Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(21)

A picture bloomed in her mind, crisp as daylight and all too real. The Duke of Halford, masculine limbs ranging across a wide bed. No toffish velvet. No flight of stairs. No swallowing maw of feather beds. Just rumpled dark hair, biceps flexed around a pillow, and soft white linen, luminous in the moonlight, tangled about his hips. Or maybe lower, just hugging the curve of a tight, muscled arse.

She tried to shove the image away. No luck.

That sealed it. Cold tea or no, now she’d never be able to sleep.

She picked herself up off the floor, gathered the counterpane tight about her shoulders as a wrap, and ventured out into the corridor.

It was darker here. Pauline stood still for a moment, trying to recall the housekeeper’s sequence of turns. She’d tried to pay attention, but she’d been so overwhelmed and tired. Not to mention awed by the rows of ancient portraits, in some places stacked three high. All those scores of illustrious ancestors.

The girls back home would say this place was surely crawling with ghosts.

Somewhere above her, timber creaked. A cool draft swirled over her neck. Pauline swallowed hard.

Left. She was sure they’d come from the left.

She made her way slowly in that direction, keeping one hand out to trail her fingers along the wall. Every dozen steps, her fingertips skipped from wallpaper to the beveled wooden surface of a door. One, two, three . . . She counted six before pausing. She ought to have reached the stairway by now.

A sudden flare of light stopped her in her paces. Stopped her heart as well. Which ghostly Duke of Halford Past was that? Ducking, she raised her hand against the blinding flame and squinted through splayed fingers.

“Simms?”

She found the eighth—and only living—Duke of Halford, haunting his own house.

He held a lamp in one hand. With the other he yanked a door closed. She heard the scrape of a key in the lock.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, pocketing the key.

His angry tone surprised her. “Good evening to you, too, your grace. My journey to London was fine, thank you.”

He was having none of it. “Why are you snooping around my private rooms?”

“I didn’t realize they were your private rooms. I wasn’t snooping. I took a wrong turning, that’s all. I’ll go back the other way.” She turned to leave.

He caught her by the arm, swiveling her back to face him.

“Did my mother put you up to this?”

Pauline didn’t even know how to answer. Put her up to what? Sleeplessness? Wrong turnings in a vast, darkened house?

“Are you looking to pilfer something? Answer me with one word.”

“No.” She drew up her spine.

“Then explain yourself. You’re out of bed when you should be sleeping, in a corridor you have no reason to visit.” He held the lamp high and examined her. “And you have a guilty look on your face.”

“Well, you have an arrogant, wrong-headed look on yours.”

That was a bit of a lie. The lamplight bleached the stark planes of his face and splashed weary shadows under his eyes. The rich brown of his irises was overwhelmed by cold, empty black. He didn’t look especially arrogant, not right now.

Whatever he’d been doing in that locked room, it was private. She’d interrupted him in an unguarded moment. And because a big, strong man like him couldn’t possibly admit to having an unguarded moment, he was going to make her twist and squirm.

She sighed. “Dukes and their problems.”

“I don’t appreciate your impertinence, Simms.”

“Well, that’s bollocks.”

He drew her closer, and her heart began to race. Her bare foot grazed his. The shock of it traveled all through her.

“My impertinence is the reason I’m here, remember? It’s why you chose me from a room of well-bred ladies. Because I’m perfectly wrong. Everything you’d never want in a woman.”

He raked a gaze down her body. “I wouldn’t say that.”

The hard bob of his Adam’s apple caught her gaze, dragged it downward. Her attention settled in the dark, chiseled notch at the base of his throat.

Her lungs chose that moment to go out on labor strike. She held her breath so long, she went a bit dizzy.

“Send me home tomorrow, if you like. But you’ll find nothing’s vanished with me. I wasn’t stealing. Even if I were considering it—and I’m not—I’d know better than to try it my first night here. I’ve met your housekeeper. I’ve no doubt she keeps a list of every last drawer pull in every last closet and takes inventory on the regular. If I meant to steal, I’d wait for the last moment. So if you won’t give me credit for honesty, at least give me credit for cleverness.”

“I’ll give you credit for nothing until I hear the truth.”

“I’ve told you the truth.” She pulled the counterpane tight about her shoulders. “I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d go down to the libr—”

“To the library,” he finished for her. Sarcasm dried his words to brittle husks. “Really, that’s what you mean to tell me. You were looking for the library.”

Why did he sound so incredulous?

“Yes,” she answered. But at this point all she wanted was to return to her bedchamber without further interrogation. Her sleeplessness would surely be cured. This man was exhausting.