Loved by a Duke (The Heart of a Duke #4)(89)

And paused.





22 April 1816


Her heart started. The day he’d reentered her life. She scanned the sentences, feeling like the worst sort of interloper in his private thoughts, a thief, stealing words she had no right to.

Saw the world in shades of russet…Her heart thumped a funny rhythm. At Gipsy Hill…

Daisy’s heart kicked up a beat. Of course. She snapped the book shut and started for the door.





Chapter 23

Auric stood on the edge of the cobbled street. The calls of gypsies hawking their wares blurred in his mind in a cacophony. He glanced down at the quizzing glass in his hand, turning it over in his palm. The morning sun’s rays played off the smooth lens, glinted off the metal, and momentarily blinded him.

It is a quizzing glass. It helps you to see…

Only, how little he’d truly seen these many years. Everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d never known he needed had always been there, right before him. She had been there. And yet, he’d lost her. Lost her, long, long ago.

“Can I help you find something, good sir?” The woman’s voice, aged and quiet cut across his silent musings.

Auric stuffed the quizzing glass back into the front pocket of his jacket. “No,” he murmured. He wasn’t even sure what had called him here to this precise place. No, that was just another lie. He knew what had brought him here. This had been the place when he’d ceased to see Daisy as a small girl in need of protection and discovered Lady Daisy Laurel Meadows, the woman who’d cracked open his heart and reminded him of what it felt to…feel again.

And damn if he did not detest all that went with living again.

“Perhaps a gift for yer lady?”

He stiffened, returning his attention to the insistent woman with her straggling, gray-black hair. He opened his mouth, but she brandished a long, yellow ribbon, ending the words on his lips. “Perhaps a ribbon for the lady’s hair?”

He shook his head. “I—”

She held up a small, ivory-plated, hand mirror. “A mirror then to capture her beauty?” She didn’t allow him to speak but continued on. “Or a pair of hair combs.”

An image she’d been on their wedding day, glowing and grinning with the butterfly combs tucked in her dark brown curls flitted through his mind and a pressure settled in his chest. He managed to shake his head and she returned her attention to her colorful collection of goods.

Auric reached into his coat and withdrew a small bag of coins. “Here,” he said gruffly, staying the old woman’s movements.

She looked up expectantly and then eyed the purse for a long while.

“Take it,” he said quietly, and pressed the bag into her gnarled fingers.

The old gypsy hesitated and then tucked the bag into the pocket of her colorful, purple gown. He started down the cobbled street.

“My lord.”

He ignored the woman and took one step, another, and then stopped. Auric closed his eyes a moment and wheeled around to face her.

She smiled at him, displaying a row of crooked, yellow teeth. “Perhaps a necklace for yer lady?” The chain twisted back and forth in her bent fingers, the sun reflecting off the gold piece.

It is a heart pendant… About this big, and gold with slight etchings upon it…

He sucked in a breath and of their own volition, his legs carried him forward.

Wordlessly, she held the necklace out and Auric automatically accepted the small bauble. The muscles of his throat moved painfully. A heart. It was a heart. The very talisman his wife had tried to capture upon her embroidery frame. “It is perfect,” he said quietly. He fished around the front of his jacket for additional coins for the woman, but she held up both palms.

“No, no. There will be no further coin for that.” She lowered her voice and spoke in such hushed tones he strained to hear. “There is a legend behind that necklace.” A slow, mysterious smile turned her lips up. “Some even say magic, that portends the wearer of it will—”

“Auric!”

He spun around and searched the clogged streets for the woman who that husky contralto belonged to.

Daisy stood several carts away, hesitancy in her proud, narrow shoulders. She drew her reticule close to her person and took a tentative step toward him. Their gazes caught and a painful longing for a life with her besieged him. She wet her lips and continued walking toward him. “You left.” There was a faintly breathless quality to her words, an accusation, heated by the intensity in her eyes.

There had been no reason to stay. His fingers curled reflexively about the gold pendant in his hand.

Daisy held her palms up in supplication. “There was every reason to stay, Auric.” The reticule twisted and twirled in the faint spring breeze.

His throat closed with emotion. They’d always shared a connection in which they could complete the other’s thoughts. “Was there, Daisy?” His voice emerged, hoarse and unrecognizable to his own ears. How could she forgive everything he’d cost her?

Daisy let her reticule slip to the ground where it landed with a thump at her feet. She reached on tiptoe and captured his face between her hands. “Do you believe I could live in a world in which you were not in it? Do you believe I could or ever would have sacrificed you for Lionel?”