Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

All the halfway decent fellows who’d once been part of their circle had drifted away in recent years—married, come into their titles, settled down. Griff would have liked to drift away, too—without the marrying part—but it was harder to leave a circle when you were the center of it.

“When are you opening the Grange this year, Hal?” Martin asked, one arm draped about his mistress’s powdered shoulders. “Ruby here fancies a holiday in the country. She’ll bring friends. Quite friendly friends.”

The painted blonde gave him a coy promise of a smile.

In years past, Griff had spent the colder months at Winterset Grange. The house was the first thing he’d purchased after reaching his majority. Even with six family properties, he’d felt the need for a place of his own. Other men had bachelor apartments. He was a duke; he had a bachelor estate. There, for several years after leaving university, he and his Oxford friends had taken the country house party tradition to new heights—or lows—of dissipation.

Always the generous host, Griff famously opened his door to any and all guests—especially the pretty, female variety. Days were for sleeping. Nights were for gambling, drinking, and other vices of the flesh.

The Grange had become such an institution that when Griff failed to open the house last winter, rumors of his insolvency had circulated.

He hadn’t been broke, of course. Just broken.

“You are opening the Grange this year, aren’t you?” Martin asked.

“I hadn’t decided,” Griff replied. “Perhaps not.”

“Oh, come along, Hal. You must. Last winter I was forced to go home to Shropshire. A crashing bore, I tell you. The old man’s after me to join the Church.”

“Second sons and their problems.”

Griff wasn’t interested in opening his house just so Martin and Delacre and every other overgrown adolescent in England could come laze barefoot on his furniture and organize drunken billiard tournaments that lasted three days and three nights straight. It had been good fun when they were youths, but now . . . He supposed his patience and his generosity had run out.

Or been redirected.

He could see himself opening that house for one reason only—and her name was Pauline.

As soon as the idea flickered through his skull, his mind pounced on it. He knew she had her dream of opening a bookshop in Spindle Cove. But perhaps she dreamed of that simply because she couldn’t conceive of more.

He could give her more.

She turned to him then, as though she could feel the force of these new, visceral intentions. Sidling her way through the crowded booth, she made her way to his side.

“Lord Delacre has asked me to dance,” she whispered. “I haven’t the faintest idea of the steps. If I time my stumble at just the right moment, I think I can take us both into the punch bowl. Will you give me a ten-pound bonus?”

He smiled despite himself. “Twenty.”

He watched her as she drifted away on Del’s arm, headed out to join the colorful whirl of dancers.

Oh, he couldn’t marry her. He couldn’t marry at all. But he could take care of her, see that she never struggled again. At the age of twenty-three, she’d worked enough for a lifetime. She shouldn’t have to toil anymore. She deserved to be spooned delicacies, pampered with the softest linens, waited on by a dozen maids, and bathed in deep copper tubs.

Delacre swung her through the dance. In that blush-pink gown, her light figure was a dream. He hoped she was enjoying herself, at least a little. In a more just world, she would have been given her own coming-out ball, with dozens of admirers queuing for her hand. Then again, he could admire her enough for dozens of men. He couldn’t take his eyes from her now.

The dancers turned a corner, and Griff caught a glimpse of her face.

Damn.

He recognized that expression she was wearing. He didn’t like it.

Before he’d even decided on a course, his feet were in motion. He had to get to her, immediately.

Something was wrong.

Chapter Seventeen

“How long have you known the duke?” Lord Delacre led her capably through the dance. He was so elegant a dancer, she scarcely had the opportunity to misstep.

“Only this week,” Pauline answered truthfully. “And you, my lord?”

“We were at Eton together. Close friends ever since.” He fixed her with an unreadable gaze. “We have a pact, you know.”

“A pact?”

“Yes. A pact, blood-sworn on our crossed blades. To protect one another in the face of all threats—treachery, betrayal . . .”

“Death?” Pauline finished.

“No, worse. Marriage.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “How old were you when you swore this pact?”

“Nineteen. But it never lapses, you know. It automatically renews.”