Any Duchess Will Do (6 page)

His gaze focused intently on her mouth.

He leaned close.

Her insides trembled. This was the moment where she needed to . . . do something. Close her eyes, if she wished to be kissed. Take a swift step back, if she didn’t.

She
shouldn’t
want it. She hated to think what impropriety rakish dukes might expect of serving girls, and she didn’t want to give the wrong impression. But it had been a very long time since she’d been kissed. And even longer since she’d heard any words so kind as the ones he’d just spoken.

In the end, she compromised by remaining perfectly, breathlessly still.

And he didn’t kiss her.

He withdrew his touch and brushed past her, continuing down the stairs with a clatter of footfalls. “Simms, give my mother my regards.”

“But where are you going?”

“I’m riding ahead to London,” he called up to her. “Tonight.”

G
riff managed to procure a young gelding from the inn’s stables. The horse was nothing to pace his favored bay warmbloods at home, but the beast looked strong and impatient—ready for some hard riding over open country. He’d do.

The moon was rising bright and round in the sky, ready to light his journey. Griff swung into the saddle, ignoring the thinness of the borrowed tack and the inconvenient tightness of his topcoat across his shoulders. These wouldn’t be the most pleasant miles he’d ever covered on horseback, but comfort wasn’t his priority tonight.

He had to get away.

That had been a very close thing, just now in the stairwell. A very close, warm, sweet, enticing, vulnerable thing.

Her lips had been so soft. A ripe berry-pink. Still glistening, where she’d searched them with her tongue. Quivering with emotion. He could have kissed them.

He’d wanted to, more than he’d wanted his next breath.

Sweet heaven.

Bloody hell.

He’d thought he was done with this. For months now he’d ignored invitations and innuendos from women all over Town. A mud-spattered, sugar-dusted, smart-mouthed serving girl in drab linsey-woolsey could not prove his complete undoing.

As he nudged the horse into a canter, he realized he hadn’t laid out a very good strategy for living the rest of his life as the New, Not-Truly-Improved, Just-Vastly-Less-Interesting Griffin Eliot York. For the past several months he’d been too absorbed by other emotions to feel any sensual deprivation. Any mild stirrings of unrest were quelled by routine physical exercise or the occasional halfhearted frig.

In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous to believe he—he!—could remain celibate for the remainder of his years. He should have known it would be coming: that day when his neglected cock
did
perk with interest, rise up and wave in a jaunty, “Ho, there—remember me?”

As his luck would have it, that day was today.

There was something about Pauline Simms that had him fascinated. She was so defiantly proud of her common origins, yet so hungry for approval.

This was a business arrangement, he reminded himself. He’d hired the girl to bedevil his mother, not to bewitch him. Her cleverness and lively, cat-tipped eyes should not be temptations. They were a desirable set of skills she brought to her post. Similar to the way one sought out a stonemason with brawn and foresight and steady hands.

The thought of employees helped him turn his mind toward mundane tasks. He’d need to warn the house staff that the duchess would be bringing a guest. Fortunately, his housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas, was scarily efficient. A few words, and everything would be readied in advance of Miss Simms’s arrival: room, maid, meals, bath.

God, yes. The girl needed a bath.

A proper bath. Not just a quick dousing to rinse away that glittering sweetness. A bath hot enough to soak those calluses from her hands and curl the short hairs at her temples. With a fresh cake of scented soap for scrubbing, and thick, downy towels to wrap her sleek, glistening limbs.

The image that came to his mind was so vivid, so lushly detailed in every texture of skin and soap and slickness . . . He had to pull the horse to a halt in the center of the road and recover himself.

The hard drumming of hoofbeats had ceased, but his ribs pounded with the furious thunder of his pulse.

Why her? Why now?

But as was the case with all the whys and wherefores he’d addressed to the darkness in recent months, no answers came back. Only one thing was clear. This just wouldn’t do. Perhaps he could outride temptation tonight, but by the morrow, temptation would be living under his roof.

There was only one thing for it. He must pay a visit on his way back to Town.

He adjusted his position in the saddle, leaning over the gelding’s neck to urge the beast faster. Midway on his journey through Kent, he turned his horse off the main road and instead took a winding, familiar spur.

