Any Duchess Will Do (5 page)

“I need a penny,” Pauline said. “Quickly, give me a penny.”

He fished in his pocket and produced a coin, then dropped it in her outstretched hand.

She peered at it. “This isn’t a penny. It’s a sovereign.”

“I don’t have anything smaller.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dukes and their problems. I’ll be along in a moment.”

Pauline drew her sister aside. She pulled her spine straight. The only way to keep Daniela from dissolving was to hold herself together. There could be no cracks in her resolve. She must be strong enough for them both, as always.

“Here’s your egg money for this week.” She opened Daniela’s hand and put the coin in it, closing her fingers over the sovereign before she could notice the color wasn’t right. “I want you to go upstairs and put it in the tea tin straightaway. Tomorrow, it goes in the collection at church.”

Daniela nodded.

“I’m going with the duke now,” Pauline told her. “To London.”

“No.”

“Yes. But only for a week.”

“Don’t go. Don’t go.” The tears streamed down Daniela’s reddened cheeks.

Don’t cry so, I beg you. I can’t bear it.

Pauline very nearly gave in. To distract herself, she thought of the golden coin squeezed in her sister’s hand. She imagined a thousand of them, stacked in neat rows. Ten by ten by ten by ten . . .

If only she could explain to Daniela what this would mean for them, and how it would better their lives in all the years to come. But her sister wouldn’t want to hear more talk of change. She needed routine, comfort. Familiar tasks to see her through the week.

“I’ll be back next Saturday to give you your egg money. I swear it. But you must earn that penny. While I’m gone, you must work hard. You cannot laze abed crying, do you hear? Collect the eggs every day. Help mother with the cooking and the house. When the week’s gone, I’ll be home. I’ll be sitting with you in church next Sunday.” She framed Daniela’s round face in her hands. “And I will never leave you again.”

She hugged her sobbing sister tight and kissed her cheek. “Go inside now.”

“No. No, don’t go.”

There was no good to come of prolonging it. Parting wouldn’t get any easier. Pauline released her sister, turned, and walked away. Daniela’s sobs followed her as she went through the gate and entered the lane, where the duke’s fine carriage waited.

“Pauline?” Her mother’s voice, calling from the front step.

“I’ll be home in a week, Mum.” She didn’t dare look back.

When she moved to enter the coach, her step faltered. The duke extended a hand. His hand was ungloved, and when his strong fingers closed over hers, a tremor passed through her.

“Are you well?” he asked. His other hand went to the small of her back, steadying her.

Pauline drew a deep breath. His strong touch made her want to melt against him, seeking comfort. She pushed the temptation away.

“I’m well,” she said.

“If you need more time to—”

“I don’t.”

“Should you go to her?” he asked.

No. No, that would make everything worse.

It was useless to explain. What did it matter if he thought her unfeeling and callous, anyhow? She wasn’t after his approval. She was doing this for his money.

“My sister always cries, but she’s stronger than you’d think.” She released his hand and mounted the stairs on her own power. “So am I.”

I
t took a great deal to impress Griff. Many an afternoon in Court, he’d looked on as officers and dignitaries were awarded ribbons, crosses, knighthoods, and more for service to the Crown. Some likely deserved their honors; many didn’t. The pomp and ceremony had him jaded by this point, and God knew he wasn’t prone to heroics himself. But he liked to think he could still recognize bravery when he saw it.

He had the feeling he’d witnessed a true act of courage just now. The girl had steel in her. He’d felt it, beneath his palm.

A good thing, too. Because if she was going to spend the next several days with the Duchess of Halford, Pauline Simms was going to need it.

“You have a week,” he told his mother, settling into the coach.

“A
week
?” Twin spots of color rose on her cheeks, matching the rubies at her throat.

“A week. Simms’s family can’t spare her any longer than that.”

“I can’t possibly accomplish this in a week.”

“If our Divine Creator could make the heavens, earth, and all its creatures in six days, I should think you can manage one duchess.”

She huffed with indignation. “You know very well I’m not—”

“Wait. Hold that thought.” Griff sent a hand into his breast pocket, searching. When he came up empty, he muttered a mild curse and fumbled in his waistcoat pockets, too.

“What on earth are you looking for?” his mother asked.

“A pencil and a scrap of paper. You were about to say you’re not God, or something to that effect. I mean to have the exact quote, date, and time recorded. An engraved commemorative plaque will hang in every room of Halford House.”

