Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

He leaned close.

Her insides trembled. This was the moment where she needed to . . . do something. Close her eyes, if she wished to be kissed. Take a swift step back, if she didn’t.

She shouldn’t want it. She hated to think what impropriety rakish dukes might expect of serving girls, and she didn’t want to give the wrong impression. But it had been a very long time since she’d been kissed. And even longer since she’d heard any words so kind as the ones he’d just spoken.

In the end, she compromised by remaining perfectly, breathlessly still.

And he didn’t kiss her.

He withdrew his touch and brushed past her, continuing down the stairs with a clatter of footfalls. “Simms, give my mother my regards.”

“But where are you going?”

“I’m riding ahead to London,” he called up to her. “Tonight.”

Griff managed to procure a young gelding from the inn’s stables. The horse was nothing to pace his favored bay warmbloods at home, but the beast looked strong and impatient—ready for some hard riding over open country. He’d do.

The moon was rising bright and round in the sky, ready to light his journey. Griff swung into the saddle, ignoring the thinness of the borrowed tack and the inconvenient tightness of his topcoat across his shoulders. These wouldn’t be the most pleasant miles he’d ever covered on horseback, but comfort wasn’t his priority tonight.

He had to get away.

That had been a very close thing, just now in the stairwell. A very close, warm, sweet, enticing, vulnerable thing.

Her lips had been so soft. A ripe berry-pink. Still glistening, where she’d searched them with her tongue. Quivering with emotion. He could have kissed them.

He’d wanted to, more than he’d wanted his next breath.

Sweet heaven.

Bloody hell.

He’d thought he was done with this. For months now he’d ignored invitations and innuendos from women all over Town. A mud-spattered, sugar-dusted, smart-mouthed serving girl in drab linsey-woolsey could not prove his complete undoing.

As he nudged the horse into a canter, he realized he hadn’t laid out a very good strategy for living the rest of his life as the New, Not-Truly-Improved, Just-Vastly-Less-Interesting Griffin Eliot York. For the past several months he’d been too absorbed by other emotions to feel any sensual deprivation. Any mild stirrings of unrest were quelled by routine physical exercise or the occasional halfhearted frig.

In retrospect, it seemed ridiculous to believe he—he!—could remain celibate for the remainder of his years. He should have known it would be coming: that day when his neglected c**k did perk with interest, rise up and wave in a jaunty, “Ho, there—remember me?”

As his luck would have it, that day was today.

There was something about Pauline Simms that had him fascinated. She was so defiantly proud of her common origins, yet so hungry for approval.

This was a business arrangement, he reminded himself. He’d hired the girl to bedevil his mother, not to bewitch him. Her cleverness and lively, cat-tipped eyes should not be temptations. They were a desirable set of skills she brought to her post. Similar to the way one sought out a stonemason with brawn and foresight and steady hands.

The thought of employees helped him turn his mind toward mundane tasks. He’d need to warn the house staff that the duchess would be bringing a guest. Fortunately, his housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas, was scarily efficient. A few words, and everything would be readied in advance of Miss Simms’s arrival: room, maid, meals, bath.

God, yes. The girl needed a bath.

A proper bath. Not just a quick dousing to rinse away that glittering sweetness. A bath hot enough to soak those calluses from her hands and curl the short hairs at her temples. With a fresh cake of scented soap for scrubbing, and thick, downy towels to wrap her sleek, glistening limbs.

The image that came to his mind was so vivid, so lushly detailed in every texture of skin and soap and slickness . . . He had to pull the horse to a halt in the center of the road and recover himself.

The hard drumming of hoofbeats had ceased, but his ribs pounded with the furious thunder of his pulse.

Why her? Why now?

But as was the case with all the whys and wherefores he’d addressed to the darkness in recent months, no answers came back. Only one thing was clear. This just wouldn’t do. Perhaps he could outride temptation tonight, but by the morrow, temptation would be living under his roof.

There was only one thing for it. He must pay a visit on his way back to Town.