Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(63)

She paused, not taking her gaze from the indecipherable heart she worked on. “Did you?” Her heart thumped wildly in her chest.

“I asked for your hand.”

Daisy jammed the tip of her needle into the pad of her thumb. Reflexively, her fingers opened and the frame slipped from her fingers.

Auric tugged off his gloves and tossed them on the rose-inlaid, mahogany table, all the while watching her with an inscrutable expression.

He’d not changed his mind. “D-did you?” A giddy sensation replaced the tension in her chest.

He shot a hand out and laid claim to her fingers, his gaze holding hers. “I did,” he confessed. The vital strength of his olive-hued fingers burned her skin. “Did you believe I would change my mind?” Then with a wickedly delicious slowness, he ran the pad of his thumb over the palm of her hand.

Well, the idea had entered her thoughts. She swallowed hard, a warm sensation fluttered in her belly. “No,” she managed, her voice breathy as Auric’s expert touch sent all manner of delicious shivers spiraling through her being. The fear that he’d recognized the folly in wedding plump, freckled Daisy Meadows hadn’t entered her thoughts—until, he’d paused on the cobbled streets a short while ago, his expression pained. Since then, she’d been consumed by a niggling fear that with the morn he’d come to his senses and recall that he could have any glorious, golden creature, which he surely favored, as evidenced by his courtship of the Lady Anne Stanhope.

Her lashes drifted closed as he dragged the tip of his index finger over the intersecting lines of her palm. How was it possible for a mere touch to affect her so? Daisy dropped her gaze and studied that seductively innocent caress. All the while her heart danced a funny rhythm in her chest. “You’re quiet. I never remember you to be quiet.”

She couldn’t very well admit that the hard, heavy assurance of his hand robbed her of coherent thought, made it nigh impossible to string words together. “I’m not the same woman I was.” Except, with those words, inadvertently she’d roused the ghost that would always be between them and part of their lives. She’d not shatter this moment with the ugliness that would forever unite them.

His gaze grew shuttered and his finger resumed its slow, explorative movement. “Yes, you’ve said as much, haven’t you?” He now ran his thumb up her palm and back and forth over her wrist.

Her mouth went dry and all thoughts fled as he slowly brought her hand to his mouth. His lips caressed the spot where her heartbeat pulsed madly for him. Only him. It had only ever been him. Her lids fluttered closed as he continued to worship the skin with his kiss.

“I’ll be obtaining a special license so we may wed within the week.” His pronouncement penetrated the thick haze of desire roused by his touch.

Warmth fanned her heart once more. “A special license?” The speed with which he’d wed her hinted at his eagerness to take her as his bride and it would spare Daisy from her mother’s grand plans for the blessed day.

Auric raised her other hand to his mouth and dropped a kiss on her knuckles. “Will you regret not having a proper ceremony and—?”

“No.” She drew in a shuddery breath. “None of that matters to me, Auric.” It never had. “I’ve never longed for an elaborate affair before a sea of lords and ladies who do not matter.”

He released her hands and she mourned the loss of that simple, yet enticing, caress. “What do you desire?” There was an earnestness to his tone. As though should she call for the stars, he’d capture her the moon. “What do you want, Daisy?”

When was the last time anyone had wondered as to her wishes or desires?

She stood, her gaze fixed on the blood-red, distorted heart she attempted to capture on the fabric in her embroidery frame. She picked it up and ran her finger absently over the gold thread stitched crookedly onto the fabric. “I want a family, Auric.” Something she’d once had, but lost. Daisy looked at him once more. “I want to love and be loved.” Did his cheeks go waxen? The frissons of unease worked down her spine. Not once has he spoken to you of love, Daisy, a dark voice niggled. But then, neither had she. “That is all,” she finished lamely.





Chapter 15

That is all.

She may as well have asked for the moon and the stars, and where he would have sought to climb into the sky and gather her a handful, could he love her, as she deserved? For with her seemingly innocent words of children between them, she roused images of his and Daisy’s bodies moving as one in a beautiful, synchronized rhythm. And he wanted her and those children belonging to her. His body ached with the desire to explore her and brand the silken softness of her skin in his palms, cupping her generous breasts and— A garbled groan lodged in his throat.

Daisy fiddled with that silly frame. Wordlessly, she carried it over to the window and stared out into the streets below. Then she angled her body back to face him. “It occurs to me, for everything we know of each other, we don’t truly know each other, do we?”

“Of course we do,” he said, frowning at her words. But for himself, he knew her better than anyone. “Your favorite color is blue.”

She widened her eyes with surprise. “You remember that?”

His silent, cowardly self still fearful of the implications of her own admission moments ago, urged him to lie. “Of course I remember that, Daisy,” he said gruffly. There was not a single detail he did not recall where she was concerned. Society would have deemed her a horrid painter.