Any Duchess Will Do (4 page)
The rear doorway led to the exterior area where they did all the washing. Soft splashes indicated someone was washing up after the noon meal.
“Mother,” she sang out, “look who I brought home from the Bull and Blossom. The ninth Duke of Halstone and his mum.”
“Halford,” the duchess corrected. “My son is the eighth Duke of Halford. He’s also the Marquess of Westmore, the Earl of Ridingham, Viscount Newthorpe, and Lord Hartford-on-Trent.”
“Oh. Right. Suppose I should learn it all proper, shouldn’t I? I mean, seeing as how it’ll be my name, too.” She grinned broadly at the duke. “Fancy that.”
His lips quirked a fraction. Whether in irritation or amusement, she didn’t dare to guess.
“Will you sit?” she asked the duchess.
“I will not.”
“If you need the privy,” she informed them in a confidential tone, “you go through that door, back around the woodpile, and left at the pigs.”
“Pauline?” Mother came through the back door, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Mother, there you are. Has Father gone back to the fields?”
“No,” said Amos Simms, darkening the same doorway her mother had just traversed. “No, he ’asn’t. Not yet.”
She found herself holding her breath as her father peered at the duke, then the duchess.
Lastly, he turned a menacing glare on Pauline.
A sharp tingle of warning volleyed between her shoulder blades. She would pay for this later, no doubt.
“What’s all this, then?” her father demanded.
Pauline swept an arm toward her guests. “Father, may I present His Grace, the eighth Duke of Halford, and his mother. As for what they’re doing here . . .” She turned to the duke. “I should let his grace explain it.”
O
h, excellent. The girl wanted him to explain it.
Griff exhaled, running a hand through his hair. There was no satisfactory explanation he could offer. He had no bloody idea what he was doing in this hovel.
Something sharp jabbed him in the kidney, nudging him forward. That damned parasol again.
Oh, yes. He recalled it now. There was a reason he was here, and the Reason Herself needed a sharp lesson in minding her own affairs.
He snatched the parasol from his mother’s grip and presented it to the farmwife. “Please accept this gift as thanks for your hospitality.”
Mrs. Simms was a small woman with stooped shoulders. She looked as faded and wrung out as the dish towel in her red-knuckled hands. The woman stared at the furled parasol, seemingly dumbfounded by its tooled ivory handle.
“I insist.” He pressed it toward her.
She took it, reluctantly. “That’s v-very kind, your grace.”
“Never enter a house empty-handed. My mother taught me that.” He shot the duchess a look. “Mother, sit down.”
She sniffed. “I don’t believe I—”
“Here.” With his boot, he hooked a rough wooden bench and pulled it out from the table. Its legs scratched across the straw-strewn dirt floor. “Sit here. You are a guest in this house.”
She sat, arranging her voluminous skirts about her. But she didn’t try to look pleased about it.
For the next minute or so, Griff learned how it felt to be a menagerie exhibit, as the collected Simms family stood about, gawking at them in silence.
“Mrs. Simms,” he finally said, “perhaps you’d be so kind as to offer us some refreshment. I would have a word with your husband.”
With evident relief at her dismissal, Mrs. Simms drew her daughter into the kitchen. Griff pulled a cane-backed chair away from the table and sat.
As Simms settled on the other chair, the burly farmer narrowed his eyes. “What can I do for you, yer grace?”
“It’s about your daughter.”
Simms grunted. “I knew it. What’s the girl done now?”
“It’s not something she’s done. It’s what my mother would like her to do.”
Simms cut a shrewd glance toward the duchess. “Is her grace needing a scullery maid, then?”
“No. My mother would like a daughter-in-law. She thinks I need a wife. And she claims she can make your girl”—he waved in the direction of the kitchen—“into a duchess.”
For a moment the farmer was silent. Then his face split in a gap-toothed grin. He chuckled, in a low, greasy way.
“Pauline,” he said. “A duchess.”
“I hope you won’t be offended, Mr. Simms, if I admit doubts as to the likelihood of her success.”
“A duchess.” The farmer shook his head and continued chuckling.
The boorish, sinister tone of his laughter had Griff shifting his weight on the chair. To be sure, it was an absurd idea. But even so, shouldn’t a man defend his own daughter?
He cleared his throat. “Here’s my offer. A man only has one mother, and I’ve decided to indulge mine. What say I take your daughter to London? There, my mother might have her best crack at transforming her from a serving girl into a lady sufficiently polished and cultured to be a duke’s bride.”
