Any Duchess Will Do (24 page)

“Manners.” He gave her bottom another teasing smack. “Remember whom you are addressing.”

“Please, your grace.” By now she was desperate for him. She made her voice as sultry and enticing as she could. “Tup your humble servant, I beg of you.”

“That’s better.”

He lifted her hips and slid into her in one smooth, thick stroke. Her moan of satisfaction echoed his.

She was wet and ready from his earlier efforts. He didn’t need to proceed slowly, so he wasted no time setting a brisk pace. Driving deep, and deeper still.

Pauline gripped the edges of the desktop to keep from being tupped straight off the desk. The heat and fullness of him thrilled her. He was reaching unexplored places inside her, showing her new, dark facets of herself. The pleasure consumed her.

“Harder,” she gasped. “Harder, if it please your grace.”

He growled. “Oh, it pleases me.”

He lifted her by the waist until her toes left the carpet, holding her off the ground as he pumped his hips harder, faster. She bit the soft flesh of her forearm to keep from crying out. He had her weightless, utterly at his mercy as he rode her at whatever angle and pace he desired. He was using her for his pleasure, and using her well.

Then he lowered her feet to the floor and bent forward, looming over her on the desk. His hands covered hers where she clutched the edges of the desktop. She felt a drop of his perspiration splash against her exposed shoulder.

“Who am I?” His voice was so close—and so guttural. Her intimate places pulsed in response.

“A duke.”

“Which duke?”

“The eighth Duke of Halford . . . your grace.”

Her whole body throbbed for release. His cock was so long and solid inside her. Why had he stopped? She rolled her hips, trying to entice him back into a rhythm.

He held firm, motionless. “The courtesy titles. Recite them, too.”

Oh, God.
“I don’t recall.”

“I recall. I never forget who I am. Not even when I’m this deep inside you and so desperate to come I could explode.” His hips flexed. “Do you understand?”

He began to move again. This time his pace was slow but relentless. He drove into her with such force, a dry sob wrenched from her throat with his every thrust.

“Griff,” she pleaded.

This “lesson” of his was both arousing and devastating. When they were together, alone, she did want him to forget the thirty-three rungs between them on the ladder of English society. But he couldn’t. And she couldn’t. The truth would never go away.

“I’m the Duke of Halford,” he said, plunging deep.

She shut her eyes, trying not to cry. It was all too much—the emotion, the pleasure. The hopelessness.

“I’m the Marquess of Westmore.”

Thrust.

“I’m also the Earl of Ridingham. Viscount Newthorpe. Lord Hartford-on-Trent.”

Thrust. Thrust. Thrust.

“And I am your slave, Pauline.”

Oh, mercy.

She sobbed in earnest that time. She couldn’t help it.

He stopped, the full length of him buried deep inside her. Filling her, lifting her, shaping her to his desire. When they parted, she would ache with emptiness for him, always.

His voice was edged with need. “Do you hear me? Do you believe it now? There could be a thousand ranks between us, and I would not give one damn. Every blue-blooded vein in this body pounds with desire for you.”

He slid an arm beneath her torso, lifting her as he drew himself tall. Her back fell against his chest. He held her up with that strong, powerful arm, and his other hand burrowed under bunched petticoats until his fingertips grazed her pearl. A shiver of ecstasy had her trembling on her toes.

“Look up at me,” he rasped. “Kiss me.”

She did as he bade, and gladly, turning her head and stretching to press her lips to his. His tongue plundered her mouth, and his cock filled her sex, and his fingertips worked her just where she needed it. He had her wrapped in strength and adoration.

She didn’t want to come. She didn’t want this to ever end. This was the purest bliss she’d ever known.

But he was wicked and skillful and so cursed efficient. Within moments her whole body was racked by waves of pleasure.

His thrusts quickened, lost their elegance. Once again that coiled power in his thighs had her toes lifting off the ground. He broke the kiss and buried his face in her hair. Profane, inarticulate mutterings rained on her ear, making her pulse drum even harder.

“I don’t forget who you are,” he whispered. “And it’s you I want. So . . . damned . . . much.”

He withdrew, finishing with a few last thrusts between her thighs. His primal growl gave her a thrill of satisfaction.

And then he held her so tightly it grew difficult to breathe. But she didn’t mind.

“Well,” he said finally, hoarsely. “I hope that’s settled.”

“Quite.”

