Heart of a Duke 04 - Loved By a Duke

by Christi Caldwell

  “That didn’t startle me,” she said, wrinkling her brow. “It…” He arched an eyebrow. “It…” She sighed. “Very well, I may be still just a slight bit frightened. A very slight bit,” she added when his smile deepened. “But more than anything else I was startled by the lightning. As most people would be. Startled by lightning,” she added as though he were a total lackwit who couldn’t have pieced together what she’d suggested. A damp, brown tress fell over her eye and she blew at the strand. Alas, the sopping lock remained plastered to her forehead.

  His hand shot out of its own volition and he brushed the lock behind her ear. “There,” he murmured.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m escorting you to your carriage.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary. Isn’t that right, Agnes?” she directed toward her maid.

  The wise maid had the good sense to remain silent.

  With a silent curse, Auric reached for Daisy’s wrist and placed her fingers on his sleeve. The maid, Agnes muttered a quiet prayer of thanks and started toward their carriage. “I expect your mother will be furious,” he said out the corner of his mouth. Daisy of years ago would have had proper fear of her mother’s admonition.

  “You would be wrong,” she muttered.

  He snorted. Young Daisy Meadows had seemed to be the bane of her mother’s existence. The poor marchioness had shaken her head in lamentation so many times, he and Lionel had jested that the woman surely walked around in a perpetual state of dizziness from the movement.

  He recognized Daisy’s black carriage. The driver hopped down from the top of his perch and pulled the door open. Auric looked down at Daisy. “I expect you to use more common sense, my lady, than to go out shopping in this Godforsaken weather. I can’t imagine some frippery is worth risking your life for.”

  “You’re wrong.” Something flared in her eyes. “It was important. Is important,” she amended. “And I’ll not make apologies to you for being out in the rain, Auric. I’m no longer a child, nor am I a woman who answers to you.” Her chest rose and fell with the force of her emotion, drawing his gaze downward to the generous swells of her breasts crushed beneath the rain-dampened fabric of her cloak.

  No. At some point, these past seven years, Daisy had become a woman. A beautiful woman. Auric swallowed hard and forced his gaze to her face.

  “Is there anything else you’d say, Your Grace?”

  Ah, so she was Your-Gracing him now? Good, this was safe. He could deal with tart charges and angry “Your Graces” a good deal better than he could Daisy’s abundant breasts and generous hips. “I caution you to use better judgment, my lady.” He took her hand to help her into the carriage.

  Her lips pulled in a grimace of discomfort.

  Auric looked down. He turned her hand over and, with a curse, gently tugged off her delicate, now shredded, kidskin gloves. An angry, red bruise stood vivid, a small scrape with a thin line of blood intersected her palm. Nausea turned in his gut and he closed his eyes a moment counting to three to drive back the horror of the past that converged with the present. The sight of blood did and, he suspected, forever would, transport him to that horrific day.

  “Auric?” Her tentative questioning pulled him back to the moment.

  He swallowed back the bile in his throat. “Bloody hell, Daisy,” he growled. He yanked a kerchief from the front of his coat. “Why didn’t you say you’d been hurt?”

  “It is just a scrape,” she said softly.

  Most other young ladies would have dissolved into histrionics at the sight of blood and bruises. Not Daisy. Then, the girl who used to bait her own hooks when fishing her father’s well-stocked lake had never been squeamish. He used the edge of the fabric to wipe free the dirt and tiny shards of pebbles lodged in the delicate lines of her palm. She gasped. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. He’d rather lob off his right arm than cause her any more pain. He froze mid-movement, guilt ravaging his conscience as he considered the greatest agony he’d already caused her.

  “What is it?” Her whisper-soft question jerked him from his reverie. “You’ve gone all serious.”

  His expression grew shuttered. “I’m always serious.” He’d not always been.

  “Yes.” She shook her head. “But this is different. Your lips are—”

  “Here.” He hastily wrapped the cloth about her hand. It wouldn’t do for them to be discovered in the streets of Gipsy Hill with Daisy talking about his mouth, or any part of his person. “Now, take yourself home, Daisy, and have more of a care in the future.”