Simms laughed again.
“Of course, in the much more likely event that this enterprise fails, we will return your daughter to you. At the least, she’ll come home with a few new gowns and some exposure to the finer things in life.”
“My girl don’t need new gowns. Nor any of your finer things.”
Just then the girl in question returned to set the table. The dish she placed before Griff was possibly the ugliest teacup he’d ever seen—a cheaply painted bit of china no doubt birthed in some cut-rate factory and passed down through several owners. But before releasing the saucer, she gave it a brisk quarter turn, so that the pathetic, limp flower on the cup would face him and the saucer’s chip was on the hidden side.
The meaning in the gesture wasn’t lost on Griff. She was a proud one, no question. Also smart-mouthed and bold enough to bait a duke and his dragon of a mother. None of those traits were desirable qualities in a serving girl, much less in a bride.
But they were qualities Griff appreciated in general, and he was beginning to admire this Pauline Simms. Just a bit, and just for herself. During her few minutes in the kitchen, she’d tied back her hair. Her figure remained unremarkable, but now he could see she was more than a little pretty. High cheekbones, gentle nose, eyes tipped at the corners like a cat’s. Quite fetching, really, in a rustic, country way. All the farmhands must be mad for her.
You’ve sworn off women
, a voice inside him nagged.
Well, that oath needed some amendment. He’d sworn off
involvement
with women, perhaps. That didn’t mean he was going to poke out his eyes. A bit of casual appreciation never hurt anyone—and he suspected it might do this particular woman some good.
“If you’re set on her, we can talk.” Simms scratched his jaw. “But I can’t let her go easy.”
Good, Griff thought. No right-thinking father should let a bright, pretty daughter go easily.
The farmer lifted his voice. “Come ’ere, Paul.”
She obeyed. As she moved toward them, her mouth was a tight line.
“Look at these ’ands of hers,” Simms said, taking his daughter by the wrist and extending her hand and forearm for Griff’s inspection.
Her fingers were slender and graceful, but her palm showed the calluses and scars of menial labor—labor more strenuous than serving pots of tea to spinsters. No doubt she helped with the farm work, too.
Simms shook his daughter’s wrist, and her hand flopped up and down. “No one else has hands this small. Nor an arm this thin.” He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, easily ringing Pauline’s slender wrist. “I’ve a mare about to foal. Ain’t no one else on this farm what can reach up inside and grab the foreleg, if need be.”
The farmer slid the ring of his thumb and forefinger from Pauline’s wrist all the way to her elbow, visually demonstrating just what equine depths his slender-armed daughter would be called to explore.
Griff’s missed breakfast now seemed like a blessing.
“Jes’ look at that,” Simms said. “She can reach all the way to the womb.”
“Father.”
Pauline snatched her arm away.
“That’s worth something, right there,” her father said. “Can’t let her go without compensation. In advance.”
Unbelievable.
Mr. Simms was a farmer. A poor farmer, yes—but not a destitute one. He owned thirty acres. His cottage was humble, but sound. No one was starving under this roof. A strange nobleman entered his home, and he offered, for all intents and purposes, to sell his daughter?
What of the girl’s safety? What of her reputation? Griff wasn’t the sort of nobleman to buy himself a virgin for despoiling, but Mr. Simms couldn’t know that. This was the point where any decent father—hell, any sort of real man—would at least demand assurances. If not tell Griff to take his feudal offer and go straight to the devil.
But Mr. Simms didn’t. Which told Griff he was a shoddy excuse for a father and no kind of man at all. The farmer wasn’t the least bit concerned about his daughter’s health or reputation. No, he just wanted to be compensated in advance. For his extra trouble when the mare foaled.
“This is truly your only objection?” he asked pointedly, giving the farmer a chance to redeem himself.
Mr. Simms frowned. “Not the only objection.”
Well, thank God.
“There’s the wages she brings home,” he continued. “I’ll need those in advance, too.”
“Her
wages
.”
Griff had the sudden urge to hit something. Something wearing a coarse homespun shirt, dirt-caked boots, and a greedy sneer. That was it. His mother would need to learn her lesson in some other way, at some other time. He needed to leave. This interview either ended now or it ended badly.
