Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(80)

“Not at all, silly,” he said, his voice gruff with the agony of regret. He looked down once more, his gaze drawn back to the frame.

…Yes. A heart. I’ve been told it is this big. And gold with faint etchings…

At last, it made sense. It was a heart.



Daisy used her husband’s preoccupation to study him. There was a sadness to him. He wore it on the harsh, angular planes of his face and in the somber set to his mouth. She hated the sadness that had lingered all these years.

“Do you know in the early days of Lionel’s death,” she said softly, “I would sometimes find myself smiling or laughing about something, sometimes nothing. And then I would immediately feel guilty.” He gave no outward reaction that he heard. The slight tensing of his shoulders, however, indicated he focused intently on her words. “One time, however, I entered his rooms.” It had been the first time and last time since his passing that she’d entered those quiet chambers. “I spoke to him and apologized for still finding happiness when he was gone. But when I lay upon his bed and stared up at the ceiling, I realized he didn’t want me to be unhappy or sad. He would have wanted me to laugh, as he would have wanted you to be happy, too.”

A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. He swallowed several times as though besieged by a wave of emotion. “You’re wrong.”

She ached with a physical need to take him in her arms and drive back any and every sadness that remained, so that all they knew was happiness with each other, in each other. “Of course he would, Auric. He loved you.” She stood and wandered around the desk.

He spoke, his words bringing her up short at the edge of the massive, mahogany piece.

“There is something I would tell you, Daisy.” Auric’s words, barely a whisper reached her ears.

She rested her hand on the edge of his desk. Her fingers brushed a piece of paper. “What is it?” she asked, as the first frissons of unease traveled along her spine. Those same, dangerous, volatile, knowing sentiments she’d known once in her life that spoke of inevitable doom. She forcibly shoved aside such inane panic.

“I have withheld the truth from you.” He released her embroidery frame. The delicate, wood piece clattered to the desk.

It was the reason Daisy glanced down and why she happened to note the page under her hands and why she then caught the handful of words scratched upon the sheet, in her husband’s handwriting. And it was why she saw those four words strung together.

I killed her brother.

A dull, humming filled her ears and she shook her head in a bid to make sense of the words on that page. With tremulous fingers, she picked the book up.

“Daisy,” Auric said hoarsely and leaped to his feet. He reached for the page.

She held it out of his reach and backed away from him. Her heart pounding loudly in her ears, Daisy skimmed the page and then moved to the next. She gave her head a clearing shake. No. This was a mistake. A lie, dashed upon a page. Daisy lifted her gaze from the opened book. Her husband stood, stoic and unmoving, guilty in his silence. She returned her eyes to the page.

I am sorry I killed you. I will fulfill the role of brother and promise to treat her as my own sister.

Except, no matter how many times she read them, nor how many times she willed them gone, the dark ink remained the same. The silence threatened to drive her mad. “What is this?” she whispered, picking her head up once more.

His face was a ravaged mask of grief.

“What is this?” she cried, waving the page about, and then she glimpsed the words upon the opposite side. She flipped the damning sheet over and the air left her on a swift, exhale.

I promise to wed her. Because she has long been neglected and uncared for. I know she requires protection. And also, how very lonely and sad her life is.

Oh, my God. She recoiled. He’d wed her out of a sense of responsibility for his role in Lionel’s death. The room dipped and swayed under her feet and she sought purchase then found it against the wall. She borrowed support from the hard plaster, her ragged breath coming fast.

“I can explain,” he said, his tone deadened. “I owed you the truth before we wed.”

The truth? His words blended and blurred together. “What truth?” She hardly recognized that high, panicky cry as her own.

He resumed walking and came to a stop several feet away from her. Daisy flipped her head back and forth, seeking escape. Oh, God, he’d killed her brother. The details of that night that no one knew of but Auric. She’d believed Wessex had remained shrouded in secrets and mystery and…

“Do not look at me like that,” he pleaded, his voice a hoarse entreaty. “As though I’m a monster.”

“What truth?” she demanded again, proud of the steady, unwaveringness in that question this time.

He held a hand out to her and she recoiled. She’d spent her life loving him, desiring him, wanting him, and all along he’d been a stranger.

“You were deserving of the truth before this.” He sucked in a slow breath and remained silent for so long, restlessness filled every corner of her being until she wanted to run from him, and this room, and back to last evening when he’d been simply Auric and she’d been Daisy, and they’d both been in love.

Lies. Lies. Lies. All of it.

“We went to a…” Auric flushed. “A place fit for no man or gentleman and certainly no place a lady should ever know about.” She cocked her head, trying to follow this disjointed exchange. “Lionel did not want to go. He wanted to remain in the fashionable end of London with…” He closed his eyes. “…the more fashionable light of loves.” Oh, God. “I insisted that we visit a…a…place,” he stumbled over his words. “I even paid the coins for the woman he went abovestairs with, and sometime during that,” He choked on his words. “exchange, he was stabbed.” A strangled sound, half-sob, half-laugh, escaped him. “All for a bag of coin and his gold timepiece.”