Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

He also kissed like a man who craved warmth and comfort. But she wasn’t about to tell the duchess that.

“A locked room,” the duchess repeated. “He keeps one chamber of his suite locked day and night. Only he has the key. He doesn’t even allow the maids to dust it. It’s . . . it’s perverse. Who knows what he’s keeping in there?”

“I do hope it’s not a collection of severed heads. Perhaps he’s been trawling the countryside for impertinent serving girls, and I’ll be number eleven.”

The duchess harrumphed. “You’re not number eleven. You’re going to be his first—and only—bride.”

“But I’m a commoner.”

“The Halford legacy is sufficiently robust to withstand my son’s debauchery. It can even survive a commoner as duchess. But it will end—forever—if there is no male heir.”

“Surely the duke has decades yet to produce a son. You can’t honestly believe he’ll marry me.”

“He must. I can’t wait decades. You don’t understand.” The duchess halted. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Now I see I have no choice.”

The older woman thrust one hand into her pocket and drew it back out, clutching something small and fuzzy.

“There,” she declared. “Just look at it.”

Pauline looked at it. A knitted object, of indeterminate purpose, made from light yellow wool. Part of it looked like a cap, and part of it looked like a glove, and none if it looked well made.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s appalling! That’s what it is. I don’t even know how it happens. I haven’t done needlework since I was a girl of fourteen. Even then it was crewel work and embroidery. Never knitting. But every night, for the past several months, I sit down for the evening, intending to read or write letters, and three hours later there’s a lumpy, misshapen thing in my lap.”

Pauline stifled a giggle.

“Go ahead, laugh. It’s ridiculous.” The duchess picked up the knitted mess and turned it over in her hands. “Is it a cap for a two-headed snake? A mitten for a three-fingered arthritic? Even I don’t know, and I made the thing. The shame. I can’t let the servants see them, of course. I have to stash them in a hatbox and smuggle them out to the Foundling Hospital on Tuesdays.”

Pauline laughed aloud at that.

“A lifetime of elegance, poise, and jewels, and now I’ve come to this.” She lifted the distorted mitten and shook it at Pauline. “This! It’s absurd.”

“Perhaps you should consult a doctor.”

“I don’t need a powder or a tonic, Miss Simms.” The duchess sank into a chair and pressed the snarl of yarn to her chest. Her voice softened. “I need grandchildren. Little pudgy, wriggling babies to absorb all this affection unraveling inside me. I’m desperate for them, and I don’t know what will become of me otherwise. Some morning, Fleur will come in to wake me and find I’ve been asphyxiated by a yards-long muffler. How gauche.”

Pauline took the knitting from the duchess’s hands and examined it. “This isn’t half bad, in places. I could teach you to make a proper cuff, if you like.”

The duchess grabbed it from her and stuffed it back in her pocket. “I’ll take knitting lessons from you later. This week, you’re taking duchess lessons from me.”

“But, your grace, you don’t understand. I don’t even—”

Pauline shut her mouth. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say, I don’t even want to marry him.

But something stopped her from saying it aloud. An impulse to spare the duchess’s feelings, she decided. No mother would like to hear her son disparaged, and it would be impossible to explain why a serving girl would turn down the chance to marry a duke.

Explanations weren’t necessary, anyhow. The duke in question was never going to propose.

“He’s paying me,” she blurted out. She just couldn’t let the poor woman get her hopes up. Halford hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, after all. “He’s paying me to be a catastrophe. To thwart your every attempt at polish.”

The duchess gave a delicate harrumph. “That’s what he told you because that’s what he’s telling himself. He can’t bring himself to admit that he’s fascinated with you. You’re a proud one as well. If I accused you of being infatuated with him already, you’d deny it.”

“I . . . I do deny it. Because it isn’t true.”

As she spoke the words, Pauline’s heart pounded in her chest.

Liar, liar, liar.

She was infatuated. Stupidly, impossibly infatuated with every little thing about the duke. No, not the duke—the man. The way he’d listened to her with true interest. The way he’d broken her fall, kissed her with such passion. The delicious, addictive way he smelled. Just that morning she’d harbored fantasies of stealing his discarded shirt from the laundry so she could stash it under her pillow.

Oh, ye gods! This was terrible. She even had flutterings.