Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(69)

When she’d been a girl, she’d longed for glorious, golden curls and a trim waist and something to set her apart, more than the odd freckles upon her cheeks. Now, she longed to be no different than any other woman. When she’d made her debut, she’d not aspired to the status of diamond of the first water. Rather, she just wanted to be ordinary and normal. Plain Daisy with her nondescript looks and her perfectly proper, polite mother.

A large, warm hand settled over hers and she started. She swung her gaze up to Auric who, under the table’s concealment, stroked his heavy, reassuring fingers over hers. He held her stare a long moment and then, too quickly, the touch was gone and he drew his hand back. However, he only reached into the front of his jacket and withdrew the small daisy-etched quizzing glass. “Here,” he whispered against her ear. Under the table he pressed the delicate piece into her palm. Her skin warmed at the heat of his touch. “It seems your marriage to a doddering, old duke has quite turned you into a doddering duchess.” He tweaked her nose. “Your new rank appears to have affected your vision and you need some assistance seeing the contents upon your plate,” a gentle teasing humor threaded his words, and with that, a small laugh escaped her. A lightness buoyed her heart with the reminder that the person he’d been, a man who teased and jested and smiled—remained. He’d not died that night alongside Lionel. As though sensing her thoughts, he gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

From Auric’s other side, Mother said something demanding his attention. He gave Daisy’s hand one more squeeze and then shifted his attention to the marchioness.

“He’s not the same teasing, charming young man you recall of your past,” Marcus murmured.

Daisy frowned and looked to the young viscount, seated on the left of her not knowing how to make sense of his cryptic words. “Perhaps,” she said noncommittal in her reply. Though in truth, just as she saw traces of the new man he’d become that her mother failed to see, so did she see glimpses of the grinning boy he’d been, a figure Marcus no longer saw. She absently toyed with the delicate, daisy-encrusted eyepiece Auric had pressed into her hand. “I think it is important to find the happiness we all carried, the uncomplicatedness of who we once were,” she said for his ears.

Marcus settled his hands before him on the tablecloth. “I fear if you go through believing the simplicity of that thought, you’ll enter into your marriage to Auric idolizing the boy he’d been and failing to realize the honorable, devoted man he’s become.”

The same stirrings of unease from three days past when Auric had strode up the steps to her townhouse, his expression curiously blank, rolled through her. “You think I’m wrong because I choose to see light and happiness?” she asked, unable to keep the thread of defensiveness from her tone.

He lowered his voice. “I believe you’re wrong because you’ll never truly love the man he’s become if you continue to see him with the eyes of your past.” Marcus picked up his champagne flute and took a long, slow swallow.

Daisy’s frown deepened as she tried to sort through that cryptic warning. “Is there something you’d say to me?” She’d never appreciated the veiled comments and innuendos favored by the ton, preferring instead stark honesty.

The handsome young viscount inclined his head. “It is not my place to say.” He looked into the contents of his nearly emptied glass, seeming lost in thought. “It is my place, however to apologize to you.”

She furrowed her brow. “Apologize to me?” Marcus had been about as interested in her as a young girl as a sinner showed interest in attending Sunday sermon. That disinterest had carried into her adult years. But for that he’d never wronged her. “You’ve committed no wrong,” she said quietly.

A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye and he appeared ready to say something, but then the rakish, charming grin that had set too many hearts aflutter turned his lips at the corners. “Perhaps you know me a good deal less than you imagine.” His was a deliberate ploy to shift the conversation to something safer than the veiled warning he’d issued moments ago.

Never one to take part in his flirtatious repartee, she only had a small smile for him. An inexplicable relief filled her when he turned his attention to neatly dicing up his cold salmon. His words and warnings of Auric and that faintly accusatory tone he’d taken in mentioning her naiveté clouded her thoughts, stealing altogether her ability to eat.

She trailed her fingertip over Auric’s quizzing glass, running it over the rounded lens and the cold, firm, daisy-etched handle. She’d spent so many years believing herself jaded and cynical and world-wary. The loss of a sibling would do all those things to a person. So there was something humbling and almost embarrassing to be accused of looking at the world through the lens of an innocent who only saw sunshine in life.

“What has you so uncharacteristically silent?” Auric murmured against her ear, calling her attention back.

She wet her lips and thrust Marcus’ dark, cryptic warning to the distant corners of her mind. “I was just thinking how much I l—”

Auric leapt to his feet so quickly, his chair scraped noisily along the wood floor. “A toast,” his deep, commanding baritone bounced off the walls, as he held his glass aloft.

Daisy furrowed her brow. If she didn’t know better, she’d believe he deliberately tried to stifle the declaration on her lips. But then Auric glanced down at her, holding her gaze. “To my wife. May she always know peace and happiness.”