Any Duchess Will Do

Deep down, beneath the overworked, sharp-tongued serving girl, he saw a woman who craved the poetry in life. She’d never been given anything—not even favorable odds. But there was a liveliness in her spirit that fed on simple possibility—soaked it up like a wick and shone the brighter for it.

And tonight? Griff tilted his head westward and regarded the setting sun. Less than an hour from now her world was going to explode with brilliant possibility.

He wanted nothing more than to be near her when it did.

Pauline found Vauxhall rather overwhelming. And that was before they even entered the place.

When they disembarked on the far side of the river, her stomach took several moments to cease bobbing. They ascended a long flight of stairs, leading up the riverbank to a grand entrance gate. The higher they climbed, the louder the music grew.

Cor, she thought. She didn’t say it aloud, not tonight. But it was the constant thought in her mind as they made their way through the gate and into the gardens proper.

Cor, cor, cor, cor, cor.

She didn’t know nature could be tamed to this degree. The greens were perfectly flat. The shrubs were pruned in squat shapes. The trees were planted in straight lines.

Stately colonnades ran in various directions, marking covered pathways. At the end of each aisle vast paintings were hung. From this distance she couldn’t quite make them out. She glimpsed a white orchestra pavilion in the form of a giant seashell, with carvings and embellishments all over it.

Suddenly, she realized her mouth had been hanging agape for the past few minutes. And the duke had noticed.

He gave her an amused look.

“It’s growing dark,” she said. “Should we head toward the pavilion?”

“Not yet,” he said, catching her arm. He guided her off the main walk, into a darkening grove of trees away from the colonnades.

“What is it?”

“Something is about to happen, and I want you to see it. I want to be with you when you see it.”

She popped up on her toes, craning her neck to look in all directions. “What is it we’re waiting to see?”

“It’s starting,” he said, turning her head. “Look.”

Pauline looked. She caught sight of a glowing orb. One single ball of light, hanging in the distance.

She blinked, and there were two of them.

And then ten.

And then . . . thousands.

A warm glow spread through the gardens like a wave of light, touching here a red lamp, there a blue or green. Breathless with delight, she tilted her head back. The trees above them were strung with lamps on every branch. The glow traveled from one to the other, and before long the entire grove was illuminated. The effect was similar to standing beneath a stained-glass church window at the sunniest part of the day. Except this was night, and all the colors had a luminous richness. The lamps were like a thousand jewels, hanging from every tree and carved stone archway.

Pauline couldn’t even come up with words. She laughed and clapped a hand to her cheek. “How do they do it?” she asked. “How do they light them all at once?”

“There’s a system of fuses,” he explained. “They only need to light a few, and the spark travels to all the lamps.”

“It’s magical,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, softly. “I think it is, rather.”

She turned to the duke, giddy with the beauty of it. He wasn’t looking around at the thousands of lit globes hanging from the trees.

He was watching her.

A shiver passed over her bare shoulders. She crossed her arms to warm herself.

“Let me,” he said, placing his gloved hands on her upper arms, then rubbing up and down.

The supple leather slid over her bare skin, warm and buttery. It was a lovely gesture, but it wasn’t doing a dratted thing to cure her of gooseflesh.

His gaze caressed her mouth. “Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”

“No,” she insisted, hoping her words weren’t drowned by the mad thumping of her heart. “No, I promise I can do this.”

“Halford!” The voice carried to them through the glen. She turned to spy Lord Delacre waving at them from the colonnade. “Come along, then. We’ve a booth over this way.”

“That’s my cue,” she said, giving Griff a wink. “Time for me to earn my thousand pounds. Prepare for disaster.”

They made their way to the colonnade and found the booth Del had reserved. Pauline slipped away to mingle with the group. Griff watched her laugh and joke, sip champagne and devour slice after slice of wafer-thin ham.

For his part, Griff stood to the side, nipping brandy from his pocket flask and finally coming to grips with a painful truth. He needed to find some new friends.

Martin had his Drury Lane songstress in tow, and Delacre had taken up with that widow again. A few well-dressed prostitutes hovered at the edges of the group, hoping for their glasses to be filled before they wandered away. Without even making an effort, Pauline was the most refined woman in the booth. If she made any ill-informed remarks about the Corn Laws, no one would care.

All the halfway decent fellows who’d once been part of their circle had drifted away in recent years—married, come into their titles, settled down. Griff would have liked to drift away, too—without the marrying part—but it was harder to leave a circle when you were the center of it.

“When are you opening the Grange this year, Hal?” Martin asked, one arm draped about his mistress’s powdered shoulders. “Ruby here fancies a holiday in the country. She’ll bring friends. Quite friendly friends.”

The painted blonde gave him a coy promise of a smile.

In years past, Griff had spent the colder months at Winterset Grange. The house was the first thing he’d purchased after reaching his majority. Even with six family properties, he’d felt the need for a place of his own. Other men had bachelor apartments. He was a duke; he had a bachelor estate. There, for several years after leaving university, he and his Oxford friends had taken the country house party tradition to new heights—or lows—of dissipation.

