Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(59)

Yes. “Yes,” he said dumbly. His heart shifted oddly in his chest.

A smile played about her lips.

He jammed his hat atop his head and gave a tug at his lapels and with no ready words on his lips, said, “Er, yes, well then.”

Some of the light in her eyes dimmed and for the length of a heartbeat, one infernally long moment he thought she intended to change her mind. And for an equally long moment, anxiety turned inside him. Then her smile was firmly in place.

Unable to meet her gaze and all the pressure that went with the expectations he saw there, he perused the streets. “You were here searching for something again,” he murmured. Anything but speaking on the offer he’d put to her that would make her forever his. “A necklace, wasn’t it?” She’d spoken of a heart pendant.

Daisy gave her head a slight shake. “It turns out I require that pendant a good deal less than I’d imagined.”

Eager to put this end of London behind them and remove Daisy to the safer, more well-traveled parts of North Bond Street or Mayfair, he held out his elbow. “Then, allow me to see you to your carriage.”

She placed her fingertips along his sleeve and then wordlessly he guided her to the waiting carriage at the opposite end of the street, a ways ahead. Her maid hurried along behind.

And as Auric handed her up into her conveyance, he thought for all that had initially appeared correct with Wessex’s argument, now seemed the very worst mistake. He could not be for Daisy the man she deserved.

God help him, he wanted her anyway.





Chapter 14

The first meeting had been the easiest.

Auric had paid the requisite visit to Daisy’s first guardian, the Marchioness of Roxbury’s brother. The older, kind-eyed gentleman had asked all the appropriate questions and displayed a genuine concern for his niece’s happiness.

The second meeting was the one he had been dreading since he’d asked Daisy to marry him. A now imminent meeting.

Auric found himself following the current Marquess of Roxbury’s butler down familiar corridors in a familiar home. Their steps fell in a matched rhythm. The bewigged man of indeterminate years kept his gaze trained forward, his face set in a proper mask.

They moved past portrait after portrait of former marquesses lining the plaster walls, the men who’d come before this current interloper. The stares of those long gone forever memorialized Roxbury ancestry, faintly accusatory in nature. The inanimate figures even recognized the one responsible for the loss of the rightful Roxbury heir being here this day. Guilt pricked his skin as he passed Lionel and Daisy’s father, and he gave silent thanks as they reached the end of the blasted hall lined with the portraits. The tread of his bootsteps were quiet in the foreign corridors as he moved past additional family portraits of other wigged and powdered ancestors.

One particular painting halted his forward movement. The lone figure of a man committed to the canvas forever smiling, forever young, but never a marquess. The butler looked questioningly back at him and Auric lifted his hand in a staying movement. He wandered closer and then stopped beside the painting wedged unceremoniously between a lady in a wimple and a mother with two children at her feet. His chest tightened as he looked on the last painting done of Lionel. This should not have been his last. His likeness belonged in the previous hall, beside the other rightful heirs and marquesses.

Emotion threatened to choke him and he momentarily pressed his eyes closed. Egads, man. My parents will have me sit for another blasted painting. I intend to smile my way through the whole sitting. That should please my dear mama… The walls even now echoed with Lionel’s bellowing laugh.

The butler coughed discreetly into his hand and Auric shook his head once and resumed walking. With each step, the weight of guilt became all the heavier. How could he in good conscience wed Daisy? A woman of her keen wit and spirit deserved far more in the man she’d call husband. Certainly more than mere protection and the security of a title. She should have love and happiness, and a gentleman who smiled. And Auric, well he no longer remembered what it was to freely grin. Not in the way that he once had and not in the way she deserved.

They stopped before the current marquess’ office and a chill stole through him. The butler rapped once and then threw the door open. “His Grace, the Duke of Crawford.”

The slender gentleman seated behind his desk glanced up from the open ledgers upon his desk and then stood. After Lionel’s father had died two years ago, Auric had studiously avoided the distant cousin who’d stepped into the role of marquess. He took this stranger in. With clever eyes and sharp features, the marquess was likely no more than a year younger or older than Auric himself.

Auric broke the silence “Roxbury,” he murmured as he entered the doorway. The butler closed the door behind him.

“Your Grace,” the man said, his tone modulated and kind. He spread his arms wide, motioning him forward. “I gather by the contents of your missive, you’ve come to speak on the matter of my ward.”

Odd to think of the lush, clever Daisy, a woman of one and twenty years referred to as a ward. Wards were young children with parents gone too soon and young ladies about to make their debut. “Yes,” he replied, moving deeper into the room. Alas, that is what she was. With his selfishness seven years ago, he’d turned her into that ward.

With an assessing eye, the marquess evaluated him. Then in one effortless move, strode out from behind his desk and crossed to the sideboard. He held a crystal decanter aloft. “A drink, Your Grace?”