Any Duchess Will Do

“I might weep.”

“I’m already weeping.” She dabbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“I . . .” He bent over, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Jesus. I think I’ll be sick.”

“Here.” She held out her bonnet. “Use this.”

He stared at it.

“Really. It’s so ugly. You could only improve it.”

His eyes met hers, wounded and dark. “I can’t make you leave me?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Simms.” As he looked away, he pressed a fist to his mouth, as though to suppress a flood of emotion.

But she could sense there were cracks in the dam.

She moved forward on the seat until their knees met in the center of the coach. “You’re safe,” she whispered. “In this space, with me—you’re safe. Whatever happens in this cab will remain here. I will go home tomorrow night. No one need ever know.”

With a curse and the swiftness of desperation, he reached for her, grasping her by the hips and lowering his head to her lap. His hands fisted roughly in the fabric of her gown.

At last, with his face buried in her skirts, he released a sound. A growling, razor-edged howl of anger and anguish. It built from his gut and erupted through his body. She could feel the force of it sending tremors all through his joints—and hers. His fingers tugged at her, drawing her closer, holding her more tightly.

Every hair on her body seemed to lift on end. The sheer violence of his emotion terrified her. Her instinct was to shrink from it, but she beat down the fear.

She laid one hand flat on his shuddering back and touched the other to his hair.

Though her heart yearned to soothe him with crooning words, she resisted the urge. There was no good in telling him she understood, or that everything would be all right. It wasn’t true. She couldn’t possibly understand his loss—the sheer agony racking his body was beyond her comprehension—and everything would not be all right. He’d lost someone who could never be replaced, and he’d been holding in the sorrow much too long.

“God.” His voice was muffled by her skirts. “God damn it. God damn it.”

She wrapped her arms about his quaking shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and embracing him as tightly she could.

They stayed like that as the coach rattled on through streets and neighborhoods she’d never seen before and would never visit again.

Pauline had never dreamed how much a father could love his child—her own upbringing hadn’t given her a clue. But Griff showed her today. If one took every battered hope in a grieving father’s heart and laid them all down end to end—they could stretch across London.

Mile after mile after mile.

Sometime later, emptied of all that pent-up emotion, he lay sprawled with her on her seat.

“Tell me about her,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

“She was exactly this big.” He touched the tip of his longest finger, then the crook of his elbow. “Her hair was like little wisps of spun copper.”

“She must have taken after you.”

“My hair is dark.”

“But your beard is ginger when it grows in.” She grazed his cheek with her fingertip. “I noticed it that first day. Did she have your fine brown eyes as well?”

“I don’t know. They were that cloudy blue-gray, but the midwife said they’d darken.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “She rarely opened her eyes while I held her. I don’t think she ever saw me at all.”

“She knew you were there.” Pauline laid a hand to his chest. “She could feel these strong arms holding her. She would have known your voice. And your cologne. You have the most wonderfully comforting scent. I don’t think I’d have ever left Spindle Cove with you if you hadn’t smelled so marvelous. She probably kept her eyes closed because she felt so safe.”

He let out a deep breath. “I was so happy when she was born a girl.”

“Truly? I thought men want sons.”

Her own father had wanted sons. When he received daughters instead, he’d never recovered from the disappointment. He even refused to give them names other than those he’d chosen for boys. It was only by the grace of the old vicar’s pen that she and Daniela weren’t named Paul and Daniel.

“I wanted a girl,” he said. “An illegitimate son would have had a harder time of it. He could never have been my heir, and I would have worried he’d feel lesser, no matter what attempts I made to be a good father. But a daughter . . . a daughter, I would have been free to spoil and cherish. I had so many plans. You can’t imagine.”

She bit her lip, grief-stricken for him. “Oh, I can imagine.”

“It wasn’t just the nursery room. I had birthdays, holidays, outings all planned out. Nursemaids already hired.”

“Had you chosen her finishing school yet?”

A wry smile tipped his mouth. “I’d started investigating possibilities.”

“I’m sure you had.” It eased her heart to see him smiling. Even a little.

He closed his eyes. “She lived less than a week. It’s been the better part of a year. How can it be that I still mourn her this much?”

“I can’t pretend to understand how love works.” Pauline sifted her fingers through his hair, smoothing a touch over his brow. “How many days have I known you? Not many more. And I doubt I’ll ever go a day without thinking of you, even if I should live to see ninety. I . . .” She couldn’t help it. “I love you so.”

His eyes flew open.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a poor time to say it.”

“When would be a better time?” He rose to a sitting position next to her.

“I don’t know.” She knotted her hands in her lap. “Probably never. But I’m not good at hiding these things, and you deserve to hear it. I fell desperately in love with you this week.”

