Any Duchess Will Do (9 page)

For a man with no desire to marry, he wasn’t exactly reveling in his freedom.

“It was just a kiss.” She gathered a lit candle from the desk. “What’s a little kiss or two? Nothing.”

He stopped and looked at her. “Did you hear yourself?”

“What?”

“You just said nothi
ng
. Not nothin’.”

“No, I didn’t. I said nothin
g
. Nothin
g
.” She gasped. “Cor. I
did
say it. Nothin
g
.” She tested more words. “Kissin
g
. Embracin
g
. Flutterin
g
.”

“Let’s just”—the duke held up a hand—“stop the exercise there.”

Pauline clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed into it. “Oh, no. This can only be your fault. Your mother did say it was all in limbering the tongue.”

He gave her a dark look.

“Don’t worry, your grace. No matter how you pronounce it, it truly was nothing. Just a kiss.”

Liar
, her heartbeat pounded.
It was so much more.

“I’ve been kissed before,” she continued.

Liar, liar. You’ve never been kissed like that.

“I know not to make too much of it. This is hardly cause for alarm,” she finished.

Liar, liar, hair afire.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “We both have our goals. You have your naughty bookshop to open, and I have my ribald life story to continue, unfettered by matchmaking. The only way this week can go wrong is if it ends with us engaged to marry, and God knows that’s not going to happen.”

He drew the doors shut, then turned to her. Their gazes caught in the warm, golden space above the candle flame.

Pauline forced a laugh. It came out high and wild and ridiculous, and she wished she could blame it on someone else. “Oh, heavens. Don’t flatter yourself, Griff. The kiss wasn’t
that
good.”

And then she hurried up the stairs, trying to outrun that pounding accusation in her chest.

Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar.

Chapter Seven

B
y mid-morning the next day, Pauline was amassing quite the mental list of things duchesses didn’t do.

Duchesses didn’t curse, spit, serve themselves at the table, buckle in any sense of the word, or speak of their internal organs in mixed company.

But on a happy note, duchesses did not have chores. They didn’t draw water, or feed the hens, or turn out the cow, or chase a loose piglet all through the yard. Duchesses didn’t make their own breakfast, or anyone else’s. That part was lovely.

And when the Duchess of Halford swept into her bedchamber, Pauline added one more item to her list:

Duchesses did not knock.

She startled and thrust the bookkeeping manual under the pillow before rising from the bed. She didn’t want to explain how that book had come to be in her possession. Even if she’d spent the past hour or two reliving the scene in her memory.

Oh, that kiss.

Her lips still tingled.

“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” the duchess said, “even at this early hour.”

This
early
hour?

“It’s nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. I’ve been awake for ages.” Never in her life had Pauline slept later than six. She turned her head and gazed out the window. “Half the day’s gone.”

“You’re used to country hours. We operate on a different schedule in Town. The time for morning calls begins at noon. Luncheon might be taken at three. The evening is just getting under way at nine o’clock, and midnight suppers are
de rigueur
.”

“If you say so.” Pauline woke with the dawn every day, without fail. Mornings would be her time for reading. Perhaps she could steal a visit or two to the library, once she finished the bookkeeping text.

“My son seldom rises before noon,” the duchess sighed. “But that’s why we’re getting an early start. We’ve a great deal of work before us.”

Pauline scanned the room. “I would have dressed, but I didn’t see my frock.”

“Oh, that.” The duchess waved a hand. “We burned that.”

“You
burned
it? That was my best for everyday.” As opposed to the two other frocks she owned, one of which was strictly for church.

“It’s not going to be your best ever again. From now on, you wear better. Later we’ll visit the shops, but I’ve had my modiste send over some samples for today. I’ll ring for Fleur, and we’ll have you dressed.”

“Jolly good, your grace.”

Pauline’s spirits sank straight to the carpet. Two minutes into her undressing last night she’d realized she didn’t get along with Fleur. Or more to the point, Fleur didn’t get along with Pauline.

The lady’s maid had golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes, and she floated into the room like a snowflake. Perfect, pale, and cold.

“Hmph,” Fleur said. It was a very French sound, and it didn’t sound complimentary to Pauline’s hair, face, attire, or character.

The Halford driver and footmen had been present in Spindle Cove for everything, and Pauline knew how quickly gossip passed from one servant to the next. By now they all must know she was a mere country farm girl, not worthy of a lady’s maid’s attention. Surely the servants would resent her and the extra work she was causing them.