He slumped into the armchair and pulled her into his lap. They sprawled there, tangled and sweaty, filling the silence with ragged breaths. He lazily stroked her hair with one hand.

She pressed her face to his shirtfront. “Griff, that was . . .”

“I know,” he said. “I know. It was. I don’t mind saying I’m rather proud of it.”

“You should be.”

His chest rose and fell with a deep, satisfied sigh. “I feel like jaunting over to Piccadilly to wait for someone in passing to ask me, ‘How do you do?’ Simply so I could reply, ‘Just had the best sexual encounter of my life, thanks for asking.’ ”

She laughed, imagining that exchange. “Best of your life?” she couldn’t help but ask. “Truly?”

“Until later tonight, at least.” He nuzzled her neck. “Pauline. Every time with you is the best of my life.”

And how many more times would they have left? Too few, too few.

Ding . . . ding . . . ding . . .

As if it were some fateful portent of their time growing short, a nearby timepiece chimed the hour. Pauline looked over at the side table. She recognized it as the clock he’d been tinkering with all week.

“You were able to repair it,” she said.

He shushed her, and his breath warmed her earlobe. “Watch.”

From a little window in the front, a tiny couple emerged. A soldier and a lady. In halting, mechanical motions, they bowed to one another, twirled in a little waltz, then parted and retreated back into the clock.

“Oh, that’s charming.”

“I always loved watching it when I was a boy.”

A hint of melancholy deepened his voice. No doubt he’d hoped his own offspring would one day love watching it, too. Now he believed he would never have someone to share it with.

At least she could share it with him now. She slid an arm around his back, hugging him tight. Listening to the last chimes of the clock and the fierce thump of his heart.

“I was thinking I’d donate it to the Foundling Hospital,” he said. “I thought perhaps the children in the infirmary would enjoy it.”

“I’m sure they would.”

“Well, then. I’ll have my mother take it when she visits next.”

She twisted in his lap and peered up at him. “I have a better idea.”

Chapter Twenty-two

T
he plan might have been Pauline’s idea, but Griff quickly took control of it. This wouldn’t be any namby-pamby Ladies’ Auxiliary tour of the establishment. If he was going to visit a foundling home, he was going to do it his way. The dissolute ducal way.

With authority, extravagance, and unabashedly wicked intent.

His arrival was unannounced—all the best, most dramatic appearances were. He led a parade of servants through the gate, each of them laden with treasures: sweets, oranges, playthings, competently knitted caps—and at Pauline’s suggestion, storybooks.

By the time they marched this bounty straight into the central courtyard, the entire place was in upheaval, with brown-clad children pouring out from every classroom and dormitory.

The matrons were not pleased. Their already dour expressions reached new excesses of sternness—many a new wrinkle would be carved that day. But the matrons had no recourse, unless they wished to refuse the thousands he gave them per annum.

It was good to be a duke.

Once all the children were assembled, Griff called out, “Where’s Hubert Terrapin?”

The lad shuffled forward. He was easy to spot—the smallest in his queue.

“Hubert, I’m appointing you quartermaster,” he said.

“What’s that mean, your grace?”

“You’re to supervise distribution of all this. It’s quite a job. Can you manage it?”

The youth pulled himself tall. “Yes, your grace.”

“Good. The rest of you, fall in line. Youngest first.”

The file moved painfully slowly. As good-natured, oft-slighted children are, Hubert was painfully fair in his apportionments, solemnly counting out sweetmeats and sections of orange.

“He’s so conscientious,” Griff whispered to Pauline. “We’ll be here until tomorrow.”

“It’s dear, isn’t it? But I’m not surprised. Squabbling over too little is just human nature. But it says a great deal about a person, what they do with abundance.” She put a boiled sweet in his hand. “Something to chew on.”

He smiled to himself as she drifted away. Apparently, she’d found time this week for duchess lessons in subtlety, or lack of it. But she was wrong if she thought these few hours of spontaneous generosity were some sort of saintly exercise on his part. Whether he bestowed it on charity or lost it at the card table, parting with money had never been a trial for him.

Parting with her, on the other hand . . . God, he couldn’t even think about it yet. The hours remaining before her inevitable departure were growing too few. He needed a task to occupy himself or he’d go mad.

“Hubert,” he said, “pass me one of those oranges. Let me give you a hand.”

Sometime later he congratulated the lad on a job well done, left the courtyard littered in orange rinds, and went in search of Pauline. At last, he found her in the infirmary.