  “But—”

  He tossed her up into the carriage.

  She peeked her head out. “Auric—”

  He closed the door.

  Daisy jerked the red velvet curtains back and glared at him.

  And, if the driver hadn’t just then slapped the reins and set the horses into motion, he didn’t doubt that Daisy Meadows would have climbed right back down and told him exactly what she thought of his highhandedness. His lips pulled up in a slow, unfamiliar grin. He stood there, as her carriage disappeared down the road, a faint, black mark in the gray horizon, his cloak soaked from the unrelenting rain.

  He’d not realized until this moment just how much he’d missed smiling.

  Chapter 6

  Seated on the robin’s egg blue sofa in the Blue Parlor, Daisy made quick work of her embroidery. She jerked the crimson thread through the fabric. Well, she made work of it anyway. With a sigh, she paused to assess her sixth attempt at a heart that week. There was some improvement. This one rather resembled conjoined teardrops, which was a good deal better than a dejected circle with a droop in the middle.

  She tossed the frame down and came to her feet. The sun’s rays filtered through the opened curtains and illuminated the room in a soft, ethereal glow. Drawn to the warmth, she wandered over to the window and drew the curtain back even further, welcoming the soothing caress of the sun on her cheeks. After days of rain, the thick clouds overhead broke to allow a trace glimpse of sun. Daisy studied the bustling streets below. She’d not found the heart pendant. Of course she’d not been so naïve to believe she’d manage to find the old gypsy, amidst a sea of gypsies after one rather unproductive afternoon.

  Not altogether unproductive. A smile pulled at her lips, while her heart thumped wildly. For yesterday, in the cold, dreary London morn she’d come to a staggering revelation. As much as she’d believed Auric had failed to see her all these years, she was not invisible to him, either. If his connection to her was strictly one of obligation, the moment he’d called and found Mother indisposed and Daisy out, he could have turned on his heel and sought out his clubs or done whatever it was gentlemen did. Instead, he’d set out after her.

  Nay, he’d pressed Frederick for details of her whereabouts and then set out after her. If she were being truthful, after years of not being seen, heard, or noticed by anyone, there was something enlivening in the discovery that to those who mattered, she’d not ceased to exist, as she’d believed for so long. Granted he’d been brusque and rude and dukelike, but there had also been those traces of gentleness. Her still-sore hands thrummed with the memory of his fingers upon the soft skin of her palm. Her grinning visage reflected back in the crystal pane.

  She spun to face her maid Agnes in the corner. “We’re returning to Gipsy Hill.”

  The young woman hesitated. “Are you certain, my lady? His Grace—”

  “Come, Agnes,” She didn’t want to hear a word about Auric’s highhanded opinion of her excursions. “The sun is shining.” Out. Shining. It was all really the same. “Gipsy Hill is far more enticing in the sun than a dreary, cold, rainy day.”

  “As you say.” Which of course meant Agnes heartily disagreed but was too polite to say as much. With all the enthusiasm of one being marched to the gallows, she climbed to her feet. She cast a dubious glance at the open curtains “I’ll have the carriage readied, my lady,” she announced.

  A short while later, Daisy ma
de her way from the parlor to the foyer. Frederick stood in wait, her green muslin cloak in his hands. She eyed him cautiously. “Frederick,” she greeted as she shrugged into her cloak. “I intend to go shopping once more.” She gave him a frown. “To Gipsy Hill.” At one and twenty she’d enjoy the freedom to shop where she would.

  The ghost of a smile played on his lips. “Very well, my lady.”

  “If a certain…gentle person,” duke “should happen to come by inquiring as to my whereabouts,” which she certainly didn’t anticipate as Auric had put in his requisite visit. “Would you be so good as to not mention where I’ve gone off to?” After all, she’d hardly manage to find the pendant if her efforts were thwarted by both a protective butler and a stubborn fool, too blind to see she was hopelessly in love with him.

  “As you wish, my lady.” Frederick inclined his head. He pressed a hand against his heart. “You have my assurance that I shall not breathe a word of your whereabouts to His…er…some gentleman.”

