Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove 4)

Pauline gave a short, muted chirp of a whistle. It echoed back to her from the coffered ceiling. Goodness, the room was a cavern.

This one bedchamber could swallow her family’s cottage whole.

And this was a guest room. Not even their best, she’d imagine. What must the other chambers be like?

On a side table, she spied a tea service, left over from when she’d arrived. Pauline supposed she should have rung to have it removed, but now she was glad she hadn’t. A sip of cold tea with lemon might soothe her nerves.

She tugged the counterpane free and wrapped it about her shoulders before sliding from the bed.

“Oof!”

It was a long way down. She landed with a thud, tangling in the counterpane and tumbling to the floor.

She wasn’t hurt. Even this carpet was softer than her mattress at home.

Ruefully, she blinked at the little staircase toward the foot of the bed. She’d forgotten climbing the thing earlier that evening. Imagine, a staircase just for getting into bed. The duke’s own bed must be so piled with feather beds, he probably needed six or eight steps. He probably lay drowning in satin bedsheets and downy pillows, cloaked in a nightshirt of regal purple velvet. The idea made her laugh.

A picture bloomed in her mind, crisp as daylight and all too real. The Duke of Halford, masculine limbs ranging across a wide bed. No toffish velvet. No flight of stairs. No swallowing maw of feather beds. Just rumpled dark hair, biceps flexed around a pillow, and soft white linen, luminous in the moonlight, tangled about his hips. Or maybe lower, just hugging the curve of a tight, muscled arse.

She tried to shove the image away. No luck.

That sealed it. Cold tea or no, now she’d never be able to sleep.

She picked herself up off the floor, gathered the counterpane tight about her shoulders as a wrap, and ventured out into the corridor.

It was darker here. Pauline stood still for a moment, trying to recall the housekeeper’s sequence of turns. She’d tried to pay attention, but she’d been so overwhelmed and tired. Not to mention awed by the rows of ancient portraits, in some places stacked three high. All those scores of illustrious ancestors.

The girls back home would say this place was surely crawling with ghosts.

Somewhere above her, timber creaked. A cool draft swirled over her neck. Pauline swallowed hard.

Left. She was sure they’d come from the left.

She made her way slowly in that direction, keeping one hand out to trail her fingers along the wall. Every dozen steps, her fingertips skipped from wallpaper to the beveled wooden surface of a door. One, two, three . . . She counted six before pausing. She ought to have reached the stairway by now.

A sudden flare of light stopped her in her paces. Stopped her heart as well. Which ghostly Duke of Halford Past was that? Ducking, she raised her hand against the blinding flame and squinted through splayed fingers.

“Simms?”

She found the eighth—and only living—Duke of Halford, haunting his own house.

He held a lamp in one hand. With the other he yanked a door closed. She heard the scrape of a key in the lock.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, pocketing the key.

His angry tone surprised her. “Good evening to you, too, your grace. My journey to London was fine, thank you. ”

He was having none of it. “Why are you snooping around my private rooms?”

“I didn’t realize they were your private rooms. I wasn’t snooping. I took a wrong turning, that’s all. I’ll go back the other way. ” She turned to leave.

He caught her by the arm, swiveling her back to face him.

“Did my mother put you up to this?”

Pauline didn’t even know how to answer. Put her up to what? Sleeplessness? Wrong turnings in a vast, darkened house?

“Are you looking to pilfer something? Answer me with one word. ”

“No. ” She drew up her spine.

“Then explain yourself. You’re out of bed when you should be sleeping, in a corridor you have no reason to visit. ” He held the lamp high and examined her. “And you have a guilty look on your face. ”

“Well, you have an arrogant, wrong-headed look on yours. ”

That was a bit of a lie. The lamplight bleached the stark planes of his face and splashed weary shadows under his eyes. The rich brown of his irises was overwhelmed by cold, empty black. He didn’t look especially arrogant, not right now.

Whatever he’d been doing in that locked room, it was private. She’d interrupted him in an unguarded moment. And because a big, strong man like him couldn’t possibly admit to having an unguarded moment, he was going to make her twist and squirm.

She sighed. “Dukes and their problems. ”

“I don’t appreciate your impertinence, Simms. ”

“Well, that’s bollocks. ”

He drew her closer, and her heart began to race. Her bare foot grazed his. The shock of it traveled all through her.

“My impertinence is the reason I’m here, remember? It’s why you chose me from a room of well-bred ladies. Because I’m perfectly wrong. Everything you’d never want in a woman. ”

He raked a gaze down her body. “I wouldn’t say that. ”

The hard bob of his Adam’s apple caught her gaze, dragged it downward. Her attention settled in the dark, chiseled notch at the base of his throat.

Her lungs chose that moment to go out on labor strike. She held her breath so long, she went a bit dizzy.