Drawing on some generations-old reserve of ducal composure, he rose to his feet. “Perhaps this was an ill-considered plan. The chances of your daughter succeeding in London society are minuscule, and the risks to her are too great.” He made his way toward the cottage door, pausing only to catch his mother by the elbow and pull her to her feet. “If you’ll excuse me, my mother and I will be on our—”
“Five,” the farmer called.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll let her go for five pounds.”
Griff could only stare at him. “Good God, man. Are you serious?”
He cracked his neck. “All right, then. You can have her for four pounds, eight. But not a penny less.”
Bloody hell. Griff passed a hand over his face. Now he looked as though he was haggling for the girl, determined to ruin her life for the lowest possible price.
“What an excellent bargain.” Irony dripped from his mother’s words. “I don’t think you could find a more economical choice.”
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Griff said.
The duchess arched a brow, deflecting all censure back at him. “Are you?”
No. He wasn’t. He felt like a first-rate ass. He’d thought himself so damned clever, picking the serving girl out of the spinster crowd. And now he’d invaded her home and forced her to watch while her own father placed a price of four pounds, eight shillings on her health and happiness.
Even for him, this was low.
Miss Simms emerged again, moving toward the table with teapot in hand. Their gazes locked, and her eyes taught him some bold, nameless shade of green. Deep in some unexplored virgin forest, there was a vine of that color, just waiting to be discovered. And there was something essential in this girl’s nature that was far, far better than this place.
Just then, Griff observed a telling sequence of events.
A clatter rose from the rear of the house.
With a quiet curse, Pauline Simms stumbled. Hot tea sloshed on the cottage’s dirt floor.
“Paul, I told you—” The farmer’s hand went up in threat.
And standing four full paces away, Pauline—the girl who would hold her own against a duke—flinched.
He’d seen enough.
“Mother, go ahead to the coach.” He quelled her objection with a small gesture, then turned to the girl. “Miss Simms, a word outside. Alone.”
P
auline followed him out the front door and around to the side of the house. The south side, where there were no windows for the family to peer at them. Neither could the duchess view this corner from the carriage. It was just the two of them, alone with a late-blossoming apple tree and the ridiculousness of it all.
She hoped they might have a good laugh and part ways. There would be evening chores to be done before long, and she’d had enough of dukes for one day.
Apparently, he’d reached a breaking point, too. He stalked the yard in long strides. Back, then forth.
“I’ve reached a decision.” He plucked a dead, dangling branch from the apple tree and tapped it on the fence rail. “Simms, you’re coming with me to London. This very afternoon.”
Her breath left her. “But . . . but why? For what purpose?”
“Duchess training, naturally.”
“But you can’t truly mean to marry me.”
He came to a decisive halt. “Of course I don’t mean to marry you.”
Well. She was glad they had that settled.
“Let’s set a few things straight at the outset,” he said. “I might wear fine clothes and possess a splendid carriage, and I’ve rolled into your life on something that might resemble a whirlwind. Perhaps even a romantic one, to the untutored eye. But this isn’t a fairy tale, and anyone who knows me could tell you . . . I am no prince.”
She laughed a little. “With all due apologies, your grace, I hadn’t formed any opinions to the contrary. I stopped believing in fairy tales long ago.”
“Too practical for such things, I suspect.”
She nodded. “I’m prepared to work hard for the things I want in life.” Sadly, she was still wearing a full year’s hard work spattered in her hair and frock.
“Excellent. Because what I’m offering you is employment. I mean to hire you as a sort of companion to my mother. Come to London, submit to her ‘duchess training,’ and prove a comprehensive catastrophe. Should require little effort on your part.”
Pauline’s jaw worked but no words came out.
“In exchange for your labors, I will give you one thousand pounds.” He leveled his apple-branch switch at the cottage. “And you will never depend on that man again.”
One thousand pounds.
“Your grace, I . . .” She didn’t even know what to say—whether to call his proposal insufferable, or nonsensical, or a dream come true.
Impossible. That was the best word.
“But I can’t. I just can’t.”
He moved closer. The sun caught amber flecks in his dark brown eyes. “You can. And you will. I will make it so.”
She turned her gaze to the cottage, frustrated with his commanding demeanor and his stubbornly enticing scent. He smelled so wretchedly trustworthy.
“Don’t worry about your clothes and your things,” he said. “Leave it all. You’ll have new.”
“Your grace . . .”
He tapped the branch against his booted calf. “Don’t play at reluctance. What can possibly be keeping you here? A post serving tea to spinsters? Farm labor, and sleeping space in a drafty loft? A brutish father who would eagerly sell you for five pounds?”
