A Heart of a Duke Collection: Volume 1-A Regency Bundle

by Christi Caldwell

  Lord Auric opened his mouth to say something when a flurry of whispers and another round of tittering carried from across the room. Lady Leticia, one year younger and a million times prettier than Daisy, stuck her finger in Daisy’s direction and giggled. Lord Auric glowered in her direction and the little girl’s blue eyes formed moons in her face. He slid into the empty seat beside Daisy while Lionel claimed the chair on her opposite side. The trio fell instantly silent.

  “Serves them right,” Daisy muttered and grabbed her roll once again. She ripped into it with her teeth.

  “Daisy,” her mother chided from across the table.

  She dropped the roll. She knew all the nonsense ingrained into her by Mrs. Wimpleton, her ancient governess, but really those tiny shredded pieces and nibbling bites were better suited to a small mouse than a human child.

  Lord Auric picked up the partially eaten roll from her plate. He yanked an enormous piece off with his teeth and winked at her once more.

  She grinned. He really was quite charming. And dashing. And all things wonderful. With a soft sigh, she propped one elbow onto the table and dropped her chin into her hand. With her free hand she reached for her glass of water. Her fingers brushed cold silver.

  Shrieks erupted about the table, as the silver candelabra tipped sideways. The marquess yanked her hand back, even as several footmen rushed forward to blot out the small flames that now licked at the white, Italian lace tablecloth.

  Lord Auric turned her hand over in his much larger one studying for marks. “No burn,” he murmured.

  “Daisy Meadows!”

  Her mother took her by the forearm and steered Daisy to her feet. She allowed herself to be dragged from the slightly charred tablecloth. Another round of tittering from the trio of mean girls trailed after her. While her mother quietly scolded her, Daisy cast one last glance over her shoulder at the young marquess now fully engrossed in conversation with Lionel.

  She sighed. She really didn’t need the future Duke of Crawford. Just Auric would do.

  Chapter 1

  London, England

  21 April 1816

  Lady Daisy Meadows was invisible.

  Oh, she hadn’t always been a shiftless, shapeless figure overlooked by all. In fact, she’d been quite the bane of her poor mother and father’s existence, and prone to all manner of mischief, since a young girl had about as little hope of being made Queen of England as accomplishing the whole invisibility feat. And yet, she’d managed it with a remarkable finesse, through no help of her own. She could point to the precise moment in time when she ceased to be.

  She plucked the copy of The Times from the rose-inlaid, mahogany table and scanned the words on the front page; so familiar she’d already committed them to memory.

  Duke of C in the market for his duchess, thrown over by the Lady AA, etc., etc.,

  Offended by the blasted page, Daisy stuck her tongue out at the mocking words and threw the paper onto the table. Thwack! “Market for a duchess,” she muttered under her breath. “As though he’s hunting for a prime piece of horseflesh.”

  The Duke of C. None other than the illustrious, sought after, Duke of Crawford. Sought after by all… She glanced down at the page once more. Well, not all. After all, the then Lady Anne Adamson had rejected his suit in favor of the roguish Earl of Stanhope. The fool.

  A fool Daisy was indebted to. But a fool nonetheless.

  With a growl of annoyance she grabbed for the embroidery frame. She picked up the needle and jammed it through the screen with such zeal she jabbed the sharp tip into the soft flesh of her index finger. “Blast.” She popped the wounded digit into her mouth and sucked the drop of blood. When she’d become invisible, she’d also taken to embroidering. She had been doing so for nearly seven years. She was as rubbish at it as she was at winning the heart of a certain duke.

  With needle in hand, and greater care on her part, she pulled it through the outline of the heart…she wrinkled her brow…or, it was intended to be a heart. Now it bore the hint of a sad circle with a slight dip in the middle. She tugged the needle through once more with entirely too much zeal and stuck her finger again. “Double blast.”

  Giving up on the hope of distraction, she tossed the frame aside where it landed upon the damning page with a quiet thwack. She hopped to her feet then made her way over to the hearth. A small fire cast soothing warmth into the chilled room. She rubbed her palms together and contemplated the flickering flames.