He approached the village in the first gray whisper of morning—a tight cluster of cottages, wreathed in fog. A dew-glittered meadow offered some bluebells and primrose for the picking. Griff turned the horse out to graze and stretched his legs, gathering what twiggy wildflowers he could find. They weren’t much, but it seemed poor form to show up empty-handed.

As dawn broke over the green horizon, he realized he was stalling. Stupid, to be anxious.

He walked past the white-steepled church, to the walled area behind it. The rusted churchyard gate swung inward with a whine of hinges, and he walked to the third row of monuments. He found the simply marked grave.

He remained there several minutes, silent and unmoving, before crouching to place his meager bouquet before the limestone cross.

When he tried to stand, he couldn’t. Grief seized him with a savage, crippling pain. Like an auger drilling straight on his heart. It hollowed him out, left a round, aching hole—one he knew would never be filled.

This is what comes of indulging your desires.

After long minutes he could breathe again. Before he rose to leave, he kissed his fingertips, then laid them to the cool, grainy stone.

There. Temptation conquered.

Chapter Five

“M
iss Simms,” the duchess said. “Your nose will wear a hole in that windowpane. Duchesses do not gawk.”

Pauline sat back on the carriage seat, chastened.

After traveling all night, they’d reached the bustling environs of London by early afternoon. It then took them three more hours to navigate the busy bridges and streets, making their way to Halford House. Her nose had been glued to the coach window for all of it, as she stared wide-eyed at the urban scenery. So much glass. So much brick. So much soot.

And so very many people.

Eventually the coach turned into an area of finer homes, many of them fronting wide green squares with immaculately trimmed hedges. They must be nearing the duke’s house.

Pauline had been in fine houses before. Well, one fine house at least—Summerfield, the home of Sir Lewis Finch. Sir Lewis’s housekeeper sometimes hired extra help to clean house at Christmas or Easter. Summerfield was a grand manor, sprawling over several wings and filled with curiosities of every stripe. Every dusty old bit of bric-a-brac was priceless—at least, hired girls were expected to handle them like treasures.

By the time the coach rolled to a halt before Halford House, Pauline had convinced herself it would be well within the range of her experience.

She was wrong.

Nothing in life, dreams, or fairy tales had prepared her for this. And how she would keep from gawking, she had no idea.

To begin with, the house was massive. Four stories high, and wide enough that one would have to stand all the way at the opposite end of the square to regard it in its entirety. Close as she was when she alighted from the coach, Pauline had to tip her head nearly all the way back. She felt her jaw hanging agape.

And then, as the sun was just sliding beneath the city’s uneven horizon, it lingered one last moment to splash brilliance across the square. The amber rays landed directly on Halford House, like a coronation. Every glass pane flashed like a diamond facet, and the white granite façade looked dipped in gold.

She was stunned.

Then the door opened. And she was stunned some more.

She followed the duchess through a gauntlet of eight liveried footmen. Once they crossed the threshold, there were more servants lined up in the entrance hall. Cook, housekeeper, housemaids, scullery maids, lady’s maid.

The interior was accordingly impressive. Paintings on every available swatch of wall, ornate clocks chiming in welcome. Sumptuous upholstery in any place a person could possibly think to sit. It was really too much to take in with her eyes, but she didn’t need to. She could feel this house’s elegance in the soles of her feet. The wooden floors were expertly sanded and polished, and the carpets . . . oh, the carpets had pile so thick and plush, they made her insteps sigh with gratitude.

Pauline was introduced to the housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas—a woman who, in any other circumstance, would have been handing her a bucket and brush, sending her to scrub a floor somewhere.

Today, she welcomed Pauline as a guest. She even curtsied. “Let me show you to your room, Miss Simms.”

As she followed the housekeeper, Pauline wished she could leave a trail of bread crumbs. She’d never find her way back on her own.

Straight from the entrance, up the steps. Right at the top, and round the bend to the second, narrower flight of stairs. Then left down the wainscoted corridor—the one with walls papered with a green toile pattern—or was it blue? This would have been easier in full daylight.

She counted the doors as they passed. One, two, three . . .