She set her teeth. “Five pounds is no paltry sum to folk like us.”
And even if it weren’t a vast amount, it was five pounds more than “completely worthless,” which was how her father set a woman’s value most days.
“Be that as it may,” he said, “five pounds is considerably less than a thousand. Even a farm girl with no schooling can do that arithmetic.”
She shook her head. Amazing. Just when she thought he’d exhausted the ways to insult or demean her, he proved her wrong.
He said, “My mother has too much time at leisure. She needs a protégé to take shopping and drill in diction. I need her diverted from matchmaking. It’s a simple solution.”
“Simple? You mean to bring me to your home . . . buy me all new things . . . pay me a thousand pounds. All that, just to cure your mother of meddling?”
He shrugged in confirmation.
“I wouldn’t call that simple, your grace. Much easier to just tell her you don’t wish to marry. Don’t you think?”
His eyes narrowed. “I think you enjoy being difficult. Which makes you the ideal candidate for this post.”
Pauline was divided on how to receive that statement. For once, she was someone’s ideal. Unfortunately, she was his ideal thorn in the side.
Nevertheless, his offer tempted in a perverse way. For once in her life she wouldn’t be failing at success. She’d be succeeding at failure. No more would she hear, “But she
means
well”—the duke didn’t want her to mean well at all.
“None of this matters,” she said at last. “I can’t leave Spindle Cove.”
“I’m offering you a lifetime of financial security. All I’m asking in return is a few weeks of impertinence. Think of it as your chance to write the practical girl’s fairy tale. Come away to London in my fancy carriage. Have some fine new gowns. Don’t change a whit. Don’t fall in love with me. At the end of it, we part ways. And you live wealthily ever after.” He looked to the carriage. “Just say yes, Simms. We need to be going.”
What would it take to convince him? She raised her voice, enunciating each word as best an uneducated farm girl could. “I . Can’t. Go.”
He matched her volume. “Well, I can’t leave you.”
The world was suddenly very quiet. The duke went absolutely still. She could have thought him a statue if not for the stray apple blossom decorating his shoulder and the breeze stirring his dark, wavy hair. Somewhere above them a songbird chirped and whistled for a mate.
She swallowed hard. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
He tilted his head and stared at her with fresh concentration. She tried not to blush or fidget as his slow, measured paces brought them toe-to-toe. So close, she could see the individual grains of whiskers dotting his jaw. They were lighter than his hair—almost ginger, in this light.
“There’s something about you.” His ungloved hand went to her hair, teasing it gently. A little shower of crystals fell to the ground. “Something . . . all over you.”
Good heavens. He was touching her—without leave, or any logical reason. And it should have been shocking—but the most surprising part was how natural it felt. So simple and unforced, as though he did this every day.
She wouldn’t mind it, Pauline thought. Being touched like this, every day. As though there were something precious and fragile beneath the grit of her life, just waiting to be uncovered.
He dusted more fine white powder from her shoulder. “What
is
this? You’re just coated with it.”
Her answer came out as a whisper. “It’s sugar.”
He lifted his thumb to his mouth, absently tasting. His lips twisted in unpleasant surprise.
“Sugar mixed with alum,” she amended.
“Oddly fitting.” He reached for her again, this time leading with the backs of his fingers.
She felt herself leaning forward, seeking his touch.
“Pauline?” a familiar voice interrupted. “Pauline, who’s that man?”
She jumped back and turned to spy Daniela peeking out from the west side of the cottage. After a moment of internal debate, Pauline waved her sister forward. There was no easier way to explain her refusal than to let him see for himself.
“Your grace, may I present my sister, Daniela. Daniela, our guest is a duke. That means you must curtsy and call him ‘your grace.’ ”
Daniela curtsied. “Good day, your grace.”
The words came out thick and nearly unintelligible, the way they always did when Daniela was nervous. Her tongue wasn’t so nimble with strangers.
“The duke was just leaving.”
Daniela curtsied again. “Goodbye, your grace.”
Pauline watched him with keen eyes, waiting. People of his rank sent their simple folk to asylums or paid someone to tend them in the attic—anything to hide them from view. Still, he would be able to tell. Everyone could always tell within a minute of meeting Daniela.
The familiar anger welled within her, fast and defensive—a response learned from years of deflecting insults and slights. Her hand reflexively made a fist.