Such a cozy scene. His repaired clock occupied the center of the fireplace mantel. On the hearth rug, Pauline had three little ones piled in her lap like kittens, as an older girl read aloud to them all from a book of fairy stories.

The irony ripped open his chest and went straight for his heart. This picture before him—Pauline, children, sweetness, the fairy-tale ending—it was everything he could want in life. And everything he could never have.

He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with her. Lord knew, he’d tried his best to avoid it. But now it was too late. And he couldn’t even employ the younger man’s trick—talking himself out of the emotion, pretending he felt something less. Perhaps his heart did lie at the bottom of a black, fathomless well, where he’d succeeded in ignoring it for years. But he’d dug deep while waiting for his daughter. Now the pump had been primed.

He knew what it was to love. And this was it.

God help him.

He remained silent in the doorway, unwilling to interrupt. Not knowing what he’d say, if he dared. He’d probably blurt out a stream of desperate raving.
Don’t leave me, I love you, I can’t go on without you.
He’d send the children screaming. They’d have nightmares for weeks.

So he just stood there, silently reeling on the edge of life-long desolation.

Until a thin, high-pitched sound pushed him over the edge.

P
auline snuggled the little ones close. Beth had reached the most delightfully gory part of the story—the bit with the dragon who plucked out black hearts with a single claw. But just as the heroine of the story prepared to face the ultimate test, they were interrupted by the high, keening cry of an infant.

“Oh, it’s that new one,” Beth said. “Always wailing. He’ll be sent to the country soon, I hope.”

“Poor thing,” Pauline said. “I didn’t know we were so close to the nursery.”

Beth turned a page. “It’s straight across the corridor.”

She looked up, toward the corridor in question.

Oh, no.

Griff stood in the doorway, mildly rumpled and devilishly handsome as ever. But his face . . . Oh, his face had gone the color of paper. One look at him and she knew. He was in torment.

“I have to go, darlings. Beth will finish the story.”

They fretted and mewled and tugged at her skirts. “Will you come back, Miss Simms?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m going home tomorrow night. I have a sister who’s missing me. And I’m missing her.” She gave Griff a cautious smile. “Perhaps his grace will visit another day.”

“I . . .” From the other room, the babe wailed again. He winced.

“I know,” she said to him and hurried to gather her bonnet and wrap. “We’ll leave at once.”

They made hasty strides for the front gate. Pauline struggled to keep pace. She knew Griff was racing his emotions, determined to outrun the epic landslide those cries had set off.

He couldn’t outrun it forever. The grief would catch up with him eventually, but she didn’t want to see him plowed under here. Not with so many people about.

She hurried toward the front entrance.

But then, without a word, he turned and passed through a side door instead. Pauline changed course and chased after him as they made their way to the street. His face had that same blank, unfocused look he’d worn the other day—the day when he’d walked off into the London streets and wandered them all night.

“Griff, wait,” she called. “You can’t leave me behind.”

“The carriage is in front. The coachman will take you home.”

“But what about you?”

He gestured aimlessly at the bustling, anonymous streets. “I need a walk. Some time. It will pass if I can just . . .” His voice failed.

Her heart ached for him. Perhaps he had successfully outrun these emotions for months now. But this was one race he was losing.

“Just leave me.”

“No,” she said as they reached the curb. “Not this time. I’m not leaving you alone.”

With a brisk wave, Pauline hailed a hackney cab. “What’s the name of that church?” she asked the driver. “The one all the way on the other side of London?”

The black-clad driver peered down his sharp nose at her. “St. Paul’s, you mean?”

“Right. We’re going there.” She climbed into the cab, knowing Griff would have to follow. He wouldn’t let her drive off alone.

“I don’t want to go to a bloody church.” He slung himself down across from her, folding his long legs into the cramped, dark cab.

“Neither do I, really. I just needed some destination that was far away. I know you need time, but you need to be with some—”

She bit the word off. He didn’t need
someone
. He needed her.

“I’m not leaving you alone right now,” she said. “That’s all.”

He tugged a silver flask from his breast pocket and began to unscrew the top. His fingers were too clumsy to manage it. With a disgusted curse, he hurled the flask into the corner of the cab.

Pauline bent to retrieve it, calmly unscrewed the cap and held the flask out to him. “Here.”

“You need to leave me.” His hands were clenched into fists on either knee. “I’m not in control of myself. I . . . I might lash out.”

As if he could ever hurt her. “I’ll duck,” she promised.