Fleur unpacked a set of tissue-lined boxes, drawing out a series of undergarments and three nearly identical frocks.

“They’re all white,” Pauline said.

“Of course they’re white,” the duchess replied.

Never in her life had Pauline worn a white frock. Perhaps not even at her own christening. White was the color for ladies, because only ladies could keep a white gown clean. If she had ever been so foolish as to make herself a light-colored frock at home, it would have been gray within three washings. Excepting aprons and stockings, everything she owned was either brown or dark blue.

Not any longer.

First she was cloaked in a snow-white chemise, then corseted within an inch of her life. The duchess selected the simplest of the frocks—a high-waisted morning dress in layers of sheer muslin—and Fleur lifted it over Pauline’s head. The pale fabric descended like a cloud, wreathing her in airy prettiness. She stared down at her arms, so tanned and freckled when placed against the pristine muslin.

The duchess scrubbed her with an appraising look. “At least it fits in the shoulders. It’s fortunate you’re willowy.”

Willowy? That struck Pauline as a generous way of describing her figure. Even willows had curves.

After fussing with the frock’s loose waistline for a few moments, Fleur took a length of jade-green satin and slid it about Pauline’s middle, cinching it tight and tying a bow in back.

“Hmph.” This time, Fleur sounded satisfied.

“Yes, much better,” the duchess agreed. “Now what can be done with her hair?”

Not much, appeared to be Fleur’s opinion.

Once Pauline’s hair was coiffed and pinned in a simple, upswept knot, she was left staring at a most unfamiliar reflection in the vanity mirror. Not a hair out of place, not a speck on her frock’s scalloped lace overlay.

The duchess dismissed Fleur with a few words in French, then addressed Pauline’s reflection in the mirror. “I am going to do something I never do. I am going to talk to you about my son.”

Pauline’s mouth opened. But even if she’d decided what to say, the duchess’s look forbade her to say anything.

“I know. I know. But I can’t speak to my peers about such things, and I’d never confide in the servants. I’m at my wit’s end with Griffy, and I’ve no one else to tell.”

Griffy?

“He’s changed since last autumn. I noticed it the day I arrived in Town. My son was always a rascal as a young boy. Then he grew into a dissolute young man, always playing cards with his friends or hosting bacchanalian parties at that Winterset Grange. And there’ve been so many women.”

No doubt, Pauline thought. Did last night make her one of them?

“But this past year, everything changed. He didn’t even open the Grange last winter. He stayed in Town. For what purpose, I can’t imagine. He never goes out to the clubs, shows no interest in friends or society. And then there’s the locked room.”

“A locked room, you say?”

She tried not to betray her heightened interest. With all that had happened in the library afterward, she’d almost forgotten surprising him in the corridor last night. He’d certainly behaved like a man with something to hide.

He also kissed like a man who craved warmth and comfort. But she wasn’t about to tell the duchess
that
.

“A locked room,” the duchess repeated. “He keeps one chamber of his suite locked day and night. Only he has the key. He doesn’t even allow the maids to dust it. It’s . . . it’s perverse. Who knows what he’s keeping in there?”

“I do hope it’s not a collection of severed heads. Perhaps he’s been trawling the countryside for impertinent serving girls, and I’ll be number eleven.”

The duchess harrumphed. “You’re not number eleven. You’re going to be his first—and only—bride.”

“But I’m a commoner.”

“The Halford legacy is sufficiently robust to withstand my son’s debauchery. It can even survive a commoner as duchess. But it will end—forever—if there is no male heir.”

“Surely the duke has decades yet to produce a son. You can’t honestly believe he’ll marry me.”

“He
must
. I can’t wait decades. You don’t understand.” The duchess halted. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Now I see I have no choice.”

The older woman thrust one hand into her pocket and drew it back out, clutching something small and fuzzy.

“There,” she declared. “Just look at it.”

Pauline looked at it. A knitted object, of indeterminate purpose, made from light yellow wool. Part of it looked like a cap, and part of it looked like a glove, and none if it looked well made.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s appalling! That’s what it is. I don’t even know how it happens. I haven’t done needlework since I was a girl of fourteen. Even then it was crewel work and embroidery. Never knitting. But every night, for the past several months, I sit down for the evening, intending to read or write letters, and three hours later there’s a lumpy, misshapen
thing
in my lap.”

Pauline stifled a giggle.