  It shouldn’t matter what the scandal sheets reported about a certain duke in the market for a wife. She’d known it was an inevitability he would wed and had long ago accustomed herself to that sad, sorry truth that it would not be her but instead a flawless English beauty such as the Lady Anne. There had been whispers of a fabled heart pendant given by a gypsy and worn by the lady to win the heart of a duke. Nothing more than whispers from romantic ladies who believed in such silly talismans. It wouldn’t have mattered if Lady Anne had been in possession of an armoire full of magic pendants. With her golden blonde curls and a remarkably curved figure, she could have had any duke, marquess, or in the lady’s case—earl, she wanted. Unlike plump, unfortunately curved Daisy. To Auric, the 8th Duke of Crawford she was just as invisible to him as she was to everyone.

  She picked her gaze up and stared at her reflection in the enormous, gold mirror. A wry grin formed on her too large lips. Odd, how a lady cursed with dark brown hair and a shocking amount of freckles, and of such a plump form should ever achieve the whole invisibility feat, and yet she had. “Now, I,” she said to the creature with enormous, brown eyes. “I require some enchanted object.” Nothing short of a gypsy’s charm would help her win Auric’s stubborn, blind heart.

  Shuffling footsteps sounded in the hall, calling her attention. Her mother stood framed in the doorway gazing with an empty stare at the parlor, as though she’d entered a foreign world and didn’t know how to escape it. It was the same blank look and wan expression she’d worn since they’d learned of Lionel.

  Her brother. Her protector. Defender. And champion. Smiling and tweaking her nose one day. The next, lost in the most brutal manner imaginable. With his senseless death, he’d taken her parents’ only happiness with them, and with his aching absence, left her invisible.

  “Mother.” There was a pain that would never go away in knowing, as the living child, Daisy could never restore happiness to her mother’s world.

  The marchioness blinked several times. “Daisy?”

  “Yes.” As in the woman’s daughter and only surviving child.

  “I…” Mother touched her fingertips to her temple as though she had a vicious megrim. “I have a bit of a headache.” She glanced about the room. “Is Aur—?”

  “He is not here,” she interrupted. Following her husband’s death two years earlier, the Duke of Crawford had become the only person her mother left the privacy of her darkened chambers for. In his presence, she somehow found traces of the mother, hostess, and person she’d been before her, nay their, world had been torn asunder.

  “He is not,” her mother repeated, furrowing her brow. With his visits, it was as though the cloak of misery she’d donned these years would lift, and the woman would show traces of the proper hostess she’d been once upon a lifetime ago. But with his departure, she’d settle into the fog of despair once again.

  “No, Mama,” she said gentling her tone as though speaking to a fractious mare. Auric hadn’t been ’round in nearly a month. Three weeks and six days to be precise. But who was counting? “Surely you do not expect he’ll visit forever?” There was no reason for him to do so. “He’ll take a duchess soon.” She hated the way her heart tugged painfully at that truth.

  A flash of lucidity lit the marchioness’ gray-blue eyes. “Do not be rude, Daisy.”

  “I’m not being rude.” She was being truthful. Even as she longed to be the reason for his coming ’round, she’d long ago accepted that his visits were out of a ducal obligation to the dear friends of
his late parents. And through it all, Daisy remained invisible. “His visits are merely an obligatory social call, Mother.”

  “I can’t think when you speak like that.” Her mother clenched her eyes tight and rubbed her temples, pressing her fingers into the skin. “I…”

  Remorse flooded her and she swept across the room. “Shh.” She took her mother by the shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze. “You should rest.”

  The older woman nodded. “Yes. Yes. That is a very good idea. I should rest.” She turned away woodenly and left in a sea of black, bombazine skirts. The only time she replaced her mourning attire was when she was forced out into Society with her still unwed daughter.

  With a sigh, Daisy wandered back to the hearth and stared down into the orange-red flames. The fire snapped and hissed noisily in the quiet of the room. When she’d been a small girl, she’d loved to hop. She would jump on two feet, until she’d discovered the thrill of that unsteady one-footed hop. Then her mother had discovered her hopping and put a subsequent end to any such behavior.

