Any Duchess Will Do (8 page)

Griff had a memory of the young ladies in that tavern, merrily ripping pages from an etiquette book to make tea trays. Yes, he could imagine torrid novels and radical pamphlets would do a brisk business in such a place.

And in making the inadvertent suggestion, he’d now be responsible for debauching-by-proxy an entire village of spinsters. This surely represented some sort of zenith or nadir of his life. He wasn’t sure which.

“Where
are
the naughty ones?” She tilted her head back, peering into the farthest upper recesses of the room. “I suppose they’d be on a high shelf. Or did you have a locked cabinet somewhere?”

He laughed. “If I did possess a secret section of my library that consists entirely of books inappropriate for young ladies, you could hardly expect me to direct you to it.”

“Why not? I’m no lady. Not that innocent, either.”

Don’t say that.

“It’s very late, Simms.”

“Very early, more like.”

“Suffice it to say, it’s very dark. And you’re very unclothed, and we’re much too alone.” For the two of them to begin a perusal of erotic literature atop it . . . ? That fragile shift of hers wouldn’t survive the hour. “I’ve no noble impulses, remember?”

Her cheeks flushed. “At least help me make a list?”

He drummed his fingers on the desk. “
Moll Flanders
,
Fanny Hill
,
The Monk
, a good translation of
L’École des Filles
. Those are a start.”

She closed her eyes. “Done.”

“You don’t want to write them down?”

“I don’t need to. I have a good memory.”

She leaned heavily to one side as she scanned the shelf, seeming to float above him. Griff was nearly reduced to panting by the nubile shadow of her silhouette and the swirled-brandy fall of her hair. Yes, he’d perused his share of naughty books. None of them had affected him like this. He was hard as the mahogany desktop.

“Aha. Here’s one I’ll take to bed with me.” She plucked a book from the shelf.
“Methods of Accounting and Bookkeeping.”

“Now that should put you right to sleep.” He chuckled. “But it’s a good idea. Keep excellent written records, even if you do have a good memory. Don’t accept credit. If you lend, always require a deposit. Few can match the aristocracy when it comes to shirking financial obligations.”

She sent him a wary glance. “You don’t shirk
your
debts, do you?”

“Last I heard, I’m the fourth-richest man in England. I never have a need to.”

“Oh. Good.” She clutched the bookkeeping tutorial to her chest and bent her head, inhaling deep. When she noticed his stare, she looked sheepish. “I like the way books smell. Is that odd?”

“Yes. A little.”

But he found it oddly endearing, too. This had gone beyond a midnight chat in the library and progressed to something bordering on flirtation. Perhaps even a strange sort of friendship—on his side, edged with fierce, carnal attraction.

Whatever it was between them . . . it ended here, and it ended now.

He set aside the dismantled clockwork and rose from his chair, trusting the shadows to hide his arousal. “Upstairs with you, Simms. It’s late, and I’m sure my mother has a full schedule of exercises in futile ambition planned for the morrow.”

“Don’t worry. I’m prepared to be a catastrophe.”

“Very good.”

She extinguished the lamp and descended two risers of the ladder. “Just to prove it, I shan’t even curtsy when I leave this room.”

“An excellent start. If you wanted to be truly shocking, you could start calling me Griff.”

She looked to him. “Truly?”

He winced. A miscalculation on his part. He’d suggested it as a stroke of impropriety, but her flattered expression reminded him—familiarity of that sort could prove dangerous.

Speaking of danger . . .

“Take care,” he warned. “The last rung is rather—”

She gasped and faltered. “Oh, bollocks.”

Chapter Six

T
ime slowed. A fraction of a second showed Griff just how the accident would occur. Her toes would miss the last rung. She’d drop the book. She would make a desperate swipe with her hand, perhaps graze the ladder rail with her fingertips—but it wouldn’t be a proper grasp. Her momentum would carry her forward.

And then she would fall to the ground, face first.

Granted, the fall was a matter of only a few feet, and she’d no doubt survive it whole and unharmed. But by the time his mind had reached the end of the scenario, his body was already in motion.

Putting one hand to the sofa back, he vaulted the thing in one swift motion. That obstacle cleared, he hurdled a leather ottoman in a single leap. Flinging his arms wide, he came to a skidding halt directly in front of the ladder.

Just in time to break her fall.

She fell heavy against his chest. He caught her in his arms.

And then—even when all was safe—he couldn’t seem to put her down.

“Oh my,” she breathed, looking at the room he’d just traversed. “That was quite an athletic feat.”

“It was nothing.”

The only manly reply, naturally. In truth, he suspected he’d pulled a muscle somewhere between vaulting the sofa and playing Jack Be Nimble with the ottoman . . . but he’d worry about the pain later. Other sensations demanded his attention now.

Good God. Just seeing her form had been a delight, but it was a pale shadow compared to the thrill of feeling her. Her nipples were every bit as assertive as her personality, jabbing at him through the frail, tissue-thin fabric of her night rail. They demanded his notice. More than mere notice—they wanted respect.

