His chest was a solid wall of heat, inflaming her and bringing her nipples to tight, needy peaks. Nothing separated their bodies but a few tissue-thin layers of linen, but still she couldn’t get close enough. She rubbed against him, hoping to soothe the ache. Pleasure arced straight to her core.
When she stretched her arms around his back, he growled in encouragement. The deep, vibrating sound traveled through her body and settled as a seductive hum between her thighs. She nestled closer still.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her lips. “That’s right.”
It was. The way they fit together felt so, so right.
He wasn’t kissing her any longer. They were kissing each other. Taking pleasure. Giving comfort. Learning one another’s taste.
His mouth gentled over hers, and his movements grew languid, playful. Their tongues partnered in a slow, sensual dance. She gripped the skin-warmed linen of his shirt, letting it glide between her fingertips. So supple, with so much strength beneath. A wild, feral curiosity seized her. She wanted to know everything about him. Was his body bronzed to match his face, or pale like carved marble? Did he have hair on his chest, or was it smooth?
What powered that fierce, drumming beat of his heart?
She told herself to stop the inquiries there, struggling to tether her imagination before it ventured further downward.
Apparently, he had no such concern.
He swept a bold, exploratory touch down her spine. A pleasant shiver chased his caress, skipping over her vertebrae. When he reached her bottom, his hand found a curve she didn’t know she had, and he claimed it with a possessive squeeze. She savored his moan of satisfaction.
How wonderful. She was used to thinking of her body as all points and angles, but he made her feel soft.
She’d never felt like this, not in all her life. So wanted, so desired. So needed, and by a man who shouldn’t need anything.
When he finally broke the kiss, he left her lips swollen and aching. The corner of her mouth was rasped raw by his whiskers, and she touched her tongue to it, coaxing the hurt. She’d be feeling this kiss for hours.
Possibly years.
He released a ragged sigh. “Simms. That was badly done of me.”
Pauline laughed a little. “If that was badly done, I’m not sure I’d survive your best effort.”
“No, no. It was badly done of me as your employer. I shouldn’t like you to think I make a habit of chasing the help.” He turned aside, scrubbing a hand through his dark hair. “When I want companionship, I have no difficulty finding it. I never need to s—”
“Sink to this?” Stung, she reached for the discarded counterpane. “If your aim is to let me down gently, you’re failing.”
Why did men have to ruin everything? The answer was simple, she supposed—because foolish women gave them the chance.
“Listen. I’m just trying to say it won’t happen again. And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for kissing me? Or sorry it won’t happen again?”
He approached and tucked the counterpane tight about her shoulders. “Both.”
In the flickering candlelight, his face took on that same haunted, lonely look. If he truly had no difficulty finding companionship—and after that kiss, she could believe he didn’t—why wasn’t he off pleasuring his mistress, or entertaining a widow, or debauching a virgin tonight?
For a man with no desire to marry, he wasn’t exactly reveling in his freedom.
“It was just a kiss.” She gathered a lit candle from the desk. “What’s a little kiss or two? Nothing.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Did you hear yourself?”
“What?”
“You just said nothing. Not nothin’.”
“No, I didn’t. I said nothing. Nothing.” She gasped. “Cor. I did say it. Nothing.” She tested more words. “Kissing. Embracing. Fluttering.”
“Let’s just”—the duke held up a hand—“stop the exercise there.”
Pauline clapped a hand over her mouth and laughed into it. “Oh, no. This can only be your fault. Your mother did say it was all in limbering the tongue.”
He gave her a dark look.
“Don’t worry, your grace. No matter how you pronounce it, it truly was nothing. Just a kiss.”
Liar, her heartbeat pounded. It was so much more.
“I’ve been kissed before,” she continued.
Liar, liar. You’ve never been kissed like that.
“I know not to make too much of it. This is hardly cause for alarm,” she finished.
Liar, liar, hair afire.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “We both have our goals. You have your naughty bookshop to open, and I have my ribald life story to continue, unfettered by matchmaking. The only way this week can go wrong is if it ends with us engaged to marry, and God knows that’s not going to happen.”
He drew the doors shut, then turned to her. Their gazes caught in the warm, golden space above the candle flame.
Pauline forced a laugh. It came out high and wild and ridiculous, and she wished she could blame it on someone else. “Oh, heavens. Don’t flatter yourself, Griff. The kiss wasn’t that good.”
And then she hurried up the stairs, trying to outrun that pounding accusation in her chest.
Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar.
Chapter Seven
By mid-morning the next day, Pauline was amassing quite the mental list of things duchesses didn’t do.
Duchesses didn’t curse, spit, serve themselves at the table, buckle in any sense of the word, or speak of their internal organs in mixed company.
But on a happy note, duchesses did not have chores. They didn’t draw water, or feed the hens, or turn out the cow, or chase a loose piglet all through the yard. Duchesses didn’t make their own breakfast, or anyone else’s. That part was lovely.