By the time the housekeeper stopped before the fourth door, it was all a blur.

The room was dark, and she was happy for it to remain that way.

Pauline numbly accepted assistance in stripping down to her shift, bathing the travel dust from her body, and climbing into the softest, warmest bed she’d ever laid upon. As her eyes closed and her legs stretched to the toasty depths of the bedsheets, she had the vague thought that someone had been here with coals in a bed warmer only moments before she’d entered the room.

Such excellent service. And for the first time in her life she was on the receiving end of it. It would have been folly to try to make it seem real, so she gratefully fell into dreams.

For several hours she knew nothing more.

S
he woke to darkness. And found she could not return to sleep.

She ought to have still been exhausted. She was exhausted, in truth. Her joints ached from the long hours in the coach, well-sprung as it was. Her mind was taxed to its limits from stretching to grasp so many unbelievable notions.

But she just couldn’t sleep.

She was in a duke’s house. Surely a duke didn’t even call it a house, did he? House was too humble, too common a word. He called it a “residence.” In the country, an “estate.” Whatsit Manor, or Summat Castle.

She drew aside a corner of the heavy tapestry bed hangings and peered into the darkened room. Fortunately, it was nearing full moon, and the milky glow seeping in from the glazed windows (three of them! in one room!) gave her enough light to see the room she’d been too fatigued to explore earlier.

She could make out so far as the foot of the bed, to the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed, to the plush embroidered carpet, its oriental reds and brassy golds now soothed by night. The lotus pattern stretched for miles, it seemed. If she strained and blinked, she could see the edge of the dressing table and catch the glint of a full-length, gilt-framed mirror hanging on the wall. The looking glass was supported by sculpted marble cherubs. Mischievous cherubs. Evidently, they never slept.

Pauline gave a short, muted chirp of a whistle. It echoed back to her from the coffered ceiling. Goodness, the room was a cavern.

This one bedchamber could swallow her family’s cottage whole.

And this was a guest room. Not even their best, she’d imagine. What must the other chambers be like?

On a side table, she spied a tea service, left over from when she’d arrived. Pauline supposed she should have rung to have it removed, but now she was glad she hadn’t. A sip of cold tea with lemon might soothe her nerves.

She tugged the counterpane free and wrapped it about her shoulders before sliding from the bed.

“Oof!”

It was a long way down. She landed with a thud, tangling in the counterpane and tumbling to the floor.

She wasn’t hurt. Even this carpet was softer than her mattress at home.

Ruefully, she blinked at the little staircase toward the foot of the bed. She’d forgotten climbing the thing earlier that evening. Imagine, a staircase just for getting into bed. The duke’s own bed must be so piled with feather beds, he probably needed six or eight steps. He probably lay drowning in satin bedsheets and downy pillows, cloaked in a nightshirt of regal purple velvet. The idea made her laugh.

A picture bloomed in her mind, crisp as daylight and all too real. The Duke of Halford, masculine limbs ranging across a wide bed. No toffish velvet. No flight of stairs. No swallowing maw of feather beds. Just rumpled dark hair, biceps flexed around a pillow, and soft white linen, luminous in the moonlight, tangled about his hips. Or maybe lower, just hugging the curve of a tight, muscled arse.

She tried to shove the image away. No luck.

That sealed it. Cold tea or no, now she’d never be able to sleep.

She picked herself up off the floor, gathered the counterpane tight about her shoulders as a wrap, and ventured out into the corridor.

It was darker here. Pauline stood still for a moment, trying to recall the housekeeper’s sequence of turns. She’d tried to pay attention, but she’d been so overwhelmed and tired. Not to mention awed by the rows of ancient portraits, in some places stacked three high. All those scores of illustrious ancestors.

The girls back home would say this place was surely crawling with ghosts.

Somewhere above her, timber creaked. A cool draft swirled over her neck. Pauline swallowed hard.

Left. She was sure they’d come from the left.

She made her way slowly in that direction, keeping one hand out to trail her fingers along the wall. Every dozen steps, her fingertips skipped from wallpaper to the beveled wooden surface of a door. One, two, three . . . She counted six before pausing. She ought to have reached the stairway by now.

