Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

“Hubert, I’m appointing you quartermaster,” he said.

“What’s that mean, your grace?”

“You’re to supervise distribution of all this. It’s quite a job. Can you manage it?”

The youth pulled himself tall. “Yes, your grace.”

“Good. The rest of you, fall in line. Youngest first.”

The file moved painfully slowly. As good-natured, oft-slighted children are, Hubert was painfully fair in his apportionments, solemnly counting out sweetmeats and sections of orange.

“He’s so conscientious,” Griff whispered to Pauline. “We’ll be here until tomorrow.”

“It’s dear, isn’t it? But I’m not surprised. Squabbling over too little is just human nature. But it says a great deal about a person, what they do with abundance.” She put a boiled sweet in his hand. “Something to chew on.”

He smiled to himself as she drifted away. Apparently, she’d found time this week for duchess lessons in subtlety, or lack of it. But she was wrong if she thought these few hours of spontaneous generosity were some sort of saintly exercise on his part. Whether he bestowed it on charity or lost it at the card table, parting with money had never been a trial for him.

Parting with her, on the other hand . . . God, he couldn’t even think about it yet. The hours remaining before her inevitable departure were growing too few. He needed a task to occupy himself or he’d go mad.

“Hubert,” he said, “pass me one of those oranges. Let me give you a hand.”

Sometime later he congratulated the lad on a job well done, left the courtyard littered in orange rinds, and went in search of Pauline. At last, he found her in the infirmary.

Such a cozy scene. His repaired clock occupied the center of the fireplace mantel. On the hearth rug, Pauline had three little ones piled in her lap like kittens, as an older girl read aloud to them all from a book of fairy stories.

The irony ripped open his chest and went straight for his heart. This picture before him—Pauline, children, sweetness, the fairy-tale ending—it was everything he could want in life. And everything he could never have.

He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with her. Lord knew, he’d tried his best to avoid it. But now it was too late. And he couldn’t even employ the younger man’s trick—talking himself out of the emotion, pretending he felt something less. Perhaps his heart did lie at the bottom of a black, fathomless well, where he’d succeeded in ignoring it for years. But he’d dug deep while waiting for his daughter. Now the pump had been primed.

He knew what it was to love. And this was it.

God help him.

He remained silent in the doorway, unwilling to interrupt. Not knowing what he’d say, if he dared. He’d probably blurt out a stream of desperate raving. Don’t leave me, I love you, I can’t go on without you. He’d send the children screaming. They’d have nightmares for weeks.

So he just stood there, silently reeling on the edge of life-long desolation.

Until a thin, high-pitched sound pushed him over the edge.

Pauline snuggled the little ones close. Beth had reached the most delightfully gory part of the story—the bit with the dragon who plucked out black hearts with a single claw. But just as the heroine of the story prepared to face the ultimate test, they were interrupted by the high, keening cry of an infant.

“Oh, it’s that new one,” Beth said. “Always wailing. He’ll be sent to the country soon, I hope.”

“Poor thing,” Pauline said. “I didn’t know we were so close to the nursery.”

Beth turned a page. “It’s straight across the corridor.”

She looked up, toward the corridor in question.

Oh, no.

Griff stood in the doorway, mildly rumpled and devilishly handsome as ever. But his face . . . Oh, his face had gone the color of paper. One look at him and she knew. He was in torment.

“I have to go, darlings. Beth will finish the story.”

They fretted and mewled and tugged at her skirts. “Will you come back, Miss Simms?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m going home tomorrow night. I have a sister who’s missing me. And I’m missing her.” She gave Griff a cautious smile. “Perhaps his grace will visit another day.”

“I . . .” From the other room, the babe wailed again. He winced.

“I know,” she said to him and hurried to gather her bonnet and wrap. “We’ll leave at once.”

They made hasty strides for the front gate. Pauline struggled to keep pace. She knew Griff was racing his emotions, determined to outrun the epic landslide those cries had set off.

He couldn’t outrun it forever. The grief would catch up with him eventually, but she didn’t want to see him plowed under here. Not with so many people about.