Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(38)

Or a thousand, she supposed.

He took her wrist, lifted her hand to his mouth, and caught the middle finger of her glove with his teeth. Then he slowly pulled.

The motion was wickedly sensual. Entrancing, even. When her hand slid free, she had no idea what to do with it.

“Oh. Yes.” She felt between them, exploring the place where his button met her bodice seam. It seemed hopelessly twisted, by touch. Her attempts to make a visual inspection were thwarted—her artificially inflated bosom kept getting in the way.

“I could see it better if not for this ridiculous corset,” she said.

“I’m good at removing those, too.”

Pauline threw him a chastening look but he didn’t catch it. He was too busy glazing her br**sts with his heated stare.

“Ahem.”

“Sorry. I’m a man. We get distracted.”

She flushed, pleased despite all her attempts not to be. Men might be distractible by nature, but they were hardly ever distracted by her.

“Fortunately,” she said, “I still have a few powers of concentration left. You should remove your coat. Then you’d have both hands free. And if we still can’t work the button loose, I can wait here while you go in search of scissors or a blade.”

“I knew you were clever.”

He tried shrugging his free arm out of his coat but made little progress. It was so tightly fitted, and his arms weren’t lean.

“I need my valet for this.”

“Let me play valet. I am a servant, after all.”

He extended his wrist to her. “Hold the cuff.”

She obeyed, and they began their second absurd dance of the evening: The duke flailing his arm while she attempted to hold the sleeve steady—and make sure that his other cuff didn’t rip free and destroy her bodice. Every time he tugged on his sleeve, he just pulled Pauline forward. They ended up pivoting in a tight, useless circle. If their first waltz was a Hungarian variation, this one must hail from the moon.

He growled. “I should see about switching to a substandard tailor.”

“Perhaps if I tried to work it loose this way.”

Turning to face him as best she could, she slid her hand under his lapel, skimming over the silk front of his waistcoat and the firm wall of muscle beneath. Her heart stuttered when she brushed something that felt distressingly nipplelike—but she proceeded undaunted, working her hand up to his shoulder in an attempt to cleave the garment from his body.

“Lift your arm a bit.”

He flinched, as if ticklish.

“Be still. I’m good at this, remember?” By twisting her arm and wriggling her fingers, she managed to ease her fingers higher. “No one can reach as high as I can.”

“Good God, Simms. My arm is not a foal to be birthed.”

“Almost there.” She slid her fingers over the crest of his shoulder and partway along his sleeve.

“Simms.”

She looked up. They were standing mere inches apart. His lips were very, very close to hers.

Her fingers involuntarily flexed, digging into his biceps. He winced.

“Oh.” She sucked in her breath, apologetic. “I’m so sorry. I’d forgotten your wound.”

“It’s not my arm, Simms. It’s everything. We’re alone in the garden while a ball goes on. I can’t stop staring at your br**sts, and your hand is . . . violating my topcoat. It is time to face hard truths. As attempts at avoiding entanglement go, this one isn’t working. At all.”

“But . . . but it could be worse.”

“It’s hard to see how.”

She didn’t know what made her say it. The words just came from her lips. “You could be kissing me.”

Chapter Ten

“Kissing you,” Griff echoed. He tried to make it sound as though the words were some outlandish sentiment spoken in a foreign, unfamiliar tongue—and not the exact same thought he’d been harboring.

She was so close and so warm. They were entangled, and her deft, impertinent hands were all over him—reminding him just how long it had been since he’d been touched, stroked, fussed over. Given a damn about.

The hell of it was, none of her attentions were soothing in the least. Only provoking, arousing. Inflaming the hurt not only in his slashed arm, but in those raw, hollowed-out chambers of his heart.

“You’re right,” he told her. “Kissing is the one thing that would undoubtedly make this moment worse.”

“Oh, Lord.” She leaned forward until her brow met his chest. Then she lifted her head slightly. Then let it fall forward again. After a few more repetitions, he understood the meaning behind this strange gesture.

His chest was the brick wall, and she was bashing her head against it.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“This is terrible,” she moaned. “I can’t fail at this, too. I just can’t. My life before this was bad enough. What kind of hapless, hopeless person fails at failing?”

“I’m not following you.”

She snuffled a little, using his pocket square to wipe her nose—without actually easing it from his pocket.

“At home,” she said, “my sister and I, we’re always those Simms girls who mean well. They say that because we can’t do anything right.”

Her br**sts were now pressed against his chest, soft and springy. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Didn’t help.