Any Duchess Will Do (15 page)
He held up his hands. “I’m done here.”
“Oh no, you’re not.” She dodged in front of him, blocking his only route of escape. “If you’re not brave enough to throw a punch, I’m sure you can find other ways. Call me names, perhaps. Insult my origins. Or I know. Perhaps you could bring out that slow, obnoxious applause.”
“Is that what this is about?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re vexed with me for not cheering your little water-goblet concert?”
“No,” she shot back, defensive. Then she revised, “In part. You were purposely hurtful this morning.”
“We made an arrangement, Simms. You agreed to be a failure. I’m paying you handsomely for the trouble. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“Yes, but—”
“If the terms of our bargain are no longer satisfactory, I can send you back to Sussex.”
“I signed on for a week of society’s disdain. Not yours.”
“Well, then. Consider it a bonus.”
“Oh, you—” With a growl, she swung at him again.
This time he was ready. He caught her fist in his hand, enveloping the tight, small knot of knuckles and holding it fast.
“I told you everything last night.” Her whispered words were barbed. “My dreams, my secrets. Everything. And this morning you treated me like nothing.”
He made his voice low. “What is it you want, Simms? What is it you’re wanting to hear? Am I supposed to say you’re the equal of any well-bred lady?”
“Of course not. No. I don’t want to be like those Awful Haughfells or any of their sort.”
“Ah.” He nodded slowly. “Now I see. You don’t want to hear that you’re their equal. You want to hear that you’re their
better
.”
She didn’t reply.
“I’m supposed to deem your little water-goblet tune more enchanting than any Italian aria. Proclaim your wholesome country manners a breath of fresh air in my sin-clouded life.” He laughed. “What else? Perhaps you’re hoping to hear that your purity is the most intoxicating and rare of perfumes. Your hair smells like hedgerows and your eyes are like chips of wide-open sky, and God above, you make me
feel
things. Things I haven’t felt in years. Or ever.” With his free hand, he clutched his chest dramatically. “What is this strange stirring in my breast? Could it possibly be . . . love?”
She stared at his waistcoat button, refusing to look at him.
Somewhere in his brain a fragment of reason shouted that he was being a bastard and cocking everything up. But he wasn’t acting on logic right now. He was torn between two impulses: the need to push her away from that raw, aching wound she kept poking, and the impossible desire to draw her close, possess her completely.
Most of all, he needed to leave this place before he went blind and mad with grief.
“I employed you for a reason, Simms. I’m not looking for a fresh-faced girl to teach me the meaning of love and give me purpose in life. And if you’re looking for a well-heeled gentleman to make a fetish of your feisty spirit . . . perhaps you could find one here in London, but it won’t be me.”
“What a speech,” she whispered, drawing close. “I’d be inclined to believe it, if it weren’t for the way you kissed me last night.”
Her angry warmth was palpable. Arousing.
“Oh, Simms. What kind of shoddy libertine do you take me for? I’ve kissed a great many women without caring for them in the least.”
Hm. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that shade of green.
That was his last coherent thought, staring into her eyes. Then her left fist crashed into his face, and his world exploded with fireworks of bright red pain. He staggered a few steps backward. His skull rang like a bell.
Well. He deserved that.
When his vision focused again, he saw her talking to the boy.
“That’s your first lesson, Hubert.” She crouched before the wide-eyed lad, speaking to him on his level. “Don’t fight fair. Life isn’t fair, especially not life in a place like this. If you have a shot, take it. There’s no call to be sporting about it, not with bullies.”
She went on, “I grew up on a farm, see. A small one. A poor one. It was always one of my chores to mind the chickens. Now, newly hatched chicks are the sweetest, downiest, most innocent looking creatures on earth—but they’re savage little beasts. They’ll peck their own brothers and sisters to death if they sense a weakness.”
As he listened to her, Griff felt his own defenses softening.
“It’s the same with places like this,” she went on. “There’s always a pecking order. The big will torment the small, and the small will torment the smaller, and on down the line. It’s the nature of chicks, and it’s the nature of children, too. Don’t dream it will change. You’ll never be able to pummel every bully, and no amount of prayer or patience will convince them to change their ways. Just keep your head up and get what’s yours. Your food, your schooling. Whatever they give you, don’t squander it. All bread goes straight in your belly, and all the learning you can gather goes here.” She tapped a fingertip against her temple. “Stash it away. Because once it’s in you, it’s yours. No one can take it from you. No schoolyard bully, no mean-tempered lessons master . . .”
