Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(61)

She popped up on her toes, craning her neck to look in all directions. “What is it we’re waiting to see?”

“It’s starting,” he said, turning her head. “Look.”

Pauline looked. She caught sight of a glowing orb. One single ball of light, hanging in the distance.

She blinked, and there were two of them.

And then ten.

And then . . . thousands.

A warm glow spread through the gardens like a wave of light, touching here a red lamp, there a blue or green. Breathless with delight, she tilted her head back. The trees above them were strung with lamps on every branch. The glow traveled from one to the other, and before long the entire grove was illuminated. The effect was similar to standing beneath a stained-glass church window at the sunniest part of the day. Except this was night, and all the colors had a luminous richness. The lamps were like a thousand jewels, hanging from every tree and carved stone archway.

Pauline couldn’t even come up with words. She laughed and clapped a hand to her cheek. “How do they do it?” she asked. “How do they light them all at once?”

“There’s a system of fuses,” he explained. “They only need to light a few, and the spark travels to all the lamps.”

“It’s magical,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, softly. “I think it is, rather.”

She turned to the duke, giddy with the beauty of it. He wasn’t looking around at the thousands of lit globes hanging from the trees.

He was watching her.

A shiver passed over her bare shoulders. She crossed her arms to warm herself.

“Let me,” he said, placing his gloved hands on her upper arms, then rubbing up and down.

The supple leather slid over her bare skin, warm and buttery. It was a lovely gesture, but it wasn’t doing a dratted thing to cure her of gooseflesh.

His gaze caressed her mouth. “Perhaps coming here was a mistake.”

“No,” she insisted, hoping her words weren’t drowned by the mad thumping of her heart. “No, I promise I can do this.”

“Halford!” The voice carried to them through the glen. She turned to spy Lord Delacre waving at them from the colonnade. “Come along, then. We’ve a booth over this way.”

“That’s my cue,” she said, giving Griff a wink. “Time for me to earn my thousand pounds. Prepare for disaster.”

They made their way to the colonnade and found the booth Del had reserved. Pauline slipped away to mingle with the group. Griff watched her laugh and joke, sip champagne and devour slice after slice of wafer-thin ham.

For his part, Griff stood to the side, nipping brandy from his pocket flask and finally coming to grips with a painful truth. He needed to find some new friends.

Martin had his Drury Lane songstress in tow, and Delacre had taken up with that widow again. A few well-dressed prostitutes hovered at the edges of the group, hoping for their glasses to be filled before they wandered away. Without even making an effort, Pauline was the most refined woman in the booth. If she made any ill-informed remarks about the Corn Laws, no one would care.

All the halfway decent fellows who’d once been part of their circle had drifted away in recent years—married, come into their titles, settled down. Griff would have liked to drift away, too—without the marrying part—but it was harder to leave a circle when you were the center of it.

“When are you opening the Grange this year, Hal?” Martin asked, one arm draped about his mistress’s powdered shoulders. “Ruby here fancies a holiday in the country. She’ll bring friends. Quite friendly friends.”

The painted blonde gave him a coy promise of a smile.

In years past, Griff had spent the colder months at Winterset Grange. The house was the first thing he’d purchased after reaching his majority. Even with six family properties, he’d felt the need for a place of his own. Other men had bachelor apartments. He was a duke; he had a bachelor estate. There, for several years after leaving university, he and his Oxford friends had taken the country house party tradition to new heights—or lows—of dissipation.

Always the generous host, Griff famously opened his door to any and all guests—especially the pretty, female variety. Days were for sleeping. Nights were for gambling, drinking, and other vices of the flesh.

The Grange had become such an institution that when Griff failed to open the house last winter, rumors of his insolvency had circulated.

He hadn’t been broke, of course. Just broken.

“You are opening the Grange this year, aren’t you?” Martin asked.

“I hadn’t decided,” Griff replied. “Perhaps not.”

“Oh, come along, Hal. You must. Last winter I was forced to go home to Shropshire. A crashing bore, I tell you. The old man’s after me to join the Church.”

“Second sons and their problems.”

Griff wasn’t interested in opening his house just so Martin and Delacre and every other overgrown adolescent in England could come laze barefoot on his furniture and organize drunken billiard tournaments that lasted three days and three nights straight. It had been good fun when they were youths, but now . . . He supposed his patience and his generosity had run out.

Or been redirected.

He could see himself opening that house for one reason only—and her name was Pauline.