Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(44)

Jackass it would be.

He began to applaud in slow, smug claps—and continued long after the room had gone silent.

Long after the shy, endearing smile had fled her face.

He let one last, ringing clap echo through the sobered room. He brought out his most bored, condescending tone. “That . . . was . . . capital, Simms. You will certainly stand out from the debutante crowd.”

She ducked her head, looking flustered. “Just an old trick I learnt at the tavern. Some nights are slow. The duchess asked after my musical talent, and this is the sum of it.”

“Do you juggle tankards, too? Fold table napkins into jousting cranes?”

“I . . . No.” She set aside the forks.

“Pity.”

“Excuse me,” she muttered, rushing out the dining room’s other door.

Griff stared at the empty space she’d left. He hadn’t expected her to take it quite that hard. She wanted to be a successful failure, didn’t she?

Once she was gone, every footman and housemaid in the room turned in his direction. Their eyes shot beams of pure resentment.

“What?” he asked.

Higgs cleared his throat in subtle rebuke.

Good God. He’d lost them, their loyalty. Just like that.

“Really,” Griff said. He ceased leaning on the doorjamb and drew to full ducal height. “Really. I’ve been your employer for years. In some cases, decades. Annual rises in pay, Christmas boxes, days off. Simms pings a fork on some goblets, and now you all side with her?”

Silence.

“You’re servants. Stop standing about, and go . . . serve.”

A dour parade of footmen and maids filed past him on their way out of the room, leaving Griff alone with his mother.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a palm.

“I will do the talking,” he said. He was the duke. He was solely responsible for six estates, a vast family fortune, and this very house—and he meant to assert that authority.

“I don’t know what else you have planned for Simms this morning, but I intend to be a part of it. No more of this scheming and shopping in secret, only to ambush me with new frocks and water goblet sonatas. Am I understood?”

She lifted her chin. “Yes.”

“Good.” He clapped his hands together. “So what’s on today’s agenda, now that music is finished? Whatever it is, I’m joining you. More shopping? Etiquette lessons? Some stab at exposing the girl to art or culture?”

“Charity,” she said.

“Charity?”

“It’s Tuesday. We’re going to the Foundling Hospital. I visit every Tuesday.”

The Foundling Hospital. The floor dropped out of Griff’s stomach. Of all the places. He had no desire to spend his day at an orphanage.

“You only have a week with Simms. Why not skip this particular Tuesday?”

“Because it’s an essential part of any duchess’s duty—charity toward the less fortunate.” Her brow quirked. “It’s an essential part of a duke’s duty, too.”

Now he saw where she was going with this. And he didn’t like it.

“On second thought,” he said, “I can’t go.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“I have an urgent appointment. I’ve just remembered it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “An urgent appointment with whom?”

“With . . .” He churned air with one hand. “Someone who needs to see me. Urgently. The land steward.”

“He’s in Cumberland.”

“I meant the family solicitor.” He looked down his nose at her. “I’ve decided to decrease your quarterly allowance.”

She hmphed. “Well, then. You can discuss the matter with him today. His office is in Bloomsbury, directly across from the Foundling Hospital.”

Griff sighed. Damn.

Chapter Twelve

Pauline was amazed. In London, it seemed even the orphans lived in palatial splendor.

The Foundling Hospital was a grand, stately edifice in Bloomsbury, surrounded by green courtyards and fronted by a formidable gate. Inside the building, the halls and corridors were lavishly decorated with paintings and sculpted trim.

As they walked down the center of the main hall, Pauline felt a cramp forming in her neck from staring upward at the artwork. But any pain in the neck was preferable to feeling the sting of Griff’s indifference.

She couldn’t even look at him. Not after that humiliation in the dining room.

It wasn’t as though she took great personal pride in pinging tunes on crystal, but there’d been such malice in those slow, smug claps. She expected him to be displeased after last night, but she hadn’t been braced for cruelty.

Men. Such capricious creatures.

She ought to have learned this lesson from Errol Bright. Whenever they’d stolen an hour or two alone together, he’d been all eager hands and fervent promises. But if they crossed paths in the village, he treated her as just the same old Pauline. At first she’d told herself it was romantic that way—they had a secret passion, and no one could guess. Eventually she’d realized the painful truth. All Errol’s tender words in the moment were just that—in the moment. He’d never truly wanted more.

Now she’d made the same error with Griff.