“Go ahead, laugh. It’s ridiculous.” The duchess picked up the knitted mess and turned it over in her hands. “Is it a cap for a two-headed snake? A mitten for a three-fingered arthritic? Even I don’t know, and I made the thing. The shame. I can’t let the servants see them, of course. I have to stash them in a hatbox and smuggle them out to the Foundling Hospital on Tuesdays.”

Pauline laughed aloud at that.

“A lifetime of elegance, poise, and jewels, and now I’ve come to this.” She lifted the distorted mitten and shook it at Pauline. “This! It’s absurd.”

“Perhaps you should consult a doctor.”

“I don’t need a powder or a tonic, Miss Simms.” The duchess sank into a chair and pressed the snarl of yarn to her chest. Her voice softened. “I need grandchildren. Little pudgy, wriggling babies to absorb all this affection unraveling inside me. I’m desperate for them, and I don’t know what will become of me otherwise. Some morning, Fleur will come in to wake me and find I’ve been asphyxiated by a yards-long muffler. How gauche.”

Pauline took the knitting from the duchess’s hands and examined it. “This isn’t half bad, in places. I could teach you to make a proper cuff, if you like.”

The duchess grabbed it from her and stuffed it back in her pocket. “I’ll take knitting lessons from you later. This week, you’re taking duchess lessons from me.”

“But, your grace, you don’t understand. I don’t even—”

Pauline shut her mouth. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say,
I don’t even want to marry him.

But something stopped her from saying it aloud. An impulse to spare the duchess’s feelings, she decided. No mother would like to hear her son disparaged, and it would be impossible to explain why a serving girl would turn down the chance to marry a duke.

Explanations weren’t necessary, anyhow. The duke in question was never going to propose.

“He’s paying me,” she blurted out. She just couldn’t let the poor woman get her hopes up. Halford hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, after all. “He’s paying me to be a catastrophe. To thwart your every attempt at polish.”

The duchess gave a delicate harrumph. “That’s what he told you because that’s what he’s telling himself. He can’t bring himself to admit that he’s fascinated with you. You’re a proud one as well. If I accused you of being infatuated with him already, you’d deny it.”

“I . . . I do deny it. Because it isn’t true.”

As she spoke the words, Pauline’s heart pounded in her chest.

Liar, liar, liar.

She
was
infatuated. Stupidly, impossibly infatuated with every little thing about the duke. No, not the duke—the man. The way he’d listened to her with true interest. The way he’d broken her fall, kissed her with such passion. The delicious, addictive way he smelled. Just that morning she’d harbored fantasies of stealing his discarded shirt from the laundry so she could stash it under her pillow.

Oh, ye gods! This was terrible. She even had flutterings.

Fleur reentered the room bearing a velvet-lined tray, which she placed on the vanity table.

Pauline gasped. The tray was covered in jewels of every type and color, sparkling in every conceivable setting—necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings. But they did not come in every size. No, each gemstone was uniformly, alarmingly huge.

“That will be all,” the duchess said, dismissing Fleur once again.

She turned her attention to the tray of jewels. “Not pearls, not today,” she muttered, pushing aside a strand of perfectly matched iridescent orbs. “Topaz would be all wrong. It will be a few years yet before you can carry off diamonds or rubies.”

Diamonds and rubies? The deluded woman kept speaking as if all these jewels would one day be hers. Pauline didn’t know how to convince the duchess of the truth.

“Didn’t you hear me, your grace?” she asked in a loud whisper. “Gri—I mean, the duke—is paying me to fail. He just wants to teach you a lesson, so he’ll never be subject to your matchmaking again.”

The older woman’s hands settled on Pauline’s shoulders. Their gazes met in the mirror. “How much did he promise you?”

“A thousand pounds.”

The duchess seemed unimpressed. She placed her hands on either side of Pauline’s face and pulled upward, elongating her spine until she sat ramrod straight.

“There. When your posture is correct, you have a marvelous neck for jewels.” She tilted Pauline’s head this way and that. “Never let anyone tell you to wear emeralds, simply because your eyes are green. It’s what people with no imagination say. On color alone, your eyes are a closer match to peridot. But peridot always strikes me as lamentably bourgeois.”

“I don’t often have people advising me on jewels, your grace,” Pauline said, her voice muffled by the duchess’s hands bracketing her cheeks. “This would be the very first time.”

The duchess released her, turned, and lifted a necklace of light purple stones and gold filigree from the velvet-lined tray. As she draped the jewels about Pauline’s neck, she said, “This is your stone. Amethyst. Rare, regal, yet sweet enough for a younger woman.”