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

Daisy blinked at this crack in his previously cool mask. “What was I doing?”

“Prior to your fall.” Auric jerked his chin toward the hearth. “It appeared as though you were,” he peered down the length of his aquiline nose. “Hopping.” The grinning Auric of his youth would have challenged her to a jumping competition. This hard person he’d become spoke to the man who found inane amusements, well…inane.

She trilled a forced laugh. “Oh, hopping.” Daisy gave a wave of her hand that she hoped conveyed “what-a-silly-idea-whyever-would-I-do-anything-as-childlike-as-hop?” To give her fingers something to do, she grabbed for her embroidery frame and cautiously eyed the offending needle.

Auric shifted in the King Louis XIV chair taking in the frame in her hands. “You don’t embroider.”

No, by the weak rendering upon the frame, he’d be correct in that regard. For as deplorable as she was, she really quite enjoyed it. Her stitchery was something she did for herself. It was a secret enjoyment that belonged to her and no other. A secret Auric now shared. “I like embroidering.” In the immediacy of Lionel’s death, when the nightmares had kept her awake, she would fix her energy on the attention it took her to complete a living scene upon the screen. Some of her more horrid pieces had kept her from the gasping, crying mess she so often was in those earlier days.

An inelegant, and wholly un-dukelike, snort escaped Auric, and just like that, he was the man she remembered and not the stern figure he presented to the ton.

“What?” she asked defensively, even as she warmed with the restored ease between them. “I do.” To prove as much she pulled the needle through the fabric, releasing a relieved sigh as it sailed through the fabric and, this time, sparing her poor, wounded flesh.

“Since when do you embroider?” Auric looped his ankle over his knee.

Out the corner of her eyes, she stole a peek at him. “For some years now.” Seven, to be precise. Not giving in to dark thoughts, she paused to arch an eyebrow. “I expect a lofty duke such as you would approve of a lady embroidering.” And doing all manner of things dull.

Except, he refused to take the gentle bait she’d set out for him and so, with a little sigh, she returned her attention to the frame. Auric had always been such great fun to tease. He would tease back. They would smile. Now, he was always serious and somber and so very dukish.

The awkward silence stretched out between them, endless, until her skin burned from the impenetrable gaze he trained on her. She paused to steal another sideways glance and found him trying to make out the image on her frame, wholly uninterested in Daisy herself.

Invisible.

“What was that?” his low baritone cut into her thoughts.

A little shriek escaped her as she jammed the needle into her fingertip. “What was what?” She winced and popped the wounded digit into her mouth.

“You said something.”

Daisy gave her head a firm shake and drew her finger out to assess the angry, red mark. “No, I didn’t.” Not intentionally, anyway. She’d developed the bothersome habit of talking to herself and creating horrible embroideries. “I daresay with you having not been to visit in some time,” three weeks and six days, but really who was counting? “you’ve come ’round for a reason?” Her question, borderline rude, brought his eyebrows together. Then, powerful dukes such as he were likely unaccustomed to tart replies and annoyed young ladies.

“I always visit on Wednesdays.”

“No,” she corrected. Before he’d inherited the title of duke, a year after the death of Lionel, with a carriage accident that had claimed both his father and mother, he’d been a very different man. “No, you don’t.” He always had visited. This Season he’d devoted his attentions to duchess hunting—which is where his attention should be. Her lips pulled in a grimace. Well, not necessarily on finding a wife, but rather on himself and his own happiness. She’d never wanted to be a burden to him, never wanted to be an obligation.

It wasn’t always that way…

Auric drummed his fingertips on the edge of his thigh and she followed the subtle movement. Her mouth went dry as she took in the thick, corded muscles encased in buff skin breeches. He really possessed quite splendid thighs. Not the legs one might expect of a duke. But rather—“You’re displeased, Daisy.”

His words jerked her from her improper musings. “What would I have to be displeased with?” Displeased would never be the right word. Regretful. Disappointed. For the years she’d spent waiting for him to see more where she was concerned, he continued to see nothing at all. To give her fingers something to do, Daisy drew the needle through the frame, working on her piece, all the while her skin pricked with the feel of being studied.

“What is it?”

She jerked her head up so swiftly, she wrenched the muscles of her neck. Daisy winced, resisting the urge to knead the tight flesh. “What is what?” She glanced about.

Auric nodded to her frame.

“This?” Oh, drat. Why must he be so blasted astute? She alternated her attention between his pointed stare and her embroidery frame then pulled it protectively to her chest.

His firm lips tugged with a nearly imperceptible hint of amusement. “Yes, what are you embroidering?”

Then knowing it would be futile to casually ignore his bold question, she turned the frame around. Even as she revealed her work, her cheeks warmed with embarrassment over her meager efforts.