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

by Christi Caldwell

  Her heart swelled with even more love as she realized his question. “How can you doubt that I did not enjoy that?” she murmured against his lips. “And do you know what, Auric?”

  “What?”

  “One cannot learn that in a manual.” She winked.

  Laughter rumbled up from his chest and then melded with her own breathless giggles. With a contended sigh, she nestled against him and for the first time in seven years, knowing peace. For so many years she’d loved him with a girl’s heart. Now she loved him every way a woman could love a man. She’d never needed a gypsy’s bauble to capture that which she’d longed for the past ten years…Auric’s heart.

  Chapter 20

  The following afternoon, Auric sat behind his immaculate, mahogany desk. He drummed the tip of his pen back and forth upon his open journal, just as he’d done for the better part of the morning and now early afternoon.

  It had been inevitable. At last, the guilt threatened to consume him. He tossed his pen down and flipped through the pages of the loyal, leather volume. Auric skimmed the pages containing his lists of suitors for Daisy, all men he hated just for having been hypothetically marked as a husband to her. He continued turning the pages and then froze. His gut clenched and he stuck his finger in the middle of the page.

  I killed her brother. Those four words inked in black stared damningly up at him and he fixed on them so intently, the marks upon the page blurred before him.

  There were a million reasons he shouldn’t have wed her, but the sheet needn’t have had any further reasons beyond the one. He turned the page over and studied the other letters he’d written.

  Dear Lionel,

  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.

  Odd, when he’d jotted down all the reasons to wed Daisy, in his ducal haughtiness, he’d thought of her in terms of a responsibility, denying the very real and very obvious truth—he loved her. Those words belonged on this useless sheet he’d hastily put together at Wessex’s insistence.

  With a curse, Auric quickly turned the pages over and over, frantically reading, and then at last settling on the accusatory words penned in his own hand—I killed her brother. Had the reasons to wed Daisy outweighed the role he’d played in Lionel’s death?

  Guilt bunched and twisted inside his stomach and he stared blankly down at the damning admission. He’d owed her the truth. Not after their marriage, but rather before, when it would have been her decision as to whether she could set aside the crimes of his youth, forgive him, and love him, even as he was undeserving of that love. He’d clung to the fleeting moment of madness in which he’d assumed what had come to pass in the Seven Dials could remain buried.

  When the morning had come, he should have risen and shared every dark, sordid detail of that night with her. For even though she was a lady, as Lionel’s sister, and more, Auric’s wife and friend, he owed her the truth. Instead, he’d rushed from her bed, leaving her snoring, curled in a contented ball, and sought to put some distance between them.

  He set the journal down on the corner of his desk and scrubbed a hand over his eyes. Wessex had maintained that Auric hadn’t been to blame. He, however, knew the truth. Yet, when she’d been simply Daisy, Lionel’s younger sister, sharing details that would ultimately shatter her heart had never been something he’d intended. All these years, he’d seen her as no more than a responsibility, a debt to be paid, an obligation owed to his closest friend. Nor was the truth fit for a young lady’s ears. He shoved back his chair with such force it scraped along the wood floor. Restless, he climbed to his feet and stalked over to the empty hearth. He stared down into the cold, dark grate.

  Everything had changed so swiftly he’d not allowed himself to consider the ramifications in loving her or worse, in marrying her. He’d demonstrated the same self-centeredness that had driven him, a then bored, young student in university to a seedy hell no decent or indecent person belonged. Auric reached into the front of his jacket and withdrew the quizzing glass he carried close to his heart. He held the delicate piece in his palm, the cool metal etched in daisies from that day he’d ceased to see the world in shades of gold and seen only Daisy—forever Daisy.

  “There you are.”

  Her soft contralto froze him where he stood. There was a shyness, a hesitancy, in her tone that he’d never known of her, but then, weren’t there so many pieces of each other both didn’t know?

  Auric schooled his features and turned around. “Daisy,” he greeted, tucking the quizzing glass into its familiar place beside his heart. She hovered in the doorway, holding her embroidery frame close to her chest. He sketched a bow.

  A little frown marred her full lips. Lips that drew forth all manner of wicked memories of how she’d felt in his arms, and how he longed to bury himself in her once again and… “Did you just bow?”

  Her words were eerily reminiscent of that night not too long ago inside Lady Harrison’s ballroom.

  “Yes, a bow.” He quirked an eyebrow. “A general expression practiced upon a polite greeting.”

  Some of the tension seemed to leave her shoulders and she wandered deeper into the room, coming to a stop several steps away. “Ah, yes. The ever important bow usually preceded by a polite curtsy.”

  Thick and prolonged silence fell between them. They’d never been without words—until now. He cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “I trust you slept w—?”

  “Oh, yes, very well,” she hastily interrupted and then her cheeks blazed red. “And did you—?”

  “Also well.” Auric folded his hands behind his back and rocked forward on the balls of his feet.

  They both went quiet, once more.

  Daisy lowered her arms to her side and beat her embroidery frame against her leg. “You weren’t there,” she blurted. “This morning, when I arose, and then I’d expected you’d break your fast with me, that is…because it is afternoon and you’ve surely already broken your fast and…” She clamped her lips into a line.

  She wanted to know why he’d left her—again. Tell her. Tell her all the truths and mistruths between you. Surely, she could forgive him.

  Except, how could she forgive him, when he could never forgive himself? “I had matters of business to see to,” he said instead. Which wasn’t altogether untrue. There were any number of estate matters and responsibilities he had to attend to. Those matters, however, came nowhere near the import of taking precedence over her.

