Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

She supposed he was right. What difference did a shoe make, when she’d just lost a necklace worth thousands of pounds?

He carried her to the end of the street, down a different way than they’d come in pursuit. She thought about pointing out the discrepancy, but decided he knew where he was going. His face, when she now and then glimpsed it in the weak light thrown from a window, was a mask of stern determination.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

He gave a terse, dismissive shake of his head. “Don’t.”

He didn’t speak to her further on the way home. Not in the boat that ferried them back across the Thames. Not in the carriage back to Mayfair.

When they arrived at Halford House, she heard him giving quiet yet firm orders to the house staff. She found herself whisked into the Rose Salon and propped up on the largest available divan.

“I’m calling for a doctor,” Griff said.

“Really, I don’t need it,” she protested.

He left the room. And that was the end of that argument.

So Pauline sat in the Rose Salon while the doctor poked and prodded and looked over her. The swelling seemed to be improving already. No lasting harm done. Not to her ankle, anyway. Other parts of her might never recover.

As the doctor was on his way out, Griff appeared in the doorway to confer with him. He’d removed his coat, rolling his shirtsleeves to the wrist.

Pauline rose from the chair and hobbled to meet him in the center of the carpet. “Well,” she said. “I finally proved a catastrophe. I must have appeared to be a foul-mouthed harpy, swooping across those manicured greens.”

He didn’t seem to see the humor in her statement. “Come. I’ll help you upstairs.”

She waved off his help. “It’s not a bad sprain. The doctor said it will quickly mend.”

He insisted on placing an arm about her waist, guiding her toward the stairs. She didn’t know how to refuse. The juxtaposition of his glowering expression and his solicitous attentions made everything seem worse.

She took the first stair with her good foot. “You’re angry with me.”

“I am angry,” he said. “I cannot deny it. But I am struggling not to direct my anger at you.”

She hobbled up another stair.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll pay it back somehow. Beginning with the thousand pounds, of course. As for the rest of it . . .” She stopped and looked up at him. “I don’t know how. But I swear to you, I will make this right.”

He looked down at her with an expression of absolute bemusement. “What on earth can you mean?”

“The necklace. I’ll pay for it somehow.” She clutched the banister and took another step.

He didn’t move with her.

“This is absurd,” he muttered.

Ducking, he wrapped one arm under her thighs and lifted her straight off her feet—into his arms. He carried her up the rest of her steps, and at the top of the staircase, he didn’t continue up another flight to her bedchamber.

He turned toward his private suite.

Balancing her weight in one arm, he opened the latch, carried her through the entry, and kicked the door shut behind him. After toting her through a sitting room, he dropped her onto a bed.

His bed.

It was an enormous bed—a four-poster of solid mahogany, with velvet hangings on all sides.

She tried to struggle up on her elbows, but her heavy gown worked against her. Before she could make any progress, he had her caged. He knelt over her, straddling her thighs.

Then he framed her face in his strong hands, forbidding her to look anywhere but at him. His eyes were wild and fierce. Her heartbeat slammed against his.

“I am angry, Pauline. I have immense rage for that brigand who dared to touch you. I am furious that you’ve been hurt. And I’m angry with you, yes. For chasing after him, putting yourself at such risk. Do you know what kind of people lurk in those paths and alleyways?”

“I didn’t know what else to do. He took your mother’s—”

“Necklace. What of it? She has dozens.”

“But this is a valuable one. I know she prizes it. That’s why she wanted me to wear it tonight, so . . .”

So you could see me, and look at me as a true lady. So you’d fall in love with me and want me to be your bride. What a laugh.

“You believe I’d value a strand of jewels above your life? I know we’ve had our differences, Simms, but that’s low. You truly think so little of me?”

“I . . . No. I think a great deal of you.”

“I happen to think a great deal of you, too.”

Kind words, but he spoke them so viciously.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I can buy my mother another necklace. A better one. A half dozen of them if she likes. Jewels can be replaced.”

“So can serving girls.”

“Don’t. Don’t play that game.” His brow pressed to hers. “When I heard you cry out . . . it was like a saber to the gut. I wanted to die.”

I wanted to die.