And when the Duchess of Halford swept into her bedchamber, Pauline added one more item to her list:
Duchesses did not knock.
She startled and thrust the bookkeeping manual under the pillow before rising from the bed. She didn’t want to explain how that book had come to be in her possession. Even if she’d spent the past hour or two reliving the scene in her memory.
Oh, that kiss.
Her lips still tingled.
“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” the duchess said, “even at this early hour.”
This early hour?
“It’s nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. I’ve been awake for ages.” Never in her life had Pauline slept later than six. She turned her head and gazed out the window. “Half the day’s gone.”
“You’re used to country hours. We operate on a different schedule in Town. The time for morning calls begins at noon. Luncheon might be taken at three. The evening is just getting under way at nine o’clock, and midnight suppers are de rigueur.”
“If you say so.” Pauline woke with the dawn every day, without fail. Mornings would be her time for reading. Perhaps she could steal a visit or two to the library, once she finished the bookkeeping text.
“My son seldom rises before noon,” the duchess sighed. “But that’s why we’re getting an early start. We’ve a great deal of work before us.”
Pauline scanned the room. “I would have dressed, but I didn’t see my frock.”
“Oh, that.” The duchess waved a hand. “We burned that.”
“You burned it? That was my best for everyday.” As opposed to the two other frocks she owned, one of which was strictly for church.
“It’s not going to be your best ever again. From now on, you wear better. Later we’ll visit the shops, but I’ve had my modiste send over some samples for today. I’ll ring for Fleur, and we’ll have you dressed.”
“Jolly good, your grace.”
Pauline’s spirits sank straight to the carpet. Two minutes into her undressing last night she’d realized she didn’t get along with Fleur. Or more to the point, Fleur didn’t get along with Pauline.
The lady’s maid had golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes, and she floated into the room like a snowflake. Perfect, pale, and cold.
“Hmph,” Fleur said. It was a very French sound, and it didn’t sound complimentary to Pauline’s hair, face, attire, or character.
The Halford driver and footmen had been present in Spindle Cove for everything, and Pauline knew how quickly gossip passed from one servant to the next. By now they all must know she was a mere country farm girl, not worthy of a lady’s maid’s attention. Surely the servants would resent her and the extra work she was causing them.
Fleur unpacked a set of tissue-lined boxes, drawing out a series of undergarments and three nearly identical frocks.
“They’re all white,” Pauline said.
“Of course they’re white,” the duchess replied.
Never in her life had Pauline worn a white frock. Perhaps not even at her own christening. White was the color for ladies, because only ladies could keep a white gown clean. If she had ever been so foolish as to make herself a light-colored frock at home, it would have been gray within three washings. Excepting aprons and stockings, everything she owned was either brown or dark blue.
Not any longer.
First she was cloaked in a snow-white chemise, then corseted within an inch of her life. The duchess selected the simplest of the frocks—a high-waisted morning dress in layers of sheer muslin—and Fleur lifted it over Pauline’s head. The pale fabric descended like a cloud, wreathing her in airy prettiness. She stared down at her arms, so tanned and freckled when placed against the pristine muslin.
The duchess scrubbed her with an appraising look. “At least it fits in the shoulders. It’s fortunate you’re willowy.”
Willowy? That struck Pauline as a generous way of describing her figure. Even willows had curves.
After fussing with the frock’s loose waistline for a few moments, Fleur took a length of jade-green satin and slid it about Pauline’s middle, cinching it tight and tying a bow in back.
“Hmph.” This time, Fleur sounded satisfied.
“Yes, much better,” the duchess agreed. “Now what can be done with her hair?”
Not much, appeared to be Fleur’s opinion.
Once Pauline’s hair was coiffed and pinned in a simple, upswept knot, she was left staring at a most unfamiliar reflection in the vanity mirror. Not a hair out of place, not a speck on her frock’s scalloped lace overlay.
The duchess dismissed Fleur with a few words in French, then addressed Pauline’s reflection in the mirror. “I am going to do something I never do. I am going to talk to you about my son.”
Pauline’s mouth opened. But even if she’d decided what to say, the duchess’s look forbade her to say anything.
“I know. I know. But I can’t speak to my peers about such things, and I’d never confide in the servants. I’m at my wit’s end with Griffy, and I’ve no one else to tell.”
Griffy?
“He’s changed since last autumn. I noticed it the day I arrived in Town. My son was always a rascal as a young boy. Then he grew into a dissolute young man, always playing cards with his friends or hosting bacchanalian parties at that Winterset Grange. And there’ve been so many women.”
No doubt, Pauline thought. Did last night make her one of them?
“But this past year, everything changed. He didn’t even open the Grange last winter. He stayed in Town. For what purpose, I can’t imagine. He never goes out to the clubs, shows no interest in friends or society. And then there’s the locked room.”
“A locked room, you say?”
She tried not to betray her heightened interest. With all that had happened in the library afterward, she’d almost forgotten surprising him in the corridor last night. He’d certainly behaved like a man with something to hide.
