This was a business arrangement, he reminded himself. He’d hired the girl to bedevil his mother, not to bewitch him. Her cleverness and lively, cat-tipped eyes should not be temptations. They were a desirable set of skills she brought to her post. Similar to the way one sought out a stonemason with brawn and foresight and steady hands.
The thought of employees helped him turn his mind toward mundane tasks. He’d need to warn the house staff that the duchess would be bringing a guest. Fortunately, his housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas, was scarily efficient. A few words, and everything would be readied in advance of Miss Simms’s arrival: room, maid, meals, bath.
God, yes. The girl needed a bath.
A proper bath. Not just a quick dousing to rinse away that glittering sweetness. A bath hot enough to soak those calluses from her hands and curl the short hairs at her temples. With a fresh cake of scented soap for scrubbing, and thick, downy towels to wrap her sleek, glistening limbs.
The image that came to his mind was so vivid, so lushly detailed in every texture of skin and soap and slickness . . . He had to pull the horse to a halt in the center of the road and recover himself.
The hard drumming of hoofbeats had ceased, but his ribs pounded with the furious thunder of his pulse.
Why her? Why now?
But as was the case with all the whys and wherefores he’d addressed to the darkness in recent months, no answers came back. Only one thing was clear. This just wouldn’t do. Perhaps he could outride temptation tonight, but by the morrow, temptation would be living under his roof.
There was only one thing for it. He must pay a visit on his way back to Town.
He adjusted his position in the saddle, leaning over the gelding’s neck to urge the beast faster. Midway on his journey through Kent, he turned his horse off the main road and instead took a winding, familiar spur.
He approached the village in the first gray whisper of morning—a tight cluster of cottages, wreathed in fog. A dew-glittered meadow offered some bluebells and primrose for the picking. Griff turned the horse out to graze and stretched his legs, gathering what twiggy wildflowers he could find. They weren’t much, but it seemed poor form to show up empty-handed.
As dawn broke over the green horizon, he realized he was stalling. Stupid, to be anxious.
He walked past the white-steepled church, to the walled area behind it. The rusted churchyard gate swung inward with a whine of hinges, and he walked to the third row of monuments. He found the simply marked grave.
He remained there several minutes, silent and unmoving, before crouching to place his meager bouquet before the limestone cross.
When he tried to stand, he couldn’t. Grief seized him with a savage, crippling pain. Like an auger drilling straight on his heart. It hollowed him out, left a round, aching hole—one he knew would never be filled.
This is what comes of indulging your desires.
After long minutes he could breathe again. Before he rose to leave, he kissed his fingertips, then laid them to the cool, grainy stone.
There. Temptation conquered.
Chapter Five
“Miss Simms,” the duchess said. “Your nose will wear a hole in that windowpane. Duchesses do not gawk.”
Pauline sat back on the carriage seat, chastened.
After traveling all night, they’d reached the bustling environs of London by early afternoon. It then took them three more hours to navigate the busy bridges and streets, making their way to Halford House. Her nose had been glued to the coach window for all of it, as she stared wide-eyed at the urban scenery. So much glass. So much brick. So much soot.
And so very many people.
Eventually the coach turned into an area of finer homes, many of them fronting wide green squares with immaculately trimmed hedges. They must be nearing the duke’s house.
Pauline had been in fine houses before. Well, one fine house at least—Summerfield, the home of Sir Lewis Finch. Sir Lewis’s housekeeper sometimes hired extra help to clean house at Christmas or Easter. Summerfield was a grand manor, sprawling over several wings and filled with curiosities of every stripe. Every dusty old bit of bric-a-brac was priceless—at least, hired girls were expected to handle them like treasures.
By the time the coach rolled to a halt before Halford House, Pauline had convinced herself it would be well within the range of her experience.
She was wrong.
Nothing in life, dreams, or fairy tales had prepared her for this. And how she would keep from gawking, she had no idea.
To begin with, the house was massive. Four stories high, and wide enough that one would have to stand all the way at the opposite end of the square to regard it in its entirety. Close as she was when she alighted from the coach, Pauline had to tip her head nearly all the way back. She felt her jaw hanging agape.
And then, as the sun was just sliding beneath the city’s uneven horizon, it lingered one last moment to splash brilliance across the square. The amber rays landed directly on Halford House, like a coronation. Every glass pane flashed like a diamond facet, and the white granite façade looked dipped in gold.
She was stunned.
Then the door opened. And she was stunned some more.
She followed the duchess through a gauntlet of eight liveried footmen. Once they crossed the threshold, there were more servants lined up in the entrance hall. Cook, housekeeper, housemaids, scullery maids, lady’s maid.
The interior was accordingly impressive. Paintings on every available swatch of wall, ornate clocks chiming in welcome. Sumptuous upholstery in any place a person could possibly think to sit. It was really too much to take in with her eyes, but she didn’t need to. She could feel this house’s elegance in the soles of her feet. The wooden floors were expertly sanded and polished, and the carpets . . . oh, the carpets had pile so thick and plush, they made her insteps sigh with gratitude.
Pauline was introduced to the housekeeper, Mrs. Thomas—a woman who, in any other circumstance, would have been handing her a bucket and brush, sending her to scrub a floor somewhere.
Today, she welcomed Pauline as a guest. She even curtsied. “Let me show you to your room, Miss Simms.”
As she followed the housekeeper, Pauline wished she could leave a trail of bread crumbs. She’d never find her way back on her own.
Straight from the entrance, up the steps. Right at the top, and round the bend to the second, narrower flight of stairs. Then left down the wainscoted corridor—the one with walls papered with a green toile pattern—or was it blue? This would have been easier in full daylight.
She counted the doors as they passed. One, two, three . . .