A sudden flare of light stopped her in her paces. Stopped her heart as well. Which ghostly Duke of Halford Past was that? Ducking, she raised her hand against the blinding flame and squinted through splayed fingers.

“Simms?”

She found the eighth—and only living—Duke of Halford, haunting his own house.

He held a lamp in one hand. With the other he yanked a door closed. She heard the scrape of a key in the lock.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, pocketing the key.

His angry tone surprised her. “Good evening to you, too, your grace. My journey to London was fine, thank you.”

He was having none of it. “Why are you snooping around my private rooms?”

“I didn’t realize they were your private rooms. I wasn’t snooping. I took a wrong turning, that’s all. I’ll go back the other way.” She turned to leave.

He caught her by the arm, swiveling her back to face him.

“Did my mother put you up to this?”

Pauline didn’t even know how to answer. Put her up to what? Sleeplessness? Wrong turnings in a vast, darkened house?

“Are you looking to pilfer something? Answer me with one word.”

“No.” She drew up her spine.

“Then explain yourself. You’re out of bed when you should be sleeping, in a corridor you have no reason to visit.” He held the lamp high and examined her. “And you have a guilty look on your face.”

“Well, you have an arrogant, wrong-headed look on yours.”

That was a bit of a lie. The lamplight bleached the stark planes of his face and splashed weary shadows under his eyes. The rich brown of his irises was overwhelmed by cold, empty black. He didn’t look especially arrogant, not right now.

Whatever he’d been doing in that locked room, it was private. She’d interrupted him in an unguarded moment. And because a big, strong man like him couldn’t possibly admit to having an unguarded moment, he was going to make her twist and squirm.

She sighed. “Dukes and their problems.”

“I don’t appreciate your impertinence, Simms.”

“Well, that’s bollocks.”

He drew her closer, and her heart began to race. Her bare foot grazed his. The shock of it traveled all through her.

“My impertinence is the reason I’m here, remember? It’s why you chose me from a room of well-bred ladies. Because I’m perfectly wrong. Everything you’d never want in a woman.”

He raked a gaze down her body. “I wouldn’t say that.”

The hard bob of his Adam’s apple caught her gaze, dragged it downward. Her attention settled in the dark, chiseled notch at the base of his throat.

Her lungs chose that moment to go out on labor strike. She held her breath so long, she went a bit dizzy.

“Send me home tomorrow, if you like. But you’ll find nothing’s vanished with me. I wasn’t stealing. Even if I were considering it—and I’m not—I’d know better than to try it my first night here. I’ve met your housekeeper. I’ve no doubt she keeps a list of every last drawer pull in every last closet and takes inventory on the regular. If I meant to steal, I’d wait for the last moment. So if you won’t give me credit for honesty, at least give me credit for cleverness.”

“I’ll give you credit for nothing until I hear the truth.”

“I’ve told you the truth.” She pulled the counterpane tight about her shoulders. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d go down to the libr—”

“To the library,” he finished for her. Sarcasm dried his words to brittle husks. “Really, that’s what you mean to tell me. You were looking for the library.”

Why did he sound so incredulous?

“Yes,” she answered. But at this point all she wanted was to return to her bedchamber without further interrogation. Her sleeplessness would surely be cured. This man was exhausting.

“Very well.” His grip tightened on her arm as he led her down the corridor. “If it’s the library you’re searching out, I’ll take you there myself.”

T
his wasn’t working how Griff had planned. He thought he’d girded himself against temptation.

He hadn’t counted on temptation herself materializing in a darkened corridor just outside his rooms, well after the hour of midnight. Her hair unbound yet again. Cloaked in her bedclothes, like a woman freshly tumbled. Skulking around his private chambers and looking even more fetching by lamplight than she had in afternoon sun.

Surely it was a trick of the shadows. Her eyelashes could not measure the length of his thumbnail. It was an impossibility.

Perhaps they grew longer with every lie she told.

Really. The
library
.

Of all the trite, clichéd excuses to pull out of her ear.

He marched her counterpane-swaddled self down the corridor, then down the staircase and around a bend. When they reached the correct set of doors, he flung them both open wide for effect.