Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(55)

“No,” he rasped.

“Who would care for her in a way that she’d never want for anything and be protected and cherished?” Wessex held his gaze. “It is you,” he said softly. “You are meant to wed her. It is why you cannot accept a name. It is why—”

“Stop,” he barked. The sharp command bounced off the walls and that explosion of emotion only further exposed him to his friend’s potent deduction. “You do not know what you say. This is Daisy.” Lionel’s sister. The girl he’d seen as a sister. Nay, the woman he’d once seen as a sister. Except, from the moment he’d taken her in his arms and explored the lush contours of her plump lips, everything he’d once believed had ceased to be, throwing him into a world he no longer understood.

“Marry her.”

Did those words belong to him? Or were they Wessex’s in his relentlessness?

Auric looked down at the sheet and then raised his eye, uncomprehendingly. “You’re mad.”

A chuckle rumbled up from the other man’s throat. “Yes, there is truth to that.” He tipped his chin toward the note clenched in Auric’s grip. “There is, however, also truth to my words.”

He stared blankly down at his friend’s familiar scrawl. The name carefully etched upon the page. His own. “I can’t.” His voice came as though down a long corridor. His palms dampened, the room spun as it always did when remorse licked at him.

“You can.” Wessex leaned forward and the wooden chair creaked in protest. “And you should.” He held Auric’s gaze. “The lady loves you.”

Auric’s mouth went dry. “Don’t be a fool. She—”

“Loves you,” he repeated.

And God help him for being the worst sort of bastard. He wanted to seize upon Wessex’s suggestion and make Daisy his, for reasons that had nothing to do with honor and loyalty and everything to do with a newfound desire for the spirited vixen. “I…” want her. Even as I have no right to her. Anything between Daisy and me, the man responsible for her brother’s murder, was the kind of tragic tale captured by The Bard himself. Auric studied the list handed him moments ago. “Even if I desired more from the lady, which I do not,” he said when his friend arched an eyebrow. “There is…” Lionel. There would always be Lionel between them. There was a bond sealed by their loss.

“It was not your fault.”

The same bond that prevented any possible union between them. For despite Wessex’s insistence, the truth was, Auric had been to blame.

“Did you hear me?” Wessex persisted with the same temerity shown by a matchmaking mama.

Lionel’s’ death may as well have been upon Auric’s hands as though he himself had gutted him in the belly that night. “I heard you,” he said, his tone deliberately wooden. That one transformative moment of his life had shaped the whole course he’d chart from then on. It also served as the reason he could not do as his friend suggested and take Daisy as his wife. She could never forgive his role in Lionel’s death, nor did he deserve her forgiveness.

Even though I want her… He thrust aside the thought. She was still Daisy, the girl he’d taught to bait her fishing rod. Only now, she possessed luscious lips and a generously curved figure that had haunted his waking and sleeping moments for days.

“Marry her,” Wessex urged once more.

He couldn’t. Auric pressed his fingers against his temples and jammed them into the sensitive flesh, in a desperate bid to thrust aside this slow, dawning realization. I want her. And this was not the sentiment of a man who merely hungered for her body. He wanted all of Daisy—her smile and her sauciness and her spirit.

With a slow, knowing grin, Wessex confirmed, “At last you realize it.”

“I can’t.” Even as he wished to know her in every way. There would always be Lionel between them.

Whatever his friend intended to say was interrupted by the appearance of Auric’s butler. The servant carried a silver tray bearing a missive. Auric took it, recognizing a certain butler’s scrawl. He frowned and ignored Wessex’s curious stare, instead directing his attention to the note. Even as he unfolded the ivory vellum, he knew what those damn words would say.

The lady has returned to Gipsy Hill.





Your Faithful servant

With a curse, he crumpled the ivory velum in his hands and jumped to his feet. His heart climbed into his throat, threatening to choke him with his own fear. The fool. The bloody fool. He started for the door.

“What is it?” Wessex called out.

“I’ve a matter of importance to see to,” he returned, not breaking his stride to deliver those words. He shouted for his horse.

By God, the lady was vexing and infuriating and with each reckless action placed herself in danger. As he moved with long, purposeful strides through the corridors, his heart climbed into his throat and threatened to choke him. Daisy required a husband and for all the reasons a union between them was wrong, he could name the singular, most important reason it was right. It was not the truth that he wanted her—which he did.

She required protection. His protection. His pulse loud in his ears, he all but sprinted into the foyer, nearly colliding with his butler. “My hor—?”

“The horse has been readied, Your Grace.”