Beauty and the Blacksmith(31)

“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Griff said.

The duchess arched a brow, deflecting all censure back at him. “Are you?”

No. He wasn’t. He felt like a first-rate ass. He’d thought himself so damned clever, picking the serving girl out of the spinster crowd. And now he’d invaded her home and forced her to watch while her own father placed a price of four pounds, eight shillings on her health and happiness.

Even for him, this was low.

Miss Simms emerged again, moving toward the table with teapot in hand. Their gazes locked, and her eyes taught him some bold, nameless shade of green. Deep in some unexplored virgin forest, there was a vine of that color, just waiting to be discovered. And there was something essential in this girl’s nature that was far, far better than this place.

Just then, Griff observed a telling sequence of events.

A clatter rose from the rear of the house.

With a quiet curse, Pauline Simms stumbled. Hot tea sloshed on the cottage’s dirt floor.

“Paul, I told you—” The farmer’s hand went up in threat.

And standing four full paces away, Pauline—the girl who would hold her own against a duke—flinched.

He’d seen enough.

“Mother, go ahead to the coach.” He quelled her objection with a small gesture, then turned to the girl. “Miss Simms, a word outside. Alone.”





CHAPTER THREE


Pauline followed him out the front door and around to the side of the house. The south side, where there were no windows for the family to peer at them. Neither could the duchess view this corner from the carriage. It was just the two of them, alone with a late-blossoming apple tree and the ridiculousness of it all.

She hoped they might have a good laugh and part ways. There would be evening chores to be done before long, and she’d had enough of dukes for one day.

Apparently, he’d reached a breaking point, too. He stalked the yard in long strides. Back, then forth.

“I’ve reached a decision.” He plucked a dead, dangling branch from the apple tree and tapped it on the fence rail. “Simms, you’re coming with me to London. This very afternoon.”

Her breath left her. “But . . . but why? For what purpose?”

“Duchess training, naturally.”

“But you can’t truly mean to marry me.”

He came to a decisive halt. “Of course I don’t mean to marry you.”

Well. She was glad they had that settled.

“Let’s set a few things straight at the outset,” he said. “I might wear fine clothes and possess a splendid carriage, and I’ve rolled into your life on something that might resemble a whirlwind. Perhaps even a romantic one, to the untutored eye. But this isn’t a fairy tale, and anyone who knows me could tell you . . . I am no prince.”

She laughed a little. “With all due apologies, your grace, I hadn’t formed any opinions to the contrary. I stopped believing in fairy tales long ago.”

“Too practical for such things, I suspect.”

She nodded. “I’m prepared to work hard for the things I want in life.” Sadly, she was still wearing a full year’s hard work spattered in her hair and frock.

“Excellent. Because what I’m offering you is employment. I mean to hire you as a sort of companion to my mother. Come to London, submit to her ‘duchess training,’ and prove a comprehensive catastrophe. Should require little effort on your part.”

Pauline’s jaw worked but no words came out.

“In exchange for your labors, I will give you one thousand pounds.” He leveled his apple-branch switch at the cottage. “And you will never depend on that man again.”

One thousand pounds.

“Your grace, I . . .” She didn’t even know what to say—whether to call his proposal insufferable, or nonsensical, or a dream come true.

Impossible. That was the best word.

“But I can’t. I just can’t.”

He moved closer. The sun caught amber flecks in his dark brown eyes. “You can. And you will. I will make it so.”

She turned her gaze to the cottage, frustrated with his commanding demeanor and his stubbornly enticing scent. He smelled so wretchedly trustworthy.

“Don’t worry about your clothes and your things,” he said. “Leave it all. You’ll have new.”

“Your grace . . .”

He tapped the branch against his booted calf. “Don’t play at reluctance. What can possibly be keeping you here? A post serving tea to spinsters? Farm labor, and sleeping space in a drafty loft? A brutish father who would eagerly sell you for five pounds?”

She set her teeth. “Five pounds is no paltry sum to folk like us.”

And even if it weren’t a vast amount, it was five pounds more than “completely worthless,” which was how her father set a woman’s value most days.

“Be that as it may,” he said, “five pounds is considerably less than a thousand. Even a farm girl with no schooling can do that arithmetic.”

She shook her head. Amazing. Just when she thought he’d exhausted the ways to insult or demean her, he proved her wrong.

He said, “My mother has too much time at leisure. She needs a protégé to take shopping and drill in diction. I need her diverted from matchmaking. It’s a simple solution.”

“Simple? You mean to bring me to your home . . . buy me all new things . . . pay me a thousand pounds. All that, just to cure your mother of meddling?”

He shrugged in confirmation.

“I wouldn’t call that simple, your grace. Much easier to just tell her you don’t wish to marry. Don’t you think?”

His eyes narrowed. “I think you enjoy being difficult. Which makes you the ideal candidate for this post.”

Pauline was divided on how to receive that statement. For once, she was someone’s ideal. Unfortunately, she was his ideal thorn in the side.

Nevertheless, his offer tempted in a perverse way. For once in her life she wouldn’t be failing at success. She’d be succeeding at failure. No more would she hear, “But she means well”—the duke didn’t want her to mean well at all.

“None of this matters,” she said at last. “I can’t leave Spindle Cove.”

“I’m offering you a lifetime of financial security. All I’m asking in return is a few weeks of impertinence. Think of it as your chance to write the practical girl’s fairy tale. Come away to London in my fancy carriage. Have some fine new gowns. Don’t change a whit. Don’t fall in love with me. At the end of it, we part ways. And you live wealthily ever after.” He looked to the carriage. “Just say yes, Simms. We need to be going.”

What would it take to convince him? She raised her voice, enunciating each word as best an uneducated farm girl could. “I . Can’t. Go.”

He matched her volume. “Well, I can’t leave you.”

The world was suddenly very quiet. The duke went absolutely still. She could have thought him a statue if not for the stray apple blossom decorating his shoulder and the breeze stirring his dark, wavy hair. Somewhere above them a songbird chirped and whistled for a mate.

She swallowed hard. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

He tilted his head and stared at her with fresh concentration. She tried not to blush or fidget as his slow, measured paces brought them toe-to-toe. So close, she could see the individual grains of whiskers dotting his jaw. They were lighter than his hair—almost ginger, in this light.

“There’s something about you.” His ungloved hand went to her hair, teasing it gently. A little shower of crystals fell to the ground. “Something . . . all over you.”

Good heavens. He was touching her—without leave, or any logical reason. And it should have been shocking—but the most surprising part was how natural it felt. So simple and unforced, as though he did this every day.

She wouldn’t mind it, Pauline thought. Being touched like this, every day. As though there were something precious and fragile beneath the grit of her life, just waiting to be uncovered.

He dusted more fine white powder from her shoulder. “What is this? You’re just coated with it.”

Her answer came out as a whisper. “It’s sugar.”

He lifted his thumb to his mouth, absently tasting. His lips twisted in unpleasant surprise.

“Sugar mixed with alum,” she amended.

“Oddly fitting.” He reached for her again, this time leading with the backs of his fingers.

She felt herself leaning forward, seeking his touch.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR


TESSA DARE is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of nine historical romance novels and four novellas. A librarian by training and a book-lover at heart, she makes her home in Southern California, where she shares a cozy, cluttered bungalow with her husband, their two children, and a dog.