Her lips thinned to a tight line.

“You claimed you could make any woman the toast of London. If you can manage that with Simms in one week, I’ll marry her.” He leveled a single finger at her. “But if this enterprise of yours fails, you will never harangue me on the subject of marriage again. Not this season. Not this decade. Not this lifetime.”

She glowered at him in silence.

Griff smiled, knowing he had her right where he wanted her.

He leaned back, propped one boot on his knee, and stretched his arm across the back of the seat. “If the conditions are unacceptable to you, I can turn this coach around right now.”

S
he didn’t object. He didn’t turn the coach around.

They forged straight on, and Griff pretended to doze through a lengthy lecture on the vaunted family history. It was a litany of heroes, lawmakers, explorers, scholars . . . All the way from his far-flung ancestors in the Crusades to his father, the great, late diplomat.

Just as the duchess’s tale was winding toward the debauched disappointment that was Griff, they paused to change horses and take dinner near Tonbridge.

Thank God.

“This,” his mother informed her new charge as they alighted from the carriage, “is one of the finest coaching inns in England. Their private dining rooms are peerless.”

Miss Simms made comical shapes with her lips as they entered the establishment. “I should think the Bull and Blossom is the superior place, for my money. More welcoming, and that’s certain.”

“A duchess does not look for an inn that is welcoming,” his mother opined. “A duchess is welcome anywhere, anytime. She relies on the establishment to keep everyone else out.”

“Really?” As they were shown into the dining room, Miss Simms turned to the stony footman. “Is that so?”

The footman pulled out a chair, staring forward at the wall.

She gave the blank-faced servant an amused look and waved her hand before his eyes. “Hullo. Anyone home?”

The footman remained still as a wooden nutcracker, until she gave up and sat down.

Griff took his own seat and summoned the waiter with a look, ordering an assortment of dishes. He was famished.

“Cor,” Miss Simms sighed, putting her elbows on the table and propping her chin on one hand. “I’m famished.”

The duchess rapped the tabletop.

“What now?” the young woman asked.

“First, remove your elbows from the table.”

Miss Simms obeyed, lifting her elbows exactly one inch above the surface of the table.

“Second, mind your tongue. A lady never refers to the state of her internal organs in mixed company. And you will strike
that
word from your vocabulary at once.”

“What word?”

“You know the word to which I refer.”

“Hm.” Dramatically thoughtful, Miss Simms put a fingertip to her lips and cast a glance at the ceiling. “Was it ‘famished’? Or ‘I’m’?”

“Neither of those.”

“Well, I’m confused,” she said. “I can’t recall saying anything else. I’m just a simple country girl. Overwhelmed by the splendor of this inhospitable establishment. How am I to know what word it is I shouldn’t say if your grace will not enlighten me?”

A pause stretched, as they all waited to see whether his mother could be provoked into repeating such a common slang as “cor.”

Griff reclined in his chair, happy to wait her out. This was the most enjoyment he could recall at a family dinner.

His mother had been needing someone to manage. She certainly couldn’t browbeat
him
—no matter what measures she’d resorted to yesternight—and the servants at Halford House were too well-trained and stoic. He’d been flirting with the idea of getting her a mischievous terrier, but this was better by far. Miss Simms wouldn’t leave any puddles on the carpet.

Perhaps after this week was over, he’d hire his mother another impertinent companion.

But next time he’d find one who wasn’t so pretty.

The girl sparkled.
Sparkled
, deuce her. Griff couldn’t help staring. Hours of coach travel hadn’t dislodged those sugar crystals dusting her form, and his eye couldn’t stop searching them out. They were like grains of brilliant sand strewn in her hair, clinging to her skin. Even tangled in her eyelashes.

Worst of all, one tiny crystal had lodged itself just at the corner of her mouth. His awareness of it had long passed distracting and verged on maddening. Surely, he thought, at some point during dinner she would catch it with her tongue and sweep it away.

If not, he’d be tempted to lean forward and tend to the cursed thing himself.

“Miss Simms,” his mother said, “if you think you can trick me into repeating your vulgarities, you will be disappointed. Suffice it to say, slang, blasphemy, and cursing have no place in a lady’s vocabulary. Much less a duchess’s.”

“Oh. I see. So your grace never curses.”

“I do not.”