“Send me home tomorrow, if you like. But you’ll find nothing’s vanished with me. I wasn’t stealing. Even if I were considering it—and I’m not—I’d know better than to try it my first night here. I’ve met your housekeeper. I’ve no doubt she keeps a list of every last drawer pull in every last closet and takes inventory on the regular. If I meant to steal, I’d wait for the last moment. So if you won’t give me credit for honesty, at least give me credit for cleverness. ”

“I’ll give you credit for nothing until I hear the truth. ”

“I’ve told you the truth. ” She pulled the counterpane tight about her shoulders. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d go down to the libr—”

“To the library,” he finished for her. Sarcasm dried his words to brittle husks. “Really, that’s what you mean to tell me. You were looking for the library. ”

Why did he sound so incredulous?

“Yes,” she answered. But at this point all she wanted was to return to her bedchamber without further interrogation. Her sleeplessness would surely be cured. This man was exhausting.

“Very well. ” His grip tightened on her arm as he led her down the corridor. “If it’s the library you’re searching out, I’ll take you there myself. ”

This wasn’t working how Griff had planned. He thought he’d girded himself against temptation.

He hadn’t counted on temptation herself materializing in a darkened corridor just outside his rooms, well after the hour of midnight. Her hair unbound yet again. Cloaked in her bedclothes, like a woman freshly tumbled. Skulking around his private chambers and looking even more fetching by lamplight than she had in afternoon sun.

Surely it was a trick of the shadows. Her eyelashes could not measure the length of his thumbnail. It was an impossibility.

Perhaps they grew longer with every lie she told.

Really. The library.

Of all the trite, clichéd excuses to pull out of her ear.

He marched her counterpane-swaddled self down the corridor, then down the staircase and around a bend. When they reached the correct set of doors, he flung them both open wide for effect.

“There you are. The library. ” He handed her the lamp.

Blinking, she moved forward into the room, using the light to lead the way.

“Have your choice of books,” he said. “I’ll wait. ”

She stood in the center of the room, turning slowly. Awestruck, no doubt. Even he would admit it was an impressive collection. As it ought to be, having been amassed over a dozen generations. The room was two stories high and hexagonal in shape, due to some fit of whimsy on the fifth duke’s part. He’d been an amateur architect, in addition to a naturalist and several other lofty things. One side of the hexagon served as the entryway, but bookshelves covered each of the other five, from floor to soaring ceiling.

“Go on, then,” he prodded.

“Am I truly allowed to touch them?” she whispered.

“But of course. Someone ought to. ”

Still, she stood huddled in that twisted counterpane, face tilted to the rafters. “I don’t even know where to start. ”

“What sort of books are your preference?” he asked, not bothering to hide the smugness in his tone. “Are you a great reader of philosophy? History? The sciences?”

“I like verses mostly. But I make no claims of being a great reader at all, your grace. ”

So. She admitted it that easily.

He crossed his arms. “Yet you claimed to be looking for the library. ”

“Yes. I wanted to see the books, not read them. I hoped to have a look through the collection. Perhaps make a list. ”

At last she ventured forward and ran her finger down the spine of a slender leather volume. She didn’t even take it from the shelf, just touched it—gingerly, as though it might disappear into mist.

“How are they organized, do you know?”

“Not really. I suspect it’s loosely by subject. My grandfather invented some system of classification and made a catalogue, but I’ve never troubled to understand it. I don’t use the library often. ”

She raised the lamp and turned to him, blinking in disbelief. “You mean you live in this house, with all these books”—she waved the lamp in an arc—“and you never read them?”

He shrugged with nonchalance, belying the sore spot she’d poked. “I am an embarrassment to my forebears. I know this well. ”

“How much do books cost, anyhow?”

He gave up on drawing connections between these questions of hers. The hour was too damned late. “That would depend on many factors, I suppose. The nature of the book, the quality of the binding. Novels might be had for a crown or two, whereas a nine-volume set on the history of Rome . . . ”

She waved off his answer. “I don’t believe I want histories of Rome. ”

“The Romans weren’t as boring as you’d think. ” History lectures were one of the few parts of his schooling he’d enjoyed.

“If you say so. But I doubt even the most bookish of Spindle Cove ladies will want to read nine volumes about it on holiday. ”

Griff watched as she nimbly climbed the rolling book stair, lamp in hand. She hung the lamp on a hook created for just that purpose and tilted her head to peruse the titles of the shelved books. Her hair fell to one side in a shimmering cascade, like poured brandy. She had a lovely neck—a smooth, graceful ivory slope.

“You mean to take books back to Spindle Cove?” he asked.

“As many as I can. You see, that’s how I mean to spend my thousand pounds—or part of it, anyway. I’m going to . . . Well, never mind. ”

“What do you mean, never mind? You’re going to spend your money on books and then . . . ?”

She sighed. “If I tell you, you’ll laugh. And if you laugh, I’ll hate you forever. ”

“I won’t laugh. ”

She gave him a dubious look.

“Very well, I might laugh. But you’ll only hate me for a day or two. ”

“I plan to take books home and open a circulating library. ”

“A circulating library,” he repeated—without laughing . . . noticeably.

“Yes. I’ll rent out books to ladies visiting on holiday. And since I’ve little experience with libraries myself, I hoped to glean some ideas from yours. Do you believe me now, that I was out of bed with honest purpose—not with snooping or thievery in mind?”