  “Oh,” she said. She motioned to the sofa. “May I join you?”

  “Join me?” he echoed back, following her gesticulating hand. “Of course,” he said.

  With a smile, Daisy sailed over to the seat, embroidery frame in her hand. She promptly sat and proceeded to pull the tip of her needle through the white fabric. He studied her a long moment, head bent over her work, and something tugged at him. In her blue skirts and companionable silence, she presented a bucolic tableau he’d not allowed himself to believe for himself. He’d envisioned a life in which he wed a proper, English miss who’d make him a sufficient duchess, but where no true emotional bond connected them.

  And all along, Daisy had been there.

  Peace. This was the peace he’d not allowed himself to believe possible. Not for him. Only, the moment she knew everything, all of this would fade.

  She peeked up from her work and looked at him questioningly, effectively jerking him from his reverie. He returned to his desk, the journal containing all his sins glared up at him. Auric reached for a pen and dipped it into the crystal inkwell, and proceeded to see to his accounts.

  Except now, with her here, the neat rows of columns held even less appeal than they had since the moment he’d entered his office earlier that morning. How was he to think with Daisy so close, the lavender scent drifting over to him, permeating his senses and consuming his thoughts? He glanced up at her. She sat with her knees drawn close to her chest
, her trim ankles exposed while she worked intently on that embroidery frame.

  Feeling his gaze upon her person, Daisy picked her head up. She smiled at catching his stare, but then her smile dipped. “What is it?”

  Auric forced a smile. “I merely wonder what you’ve set your efforts to now?” He tightened his grip upon the pen in his hand, abhorring how effortlessly the lie slipped out. The pen snapped in his fingers and he released it swiftly.

  Daisy swung her legs over the side of her seat in a noisy rustle of muslin. She held up the wooden frame for his inspection.

  Auric tossed his pen down and leaned back in his seat. “Hmm.” He made a show of studying the red and gold stiches. “A flower?” he ventured. There was not a thing he did not love about her. Even her horrid ability to stitch and the joy she seemed to find in it.

  She pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “Does this appear to be a flower, Auric?” she asked, her tone filled with exasperation. She hopped to her feet and proceeded over to his desk.

  Well, in fairness, the misshapen…shape, didn’t appear to be much of anything. He rolled his shoulders, his attention fixed not upon that damned embroidery but upon her. The modest, muslin gown clung to every curve of her voluptuous frame, the fabric kissing her skin as she moved. He would never have enough of her.

  Daisy stopped at the edge of his desk and propped her hip against the edge. She held the frame under his nose.

  Auric captured her wrist and raised it to his lips. He placed a lingering kiss upon the wildly beating pulse. “Beautiful,” he murmured against her satiny soft skin.

  The muscles of her throat worked up and down with the force of her swallow. “W-well,” she whispered breathlessly. “Have a look.” All attempts of hers to command was lost on a breathless, little whisper, that roused images of how they’d spent the evening, entwined in one another’s arms.

  Auric swallowed a groan and released her, shifting his attention to those familiar threads. He captured the delicate wood frame in his hand, careful to avoid the dangling needle. Then, he sat back in his seat and proceeded to study her efforts.

  “I’m rather horrid at it, I know,” she confessed. He’d always admired her forthrightness which set her apart from any other lady he’d ever known. When most women prevaricated, particularly around him as a duke, Daisy had been unrepentantly honest. From the corner of his eye, he detected her distracted little movements as she wrung her hands together. “I do enjoy it, though.”

  He recalled a seven-year-old Daisy behind the blue drapes in the Marquess of Roxbury’s office as she hid from a nursemaid intending to drill proper lessons into the then girl, on embroidering and singing and all manner of things young Daisy had detested. “You detested it as a child.” What had changed?

  She ran her palm over the surface of his desk in a back and forth movement, her gaze fixed on her own distracted motion. “When…my brother died I found myself unable to sleep.”

  He stilled. How many nights had he lain awake himself, riddled with nightmares made all the more horrific by their truth. Even then, when sleep had come to him, he’d been tortured by his own cries that merged with the memories of that night.

  Her hand paused. “I would stitch,” she admitted. “Sometimes I’d jab my finger with the needle.” A wistful smile played about her lips. “Or rather, most times I’d inadvertently jab my finger with the needle. But, as much as I’ve abhorred needlework through the years, it gave me something to focus on. Even if it was something as inane and senseless as stitching.” Silence met her admission. She glanced up at him. “Silly, isn’t it.”

  “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, seek
ing 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.”

  Daisy groaned. The sound tore from her throat, painful. “No. No. No,” she moaned, tossing her head back and forth. She released the journal and clamped her hands over her ears to blot out his voice.

  A heavy sheen of tears filled his eyes, those useless, empty, meaningless expressions. More lies. “I didn’t kill him.” He dragged a hand over his face. “But he was there because of me…and, ah, God Daisy the guilt of that will always be with me.”

  Tears flooded her own eyes and she blinked them away. A drop streaked a path down her cheek, followed by another, and another, until the torrents opened, and she openly sobbed. She folded her arms about her waist and hugged herself tight, but it did little to drive back the pained agony threatening to rip her apart. She’d heard nothing more than faint whisperings about that dark night. For what had transpired had been too dark and too vile for even the gossips to boldly bandy about before polite Society. Now, she knew the truth. Auric and Lionel and Marcus had gone to the unfashionable ends of London…to know the pleasures of a whore and, in the end, her brother, who by Auric’s account had not wanted to go, had paid with his life.