  At least when there was a hint of a possibility of Mother being near. Now, with her father gone, dead in his sleep not even two years ago, and a mother who’d ceased to note her existence, Daisy would quite gladly trade her current state for that overbearing, oft-scolding mother.

  She gently tugged up the hem of her gown and jumped on her two slippered feet. A smile pulled at her lips as the familiar thrill of the forbidden filled her. Even if it was only the forbidden that existed in her mind, from a time long ago. Did she even remember how to hop? She’d not done so in…she searched her mind. Seven years? Surely not. Entirely too long for any person to not do something as enjoyable as jump or hop.

  Daisy held her arms out at her side and experimented with a tentative hop. She chewed her lips. Boots had been ever so much more conducive to this manner of enjoyable business. “How utterly silly,” she mumbled to herself. It was silly. Quite juvenile, really. And yet, despite knowing that and all the lessons of propriety ingrained into her, giddiness filled her chest. With a widening smile she hopped higher, catching her reflection in the mirror, a kind of testament to the fact that she was, in truth, visible. Still real. Still alive when the loved, cherished brother no longer was. “I am here,” she said softly into the quiet of the ivory parlor. Daisy lifted her skirts higher and hopped up and down on one foot. Her loose chignon released several brown curls. They tumbled over her eye and she blew them back.

  Ladies did not hop. Invisible ones, however, were permitted certain freedoms.

  Her smile widened at the triviality of her actions. For many years, she’d been besieged with guilt for daring to smile or laugh when Lionel should never again do either. Eventually, she had. And along with guilt there was also some joy for the reminder that she was in fact—

  “Ahem, the Duke of Crawford.”

  Daisy came down hard on her ankle and, with a curse, crumpled before the hearth. Her heartbeat sped up as she caught a glimpse of Auric’s towering form, over the ivory satin sofa, at the entranceway. He wore his familiar ducal frown. However, the usually stoic, unflappable peer hovered blinking at her in her pile of sea foam green skirts.

  She mustered a smile. “Hullo.” She made to shove herself to her feet.

  He was across the room in three long strides. “What are you doing?” Not: how are you? Not: Are you all right? And certainly not: My love, please don’t be injured.

  She winged an eyebrow upward. “Oh, you know, I’m merely sitting here admiring the lovely fire.” His frown deepened.

  Then in one effortless movement, he scooped her up and set her on her feet. A thrill of warmth charged through her at his strong hands upon her person. “Are you hurt?”

  Well, there, a bit belated, but she supposed, better late than never. “I’m fine,” she assured him. Her maid appeared in the doorway. “Agnes, will you see to refreshments?”

  The young woman, who’d been with her for almost six years, turned on her heel and hurried to see to her mistress’ bidding. Agnes had come to know, just like every other servant, peer, and person, that there was no danger to Daisy’s reputation where the Duke of Crawford was concerned.

  She took a tentative step, testing for injury.

  “You’d indicated you were unhurt,” he spoke in a disapproving tone, as though perturbed at the idea of her being hurt.

  Goodness, she’d not want to go and bother him by being injured. “I am all right,” she replied automatically. Then, “What are you doing here?” Mortified heat burned her cheeks at the boldness of her own question.

  He gave her an indecipherable look.

  “Not that you’re not welcome to visit.” Shut up this instant, Daisy Laurel. “You are of course, welcome.” He continued to study her in that inscrutable way of his. Sometime between charming young boy of sixteen and now, he’d perfected ducal haughtiness. Annoyed by his complete mastery of his emotions, she slipped by him and claimed a seat on the ivory sofa. “What I intended to say is,” I, “my mother missed your visits.”

  There was a slight tightening at the corners of his lips. Beyond that, however, he gave no indication that he either cared, remembered, or worried about the Marchioness of Roxbury.

  She sat back in her seat. “Would you care to sit?” Or would you rather stand there glowering in that menacing manner of yours?

  He sat. And still glowered in that menacing manner of his. “What were you doing?”

  Daisy blinked at this crack in his previously cool mask. “What was I doing?”