Hell, he would have offered them worship.

“It didn’t seem like nothing.” Her arms laced about his neck. “You’re breathless.”

“So are you,” he noted.

“Fair enough.” She gave him a smile so shyly sweet, it seemed to belong to some other girl. “Your reflexes are most impressive.”

What a gift of a remark. Here was where he would normally reply with a suggestive,
You have no idea
, or
Years of practice, sweeting
. But he couldn’t quite muster the tired rakish innuendo. An absurd idea visited him—that his entire misspent life of sport and leisure, whiling away the days fencing or boxing when he might have been building a legacy, had prepared him for this one moment.

For this one girl, who needed him to break her fall.

“I just couldn’t watch you get hurt,” he said, not understanding it.

“I thought you didn’t have noble impulses.”

“Believe me.” He stared into her eyes and spoke the words without lewdness or irony. “I don’t.”

If he possessed a single grain of decency, he would have set her down long moments ago. Wicked as it made him, he loved the way she was clinging to his neck. As though the world around them were a vast, frozen waste and sharing the heat of his body was her only chance to survive. It was so easy to believe, for this moment, that she needed him. Needed his touch, his mouth, his heated breath. His bared, feverish skin all over hers.

Amazing, what acrobatic contortions the lusting male mind could achieve. He’d almost convinced himself that kissing her lush, sweet lips
was
the noble thing to do.

Almost. But not quite.

“I’ll put you down now,” he said.

She nodded.

And then she pressed her lips to his.

Praise and curses be heaped. The girl kissed
him
.

The kiss crashed over him in a turbulent wave. His senses opened like floodgates. Her lips were so soft. They tasted ripe as berries. She smelled of linen dried in the sun. Her skin was a lush blur of creamy pink in his stunned, still-wide-open eyes.

Even when the kiss ended, the sweet shock of it resounded in his every nerve. Primal urges echoed back.

More. Again. Now.

Lust was his old, familiar acquaintance. The rapid beat of his pulse, the taste of her on his tongue, the sudden tightening in his groin . . . he knew all these sensations quite well.

But there was something else in this storm of feeling. A deep, steady thrum in the region of his heart.

Her
, it whispered.
I’ll take her.

That part was new. And terrifying.

He abruptly set her on her feet. Then he turned away, rubbing his mouth. “What the devil was that?”

“I would expect your grace to have more experience on the subject . . . but I thought it was a kiss.”

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

“No, no. It was . . . it was good.”

He swung to face her. “You call that good?”

“No. Not good. Fortunate, more like.” She swallowed. “You can’t deny there’s been a certain tension building between us. I thought the kiss might help.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Help.”

“Well, now it’s done, you see.” She turned away with a self-conscious shrug. “It’s over. And obviously it wasn’t anything special. We won’t have to worry about an attraction.”

It wasn’t anything special? Not worry about an attraction?

Remarkable, how this girl could slash at his pride. Perhaps he should hand her a letter opener and invite her to complete the evisceration.

She reached to retrieve the book she’d dropped and gathered it close to her chest, preparing to leave. “Good night, your grace.”

Let it go
, he told himself.
Let her go.

“You can’t judge on that kiss.” He took a step forward—blustering on past logic and common sense, tripping straight into pigheaded foolishness.

“I can’t?” she asked.

“No. That wasn’t a proper kiss. It was a mere collision of lips. If I kissed you and meant it, you’d have cause to worry, Simms.”

“I would?”

He approached her slowly, made his voice low and cool. “You would. A true kiss would stir you in your deepest places. It would keep you lying awake in your bed all night long. Restless, and beset by . . .” He paused, grasping for the female equivalent of an aching cockstand. “ . . . flutterings.”

Her brow lifted in amusement, and a sly dimple formed in her cheek. “Flutterings?”

“Yes,” he pronounced in a definitive tone. “Flutterings.”

She smothered a laugh.

Good Lord. This wasn’t happening. He could not be having this conversation.
Flutterings?
Stupid, asinine word, but he was committed now. He couldn’t back down. He was the duke in this room, he reminded himself. And she was just a serving girl. It was time they both remembered it.

Except she wasn’t just a serving girl. She was a serving girl with aspirations, keen business sense, shockingly good taste in poetry . . . and slight, enticing curves his hands ached to explore.

She was delectable. Ripe as berries.

Her,
the whisper came again.

Leave off,
he told it.

“Flutterings,” she mused aloud.

He nodded. He didn’t even mind that she was mocking him. He wanted her to say that word again and again, because each repetition came with an erotic flash of her tongue. It stoked a wildness in him.

She pushed her bottom lip forward, considering. “I don’t know that I’ve ever suffered flutterings, your grace. Perhaps they’re unique to ladies of the higher classes. I don’t possess that sort of delicate feminine nature.”

