Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

And even though she managed to delay her first trip to the All Things shop for another several days, she still wasn’t prepared to answer them.

Sally Bright pounced on her the moment she walked through the door. Aside from being her oldest and dearest friend, Sally was the most inquisitive, gossipy person in Spindle Cove. Pauline knew the curiosity must be gnawing at her friend with a hundred teeth.

“You”—she lifted and waved a stack of newspapers—“have so much explaining to do! Did you really attend a ball? Make a duke fall madly in love with you?”

“Sally, I don’t wish to speak of it yet. I just can’t. It’s all too . . .” Her voice broke.

Sally didn’t press for more. She hurried out from behind the counter and wrapped Pauline in a tight hug. “There there. We’ll have years to talk it over, won’t we?”

Pauline nodded. “Sadly, I think we will.”

She’d been harboring the absurd hope that Griff would come chasing after her, perhaps show up at the farm cottage some morning, unshaven and smelling of cologne. But as the days passed, her hope seemed more and more like a fanciful dream. That wasn’t the fairy tale he’d promised her.

“I have some news that will cheer you,” Sally said.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“It’s nasty old Mrs. Whittlecombe. She’s moving to Dorset to live with her nephew.”

“Truly? That is good news, I suppose. For everyone but the nephew. I thought she’d never leave that tumbledown old place.”

Sally shrugged. “Well, she did. And cleared out of the neighborhood quickly, too. Now I’m stuck with a half-dozen bottles of her noxious ‘health tonic.’ I don’t suppose anyone else is going to want it.” Her eyebrows lifted. “And there’s something else. Something for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Come see.”

Sally pulled her over to the storeroom. On the floor in the center sat an immense wooden crate, labeled with Pauline’s name.

“A man delivered it special yesterday,” she said. “It didn’t come through the regular post. But he told me it wasn’t to go to your cottage, ever. I must wait until Miss Simms came to the shop, and I couldn’t speak a word of it to anyone. It was all just painfully mysterious.” She gave Pauline’s arm an impatient shake. “Can’t we open it now? It’s heavy as anything. I’m dying to know what’s inside. Dying.”

Pauline nodded. “Of course.”

Sally gave a little cheer of excitement. With the help of a slender crowbar, she pried the top from the crate and sifted through a top layer of straw.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “Well, that’s disappointing. I hope you didn’t have your hopes too high. It’s only books.” She lifted a red-bound volume off the top and peered into the crate. “Yes. Books, all the way down.”

“Let me see,” Pauline said, snatching the book from Sally’s hand.

She ran a palm over the fresh red Morocco binding, brushing aside a blade of straw so she could read the cover: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure: The Life and Adventures of Fanny Hill.

“Who’s this Mrs. Radcliffe person?” Sally lifted a handful of books from the crate. “She wrote a great many books.”

“Be careful with them, please.” Pauline went to her side and began to sort through the volumes. Radcliffe, Johnson, Wollstonecraft, Fielding, Defoe. All the books on the list that Griff had dictated that day in Snidling’s bookshop.

He’d remembered. And he’d known not to send them to her home, for fear her father would pitch them all into the fire. She lifted the book to her nose and inhaled that aroma deeply—her second favorite smell—before setting it aside to look at the rest.

Halfway through the crate, she found a small volume not bound in red Morocco, but instead covered in the softest, most impractical fawn-hued leather. Collected Poems of William Blake.

Tears welled in her eyes as she opened the cover. Inside, right on the exquisite marble endpaper, there was affixed a bookplate with a stamp.

FROM THE LIBRARY OF MISS PAULINE SIMMS

“Oh, Griff.”

This crate wasn’t merely stuffed with books. It was full of meaning. Messages too complicated to explain and too risky to send in a letter.

He knew her, this crate of books said. He knew her to the deepest, most hidden places of her soul. He respected her as a person, with thoughts and dreams and desires.

He loved her. He truly did.

And most poignant of all, this crate of books held one clear, undeniable message:

Goodbye.

Chapter Twenty-seven

A few months later

If there was anything better than the smell of books, it was the smell of books mingled with the scents of strong tea and spice biscuits—and all of it on a rainy afternoon.

A celebration was in order. The Two Sisters circulating library was exactly one month old today.