  “Prior to your fall.” Auric jerked his chin toward the hearth. “It appeared as though you were,” he peered down the length of his aquiline nose. “Hopping.” The grinning Auric of his youth would have challenged her to a jumping competition. This hard person he’d become spoke to the man who found inane amusements, well…inane.

  She trilled a forced laugh. “Oh, hopping.” Daisy gave a wave of her hand that she hoped conveyed “what-a-silly-idea-whyever-would-I-do-anything-as-childlike-as-hop?” To give her fingers something to do, she grabbed for her embroidery frame and cautiously eyed the offending needle.

  Auric shifted in the King Louis XIV chair taking in the frame in her hands. “You don’t embroider.”

  No, by the weak rendering upon the frame, he’d be correct in that regard. For as deplorable as she was, she really quite enjoyed it. Her stitchery was something she did for herself. It was a secret enjoyment that belonged to her and no other. A secret Auric now shared. “I like embroidering.” In the immediacy of Lionel’s death, when the nightmares had kept her awake, she would fix her energy on the attention it took her to complete a living scene upon the screen. Some of her more horrid pieces had kept her from the gasping, crying mess she so often was in those earlier days.

  An inelegant, and wholly un-dukelike, snort escaped Auric, and just like that, he was the man she remembered and not the stern figure he presented to the ton.

  “What?” she asked defensively, even as she warmed with the restored ease between them. “I do.” To prove as much she pulled the needle through the fabric, releasing a relieved sigh as it sailed through the fabric and, this time, sparing her poor, wounded flesh.

  “Since when do you embroider?” Auric looped his ankle over his knee.

  Out the corner of her eyes, she stole a peek at him. “For some years now.” Seven, to be precise. Not giving in to dark thoughts, she paused to arch an eyebrow. “I expect a lofty duke such as you would approve of a lady embroidering.” And doing all manner of things dull.

  Except, he refused to take the gentle bait she’d set out for him and so, with a little sigh, she returned her attention to the frame. Auric had always been such great fun to tease. He would tease back. They would smile. Now, he was always serious and somber and so very dukish.

  The awkward silence stretched out between them, endless, until her skin burned from the impenetrable gaze he trained on her. She paused to steal another sideways glance and found him trying to ma
ke out the image on her frame, wholly uninterested in Daisy herself.

  Invisible.

  “What was that?” his low baritone cut into her thoughts.

  A little shriek escaped her as she jammed the needle into her fingertip. “What was what?” She winced and popped the wounded digit into her mouth.

  “You said something.”

  Daisy gave her head a firm shake and drew her finger out to assess the angry, red mark. “No, I didn’t.” Not intentionally, anyway. She’d developed the bothersome habit of talking to herself and creating horrible embroideries. “I daresay with you having not been to visit in some time,” three weeks and six days, but really who was counting? “you’ve come ’round for a reason?” Her question, borderline rude, brought his eyebrows together. Then, powerful dukes such as he were likely unaccustomed to tart replies and annoyed young ladies.

  “I always visit on Wednesdays.”

  “No,” she corrected. Before he’d inherited the title of duke, a year after the death of Lionel, with a carriage accident that had claimed both his father and mother, he’d been a very different man. “No, you don’t.” He always had visited. This Season he’d devoted his attentions to duchess hunting—which is where his attention should be. Her lips pulled in a grimace. Well, not necessarily on finding a wife, but rather on himself and his own happiness. She’d never wanted to be a burden to him, never wanted to be an obligation.

  It wasn’t always that way…

  Auric drummed his fingertips on the edge of his thigh and she followed the subtle movement. Her mouth went dry as she took in the thick, corded muscles encased in buff skin breeches. He really possessed quite splendid thighs. Not the legs one might expect of a duke. But rather—“You’re displeased, Daisy.”

  His words jerked her from her improper musings. “What would I have to be displeased with?” Displeased would never be the right word. Regretful. Disappointed. For the years she’d spent waiting for him to see more where she was concerned, he continued to see nothing at all. To give her fingers something to do, Daisy drew the needle through the frame, working on her piece, all the while her skin pricked with the feel of being studied.