He slid his hand to the back of her head, plunging his fingers through the raw silk of her hair. “Now that’s bollocks.”

And then he pulled her into a kiss.

A
h. So
these
were flutterings.

And this, Pauline gathered, was his idea of a proper kiss. An embrace with heat and purpose, and one that remained entirely in his command. He controlled the angle of her neck and the closeness of their bodies—and the slow, maddening rhythm of his tongue, sweeping between her lips again and again.

He kissed her forcefully, relentlessly, as though he were meting out some punishment she deserved. Twenty lashings with a strong, wicked tongue. Little could he suppose it was exactly what she wanted. What she craved, with every bone and sinew in her small, slender frame.

Yes. Thank you. May I have another.

Those few moments after she’d kissed him had been among the most miserable of her life. He’d acted so horrified and disturbed. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking to try it. Only that she was so grateful to him for opening this vast, invaluable library to her, a common serving girl. For listening to her most secret dreams without mocking them—and what’s more, perfecting them by giving her that brilliant, naughty idea.

He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know how much it meant.

And
then
he’d performed that dashing, heroic maneuver to break her fall.

When she saw him up close, a flash in his eyes gave her the strangest notion. That this was scarcely the first night he’d spent haunting the corridors, staying up much too late and far too alone. That he wasn’t nearly so put out by the interruption as he would have her believe.

That he might need a kiss—and a little rescuing, too.

Of course he’d walk a bed of nails barefoot rather than admit such a thing. She ought to have guessed how he’d react. All men had their pride, and dukes worst of all. “Admitting weaknesses” must rank with “tickle fights” and “slug hunting” in his list of least-favored activities.

So he’d struck back at her with this. A kiss that was controlled, masterful, possessive. And Pauline couldn’t say she minded in the least.

He held her to him so tightly, twisting one hand in the linen of her shift and making a snarl of her hair with the other. Later, she’d be brushing it until her arm ached, but it would be worth every last stroke. The sensations racing over her scalp danced on that delicious edge between pleasure and pain.

His chest was a solid wall of heat, inflaming her and bringing her nipples to tight, needy peaks. Nothing separated their bodies but a few tissue-thin layers of linen, but still she couldn’t get close enough. She rubbed against him, hoping to soothe the ache. Pleasure arced straight to her core.

When she stretched her arms around his back, he growled in encouragement. The deep, vibrating sound traveled through her body and settled as a seductive hum between her thighs. She nestled closer still.

“That’s it,” he murmured against her lips. “That’s right.”

It was. The way they fit together felt so, so right.

He wasn’t kissing her any longer. They were kissing each other. Taking pleasure. Giving comfort. Learning one another’s taste.

His mouth gentled over hers, and his movements grew languid, playful. Their tongues partnered in a slow, sensual dance. She gripped the skin-warmed linen of his shirt, letting it glide between her fingertips. So supple, with so much strength beneath. A wild, feral curiosity seized her. She wanted to know everything about him. Was his body bronzed to match his face, or pale like carved marble? Did he have hair on his chest, or was it smooth?

What powered that fierce, drumming beat of his heart?

She told herself to stop the inquiries there, struggling to tether her imagination before it ventured further downward.

Apparently, he had no such concern.

He swept a bold, exploratory touch down her spine. A pleasant shiver chased his caress, skipping over her vertebrae. When he reached her bottom, his hand found a curve she didn’t know she had, and he claimed it with a possessive squeeze. She savored his moan of satisfaction.

How wonderful. She was used to thinking of her body as all points and angles, but he made her feel soft.

She’d never felt like this, not in all her life. So wanted, so desired. So needed, and by a man who shouldn’t need anything.

When he finally broke the kiss, he left her lips swollen and aching. The corner of her mouth was rasped raw by his whiskers, and she touched her tongue to it, coaxing the hurt. She’d be feeling this kiss for hours.

Possibly years.

He released a ragged sigh. “Simms. That was badly done of me.”

Pauline laughed a little. “If
that
was badly done, I’m not sure I’d survive your best effort.”

“No, no. It was badly done of me as your employer. I shouldn’t like you to think I make a habit of chasing the help.” He turned aside, scrubbing a hand through his dark hair. “When I want companionship, I have no difficulty finding it. I never need to s—”

“Sink to this?” Stung, she reached for the discarded counterpane. “If your aim is to let me down gently, you’re failing.”

Why did men have to ruin everything? The answer was simple, she supposed—because foolish women gave them the chance.

“Listen. I’m just trying to say it won’t happen again. And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for kissing me? Or sorry it won’t happen again?”

He approached and tucked the counterpane tight about her shoulders. “Both.”

In the flickering candlelight, his face took on that same haunted, lonely look. If he truly had no difficulty finding companionship—and after that kiss, she could believe he didn’t—why wasn’t he off pleasuring his mistress, or entertaining a widow, or debauching a virgin tonight?