Page 26 of The Duke I Wished For
“Daff,” Delilah continued, holding both her hands tightly. “When we were young, who comforted me when there was a storm? And who coddled me when I was sick? Who read to me at night and let me cry on her shoulder when I wept?”
Daffodil stared at her shy little sister in surprise. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard Delilah speak so much.
“I think what Delilah’s saying is that you’ve already proven that you’re nothing like your mother,” Isabelle said.
“And you never will be,” Jocelyn added.
“Thank heavens for that,” Jane muttered.
For a long moment, Daffodil stared at her friends as she let her sister’s words and their meaning settle over her. There was truth there…
But she couldn’t quite shake this fear. This worry that Blake would get to know her better and be disappointed. That she’d fail in her efforts to be a great mother to Clarissa.
There was fear still…
But mostly, there was hope.
For the first time, Daffodil started to see the future as something bright and filled with possibility rather than a dead end she’d been forced to enter.
“He could change his mind,” she said. “He could get to know me and…”
She trailed off. That was fear at work, and she didn’t want to act out of fear. For once, she wanted to be brave.
“The same could be said for you,” Jocelyn pointed out. “What if you change your mind about him? There’s always a risk when it comes to love.”
Love. The word rattled her, but it also quelled the last of her fears and had her smiling for the first time in days. “Then I suppose…” She squeezed her sister's hands as she sniffed back the last of her tears. “I suppose it’s about time I took a leap of faith.”
8
Neither Blake nor his brother Adam were known for being garrulous. But as they sat side by side near the fire on this chilly spring evening, Blake was certain this was the first time he’d ever been more churlish than his notoriously terse brother.
“So what’d you say then?” Adam took another swig of his whiskey.
“What do you mean, what did I say? There was nothing to say. Her parents took her away from me.”
“Mph.”
Adam’s grunt was easy to interpret and Blake stiffened. “It’s not like I could force the woman to give me an answer, now could I?”
Adam eyed him levelly.
Blake let out a sharp exhale. “I wouldn’t have invited you over here if I knew you were going to judge me so.”
“You didn’t invite me. Clarissa did. Didn’t you, sweetheart?”
Clarissa beamed at her uncle.
Adam wasn’t wrong. When Blake had taken Clarissa to visit her uncle last week, she’d told him he needed to come to their house to play. And while the retired captain might be uncivil to most and a terror to his enemies, his niece had him wrapped around her little finger.
“Besides, I’ve barely said a word,” Adam shot back. “You’re doing enough blaming for both of us.”
Blake pinched the bridge of his nose. His brother was right. He’d been defensive and on edge as he’d given his brother the brief rundown of how he’d gone and fallen for a near stranger, and then went about proposing with no thought to propriety whatsoever.
“I should have spoken to her father first,” he muttered.
Adam leaned over to pick up the doll Clarissa had dropped and handed it back to her as she played at their feet. “Here you are, moppet.”
Clarissa grinned at him, and Adam gave her a rare smile that he seemed to reserve only for his niece. The smile and the flickering of the firelight did nothing to soften the hard lines of his features, and it only exacerbated the scar that cut across his left cheek, a remnant of his time on the battlefield—but Clarissa never seemed to notice any of Adam’s deficiencies. How the child could be so afraid of everyone else and yet so warm to two beastly men, Blake could not say.
