Any Duchess Will Do

“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 ham, Miss Simms.” The duchess weighed heavily on the H. “Ham, not ’am. Yorkshire pudding, 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 ham 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 hell or high 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.”