Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(49)

“You ‘like’ me.”

“I do. In fact, I like you a great deal more than I should. And it’s precisely because you are all wrong.”

She stared at him, pursing those delectable, berry-pink lips. Far too many hours had passed since he’d kissed her.

He cursed. “I’m not explaining it right. I’m not used to making these sorts of speeches. But can’t we call a truce? Find somewhere to have a spot of—”

Before he could finish the thought, a woman in dark, shapeless wool rushed up to him. Like a raven, winging out of nowhere.

“Please, sir. I c-can’t . . .” She sobbed from deep in her chest. “Please.”

She darted away just as quickly, and it took Griff several instants to register that she’d left something behind.

A babe. Wedged into his arms.

Oh, Jesus.

Gray-blue eyes, scratchy little fingers. No nose or neck to speak of. All wrinkles, from head to tiny toes. Christ, why did they all have to look so much the same?

“Oh, goodness,” Pauline said. “That poor woman.”

“Wh—” He held the child slightly out from his body. His arms were frozen with shock. “Where is she? Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. She must have meant to surrender the child. Perhaps she was afraid to come inside.”

Griff scanned the busy environs, hoping stupidly for one flash of dark wool to stand out from the dark, woolen crowd. She’d probably stayed nearby. She was likely watching him now—this stiff, useless nobleman she’d trusted to do right by her child—and feeling keen regret.

The infant knew she’d been done wrong. She wailed up at Griff, puckered and red-faced, waving little fists clenched in anger. Drops of rain spattered her face and blanket. She opened her mouth so wide, her lips seemed to thin and disappear. Her toothless gums and little tongue were bright vermilion with rage.

You’re a bloody duke, the babe seemed to shout at him. Near six foot tall, thirteen stone. Do something, you worthless lump. Make it all come out right!

“What should we do?” Pauline asked.

“I . . .”

Griff didn’t know. With everything in his hollowed-out shell of a heart, he wanted to soothe the child’s cries. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

He passed the baby into Pauline’s arms, muttered a few words of excuse that he’d never remember later. Then he turned and strode away, into the rain.

“Your grace! Griff, wait!”

He could shake off her calls, but the wailing carried high above the din of the streets, above the dark clatter of rain. Those wordless cries of accusation followed him all the way to the street.

Haunted him for miles.

Chapter Thirteen

Very early the next morning, Pauline woke in the darkness. She wrapped her body in a dressing gown, lit a taper, and made her way downstairs to the library.

She didn’t find the man she’d spent a fitful night alternately worrying over and dreaming about. But she found something almost as intriguing.

The naughty books.

She plucked a volume from the shelf, built a fire in the grate, and settled in.

An hour or so later she was immersed in a scandalous encounter—a dairymaid’s lover had his hands under her skirts and was questing determinedly higher—when the library door swung open with a whoosh of freezing air.

She startled, whipping her head up. Her attention was ripped from the story roughly, unevenly—like a sheet of pasted paper torn loose. Little scraps of lewdness clung to her. She was blushing so fiercely she worried her cheeks would glow in the dark.

Thank goodness the intruder wasn’t the duchess or a servant.

Only Griff.

But she couldn’t call him “only Griff.” He could never be “only” anything. The intruder was life-altering, heart-muddling, oft-maddening Griff.

And she didn’t know what they’d make of each other, after all that happened yesterday.

He tossed her a brief, dark look. She couldn’t tell whether he was glad to see her or the reverse. “You’re awake at this hour?” he said.

She closed her finger in her book, holding the page. “I wake early every morning. I’m a farm girl at heart. Can’t sleep past five, it seems.”

As he shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair, she recognized it as the same one he’d been wearing when she’d seen him last. His jaw was unshaven. He was still hatless as well. And he looked every bit as miserable as when he’d left her at the front gates of the foundling home, squalling babe in arms.

However he’d spent his night, the activity hadn’t succeeded in cheering him.

“Are you just coming in?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too managing or . . . well, wifely.

He nodded.

What a stark illustration of the differences between them. This hour meant early rising for her, but late homecoming for him. The two of them were literally night and day.

But even night and day had to cross paths sometime.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

His answering sigh was a slow, weary rasp. “Simms, I honestly don’t even know.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now.”

Wordlessly, he crossed to his desk and rolled up his uncuffed shirtsleeves. He lit two candles, sat down and regarded the broken clockwork he’d left waiting the other night.