Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)

She hurried toward the front entrance.

But then, without a word, he turned and passed through a side door instead. Pauline changed course and chased after him as they made their way to the street. His face had that same blank, unfocused look he’d worn the other day—the day when he’d walked off into the London streets and wandered them all night.

“Griff, wait,” she called. “You can’t leave me behind.”

“The carriage is in front. The coachman will take you home.”

“But what about you?”

He gestured aimlessly at the bustling, anonymous streets. “I need a walk. Some time. It will pass if I can just . . .” His voice failed.

Her heart ached for him. Perhaps he had successfully outrun these emotions for months now. But this was one race he was losing.

“Just leave me.”

“No,” she said as they reached the curb. “Not this time. I’m not leaving you alone.”

With a brisk wave, Pauline hailed a hackney cab. “What’s the name of that church?” she asked the driver. “The one all the way on the other side of London?”

The black-clad driver peered down his sharp nose at her. “St. Paul’s, you mean?”

“Right. We’re going there.” She climbed into the cab, knowing Griff would have to follow. He wouldn’t let her drive off alone.

“I don’t want to go to a bloody church.” He slung himself down across from her, folding his long legs into the cramped, dark cab.

“Neither do I, really. I just needed some destination that was far away. I know you need time, but you need to be with some—”

She bit the word off. He didn’t need someone. He needed her.

“I’m not leaving you alone right now,” she said. “That’s all.”

He tugged a silver flask from his breast pocket and began to unscrew the top. His fingers were too clumsy to manage it. With a disgusted curse, he hurled the flask into the corner of the cab.

Pauline bent to retrieve it, calmly unscrewed the cap and held the flask out to him. “Here.”

“You need to leave me.” His hands were clenched into fists on either knee. “I’m not in control of myself. I . . . I might lash out.”

As if he could ever hurt her. “I’ll duck,” she promised.

“I might weep.”

“I’m already weeping.” She dabbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

“I . . .” He bent over, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Jesus. I think I’ll be sick.”

“Here.” She held out her bonnet. “Use this.”

He stared at it.

“Really. It’s so ugly. You could only improve it.”

His eyes met hers, wounded and dark. “I can’t make you leave me?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Simms.” As he looked away, he pressed a fist to his mouth, as though to suppress a flood of emotion.

But she could sense there were cracks in the dam.

She moved forward on the seat until their knees met in the center of the coach. “You’re safe,” she whispered. “In this space, with me—you’re safe. Whatever happens in this cab will remain here. I will go home tomorrow night. No one need ever know.”

With a curse and the swiftness of desperation, he reached for her, grasping her by the hips and lowering his head to her lap. His hands fisted roughly in the fabric of her gown.

At last, with his face buried in her skirts, he released a sound. A growling, razor-edged howl of anger and anguish. It built from his gut and erupted through his body. She could feel the force of it sending tremors all through his joints—and hers. His fingers tugged at her, drawing her closer, holding her more tightly.

Every hair on her body seemed to lift on end. The sheer violence of his emotion terrified her. Her instinct was to shrink from it, but she beat down the fear.

She laid one hand flat on his shuddering back and touched the other to his hair.

Though her heart yearned to soothe him with crooning words, she resisted the urge. There was no good in telling him she understood, or that everything would be all right. It wasn’t true. She couldn’t possibly understand his loss—the sheer agony racking his body was beyond her comprehension—and everything would not be all right. He’d lost someone who could never be replaced, and he’d been holding in the sorrow much too long.

“God.” His voice was muffled by her skirts. “God damn it. God damn it.”

She wrapped her arms about his quaking shoulders, pressing a kiss to the top of his head and embracing him as tightly she could.

They stayed like that as the coach rattled on through streets and neighborhoods she’d never seen before and would never visit again.

Pauline had never dreamed how much a father could love his child—her own upbringing hadn’t given her a clue. But Griff showed her today. If one took every battered hope in a grieving father’s heart and laid them all down end to end—they could stretch across London.

Mile after mile after mile.

Sometime later, emptied of all that pent-up emotion, he lay sprawled with her on her seat.