Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(64)

“My mother said it was merely paint splattered upon the canvas,” she said more to herself.

Auric, however, had only seen the stunning mastery of color. The masterpieces she’d turned out for his and Lionel’s inspection had captured more shades of blue than he’d ever known existed. “I admired that you weren’t restrained by Society’s dictates.” With the memories of their past unraveling between them, he wandered down a more and more irreversible path, cementing this new relationship in which they were more strangers than not.

“But that isn’t truly knowing someone,” she said softly. “The color I like or the colors I hate—”

“Orange and purple,” he supplied automatically.

“—do not speak to the dreams I carry in my heart.”

He fell silent. For in this, she spoke true. Beyond that shockingly intimate desire she’d shared of love and a family, he didn’t truly know Daisy’s interests. He knew sometime in the recent years she’d taken up embroidering, but didn’t know why or if she’d been made to or whether she merely challenged herself with the tedious task, and God help him, he longed to know all those pieces of her. Auric drew in a slow, staggering breath as he realized—he wanted to know everything there was to know about Daisy. He wanted to know the things that made her smile now as a woman, the tasks she enjoyed and, more importantly, he had a desire to know why she enjoyed them.

“For everything we’ve shared, and as long as we’ve known each other, there is so much we do not know of each other, even so.” Her words served as an echo to his tumultuous thoughts.

Drawn to her like the siren, Calypso, his legs of their own volition carried him closer and closer until a mere hairsbreadth separated them. “What do you wish to know?” His words emerged husky.

She tipped her head back. “What do you desire, Auric?”

You. The word hung, unspoken on his lips. I desire you. Since that fateful night seven years ago, he’d not taken another woman into his bed. He hungered for her the way a starving man longed for food. And yet, this force of emotion that gripped him defied a mere physical awareness. “Peace.” The word danced in the air between them. “I desire peace.” And escape from the hellish memories he carried, memories he likely always would.

Daisy slipped her hand into his and raised their interlocked fingers. This again, that bond shared by only them who’d known this tragic loss. “Then we shall know peace together.”

Warmth slipped inside his heart. The cold and hollow organ stirred to life.

She studied their joined hands. “Surely, you desire more than peace.” Daisy raised her gaze. “Your courtship of Lady Stanhope was not borne of a hope for peace alone.”

There had been a great appeal in the lovely, young, blonde woman who’d not fawned over his title as every other lady of marriageable age. Yet, a good deal of that had stemmed from her absolute disconnect from the darkest part of his life. The countess did not know the shameful details of his youth, or the horrors of that night. Daisy, on the other hand, would be forever intrinsically connected to the whole of his past.

After a long stretch of silence, Daisy let her arm fall back to her side and his hand went cold at the loss of her reassuring touch.

Auric brushed his knuckles under her chin, tipping her gaze back to his. “Come, surely you’d not have me speak of my previous courtship?”

“Yes, yes I would,” she said with the same boldness he’d come to expect of Lady Daisy Meadows through the years. She pinked, as though embarrassed by such an admission, but she stared on relentlessly. “Did you care for her?”

Some, powerfully intense emotion in her eyes gave him pause. It was something that indicated his response was an important one and the wrong response would prove disastrous in ways he didn’t fully understand. “The lady didn’t fawn over my title,” he said, picking his way carefully through this exchange.

“And you’d have wed the lady for that reason alone?”

“I would say that it speaks to the lady’s honor.” He dropped his brow to hers. “I’d not speak of my courtship of another. Not today.” Not when he’d so recently offered for her. The mention of Lady Stanhope or any other sullied whatever this indefinable pull was between them. He curved his hand around the graceful lines of her long neck.

Her lower lip quivered as he angled her close “I’d only speak of you, Daisy.” He took her mouth under his as he’d longed to since he’d first tasted the sweetness of her kiss and the passion on her lips, that yearning made only stronger when she’d sailed into Lady Ellis’ ballroom, a voluptuous angel sent to torment. Auric slanted his mouth over hers again and again until she sagged. He easily caught her to him and drew her against his frame. His body roared to life with a hot, primitive awareness of a man who’d not given himself to another and now only wished to learn her and no other. He slipped his tongue inside her mouth.

She moaned and, at first, tentatively touched her tongue to his and then shamelessly met his in an age-old dance. What once had been wrong because she was Daisy of his past now became right in every way. He drew back and she tangled her fingers in his hair, attempting to draw him close, but he merely continued his tireless exploration. Afire with a need to explore all of her, he trailed a path of kisses over her freckled cheeks.