“Words like cor . . . bollocks . . . damn . . . devil . . . blast . . . bloody hell . . .” She pronounced the words with relish, warming to her task. “They don’t cross a duchess’s lips?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

Miss Simms’s fair brow creased in thought. “What if a duchess steps on a tack? What if a gust of wind steals a duchess’s best powdered wig? Not even then?”

“Not even when an impertinent farm girl provokes a duchess to a simmering rage,” she replied evenly. “A duchess might contemplate all manner of cutting remarks and frustrated oaths. But even in the face of extreme annoyance, she stifles any such ejaculations.”

“My,” Miss Simms said, wide-eyed. “I do hope dukes aren’t held to the same standard. Can’t be healthy for a man, always stifling his ejaculations.”

Griff promptly broke the prohibition against elbows on the table, smothering a burst of laughter with his palm and disguising it as a coughing fit. The violence of it caught him by surprise. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d laughed from so deep in his chest that his ribs ached. For that matter, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d been tempted to lean across the table and catch a lush, clever mouth in a kiss.

For several months he’d been stifling . . . everything.

“Let it out, your grace. You’ll feel better.” She looked to him with false concern and a coy, conspiratorial smile.

Oh, he liked this girl. He liked her a great deal.

And that worried him intensely.

Chapter Four

D
rat. So close. She’d almost had him laughing just then.

The duke had hired Pauline to provoke his mother, but somewhere in the past few minutes, Pauline had grown far more interested in provoking the duke.

For all his devil-may-care posturing, it would seem the devil did care about
something
. In the hours since they’d left Spindle Cove, a strange cloud of melancholy had gathered about him. She wanted to dispel it. Not out of charity, precisely—but because his brooding made her so acutely aware of her own sadness.

She was already sick with missing home.

She wondered if Daniela had stopped crying yet. Would she be able to sleep alone in the loft? Perhaps their mother would climb up to soothe her after Father had fallen asleep, bringing a dish of blancmange.

Pauline would tell herself that was the case. More comforting that way. When she returned home independently wealthy, her sister would have a great bowlful of blancmange, every single night.

Speaking of food . . . On the table before her, the inn’s servers spread a veritable banquet. Her stomach rumbled. She’d scarcely eaten all day, and she’d never been served a meal like this.

“Miss Simms,” the duchess said. “Tell me what dishes you see on the table.”

Pauline eyed her suspiciously, wondering what sort of test the older lady had in mind. The meal set before them was composed of a great many dishes, but none were exotic. She could name them all, easily.

“Ham,” she answered. “Beef and Yorkshire pudding. Roasted chicken. Peas, boiled potatoes, and some sort of soup—”

The duchess rapped the table. “Wrong. All of it, wrong.”

“All of it?” Pauline blinked at the unquestionably ham-shaped object on the platter before her. If it wasn’t a ham, what on earth could it be?

“It’s
h
am, Miss Simms.” The duchess weighed heavily on the
H
. “Ham, not ’am. Yorkshire puddin
g
, not ‘puddin’.’ Boiled potatoes, not ‘biled.’ And we eat roasted fowl, not vulgar chicken. After dinner, I’ll give you some elocution exercises. Very useful in limbering the lips and tongue.”

Well, that sounded . . . perfectly dreadful. For now, Pauline was far more interested in using her lips and tongue to eat. She reached for the carving knife embedded in the
h
am and used it to draw the platter toward her plate.

Rap, rap.

The duchess again.

“What is it I’ve done now?” Pauline asked. “I didn’t say a word.”

“It was your actions,” the duchess replied, sending a glance toward the ham. “A duchess does not serve herself, Miss Simms.”

“Very well.” Pauline turned to the server. “You, there. Would you mind—”

Rap, rap.

The older woman cut her a look. “A duchess does not ask to be served, either.”

Pauline regarded her empty plate with despair. “Then how, pray tell, does a duchess eat?”

“Observe me.”

Pauline raised her head and watched.

“Are you regarding me very closely?” the duchess said.

“Yes, your grace.”

“I shall only do this the once. A duchess need never repeat herself, you understand.”

By this point Pauline was sure there was more steam between her ears than beneath the domed cover of the soup tureen. The duchess was like a walking, talking copy of
Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies
. Pauline began to understand just what the Spindle Cove ladies were escaping when they came for holidays by the sea.