He probably wouldn’t resort to name-calling. Idiot, numskull, half-wit, dummy, simpleton. Those words would be beneath a duke, wouldn’t they?
But he would have some reaction. They always did. Even well-meaning people found some way to give offense, treating Daniela like a puppy or an infant, instead of like a full-grown woman.
Most likely the duke would curl his lip in disgust. Or turn his gaze and pretend she didn’t exist. Perhaps he would sneer or shudder, and that would give Pauline just the surge of anger she needed to send him away.
But he didn’t do any of those things.
He spoke in a completely unaffected, matter-of-fact tone. “Miss Daniela. A pleasure.”
And as Pauline watched, the duke—God above, a bloody
duke
—lifted her sister’s hand to his lips. And kissed it.
Lord help her, for the briefest of instants, Pauline tumbled headlong in love with the man. Never mind his promise of a thousand pounds. He could have had her soul for a shilling.
She briefly closed her eyes, rooting deep in her heart for all those reasons to dislike him. The most petty, stupid one came to her lips. “You didn’t kiss
my
hand.”
“Of course not.” He glanced at the appendage in question. “I know where it’s been.”
Her cheeks flushed as she recalled her father’s “demonstration” in the cottage.
“She is the source of your reluctance, I take it?” he asked.
Pauline nodded. “I can’t leave her. And she can’t leave home.”
After a moment’s quiet consideration, he addressed her sister. “Miss Daniela, I want to take your sister to London.”
Daniela paled. Her chin began to quiver. The tears were already starting.
“I will bring her back,” he said. “You have my word. And a duke never breaks his word.”
Pauline raised a brow, skeptical.
He shrugged, conceding the improbable truth of the statement. “Well, this particular duke won’t break this particular word.”
“No.” Her sister hugged her so tightly, Pauline reeled on her feet. “Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.”
Her heartstrings stretched until they ached. They’d never been apart. Not for even one night. What the duke might describe to her as temporary, Daniela would experience as endless. She’d spend every moment of their separation feeling miserable, abandoned. But at the end of it . . .
One thousand pounds.
They could do anything with a thousand pounds. Escaping their father would only be the beginning. She and Daniela might have a cottage of their own. They could raise chickens and geese, hire a man now and then for the heavy labor. With prudence, the interest alone would be enough to keep them fed and safe.
And she could open her shop.
Her shop.
So silly, how she’d come to think of it that way. She might as well have named it Pauline’s Unicorn Emporium, as likely as it was to come to pass. It had always been just a dream for someday. But with one thousand pounds, that someday could be quite soon.
“God’s knees.” The duke’s voice intruded on her thoughts. “Not you again.”
Major, the old cantankerous gander, had found them once more, and he wasted no time in making the duke feel unwelcome. The bird stretched his neck to its greatest length, puffing his breast in a warlike pose. Then he lowered his beak and made a strike at the duke’s boot.
With a crisp thwack, Halford deflected the goose with a flick of the apple bough. He jabbed the blunt end into the goose’s breast, holding the enraged bird at branch’s distance. “This bird is possessed by the spirit of a dyspeptic Cossack.”
“He doesn’t like you,” Pauline said. “He’s very intelligent.”
With a short flight, Major managed to squawk free, and then they were starting all over again. Dueling, duke versus gander.
Halford stood light on his feet, one leg forward and one back, wielding the switch like a foil. “Winged menace. I’ll have your liver.”
Major cast some aspersions of his own. They were unintelligible to human ears, but no less vehement.
At her side, Daniela ceased to cry and began to giggle.
The tightness in Pauline’s chest eased. “Daniela,” she said. “Take Major to the poultry yard for me. Then come back.”
Her sister spread her arms and shooed the gander toward the rear of the house. Once she was safely out of earshot, Pauline crossed her arms and faced the duke.
“If I agree to this . . .” She willed her voice not to shake. “If I go with you, will you return me home in one week?”
“A
week
?” He tossed the stick aside. “That’s unacceptable.”
“It’s the only way I’ll agree. It must be a week. We have a ritual of sorts on Saturdays, Daniela and I. She can understand this. If I promise to be back by next Saturday, she’ll know I’m not leaving forever.” When he hesitated, she went on, “I assure you, I can prove catastrophic within one week.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” He paused in thought. “A week, then. But we leave at once.”
“As soon as I bid my sister farewell.”
She turned and looked over her shoulder. Daniela was already on her way back from the henhouse.