Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(73)

Auric drew in a slow, deep breath. He wanted her and all the questions and confusion and uncertainty could be sorted out later. With a determined step, he started for the door. He pulled it open and then strode down the thin-carpeted corridor. His bootsteps fell quietly in the hum of midnight silence. He moved past the closed parlor doors and the formal drawing room and then paused beside one slightly ajar wood panel.

“Bloody unlikely…” The muttered words drifted from inside the library, out into the corridor. His lips twitched and he readjusted his earlier intentions of seeking a certain lady’s chambers and wandered over to that partially opened door. He peered through the slight gap and squinted into the dark space. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust and when they did, he easily found her.

From her seat upon the leather sofa, Daisy squinted down at the fine muslin. With little regard for the dark, she jabbed her needle viciously into the expensive fabric. He winced, feeling a sense of guilt for that particular inanimate object that was likely bearing the lady’s displeasure with her new bridegroom. She worked her long fingers in a quick, jerky rhythm. Not for the first time he wondered when she’d taken up the ladylike pastime.

Regardless of when, how, or why, there really was only one certainty at this moment—Daisy had no place spending her wedding night alone in the darkened library, brutalizing the stark, white fabric. Shoving aside the self-doubt and anxiety he’d carried from the moment they’d arrived that afternoon as newly wedded man and wife, he pushed the door open and stepped inside. “You’re not sleeping.”

Daisy shrieked and leaped to her feet. The wood frame tumbled to the floor with a soft thump. “Auric,” she breathed. She pressed a hand to her heart. “You startled me.”

The moon’s soft, white light splashed through the floor-length windows and bathed her in an ethereal glow. “Forgive me,” he apologized. He stepped deeper into the room. Her modest, white, night wrapper drew him like a moth to the flame.

She wet her lips. “Should I be sleeping?”

He arched a single eyebrow. Surely, she didn’t mean what he believed she…

“Of course I should be sleeping at this hour,” she said on a rush. “After all, I cannot imagine a single thing we should be doing other than sleeping.” Then she widened her eyes and she clamped her lips into a firm line. If her cheeks became any redder, the lady’s face would catch fire.

He would very gladly now show her the alternative to the question on her lips. Auric stopped beside her. “Oh?” he drawled. He bent and retrieved her forgotten frame, studying it a moment. The object in gold and red stitch was still indefinable and he was at a loss for just what his wife sought to capture with those same threads.

“Indeed,” she said with a toss of her dark brown curls and then her eyes flew wide. “We,” she blurted.

A smile tugged at his lips.

“That is, what I’d intended to say is I cannot imagine a single thing I should be doing other than sleeping. Not sleeping with you,” she added, prattling on.

He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, knowing she’d believe he was laughing at her.

Alas, Daisy had often known him better than he knew himself. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you laughing at me?”

Auric schooled his features and spread out his hands. “I know you well enough never to do something as outrageous,” he said neatly.

Daisy plucked the frame from his fingers. “Something outrageous?” She settled one hand upon her hip. “Such as, avoid one’s wife. On your wedding night, no less?” Then, a very determined, angry glint flickered in her eyes and sent warning bells clamoring.

Only Daisy would be so bold as to speak so candidly about his lack of attentions this evening. And once again, he wished he was one of those charming rogues with a million words on the ready. “I take it you are angry with me?” he asked, in a placating tone.

That merely served to lower his wife’s eyebrows altogether. “Do you know, Auric?” Oh, Christ, the placating tone had never been the one to adopt with her. “I am rather angry with you.” She took a furious step toward him and he retreated. “I’ve been alone. In my chambers. By myself.” Yes, that rather was the meaning of the word alone. It would not however do to point such a thing out. More precisely, not at this particular moment.

She really deserved an explanation. His neck heated with embarrassment. “Daisy,” he began. He fumbled for words but came up empty with the embarrassing truth. For all the women she imagined he’d taken to his bed, but for one nameless woman in his youth, there had never been another.

“Yes?” she whispered.

Nor would there ever be another, but her. He tugged at his lapels. “I…” Certainly couldn’t say “oh, you see I’ve only been with one other woman in my life and she’d been a lightskirt, and not you, the woman who captured my heart between one unchaperoned venture to Gipsy Hill and an afternoon visit in that Blue Parlor.”

“That is not all, husband.” That word wrapped around him, enveloping him with the absolute rightness of it. She slapped her embroidery frame into his chest. “Are you listening to me?”

He grunted. No. “Yes,” he lied.

“We should not simply be sleeping either, Auric.” He stilled. What did she know about what they should be doing? “Did you hear me?” Daisy jabbed him again with the wood frame. The needle dangling from the fabric speared the fabric of his jacket. “I don’t know all the details,” she said the way a Bow Street Runner might in discussing the terms of a case. “But I certainly have gleaned enough.”