“I’m watching,” she said tightly.

The duchess slid one eye—or at least, it seemed that way—to the waiting footman. Then she tilted her head by a nearly imperceptible degree, nodding once in the direction of the food.

The servants leapt forward and began serving food onto their plates.

“Praise be,” Pauline muttered.

“Thank you, Simms,” the duke replied, reaching for the carving knife. “I believe we will let that sentiment serve as table grace.”

“The servants bring the vegetables, soup, fish, and all other dishes,” the duchess explained. “The gentlemen at the table carve the meats.”

As if in demonstration, the duke placed a thick, rosy slice of ham on Pauline’s plate.

“Given your former employment,” the duchess said, “I should think you would know all this.”

“Etiquette is never strictly enforced in Spindle Cove,” Pauline said. “And it’s only ladies at the tables, anyhow. If they waited on a gentleman to serve them, they’d starve away.”

“I can see we have a great deal of work ahead. What about your accomplishments? Do you sing, Miss Simms?”

“No.”

“Play any instrument?”

“None.”

“Have you any languages? Can you draw, sketch, paint, embroider, or produce any evidence of a ladylike finishing whatsoever?”

“I’m afraid not, your grace. I’m perfectly wrong for the position of duchess.” She threw Halford a cheeky half smile.

But instead of smiling back, he gave her a look of cool displeasure. She didn’t understand that look. It rattled her.

“Miss Simms,” the duchess went on, “there is no magical combination of qualities that will make for a successful duchess. Beauty is useful, but not essential. Wit is desirable as well. Mind that I said wit, not cleverness. Cleverness is like rouge—liberal application makes a woman look common and desperate. Wit is knowing how to apply it.”

The duke reclined in his chair. He seemed to have abandoned his own meal in favor of fixing Pauline with that intense stare.

She gathered an obscenely large forkful of potatoes and stuffed it into her mouth. She couldn’t fathom the reason for his sudden broodiness. Wasn’t this precisely what he’d hired her to do? He wanted her to be ill-mannered, didn’t he?

“Lastly,” the duchess continued, “the most important quality any Duchess of Halford needs is this: phlegm.”

“Phlegm?” Pauline echoed, choking down her food. “It’s forbidden to speak of hunger at the dinner table, but it’s fine to talk about phlegm?” She poked at a bit of ham. “If it’s phlegm you want, I can give you that. I learned how to spit with the farm boys. The trick is to start far back in your throat and—”

The duchess halted, just as she was about to spoon some asparagus soup into her mouth. She looked at the rich green broth, then set down her spoon.

“Not that kind of phlegm, Miss Simms. I refer to self-assurance. Unflappability. Aplomb. The ability to remain calm, no matter what occurs. Never underestimate the power of phlegm.”

Ah, so she meant the way she and the duke had stared one another down that afternoon in the Bull and Blossom—neither of them willing to show a hint of weakness. The way they inspected the entirety of the farm cottage in a glance, sweeping a gaze around the rooms without even turning their heads.

The duchess cut her beef with delicate sawing motions. “Phlegm will be our greatest challenge, I suspect.”

“I’m sure you’re right on that score.”

Whenever someone hurt Daniela—or anyone she loved—that thorny vine of rage blossomed in her chest. She didn’t suppose she’d ever be able to suppress the response, nor did she wish to try.

“What good is rank and wealth,” she asked, “if you can’t even own your emotions? Aren’t the Quality permitted to feel anything?”

The duchess replied, “Oh, we are permitted to
feel
. But we must never appear to be
ruled
by our feelings.”

“I see. It would be unbearably common to sit at this table and just openly discuss our emotions about, say, love and marriage.”

“Of course.”

“So much more refined to kidnap one’s son, then instigate a week-long farce with a serving girl. Is that it?”

She thought surely the duke would smile at that, but no. His gaze was now burning into her skin, like sunlight concentrated through a lens.

“I’m not sure I care for any phlegm.” She took another bite and purposely spoke around it. “In fact, I’m sure I don’t want it.”

“For the last time, Miss Simms, this isn’t a dish on the table to be taken or refused. If you’re going to learn to be a duchess, phlegm is a requirement.”

“Then I suppose we’ll see who buckles first.”

“I never buckle. A duchess has people to do the buckling for her.”

Pauline shook her head. This week would be a challenge—but an amusing one, at least. The duchess did possess a sense of humor. However, the older woman underestimated Pauline, if she thought she could cow her.

