Any Duchess Will Do (18 page)
G
riff kept busy for the rest of the day. He had a full slate of appointments that afternoon, all related to the business of his estates.
It still wasn’t enough. All his meetings with solicitors and land agents and secretaries . . . They were like cannonballs stuffed in a crate. They were weighty, and they took up space—but they didn’t make the crate truly full. Thoughts of Pauline slipped in to fill every void, like a million grains of sand.
Or crystals of sugar, it might be more appropriate to say.
Somehow he made it to late afternoon, when he surrendered to the attentions of his valet. He emerged an hour later—smooth-shaven, fully dressed, and completely unprepared for the vision coming down the staircase.
Good Lord.
One look at her and Griff knew it was over. The evening was a failure before it began. No one would ever believe her to be a common serving girl. Not tonight, not looking like this.
She wore a gown in deep, lush pink, with gauzy layers of skirts billowing out from a fitted, off-the-shoulder bodice. Matching elbow-length gloves. Her hair was curled, looped, and pinned—but all in a way that managed to look effortlessly lovely and elegant. Quite a trick, that. Fleur deserved a rise in wages.
She carried herself well, too. Her neck was a pale, slender column, and her bare shoulders . . . ah, her shoulders looked sculpted from moonlight. Delicate and serene, mysterious and feminine. A rope of pale amethysts dipped sensuously above her décolletage, catching the light with a thousand facets.
He was a duke and a libertine, he reminded himself. He’d seen many a beautiful woman in his life. Finer gowns than this, more lavish jewels than these. Rationally, he knew that Pauline Simms could not eclipse everything and everyone who had come before her. And yet, somehow she did.
There wasn’t any one feature he could point to, or any particular gesture she made. It was just . . .
Her. I’ll take her.
“Well?” she prompted.
Finally, he looked her in the eyes—those bright green, cat-tipped, intelligent eyes, set in a heart-shaped face. They were anxious tonight, and transparently vulnerable.
Lord above. She had no idea. She had him enraptured to the point of drooling incoherence, and she had absolutely no idea.
She lifted an eyebrow.
She’s waiting for your reaction. React. But not too much. Only the appropriate amount. A well-chosen word or two.
What he said was, “Guh.”
Oh, hell. Had that unformed syllable actually escaped his throat?
Pauline blinked at him. “What?”
Apparently it had. He cleared his throat with a loud harrumph, then searched for a way to amend his statement. “Good,” he pronounced, clearing his throat again. “I said good.”
A pretty flush rose on Pauline’s cheeks. Still, she bit her lip, looking hesitant. “What kind of good?” she asked. “ ‘Good’ as in ‘rather bad,’ which aids our purpose? Or ‘good’ as in ‘actually good,’ and you’re displeased?”
Griff sighed inwardly. What was he to say?
“Good” as in “Good God, you are the most radiant, lovely thing I’ve seen in all my life, and I’m a speechless, shuddering fool before you.” Does that clear matters?
“Good as in good,” he said. “I’m not displeased.”
Her mouth pulled to the side. “Then that’s . . . good.”
This was now officially the most inane conversation in which Griff had ever been a participant—and that included a drunken debate with Del over ostrich racing.
“The color isn’t too awful?” She twisted a fold of the skirt. “The draper called it ‘dewy petal,’ but your mother said the shade was more of a ‘frosted berry.’ What do you say?”
“I’m a man, Simms. Unless we’re discussing nipples, I don’t see the value in these distinctions.”
Her lips pursed into a chastening pout.
“Whatever shade it is, it looks well on you.”
Too well.
He tugged his black evening gloves on and gathered his hat from Higgs. “Let’s be going.”
The carriage was readied and waiting. He turned to Pauline. She obviously needed help, what with those ungainly skirts. Without hesitation, she took the hand he offered and clutched it tightly, borrowing his strength. The warm clasp of her satin-clad fingers nearly undid him. He was unsteady himself as he made his own way into the coach and sat across from her on the rear-facing seat.
He turned his head to the window. He needed to bring himself under control. They were only just leaving the house, and the whole evening lay ahead.
When they reached the place for the river crossing and alighted from the coach, twilight had descended. The air was heavy with wisps of fog and shadow. An air of romantic mystery lingered, despite all Griff’s attempts to discredit it.
“We’re going to cross the river in boats?” she asked, eyeing the boat launch with alarm. Her grip tightened on his arm.
He nodded. “It’s the only way to Vauxhall. Eventually there’s to be a bridge, but it isn’t complete.”
“I’ve never been in a boat. Not in my whole life.”
“Never? But you live by the sea.”
“I know. It’s absurd, isn’t it? Sometimes the ladies go boating, but I never had a reason to join in.”
“Don’t be frightened.” He reached for her. “Here.”
Helping her into the boat was even more precarious than handing her into the carriage had been. Griff went first, wedging his boots fast against the floorboards and steadying his balance.
Pauline accepted his hand and took a cautious step onto a seat near the bow. But just then the waterman launched the boat. She stumbled. Griff had to catch her by both arms as she fell against his chest.
“Oh, bollocks.” She struggled to correct herself, and the boat lurched.
His stomach nearly capsized. He had a vision—a brief, waking nightmare of a thought—in which she tumbled straight into the black water and all those heavy, embellished skirts dragged her straight to the depths.
“Don’t move,” he told her, tightening his grip. “Not yet.”
He held her close and tight. For long moments they stood absolutely still—swaying in each other’s arms while the boat regained its equilibrium.
“Are you well?” he whispered.
She nodded.
“Your heart is racing,” he said.
“So is yours.”
He smiled a little. “Fair enough.”
When the boat finally steadied, he helped her onto the seat and motioned to the waterman, who ferried them across the Thames in smooth, even strokes.
