Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

Motionless.

His veins became ice floes. This couldn’t happen. Not yet. He knew she was getting older and that inevitably her health would fail. But she was still so strong-willed, so alive. She couldn’t do this to him now.

He wasn’t ready to be alone.

“Mother?” When she gave no answer, a knot stuck in his throat. “Mother.”

At last her eyes opened, with an innocent flutter of lashes. Her voice was weak. “Griffin? Is that you, my dear boy?”

Devil take it.

He knew in that moment that this was all a ruse. In all his life, his mother had never once referred to him as her “dear boy.” He would have remembered.

The duchess was alive, well, and cunning as ever. He was going to throttle her.

“Come closer.” Her pale hand groped the air. “I want to look on your face one last time.”

Really, her acting skills were most impressive. She should take to the stage.

She mustered a pathetic cough. “My only regret . . . the fete at Vauxhall tonight.”

“Never mind it. We won’t go.”

“No.” The volume of her protest seemed to revive her a bit. “No, you must attend. Everyone’s expecting you.”

“Then why are you playing ill?”

“I’m not playing.” She smoothed the bedcoverings with one hand. “I’m simply too weak for Vauxhall this evening. The drafts, the fog by the river, all those stairs. I feel a chill coming on, just to think of it. The two of you must go without me. I don’t want to ruin your evening.”

“I find that hard to believe. You were all too eager to ruin our afternoon.”

Diabolical woman. Did she truly not understand the panic she’d just put him through? It was a thousand times worse than any matchmaking, or even drugging and kidnapping. He couldn’t forgive her that.

“You are not ill,” he said. “I command you to rise from that bed and be well.”

She fixed him with a droll gaze. “Griffin, you are a duke. You are not St. James curing the lepers.”

“Tell me, which saint is the patron of beleaguered sons?” He glared at a mysterious lump beneath the counterpane. “What is it you have under there?”

Her hands covered the lump. “Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. I can plainly see you have something under that blanket. What is it?” He reached for the counterpane and bed linens, planning to draw them back.

She tugged them close. “Leave me be.”

“I will know what you’re hiding.”

They tussled back and forth for several seconds. Until something sharp stabbed him in the wrist.

“Ouch.”

He pulled back his hand. Incredulous, he rubbed at a small round wound. She was stabbing him with pins now? Good Lord. She’d be a terror with a saber.

“I revise my previous statement,” he said. “You are ill. Seriously ill. And when this week is over, we’re going to discuss living arrangements for your decline. I hear there are lovely sanitariums in Ireland.”

Pauline waved him to the side of the room. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s for the best. If I’m to be a social disaster, it will go much easier without her there.”

Griff wasn’t so sure. He knew exactly what his mother had in mind. She wanted to force the two of them alone. So they’d spend the whole evening together in a hopelessly romantic setting, and then . . .

“It’s not a good idea,” he said.

Her green eyes pleaded with him. “I’m only in London this one week. Chances are, I’ll never return. I was looking forward to seeing Vauxhall. And to earning my keep, at last.”

He sighed and leveled a single finger at her nose. “Your comportment had better be dreadful.”

She lifted a hand in mock salute. But her fetching smile gave him grave misgivings. Soon, there’d be nothing he could deny her.

On his way out of the bedchamber he addressed the vigilant butler. “Higgs,” he said, “see that my mother does not move from that bed. And summon the doctor. Not the gentle-mannered one, either. The one with the leeches.”

Once the duke had left the room, Pauline approached the duchess’s bed. “Really, your grace. That wasn’t kind of you. He was terribly concerned.”

He’d been more than concerned. She’d watched his face go pale as ash, and he’d clenched his hands until his knuckles bleached to bone. Didn’t they realize how fortunate they were to have each other? She’d never known two people who so clearly loved each other yet spent so much time and effort denying it.

There was phlegm, and then there was sheer obstinacy.

“I should think this sort of ploy is beneath a duchess.”

She clucked her tongue. “Very well, I admit it. I’m not truly ill. I’m desperate. Look.”