Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(43)

“Not at all. I heard you perfectly.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m smiling because you said ‘spoiled plans’ and ‘boiled egg.’ Not ‘spiled’ or ‘biled.’ ”

Pauline clapped her hand over her mouth, aghast. Drat. The duchess was right. She had said the words correctly. What was happening to her?

She knew the answer to that question.

Griff was happening to her. When the duke kissed her, her head spun, her knees melted . . . and her elocution improved. Limber tongues and all that.

“Bloody hell,” she mumbled into her palm.

The duchess gave a weak sigh and motioned to the servant for more tea. “Your H’s still need work.”

Griff woke up at the crack of . . . half-nine. Hours earlier than usual.

He’d always been the sort of person who felt most himself at night, and in this last year he’d become a veritable vampire. More often than not he went to bed as the sun came up and remained there until well past noon. But yesterday’s debacle had made it clear to him he couldn’t afford to doze though another day of his mother’s scheming.

How had yesterday gone so wrong?

It had started with the frock. That damnable sweet, sheer, innocent white frock. She’d turned his head, and the rest of the day had been one mistake piling atop the next.

If he hadn’t lost his concentration with Del, he wouldn’t have been wounded. If he hadn’t been wounded, he would have never agreed to attend that ball. If they hadn’t attended the ball, he wouldn’t have ended with her in that dark, fragrant garden, sliding his fingers over her tempting curves and contemplating acts of romantic lunacy.

The answer to this situation was plain.

No new frocks.

No attractive ones, anyhow.

No more kisses, either. That was obvious.

And most important of all, no more surprises.

As he walked through the house in search of them, Griff passed an unusual amount of clutter. Strange debris littered every room—all sorts of activities hastily abandoned. As though the house’s occupants had recently fled an erupting volcano.

In the salon, he found various instruments of needlework strewn on the settee and table. In the morning room, an abandoned easel displayed a drippy mess of a watercolor. Nearby a few drawing pencils lay cruelly snapped in half.

He heard a faint melody, so he walked toward the music room. When he arrived, he found it empty of people—but every instrument in the place, from harp to harpsichord, had been stripped of its Holland cloth, dusted, and attempted.

Where were the servants? Why weren’t they putting these rooms back to rights?

And he still heard that strange, slow melody. Like a drunken music box winding into a death spiral.

The tune ended. It was followed by an enthusiastic smattering of applause.

“Brava, Miss Simms,” he heard.

And then, from someone else, “Give us another?”

The melody began again.

With slow, quiet footfalls, Griff traced the sounds to the dining room. He eased open the door a fraction.

At the far end of the room, he spied Pauline Simms. She stood before about fifteen water goblets lined up on the table, each one filled with a different amount of water, and she was pinging them with two forks. He couldn’t tell if they were pickle forks or oyster forks. And then he decided this absurd preoccupation with forks was why he didn’t do mornings.

Anyhow, she was doling out a cheerful melody with these forks, as if each note were a bite of music.

No wonder the house was a shambles. All around her the assembled servants of Halford House stood looking on, rapt. Anticipating each musical morsel that fell from those precious little tines. None of them noticed Griff standing in the door.

The music was only part of the entertainment. As she worked, she pulled the most amusing faces. Delicate frowns of concentration, punctuated by disarming cringes when she struck a wrong note. When a lock of hair worked loose to dangle over her brow, she huffed a breath, blowing it away without skipping a beat.

She was working so very, very hard—so very, very earnestly—to create this display. It was absurd. Ridiculous. And utterly adorable.

Everyone in the room was enchanted, and Griff couldn’t claim he was immune to her spell. She was enchanting.

When the last note faded, all the servants clapped.

“That was Handel, my girl,” his mother said, beaming with pleasure. “How did you learn that piece?”

Pauline shrugged. “Just by listening to the village music tutor. She taught piano lessons in the Bull and Blossom.”

“That’s natural musicality,” the duchess said. “You could translate that ability to any of several proper instruments, with practice.”

“Truly? But, your grace, there’s no time for prac . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked up—and saw Griff, standing in the doorway.

Their gazes tangled.

Without breaking eye contact, he could feel all the others in the room turning his way.

Griff knew he had a split-second decision to make. He was either going to be caught staring at Miss Simms, exposed for the enraptured, lusting fool he was, in front of his mother and all his servants—or he could do what he did best: hide his every emotion behind the mask of an indifferent, entitled jackass.

Really, there was no choice.