  Daisy eyed him a moment in an attempt to gauge his veracity. Frederick had been quite loyal to her through the years. He’d never betrayed her whereabouts to stern governesses, and even, in some instances, when Mother had been in one of her tempers, to the mistress of the house.

  He arched a bushy, white eyebrow. “Is there anything else you require, Lady Daisy?”

  Just his discretion. “No, that is all.” With a nod, she sailed through the open door and down the handful of steps to the waiting carriage. She accepted the waiting coachman’s assistance into the carriage and settled into the seat across from her maid.

  The servant closed the door behind her and then the carriage dipped as he climbed atop his perch. Daisy settled into her seat with a renewed vigor. All these years she’d believed Auric failed to see her. And yet, their last exchange revealed he, in fact, saw her. Mayhap not in the light she hoped. But according to Lady Stanhope, all Daisy required was that pendant. Her lips turned up in a smile. How wonderful it felt to turn herself over to hope. She’d lamented her mother and Auric’s perpetual state of seriousness all these years, but had Daisy truly been any different? With her sad thoughts and agonized regrets, she really wasn’t unlike either of the two remaining people left to her.

  Well, no more. The time for sadness and frowns and regrets was at an end. Lionel would not have wanted any one of them to move through life in a constant gloom. She stared out at the passing streets. The sun peaked through the dark, gray skies, and then was swallowed by the fast moving storm clouds. No, Lionel would have likely committed himself to eliciting smiles and laughter, because that had been the kind of man he’d been.

  It was time to honor his memory—by living.

  Thunder rumbled overhead—and by setting her fears free.

  …Bah, afraid of thunder? Why, merely imagine all of Mother and Father’s stuffy guests playing a raucous match of Bowls…

  “My lady, perhaps we should turn back?” Agnes questioned from the opposite bench. “The weather is threatening.”

  She leaned across the bench and patted the other woman’s hands. “Bah, it is just a bit of thunder.” Her smile deepened. She’d no intention of giving up her search over a little rain. No, free of Auric’s austere presence this day, she would make good use of her search. Thunder or no thunder.

  Thunder shook the foundations of his townhouse and Auric froze, his pen poised mid-movement, and his gaze fixed on the handful of words written.

  Dear Lionel,

  I’ve failed you again…

  He tapped the edge of his pen on those handful of words marked upon his opened journal in a deliberate, staccato rhythm. Taking pen to paper and committing words to his friend had brought him back from the edge of madness, early on. When sleep eluded him, or the amorphous memories crept in, he wrote to his friend. He found a soothing peace in being honest—if at the very least with the pages in a black leather volume.

  Except, he stopped mid-tap and stared at those six words. Today he was preoccupied. He held his pen up and fixated on the sharp tip. With two meetings this week, he’d paid more than his requisite visit to the Marchioness of Roxbury’s home. The familiar niggling of guilt he carried, a debt he could never repay those broken people, the dearest friends of his now departed parents, still unassuaged.

  He released a pent up sigh. There was the matter of the still troublesome Daisy. Annoyance roused in his chest. Nay, this was something far more gripping and potent. It sucked at his breath until his fingers itched for the reassuring presence of his black leather book. He drew in several breaths. What madness had possessed her to go off on her own to Gipsy Hill? Did she not have a care for the perils that could befall a young woman venturing beyond the fashionable end of London?

  Auric tossed aside his pen. He fished around the inside of his jacket and withdrew the small, silver token given him yesterday. A ray of sunlight filtered through the curtains, a splash of cheer amidst the overcast skies. The hint of sun reflected off the shiny metal and sent beams of light radiating out upon the walls. Odd how, even amidst such thick gloom and darkness, there should be a hint of lightness. He passed the quizzing glass back and forth between his hands, his mind drawn once more to Daisy.

  She was still a cheeky, insolent miss. And infuriating. And bothersome. And beautiful. He frowned. Where in blazes had that bit of madness come from?

  A knock sounded at the door.

  Grateful for the interruption, Auric closed his journal and set it aside. “Enter.” A footman entered, carrying a small, silver salver with a note atop it. The young man rushed forward and held out the missive. With a murmured thanks, Auric accepted the folded piece of velum, written in an unfamiliar scrawl. “That will be all,” he said dismissively, unfolding the page.