“I might weep.”

“I’m already weeping.” She dabbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“I . . .” He bent over, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Jesus. I think I’ll be sick.”

“Here.” She held out her bonnet. “Use this.”

He stared at it.

“Really. It’s so ugly. You could only improve it.”

His eyes met hers, wounded and dark. “I can’t make you leave me?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Simms.” As he looked away, he pressed a fist to his mouth, as though to suppress a flood of emotion.

But she could sense there were cracks in the dam.

She moved forward on the seat until their knees met in the center of the coach. “You’re safe,” she whispered. “In this space, with me—you’re safe. Whatever happens in this cab will remain here. I will go home tomorrow night. No one need ever know.”

With a curse and the swiftness of desperation, he reached for her, grasping her by the hips and lowering his head to her lap. His hands fisted roughly in the fabric of her gown.

At last, with his face buried in her skirts, he released a sound. A growling, razor-edged howl of anger and anguish. It built from his gut and erupted through his body. She could feel the force of it sending tremors all through his joints—and hers. His fingers tugged at her, drawing her closer, holding her more tightly.

Every hair on her body seemed to lift on end. The sheer violence of his emotion terrified her. Her instinct was to shrink from it, but she beat down the fear.

She laid one hand flat on his shuddering back and touched the other to his hair.

Though her heart yearned to soothe him with crooning words, she resisted the urge. There was no good in telling him she understood, or that everything would be all right. It wasn’t true. She couldn’t possibly understand his loss—the sheer agony racking his body was beyond her comprehension—and everything would
not
be all right. He’d lost someone who could never be replaced, and he’d been holding in the sorrow much too long.

“God.” His voice was muffled by her skirts. “God damn it. God damn it.”

She wrapped her arms about his quaking shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and embracing him as tightly she could.

They stayed like that as the coach rattled on through streets and neighborhoods she’d never seen before and would never visit again.

Pauline had never dreamed how much a father could love his child—her own upbringing hadn’t given her a clue. But Griff showed her today. If one took every battered hope in a grieving father’s heart and laid them all down end to end—they could stretch across London.

Mile after mile after mile.

Sometime later, emptied of all that pent-up emotion, he lay sprawled with her on her seat.

“Tell me about her,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

“She was exactly this big.” He touched the tip of his longest finger, then the crook of his elbow. “Her hair was like little wisps of spun copper.”

“She must have taken after you.”

“My hair is dark.”

“But your beard is ginger when it grows in.” She grazed his cheek with her fingertip. “I noticed it that first day. Did she have your fine brown eyes as well?”

“I don’t know. They were that cloudy blue-gray, but the midwife said they’d darken.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “She rarely opened her eyes while I held her. I don’t think she ever saw me at all.”

“She knew you were there.” Pauline laid a hand to his chest. “She could feel these strong arms holding her. She would have known your voice. And your cologne. You have the most wonderfully comforting scent. I don’t think I’d have ever left Spindle Cove with you if you hadn’t smelled so marvelous. She probably kept her eyes closed because she felt so safe.”

He let out a deep breath. “I was so happy when she was born a girl.”

“Truly? I thought men want sons.”

Her own father had wanted sons. When he received daughters instead, he’d never recovered from the disappointment. He even refused to give them names other than those he’d chosen for boys. It was only by the grace of the old vicar’s pen that she and Daniela weren’t named Paul and Daniel.

“I wanted a girl,” he said. “An illegitimate son would have had a harder time of it. He could never have been my heir, and I would have worried he’d feel lesser, no matter what attempts I made to be a good father. But a daughter . . . a daughter, I would have been free to spoil and cherish. I had so many plans. You can’t imagine.”

She bit her lip, grief-stricken for him. “Oh, I can imagine.”

“It wasn’t just the nursery room. I had birthdays, holidays, outings all planned out. Nursemaids already hired.”

“Had you chosen her finishing school yet?”

A wry smile tipped his mouth. “I’d started investigating possibilities.”

“I’m sure you had.” It eased her heart to see him smiling. Even a little.

He closed his eyes. “She lived less than a week. It’s been the better part of a year. How can it be that I still mourn her this much?”

“I can’t pretend to understand how love works.” Pauline sifted her fingers through his hair, smoothing a touch over his brow. “How many days have I known you? Not many more. And I doubt I’ll ever go a day without thinking of you, even if I should live to see ninety. I . . .” She couldn’t help it. “I love you so.”