Nor an abusive father,
Griff silently added. He pictured her, a lock of hair dangling over her smudged cheek as she furtively memorized bits of etiquette and poetry between farm chores. Reading the same words again and again, until they were stashed away. Safe inside, where no one could rob her of them.
“Not even a duke,” she finished.
Hubert eyed her silk day dress, with its flounce of lace. “You, my lady? You raised chickens on a farm?”
“I did. And as a child, I took more than my share of licks. But I got mine, just like I told you. It’s how I’ve come this far. And if you find me impressive now . . . ?” She rose to her feet and patted the boy on the shoulder. “Come visit me next week. I’ll be living wealthily ever after.”
With a fiery glance at Griff, she left the room.
He started off in pursuit, somewhat hobbled by his aching . . . everything. God’s teeth, what this woman was doing to him. He trailed her clipped footsteps down the corridor, catching up to her at the building’s main entrance.
“Listen,” he said, snaring her arm at the top of the steps. “About this morning. I wasn’t trying to be the savage chick, or the pecking bully, or whatever it is you’ve likened me to.”
“Don’t apologize, please. Then I might feel compelled to apologize for hitting you, and I don’t want to be sorry in the least.”
“I’m not apologizing. Just explaining. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Simms. But if the damned things are really so fragile, you shouldn’t let me anywhere near them. I told you, I’m no prince.”
She squared her shoulders, apparently reaching some decision. “You’re right. You did warn me. And I shouldn’t care what you think.”
No, wait,
he stupidly felt like contradicting.
I take it back. You should care. Please care.
Because he could see it on her face—just like that, she’d decided she didn’t need him. She would take her own advice to Hubert: complete her week’s employment, take his thousand pounds, and never think of him again.
He
wanted
her to think of him. Not just this week, but always.
What an ass he’d been, baiting her with all those compliments she might hope to hear. Griff saw himself clearly now. He was the one yearning for approval. Long after this week was over, he wanted her to remember him as the beneficent, handsome duke who’d whisked her away to London and changed her life. No matter what other disappointments he added to his family legacy, he could console himself with the knowledge that there was a shopkeeper at the arse-end of Sussex who worshipped him. Who believed he had a heart of pure, chivalric-grade gold—or at least sterling—hidden beneath the arrogance and vice.
She was meant to be the one good thing he’d done.
And now she looked at him like something that slithered.
“You’re right,” she said. They exited through the front gates, where she drew to a halt in the drive. “Of course you’re right. I’ve been a fool, wanting you to like me, approve of me. If you found anything in me to approve, you wouldn’t have hired me in the first place.”
“That’s not true.”
Now that they were out of the orphanage, he could breathe again. There were too many people about to do what he truly wished—which was to pull her into his arms for an embrace that might comfort them both. He settled for righting her sleeve.
“You don’t understand, Simms.”
She looked at his touch on her sleeve. “Oh, I understand you perfectly. You have good, generous instincts, but they’re all smothered under that aristocratic phlegm. You’re so choked with it, you’re afraid to care about anything. Or at least, you’re afraid to show that you do.”
It started to rain then. Cold, fat drops struck the pavement with audible force. In moments the damp had flattened her clothing to her back and plastered locks of hair to her face, making her look small and alone.
“Simms.”
She flinched from his touch. “What, Griff? What? Did you have something to say to me here? In the midst of a busy street, with people nearby—not in a darkened garden or locked room?”
“I . . .” He set his teeth. “Very well. I like you.”
“You ‘like’ me.”
“I do. In fact, I like you a great deal more than I should. And it’s precisely because you
are
all wrong.”
She stared at him, pursing those delectable, berry-pink lips. Far too many hours had passed since he’d kissed her.
He cursed. “I’m not explaining it right. I’m not used to making these sorts of speeches. But can’t we call a truce? Find somewhere to have a spot of—”
Before he could finish the thought, a woman in dark, shapeless wool rushed up to him. Like a raven, winging out of nowhere.
“Please, sir. I c-can’t . . .” She sobbed from deep in her chest. “Please.”