Oh, she knew the Halford pride was strong. In the carriage, she’d listened to the family provenance. At
length
. No doubt a duchess born to generations of wealth, married into an even longer line of nobility, would believe herself to be indomitable. But Pauline had earned her stubbornness, fighting hard for it at every turn. On the other side of this week lay the prospect of a new, independent life. She wouldn’t be swayed from that goal. Not even by a duchess.

Come
h
ell or
h
igh society, she would earn that one thousand pounds.

Eventually they all settled down to the business of eating. The servants removed the savory dishes from the table and replaced them with a variety of fruits and cheeses. Grapes, plums, nectarines. Pauline spied a dish of sherry trifle that had her mouth watering—layers of raspberries, sponge, whipped cream, all visible through the glass dish.

And then, to this overwhelming abundance of sweets, the footman set before her one more: a molded sculpture of blancmange.

The breath left her body, leaving only a keen, sharp ache.

Oh, Danny.

The wave of homesickness swamped her with such violent force, she couldn’t bear it. Not a moment longer. She pushed back from the table and fled the room, dashing into the stairwell.

This was a mistake. She had to leave. She had to go home. How many miles had they traveled? Fifteen? Twenty? She had a full belly, and the weather was fine. If she started now, she could walk home by dawn.

“Simms?” The duke’s voice echoed down the narrow stairwell, arresting her on the landing. “Are you ill?”

“No,” she said, hastily dabbing at her eyes before she turned to him. “No, I’m well. I’m sorry for leaving the table so abruptly.”

Slow footfalls carried him down the stairs. “Don’t be. It was the cap on a sterling display of poor etiquette. Well done, you. But my mother was concerned for your health.”

“I’m fine, truly. It was just the blancmange.”

“The blancmange?” He frowned. “I find it revolting myself, but the stuff almost never drives me to tears.”

She shook her head. “It’s my sister’s favorite. I’ve been missing her all day, of course. But when that blancmange appeared before me, it all just . . .”

“Hit you,” he finished for her, coming to join her on the landing. “All at once. Like a landslide.”

She nodded. “Exactly so. For a moment, it was like the air went to mud. I couldn’t even—”

“Breathe,” he said. “I know the sensation.”

“Do you?”

Perhaps he did, she thought, surveying the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and the weariness that pooled like shadows beneath. She could believe he was intimately acquainted with this lonely, desolate feeling—perhaps even more so than she.

“Give a moment,” he said. “It will pass.”

The stairwell was suddenly very warm, and very small. The walls seemed to push them closer together. She was aware of his looming size, his male heat. His powerful good looks. And that rich, lingering hint of his musky cologne.

“Perhaps we should go back,” she said.

“Wait. You have something”—he touched a fingertip to the corner of his own mouth—“just here. A stray bit of sugar, I think.”

She cringed. How embarrassing.

She extended her tongue and ran it slowly from one corner of her mouth to the other, then back again. “Better?”

He blinked. “No.”

She raised her hand to dab at her cheek.

“Stop. Just let me.” He reached one hand forward, bracing the side of his palm against her cheek and brushing the corner of her mouth with his thumb.

Mercy. She was the farthest from home she’d ever been in her life, adrift in a vast, lonely sea of emotion. And his touch against her bare skin, so warm and assured . . . It was like someone throwing her a rope.

A connection.

He skimmed a light touch under her bottom lip. “You,” he said softly, “have quite the mouth on you.”

“So I’ve been told. It’s my worst fault, I think.”

“I’m not sure I’d agree.”

She forced a cheerful tone. “I do have many faults to choose from. Impertinence, stubbornness, pride. I curse too much, and I’m terribly clumsy.”

“Well.” His touch stilled, and he tilted her face to his. “This week, all those faults make you perfect.”

He
would
go and say something wonderful.

She tried to smile. It didn’t quite work. Her emotions were chaotic, swinging back and forth between caution and thrill, and a mad voice inside her kept foolishly insisting that she needed to keep her lips very, very still . . .

Because this man was about to kiss them.

Pauline had been kissed a time or two. She knew how a man’s face changed as he was preparing to do it. The small lines around his mouth disappeared, and his head made a subtle tip to one side. His eyelids grew heavy, lowering just enough to reveal a dark fringe of lashes.