“See?” he murmured, keeping her close. “There’s nothing to fear. Just imagine we’re traveling through that crystal cabinet in the poem. On our way to another world. Another England. Another London with its Tower. Another Thames and other hills.”
She relaxed against his shoulder. “A little lovely moony night.”
“Exactly so.” There she went again, enchanting him.
Griff had never been the fanciful sort, even as a boy. When he was with Pauline, the world
was
different. She forced him to see things through fresh eyes. Suddenly his library was the eighth wonder of the world, and Corinthian columns merited blasphemy. A ferry across the Thames was an epic journey, and a kiss . . . a kiss was everything.
Deep down, beneath the overworked, sharp-tongued serving girl, he saw a woman who craved the poetry in life. She’d never been given anything—not even favorable odds. But there was a liveliness in her spirit that fed on simple possibility—soaked it up like a wick and shone the brighter for it.
And tonight? Griff tilted his head westward and regarded the setting sun. Less than an hour from now her world was going to explode with brilliant possibility.
He wanted nothing more than to be near her when it did.
P
auline found Vauxhall rather overwhelming. And that was before they even entered the place.
When they disembarked on the far side of the river, her stomach took several moments to cease bobbing. They ascended a long flight of stairs, leading up the riverbank to a grand entrance gate. The higher they climbed, the louder the music grew.
Cor, she thought. She didn’t say it aloud, not tonight. But it was the constant thought in her mind as they made their way through the gate and into the gardens proper.
Cor, cor, cor, cor, cor.
She didn’t know nature could be tamed to this degree. The greens were perfectly flat. The shrubs were pruned in squat shapes. The trees were planted in straight lines.
Stately colonnades ran in various directions, marking covered pathways. At the end of each aisle vast paintings were hung. From this distance she couldn’t quite make them out. She glimpsed a white orchestra pavilion in the form of a giant seashell, with carvings and embellishments all over it.
Suddenly, she realized her mouth had been hanging agape for the past few minutes. And the duke had noticed.
He gave her an amused look.
“It’s growing dark,” she said. “Should we head toward the pavilion?”
“Not yet,” he said, catching her arm. He guided her off the main walk, into a darkening grove of trees away from the colonnades.
“What is it?”
“Something is about to happen, and I want you to see it. I want to be with you when you see it.”
She popped up on her toes, craning her neck to look in all directions. “What is it we’re waiting to see?”
“It’s starting,” he said, turning her head. “Look.”
Pauline looked. She caught sight of a glowing orb. One single ball of light, hanging in the distance.
She blinked, and there were two of them.
And then ten.
And then . . . thousands.
A warm glow spread through the gardens like a wave of light, touching here a red lamp, there a blue or green. Breathless with delight, she tilted her head back. The trees above them were strung with lamps on every branch. The glow traveled from one to the other, and before long the entire grove was illuminated. The effect was similar to standing beneath a stained-glass church window at the sunniest part of the day. Except this was night, and all the colors had a luminous richness. The lamps were like a thousand jewels, hanging from every tree and carved stone archway.
Pauline couldn’t even come up with words. She laughed and clapped a hand to her cheek. “How do they do it?” she asked. “How do they light them all at once?”
“There’s a system of fuses,” he explained. “They only need to light a few, and the spark travels to all the lamps.”
“It’s magical,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, softly. “I think it is, rather.”
She turned to the duke, giddy with the beauty of it. He wasn’t looking around at the thousands of lit globes hanging from the trees.
He was watching her.
A shiver passed over her bare shoulders. She crossed her arms to warm herself.
“Let me,” he said, placing his gloved hands on her upper arms, then rubbing up and down.
The supple leather slid over her bare skin, warm and buttery. It was a lovely gesture, but it wasn’t doing a dratted thing to cure her of gooseflesh.
His gaze caressed her mouth. “Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”
“No,” she insisted, hoping her words weren’t drowned by the mad thumping of her heart. “No, I promise I can do this.”
“Halford!” The voice carried to them through the glen. She turned to spy Lord Delacre waving at them from the colonnade. “Come along, then. We’ve a booth over this way.”
“That’s my cue,” she said, giving Griff a wink. “Time for me to earn my thousand pounds. Prepare for disaster.”
T
hey made their way to the colonnade and found the booth Del had reserved. Pauline slipped away to mingle with the group. Griff watched her laugh and joke, sip champagne and devour slice after slice of wafer-thin ham.
For his part, Griff stood to the side, nipping brandy from his pocket flask and finally coming to grips with a painful truth. He needed to find some new friends.
Martin had his Drury Lane songstress in tow, and Delacre had taken up with that widow again. A few well-dressed prostitutes hovered at the edges of the group, hoping for their glasses to be filled before they wandered away. Without even making an effort, Pauline was the most refined woman in the booth. If she made any ill-informed remarks about the Corn Laws, no one would care.
All the halfway decent fellows who’d once been part of their circle had drifted away in recent years—married, come into their titles, settled down. Griff would have liked to drift away, too—without the marrying part—but it was harder to leave a circle when you were the center of it.
“When are you opening the Grange this year, Hal?” Martin asked, one arm draped about his mistress’s powdered shoulders. “Ruby here fancies a holiday in the country. She’ll bring friends. Quite friendly friends.”
The painted blonde gave him a coy promise of a smile.
In years past, Griff had spent the colder months at Winterset Grange. The house was the first thing he’d purchased after reaching his majority. Even with six family properties, he’d felt the need for a place of his own. Other men had bachelor apartments. He was a duke; he had a bachelor estate. There, for several years after leaving university, he and his Oxford friends had taken the country house party tradition to new heights—or lows—of dissipation.