He pushed a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand. We had an agreement, Simms. How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. Vauxhall, the bookshop, those first kisses in your library . . . When I try to understand how it began, I go back and back. I don’t know how it started, I just—” She made herself look at him. “I just feel rather sure it’s not going to end. Ever.”

“Pauline.” He cupped her face.

“Still, I can’t be sorry for it. I won’t be. I know we have to part, and my heart will break. But even if it’s aching, at least I’ll always know it’s there.” She gave him a weak smile. “And the naughty books will make so much more sense.”

His mouth thinned to a solemn line. He inhaled slowly. Then he raised his fist and banged on the coach top to signal the driver. “That’s it. We’re going home.”

“Because you’re unhappy?”

“No.” He gave her a look that said, Isn’t it obvious? “Because lovemaking in a moving carriage isn’t all it’s purported to be.”

“Oh.”

He hauled her into his lap and swept her into a passionate kiss.

“Pauline.” His voice was a dark murmur against her lips. “My heart, my dearest love. We are done with this cab. To do every wicked, delicious thing I mean to do to you, I need a bed. And hours.”

Chapter Twenty-three

There was no denying it. Despite a week’s worth of duchess training, Pauline remained a farm girl at heart. Once again she woke before first light.

Griff lay tangled with her, snoring softly. His dark head lay heavy on her breast. She wished she could let him sleep all morning. After his efforts in this bed last night, he’d certainly earned his rest.

But all too soon it was dawn. She could hear servants stirring on the lower level of the house.

“Griff,” she whispered. She teased her fingers through the dark, tousled waves of his hair. “Griff, I have to go. It’s nearly morning.”

He clutched her tight about the middle. “It can’t be morning. I won’t let it be morning.”

She smiled. “I don’t think even the Duke of Halford can make time stand still.”

“He can try.”

He pulled her down and yanked the bedsheet over them both, making a sort of tent for two. The early morning light shone through the linen, painting their naked bodies with a warm, honey-gold glow.

Pauline ceased worrying about what would happen later that day, and for the rest of her life. She was here now. In his arms. His touch could make her forget everything.

Except the muffled crash and scrape of a grate being cleaned downstairs. That was hard to ignore.

“Is the door locked?” she asked.

He made a nod of confirmation as he tongued her nipple. “It’s locked.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” His hand delved between her thighs.

She put a hand to his chest, holding him back. “Please go check. I’ll feel safer.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Well, then.” He rose up on his haunches. “I won’t have you feeling anything less than safe in my bed.”

With a quick kiss to her brow, he rose from the mattress and made his way toward the door. Pauline rolled onto her side, watching him.

As he covered the distance in easy strides, she admired the long, lean muscles of his calves and the sculpted tone of his shoulders and back. And his arse . . . Lord above. The world had not seen such a perfectly formed arse since the sixth day of Creation. His buttocks were taut, rounded domes of pure muscle. As he walked, tantalizing hollows appeared on each cheek, alternating with every step.

Right, left, right . . .

He reached the door and rattled the latch. “Locked,” he confirmed aloud.

Then he turned around—praise be—and began the walk back.

If he was arousing to view from behind, he was devastating in the approach.

“Wait,” she said. “Stop there.”

He halted. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s just . . . I’ve lied to you about something.”

His dark eyebrows gathered like storm clouds. “What?”

“I wasn’t truly that concerned about the door latch,” she confessed. “I just wanted to watch you walk across the room.”

He laughed, startled. His abdominal muscles tensed in a delicious manner.

She reclined on her elbow and sighed languidly. “You’re so beautiful. If ‘beautiful’ is the right word to use for a man.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t often compliment naked men.” He tugged at his ear in a self-conscious gesture. “I’m starting to feel like a display in the British Museum.”

“You belong in a museum.” She shook her head, amazed. “How do you stay so fit? You’re a nobleman, but that body puts farmhands to shame.”

He scrubbed a palm over his washboard of a belly. “I just stay active. It’s important to me. One winter at Oxford, I caught a pneumonia. Lay sick in bed for months and nearly died. It was a difficult time.”

Pauline could imagine it would have been. Not only for him, but for his parents. Griff was their only child remaining of four, and if something had happened to him . . .

He confirmed her suspicions. “I was already a disappointment to them. But it seemed the least I could do was stay alive, you know? As soon as I was able, I worked hard to recover my strength.” He stretched and flexed one arm. “Not only strength, but balance, reflexes. And I’ve tried to stay fit ever since. Lately, it’s mostly the fencing.”

She smiled. “All that thrusting has served you well.”

“Fencing’s not only about the thrusting.” He drew closer. “It’s about quickness of mind and body. Flexibility. Concentration. Strategy.”