Always the generous host, Griff famously opened his door to any and all guests—especially the pretty, female variety. Days were for sleeping. Nights were for gambling, drinking, and other vices of the flesh.

The Grange had become such an institution that when Griff failed to open the house last winter, rumors of his insolvency had circulated.

He hadn’t been broke, of course. Just broken.

“You are opening the Grange this year, aren’t you?” Martin asked.

“I hadn’t decided,” Griff replied. “Perhaps not.”

“Oh, come along, Hal. You must. Last winter I was forced to go home to Shropshire. A crashing bore, I tell you. The old man’s after me to join the Church.”

“Second sons and their problems.”

Griff wasn’t interested in opening his house just so Martin and Delacre and every other overgrown adolescent in England could come laze barefoot on his furniture and organize drunken billiard tournaments that lasted three days and three nights straight. It had been good fun when they were youths, but now . . . He supposed his patience and his generosity had run out.

Or been redirected.

He could see himself opening that house for one reason only—and her name was Pauline.

As soon as the idea flickered through his skull, his mind pounced on it. He knew she had her dream of opening a bookshop in Spindle Cove. But perhaps she dreamed of that simply because she couldn’t conceive of more.

He could give her more.

She turned to him then, as though she could feel the force of these new, visceral intentions. Sidling her way through the crowded booth, she made her way to his side.

“Lord Delacre has asked me to dance,” she whispered. “I haven’t the faintest idea of the steps. If I time my stumble at just the right moment, I think I can take us both into the punch bowl. Will you give me a ten-pound bonus?”

He smiled despite himself. “Twenty.”

He watched her as she drifted away on Del’s arm, headed out to join the colorful whirl of dancers.

Oh, he couldn’t marry her. He couldn’t marry at all. But he could take care of her, see that she never struggled again. At the age of twenty-three, she’d worked enough for a lifetime. She shouldn’t have to toil anymore. She deserved to be spooned delicacies, pampered with the softest linens, waited on by a dozen maids, and bathed in deep copper tubs.

Delacre swung her through the dance. In that blush-pink gown, her light figure was a dream. He hoped she was enjoying herself, at least a little. In a more just world, she would have been given her own coming-out ball, with dozens of admirers queuing for her hand. Then again, he could admire her enough for dozens of men. He couldn’t take his eyes from her now.

The dancers turned a corner, and Griff caught a glimpse of her face.

Damn.

He recognized that expression she was wearing. He didn’t like it.

Before he’d even decided on a course, his feet were in motion. He had to get to her, immediately.

Something was wrong.

Chapter Seventeen

“How long have you known the duke?” Lord Delacre led her capably through the dance. He was so elegant a dancer, she scarcely had the opportunity to misstep.

“Only this week,” Pauline answered truthfully. “And you, my lord?”

“We were at Eton together. Close friends ever since.” He fixed her with an unreadable gaze. “We have a pact, you know.”

“A pact?”

“Yes. A pact, blood-sworn on our crossed blades. To protect one another in the face of all threats—treachery, betrayal . . .”

“Death?” Pauline finished.

“No, worse. Marriage.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “How old were you when you swore this pact?”

“Nineteen. But it never lapses, you know. It automatically renews.”

“I see.” She tried to look thoughtful. “Lord Delacre, if a duke wishes to avoid matrimony, isn’t he capable of protecting himself?”

He shook his head. “You really are new in London, aren’t you? A man like Halford needs a trusted friend to watch his back at all times. The ton is rife with fortune-hunters. And as fortune-hunting goes, his fortune is the elusive white tiger’s pelt. The greatest prize to be had. There are women in this town who’d stoop to poisoned darts and mantraps just to bag him.” He arched one brow and swept a playful look around the crowd.

His gaze returned to her. “You never know when they’ll strike.”

“So you think I’m one of those women,” Pauline concluded. “A fortune-hunter like the rest. My lord, let me assure you—I have no designs on the duke. No sharpened arrows or slingshot in my reticule. I possess no qualities that could remotely tempt a man like Halford into marriage.”

Where was that punch bowl anyway? She didn’t feel like explaining her bargain with Griff to Delacre, but acting it out might serve the same purpose. Surely he wouldn’t view her as a marital threat once he was drenched in arrack punch.

“You’re aware of Halford’s reputation, I hope,” Delacre said. “Fling your favors at him all you like, but he won’t marry you.”

“What makes you think I’d ‘fling my favors’ at anyone?”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Simms,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t intend any such implication.”

Liar. He’d meant exactly what he’d said. As though he could look at her—without having any knowledge of her humble, common origins—and just know she was that sort of girl.

What was worse, he was right, to a point. In her youth, she hadn’t guarded her “favors” as closely as she should have. But Griff knew about that, and he never made her feel lesser for it.