Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

Her lips thinned to a tight line.

“You claimed you could make any woman the toast of London. If you can manage that with Simms in one week, I’ll marry her.” He leveled a single finger at her. “But if this enterprise of yours fails, you will never harangue me on the subject of marriage again. Not this season. Not this decade. Not this lifetime.”

She glowered at him in silence.

Griff smiled, knowing he had her right where he wanted her.

He leaned back, propped one boot on his knee, and stretched his arm across the back of the seat. “If the conditions are unacceptable to you, I can turn this coach around right now.”

She didn’t object. He didn’t turn the coach around.

They forged straight on, and Griff pretended to doze through a lengthy lecture on the vaunted family history. It was a litany of heroes, lawmakers, explorers, scholars . . . All the way from his far-flung ancestors in the Crusades to his father, the great, late diplomat.

Just as the duchess’s tale was winding toward the debauched disappointment that was Griff, they paused to change horses and take dinner near Tonbridge.

Thank God.

“This,” his mother informed her new charge as they alighted from the carriage, “is one of the finest coaching inns in England. Their private dining rooms are peerless.”

Miss Simms made comical shapes with her lips as they entered the establishment. “I should think the Bull and Blossom is the superior place, for my money. More welcoming, and that’s certain.”

“A duchess does not look for an inn that is welcoming,” his mother opined. “A duchess is welcome anywhere, anytime. She relies on the establishment to keep everyone else out.”

“Really?” As they were shown into the dining room, Miss Simms turned to the stony footman. “Is that so?”

The footman pulled out a chair, staring forward at the wall.

She gave the blank-faced servant an amused look and waved her hand before his eyes. “Hullo. Anyone home?”

The footman remained still as a wooden nutcracker, until she gave up and sat down.

Griff took his own seat and summoned the waiter with a look, ordering an assortment of dishes. He was famished.

“Cor,” Miss Simms sighed, putting her elbows on the table and propping her chin on one hand. “I’m famished.”

The duchess rapped the tabletop.

“What now?” the young woman asked.

“First, remove your elbows from the table.”

Miss Simms obeyed, lifting her elbows exactly one inch above the surface of the table.

“Second, mind your tongue. A lady never refers to the state of her internal organs in mixed company. And you will strike that word from your vocabulary at once.”

“What word?”

“You know the word to which I refer.”

“Hm.” Dramatically thoughtful, Miss Simms put a fingertip to her lips and cast a glance at the ceiling. “Was it ‘famished’? Or ‘I’m’?”

“Neither of those.”

“Well, I’m confused,” she said. “I can’t recall saying anything else. I’m just a simple country girl. Overwhelmed by the splendor of this inhospitable establishment. How am I to know what word it is I shouldn’t say if your grace will not enlighten me?”

A pause stretched, as they all waited to see whether his mother could be provoked into repeating such a common slang as “cor.”

Griff reclined in his chair, happy to wait her out. This was the most enjoyment he could recall at a family dinner.

His mother had been needing someone to manage. She certainly couldn’t browbeat him—no matter what measures she’d resorted to yesternight—and the servants at Halford House were too well-trained and stoic. He’d been flirting with the idea of getting her a mischievous terrier, but this was better by far. Miss Simms wouldn’t leave any puddles on the carpet.

Perhaps after this week was over, he’d hire his mother another impertinent companion.

But next time he’d find one who wasn’t so pretty.

The girl sparkled. Sparkled, deuce her. Griff couldn’t help staring. Hours of coach travel hadn’t dislodged those sugar crystals dusting her form, and his eye couldn’t stop searching them out. They were like grains of brilliant sand strewn in her hair, clinging to her skin. Even tangled in her eyelashes.

Worst of all, one tiny crystal had lodged itself just at the corner of her mouth. His awareness of it had long passed distracting and verged on maddening. Surely, he thought, at some point during dinner she would catch it with her tongue and sweep it away.

If not, he’d be tempted to lean forward and tend to the cursed thing himself.

“Miss Simms,” his mother said, “if you think you can trick me into repeating your vulgarities, you will be disappointed. Suffice it to say, slang, blasphemy, and cursing have no place in a lady’s vocabulary. Much less a duchess’s.”

“Oh. I see. So your grace never curses.”