She darted away just as quickly, and it took Griff several instants to register that she’d left something behind.
A babe. Wedged into his arms.
Oh, Jesus.
Gray-blue eyes, scratchy little fingers. No nose or neck to speak of. All wrinkles, from head to tiny toes. Christ, why did they all have to look so much the same?
“Oh, goodness,” Pauline said. “That poor woman.”
“Wh—” He held the child slightly out from his body. His arms were frozen with shock. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. She must have meant to surrender the child. Perhaps she was afraid to come inside.”
Griff scanned the busy environs, hoping stupidly for one flash of dark wool to stand out from the dark, woolen crowd. She’d probably stayed nearby. She was likely watching him now—this stiff, useless nobleman she’d trusted to do right by her child—and feeling keen regret.
The infant knew she’d been done wrong. She wailed up at Griff, puckered and red-faced, waving little fists clenched in anger. Drops of rain spattered her face and blanket. She opened her mouth so wide, her lips seemed to thin and disappear. Her toothless gums and little tongue were bright vermilion with rage.
You’re a bloody duke,
the babe seemed to shout at him.
Near six foot tall, thirteen stone. Do something, you worthless lump. Make it all come out right!
“What should we do?” Pauline asked.
“I . . .”
Griff didn’t know. With everything in his hollowed-out shell of a heart, he wanted to soothe the child’s cries. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
He passed the baby into Pauline’s arms, muttered a few words of excuse that he’d never remember later. Then he turned and strode away, into the rain.
“Your grace! Griff, wait!”
He could shake off her calls, but the wailing carried high above the din of the streets, above the dark clatter of rain. Those wordless cries of accusation followed him all the way to the street.
Haunted him for miles.
V
ery early the next morning, Pauline woke in the darkness. She wrapped her body in a dressing gown, lit a taper, and made her way downstairs to the library.
She didn’t find the man she’d spent a fitful night alternately worrying over and dreaming about. But she found something almost as intriguing.
The naughty books.
She plucked a volume from the shelf, built a fire in the grate, and settled in.
An hour or so later she was immersed in a scandalous encounter—a dairymaid’s lover had his hands under her skirts and was questing determinedly higher—when the library door swung open with a whoosh of freezing air.
She startled, whipping her head up. Her attention was ripped from the story roughly, unevenly—like a sheet of pasted paper torn loose. Little scraps of lewdness clung to her. She was blushing so fiercely she worried her cheeks would glow in the dark.
Thank goodness the intruder wasn’t the duchess or a servant.
Only Griff.
But she couldn’t call him “only Griff.” He could never be “only” anything. The intruder was life-altering, heart-muddling, oft-maddening Griff.
And she didn’t know what they’d make of each other, after all that happened yesterday.
He tossed her a brief, dark look. She couldn’t tell whether he was glad to see her or the reverse. “You’re awake at this hour?” he said.
She closed her finger in her book, holding the page. “I wake early every morning. I’m a farm girl at heart. Can’t sleep past five, it seems.”
As he shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair, she recognized it as the same one he’d been wearing when she’d seen him last. His jaw was unshaven. He was still hatless as well. And he looked every bit as miserable as when he’d left her at the front gates of the foundling home, squalling babe in arms.
However he’d spent his night, the activity hadn’t succeeded in cheering him.
“Are you just coming in?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too managing or . . . well,
wifely
.
He nodded.
What a stark illustration of the differences between them. This hour meant early rising for her, but late homecoming for him. The two of them were literally night and day.
But even night and day had to cross paths sometime.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
His answering sigh was a slow, weary rasp. “Simms, I honestly don’t even know.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now.”
Wordlessly, he crossed to his desk and rolled up his uncuffed shirtsleeves. He lit two candles, sat down and regarded the broken clockwork he’d left waiting the other night.
“I hope your evening was more exciting than mine,” she said lightly. “After dinner, your mother set me reading aloud from Scripture to improve my diction. I was told to read only the
H
words.
H
ath,
h
oly,
h
eresy. Rather a bore.” She lifted the book in her hand and reopened to her current page. “Now that I’ve found the naughty books, the exercise seems much more interesting.
H
ard as
h
ornbeam.
H
eaving
h
illocks of bounteous flesh.”