  It felt essential that I inform His Grace of a certain lady’s return to Gipsy Hill—

  “Wait!” Auric leapt to his feet with such alacrity his winged back chair tumbled backward.

  The liveried servant froze on the threshold.

  “My horse,” he barked. “Have my horse readied instantly.”

  The young man nodded and sprinted off to see to Auric’s bidding. With a dark curse, he reread the handful of sentences on the unmarked missive and then stuffed it into the front of his jacket. In loping strides, he made his way from his office to the foyer.

  What madness possessed the lady? There was no accounting for her ill judgment in going out not once, but twice to Gipsy Hill. And when he found the worthless gentlemen responsible for those ill-thought out trips, by God he would stuff the man’s teeth down the back of his throat.

  His butler stood in wait, Auric’s cloak held out in his old, gnarled fingers. “When did that recent missive arrive?” He shrugged into the thick, black garment.

  “Just a short while ago, Your Grace,” the servant said, entirely too calm.

  Minutes? Seconds? Hours? “When?” he bit out. For every unaccounted moment was another blasted moment the lady was out on her own, unchaperoned with some shiftless bounder… A deep growl stuck in his chest.

  “Six minutes and a handful of seconds, Your Grace.” Had anyone else uttered those words, they’d have hinted at sarcasm. However, the precise, masterful servant, Justin, attended his duties with a military like precision. He pulled the door open and Auric swept through the doorway then bounded down the steps to his waiting mount, a black gelding named Valiant. “Gipsy Hill,” he muttered. The horse whinnied in like displeasure. Even his blasted horse knew better. What in blazes was the lady doing in that unfashionable end of London? Again.

  The servant handed the reins over to Auric. “My lord?” he asked, with a furrowed brow.

  Could she not stay on North Bond Street with every other sensible lady? “Nothing,” he bit out and then issued a belated thanks. He climbed astride and nudged Valiant forward. Then, Daisy had never been anything like every other English lady. She’d been unashamedly bold and proud and…he gritted his teeth, fearless. Such a thing had amused him at one time. Now,
with her a lady grown, it was a good deal less entertaining. He squared his jaw. In fact, there was nothing the slightest bit funny about Daisy visiting Gipsy Hill. Again. After he’d expressly forbidden it. Auric urged his horse faster through the thankfully quiet London streets, onward to Gipsy Hill. With each moment, he was humbled more and more by the depths in which he’d failed Lionel, and Daisy.

  He’d been of the erroneous assumption that the attention he’d paid Daisy and the marchioness over the years was sufficient. He’d carved time out of his schedule to regularly visit mother and daughter. He’d made sure to be present for her Come Out, those years ago, throwing his support as the Duke of Crawford. The pain of that, serving as the de facto protector to a then wide-eyed, young lady in too many white ruffles, standing beside her when the responsibility had belonged to another, would always be with him. It should have been Lionel.

  Auric stroked Valiant on the withers and nudged him along. The faithful creature reveled in the freedom and quickened his strides. In Auric’s devotion to Lionel’s family, he’d believed such attention would lessen his sense of guilt over the loss of his friend. Time had shown him, however, that he’d never be free of those sentiments. Not a single day passed or a night was slept where Lionel’s last night alive didn’t creep in and hold on. This moment was no exception. Auric flayed himself with the guilt of his own doing.

  Young, still in university he and Lionel had been rash and reckless, living in a world where their status as noblemen had made them immune to the harsh realities of life. At Auric’s urging, they’d visited a disreputable hell in the Seven Dials. Bile burned like acid in his throat. Lionel had wanted to return to the comfortable clean and safe end of the fashionable parts of London. And how had Auric responded to the other man’s unease? With mocking laughter and an offer to pay for some comely light of love. He’d sent Lionel above stairs with some scantily clad creature.

  Lionel had never come back down. Not alive.

  He absently scanned the shop front windows and wooden carts lining the streets and slowed Valiant’s strides. The possibility of failing both Daisy and Lionel ran him ragged. If she were hurt here in her naïve trustingness in visiting places such as Gipsy Hill, the guilt of that would destroy him.