaiting you in the foyer, my lady.”

With a sigh, she stuffed the cloth under her pillow. “Thank you, Agnes.”

The maid nodded and ducked back out of the room.

Daisy rose from the edge of her bed in a flutter of green satin skirts. She’d been dreading Lord and Lady Windermere’s casual dinner party since last year’s dinner party and the year before it. Come to think of it, she’d always hated those intimate gatherings with her parents’ stiffly proper friends.

Yet, for the manner in which the marchioness had retreated from the living, she somehow roused herself for her small, intimate circle of distinguished friends. Perhaps she felt closer to her past that way? Those friends, however, either failed to see or care that the smile worn by the marchioness was, in fact, false.

Daisy moved quietly down the hall, her footsteps muffled by the thin, mauve carpet. Shortly after Lionel’s death, when she couldn’t manage another teardrop, she’d wondered how many days would need to pass before she felt like she could breathe again. Wondering if she’d ever be able to laugh or smile, or move again without feeling like she would splinter into a thousand million shards of broken pain.

Daisy paused beside an always-closed door. She touched her hand to the wood panel.

“Rap three times when you need me…”

She flung her arms about her brother’s waist. “But what if you’re not here?”

“I’ll always be here, Daisy girl…”

The hall still echoed with the laughter following those boastful words of a young gentleman and older brother who’d believed himself invincible.

She tapped the door three times. No matter how hard she knocked or how many times, he was never coming back. When her brother had died, she’d thought herself incapable of ever smiling again. Yet, despite the grief that still had the power to suck the air from her lungs, in time, she did again smile.

Daisy let her hand fall back to her side and continued the long, slow walk down the corridor. In the blackest moments, when the nightmares came, she ached for Auric’s reassuring presence. For he was the only one who shared this ugly, unbreakable bond. When her world had collapsed about her, she’d known if anyone could teach her to laugh and smile again, it would be Auric; who as a young man had welcomed an awkward, friendless girl into his fold, who’d teased her as though she’d belonged to a special club of which only he, Lionel, and Marcus were members. Except after Lionel’s services, Auric, too, had been forever changed. That grinning, affable boy was replaced by the somber, oft-scowling duke.

Then how could he not be? As a lady, she’d been carefully sheltered from the truths of that night and, as a result, she’d been able to resume some sense of normalcy. Auric, however, as the last person to have ever seen, spoken to, or laughed with Lionel would not be so fortunate. Until this very moment she’d not considered how greatly that had affected him and how that had surely changed him.