When that failed to coax a smile from him, she set the book aside and curled up in the chair. Propping her chin on her knees, she regarded him through the veil of lingering dark.
Something was very, very wrong. In a word (in an
H
word, no less—they seemed all the words she could think of now) he looked
h
orrible.
H
aunted, too—even more so than he had the first night.
And part of her suspected he needed to be
h
eld.
She wasn’t sure how to initiate anything of that sort. To make the attempt seemed unwise, for many reasons. But there was one thing she could do for him—a skill learned through years of practice.
She rose from her chair, crossed to the bar in the corner and poured him a drink.
“When I started working at the tavern years ago, Mr. Fosbury told me I prattled on too much.” She watched the amber liquid swirl into a glass. As she recapped the decanter, she made her voice gruff in imitation. “ ‘Pauline,’ he said to me, ‘you have to learn to tell the difference between men who come in wanting a chat, and men who just want to be let alone.’ ”
After crossing the carpet in slow, careful steps, she set the drink on the desktop just inches from Griff’s elbow. He didn’t look at it, nor at her. He rubbed the fatigue from his face and peered at the broken clock. As if he could stare at the thing hard enough that the gears would leap into motion of their own accord. Perhaps begin churning time in reverse.
“I took his advice,” she went on, “learned to mind my conversations. But I also learned Mr. Fosbury had something wrong. There were men who wanted a chat and those who didn’t.” Gathering her courage, she laid a hand to Griff’s shoulder. “But none of them wanted to be alone.”
He drew a deep breath. His strong, linen-clad shoulder rose and fell beneath her palm.
She silently counted to five, as slowly as her skittering nerves would allow.
Nothing.
Well, then. She’d given him a chance. Nodding to herself, she lifted her hand and turned away. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Don’t.”
The hoarse command froze her in place.
He swiveled his chair so that they faced one another, reached to take her by the waist, and drew her close between his sprawled legs.
Then he leaned forward—slowly, inexorably—until his forehead met her belly.
“Don’t,” he told her navel. “Don’t leave.”
Overwhelmed with some unnamable emotion, she stroked her fingers through his thick, dark hair. “I won’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I . . . I know.”
They remained that way for several moments. Touching. Breathing. Warming each other in the dark. Gratitude swelled in her heart. She hadn’t let herself realize how worried she’d been for him. Not until this moment, when he was home safe. With her.
“How is she?” he murmured.
Something told her he didn’t mean the duchess. “The babe?”
She felt his nod of confirmation chafe against her belly.
“The babe was a he, actually. And he’s fine. I took him in to the matrons. They dressed him in clean swaddling, filled his belly with milk. He’ll have been named and christened by now, I expect.”
“I hope he fared better than Hubert with that naming part.”
She smiled and stroked his hair again.
“I shouldn’t have left you. I just . . .” He huffed out a breath.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. It was obvious the whole place set you on edge. Many a big, strong man has been sent into a panic by a wailing infant.”
He lifted his head and gave her a searching look.
And her silly, girlish brain picked that moment to decide he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. Probably because he was the only man to ever look at her this way. Holding her together with his strong, sculpted arms while his heated gaze turned her to slag.
“Can we return to the conversation we were having just before all that?” she whispered. “We were standing at the gate. You were saying how much you liked me, asking for a truce. And I . . .” She grazed a light touch over his cheek. “I was about to apologize for this.”
“Don’t. I deserved the punches and then some. For most of my life I’ve been a first-rate jackass. For the past year I’ve been trying to be less of one. But I don’t think I’m succeeding. I’ve merely graduated from first-rate jackass to flagship bastard.”
“I don’t know about that.” She tamed a lock of his hair. “You’ve had your moments this week. Saved me from falling not once, but twice. You were perfect with my sister. And I suspect that when you offered me this post, you
thought
you were doing it to rescue me.”
Now she wasn’t sure.
Now she wondered if she was here to rescue him.
He said, “At any rate, I owe you an apology for everything today. Including the water goblets.”
She laughed a little. “It truly was nothing. Just a silly tavern trick.”
“I have embarrassing party tricks, too.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, yes.” He released her, reclining in his chair. “I can pleasure two women with both hands tied behind my back. Blindfolded.”
“How boastful you are.”
