Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(2)

“You are a scheming, fiendish woman with entirely too much time at leisure.”

“And you are the eighth Duke of Halford,” she returned. “I know that doesn’t mean much to you. The disgraces at Oxford, the gambling, the years of aimless debauchery . . . You seem determined to be nothing more than an unfortunate blot on the distinguished Halford legacy. At the very least, start on the next generation while I still have time to mold it. You have a responsibility to—”

“To continue the line.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So I’ve been told. Again and again.”

“You’ll be five-and-thirty this year, Griffy.”

“Yes. Which makes me much too old to be called ‘Griffy.’ ”

“More to the point, I am fifty-eight. I need grandchildren before my decline. It’s not right for two generations of the family to be drooling at the same time.”

“Your decline?” He laughed. “Tell me, Mother, how can I hasten that happy process? Other than offering a firm push.”

Her eyebrow arched in amusement. “Just try it.”

Griff sighed. His mother was . . . his mother. There was no other woman in England like her, and the rest of the world had better pray God had broken the mold. Like the jewels she delighted in wearing, Judith York was a formidable blend of exterior polish and inner fire.

For most of the year, they led entirely separate lives. They only resided in the same house for these few months of the London season. Apparently, even that was too much.

“I’ve been patient,” she said. “Now I’m desperate. You must marry, and it must be soon. I’ve tried to find the most accomplished young beauties in England to tempt you. And I did, but you ignored them. I finally realized the answer is not quality. It’s quantity.”

“Quantity? Are you taking me to some free-love utopian commune where men are permitted as many wives as they please?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I was being hopeful.”

Her lip curled in a delicate scowl. “You’re terrible.”

“Thank you. I work hard at it.”

“So I’ve often lamented. If only you applied the same effort toward . . . anything else.”

Griff closed his eyes. If there was any conversation more tired and repetitive than the “When will you ever marry?” debate, it was the “You’re a grave disappointment” harangue. Only in this family would it be considered “disappointing” to successfully oversee a vast fortune, six estates, several hundred employees, and thousands of tenants. Impressive, by most standards. But in the Halford line? Not quite enough. Unless a man was reforming Parliament or discovering a new trade route to Patagonia, he just didn’t measure up.

He glanced out the window again. They seemed to be entering a sort of village. He slid open the glass pane and discovered he could smell the sea. A salted-blue freshness mingled with the greener scents of countryside.

“It is a prettyish sort of place,” his mother said. “Very tidy and quiet. I can understand why it’s so popular with the young ladies.”

The coach rolled to a halt in the center of the village, near a wide, pleasant green that ringed a grand medieval church. He peered out the window, gazing in all directions. The place was far too small to be Brighton or . . .

“Wait a minute.” A vile suspicion formed in his mind.

Surely she hadn’t . . .

She wouldn’t.

The liveried footman opened the coach door. “Good day, your graces. We’ve reached Spindle Cove.”

“Oh, bollocks.”

When the fancy coach came trundling down the lane, Pauline scarcely gave it a glance. Many a fine carriage had come down that same road, bringing one visitor or another to the village. A holiday in Spindle Cove was said to cure any gently bred lady’s crisis of confidence.

But Pauline wasn’t a gently bred lady, and her trials were more practical in nature. Such as the fact that she’d just stumbled into a murky puddle, splashing her hem with mud.

And that her sister was near tears for the second time that morning.

“The list,” Daniela said. “It’s not here.”

Drat. Pauline knew they didn’t have time to go back to the farm. She was due at the tavern in minutes. This was Saturday—the day of the Spindle Cove ladies’ weekly salon, and the Bull and Blossom’s busiest day of the week. Mr. Fosbury was a fair-minded employer, but he docked wages for tardiness. And Father noticed.

Frantic, Daniela fished in her pocket. Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s not here. It’s not here.”

“Never mind. I remember it.” Shaking the muddy droplets from her skirts, Pauline ticked the items off in her memory. “Dried currants, worsted thread, a bit of sponge. Oh, and powdered alum. Mother needs it for pickling.”

When they entered the Brights’ All Things shop, they found it packed to bursting. While the visiting ladies met for their weekly salon, the villagers purchased their dry goods. Villagers like Mrs. Whittlecombe, a cobwebby old widow who only left her decrepit farmhouse once a week to stock up on comfits and “medicinal” wine. The woman gave them a disdainful sniff as Pauline and Daniela wedged their way into the shop.

Pauline could just make out two flashes of white-blond hair on the other side of the counter. Sally Bright was busy with customers three deep, and her younger brother Rufus ran back and forth from the storeroom.