“Boasting would imply I’m proud of it. I’m not boasting.”
Oh God. The look on his face told her he wasn’t. The images now filling Pauline’s mind made her a little bit queasy.
And very, very curious.
“I found the naughty books,” she said. “I have questions.”
“Oh, Lord.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “No, Simms. No.”
“But you’re the only person I can ask. And you owe me for the water goblets.”
He dropped his hands. “Very well. You have questions? Here are some answers. ’Yes,’ ‘No,’ and ‘Only with ample lubrication.’ Apply them to your questions as you like.”
She reached out and gave him a playful smack on the shoulder. “It’s just that the books make it sound so ridiculous. All this pulsing and divine throbbing and unparalleled ecstasy and cataclysmic smelting of two souls into one.”
“Cataclysmic ‘smelting’? What book said that?”
“Never mind the smelting,” she said. “But the rest of it. The unparalleled ecstasy part. Is it . . . is it really supposed to be that way?”
He sighed. “That particular question is best answered by experience.”
“But that’s just it, you see. I’ve had experience.” She cringed. “A little bit of it. And it was nothing like that. No ecstasy whatsoever. Nor even any flutterings. That’s why I was wondering if the books tell lies, or . . . or if it was just me.”
“Simms.” He rose from his chair and looked her in the eye.
It was killing her not to look away, but his expression made it clear he wouldn’t answer otherwise. So she slid from the edge of the desk, met him toe-to-toe, and held his gaze directly.
Then waited, miserable.
“It wasn’t you,” he said.
I
n Griff’s head alarm bells were sounding by the hundreds. He shouldn’t have this conversation. Hell, he shouldn’t even be here with her alone. But he needed to be with someone right now. And by God, she needed to hear this.
“It wasn’t you,” he said again.
“So the books
do
exaggerate,” she said.
“I’m not saying that, either.”
Her nose crinkled. “I’m so confused.”
“That’s because there are no simple answers. Can it be divine bliss? Yes. Can it be a dismal trial? Yes. It’s like conversation. With the wrong person, it
can
feel forced, perfunctory. Boring as hell. But sometimes you find someone with whom the discussion just flows. You never run out of ideas. There’s no awkwardness in honesty. You surprise each other and yourselves.”
“But how do you find that person without . . . conversing all over town?”
Griff gave a dry laugh. “What a question. Find the answer and bottle it, and you’ll have the most successful shop in England. I might even queue up myself.”
He had “conversed” with many women in his life, and he wasn’t proud of it. Oh, he had
been
proud of it once, and the women themselves had few complaints. But he’d come to realize it was a cold thing, when the best you could say of a bed partner wasn’t “I love you” or even “I’m fond of you,” but merely “I despise you a bit less than I despise myself.”
But he meant what he’d said at the foundling home gates. He
liked
this woman. He could talk with her, as he hadn’t talked with anyone in ages. And any man who’d let her go was a goddamned fool.
He reached for her, framing her sweet face. He traced her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “I don’t have many answers, but I can tell you this much. It wasn’t you.”
He approached her, feeling the darkness compress and heat up between them.
“Griff.” Her hand went to his wrist. “I wasn’t asking for this.”
“I know.” He leaned in, tilting his head for the kiss. The anticipation of her taste set his pulse racing.
“But—”
“Simms. You asked the question. Don’t interrupt when I’m making a point.”
He hovered an inch above her lips . . . then reconsidered. A kiss wasn’t what she needed. A kiss gave her too much room to hide. She needed to see him, see herself and how beautiful, how sensual, she was.
He ran his hands over the curves of her body, tracing them through her dressing gown. Her little gasp of pleasure thrilled him.
“I think I had a dream that went like this,” she whispered. “Just last night.”
“Don’t tell me that.” The vision of her dreaming fitfully beneath white sheets . . .
“What should I tell you, then? That you’re the most attractive man I’ve ever known, and the mere scent of your cologne sets fire to my petticoats?”
“You should tell me to go to the devil.” His hands went to the ties of her dressing gown. He paused, one finger looped in the corded sash. “But would you tell me so, if that’s what you felt?”
She gave him a smile. “Don’t you know me at all?”
He yanked on the knotted sash, drawing her to him. “I just know I’m desperate to touch you, everywhere.”