Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(81)

“I always loved watching it when I was a boy.”

A hint of melancholy deepened his voice. No doubt he’d hoped his own offspring would one day love watching it, too. Now he believed he would never have someone to share it with.

At least she could share it with him now. She slid an arm around his back, hugging him tight. Listening to the last chimes of the clock and the fierce thump of his heart.

“I was thinking I’d donate it to the Foundling Hospital,” he said. “I thought perhaps the children in the infirmary would enjoy it.”

“I’m sure they would.”

“Well, then. I’ll have my mother take it when she visits next.”

She twisted in his lap and peered up at him. “I have a better idea.”

Chapter Twenty-two

The plan might have been Pauline’s idea, but Griff quickly took control of it. This wouldn’t be any namby-pamby Ladies’ Auxiliary tour of the establishment. If he was going to visit a foundling home, he was going to do it his way. The dissolute ducal way.

With authority, extravagance, and unabashedly wicked intent.

His arrival was unannounced—all the best, most dramatic appearances were. He led a parade of servants through the gate, each of them laden with treasures: sweets, oranges, playthings, competently knitted caps—and at Pauline’s suggestion, storybooks.

By the time they marched this bounty straight into the central courtyard, the entire place was in upheaval, with brown-clad children pouring out from every classroom and dormitory.

The matrons were not pleased. Their already dour expressions reached new excesses of sternness—many a new wrinkle would be carved that day. But the matrons had no recourse, unless they wished to refuse the thousands he gave them per annum.

It was good to be a duke.

Once all the children were assembled, Griff called out, “Where’s Hubert Terrapin?”

The lad shuffled forward. He was easy to spot—the smallest in his queue.

“Hubert, I’m appointing you quartermaster,” he said.

“What’s that mean, your grace?”

“You’re to supervise distribution of all this. It’s quite a job. Can you manage it?”

The youth pulled himself tall. “Yes, your grace.”

“Good. The rest of you, fall in line. Youngest first.”

The file moved painfully slowly. As good-natured, oft-slighted children are, Hubert was painfully fair in his apportionments, solemnly counting out sweetmeats and sections of orange.

“He’s so conscientious,” Griff whispered to Pauline. “We’ll be here until tomorrow.”

“It’s dear, isn’t it? But I’m not surprised. Squabbling over too little is just human nature. But it says a great deal about a person, what they do with abundance.” She put a boiled sweet in his hand. “Something to chew on.”

He smiled to himself as she drifted away. Apparently, she’d found time this week for duchess lessons in subtlety, or lack of it. But she was wrong if she thought these few hours of spontaneous generosity were some sort of saintly exercise on his part. Whether he bestowed it on charity or lost it at the card table, parting with money had never been a trial for him.

Parting with her, on the other hand . . . God, he couldn’t even think about it yet. The hours remaining before her inevitable departure were growing too few. He needed a task to occupy himself or he’d go mad.

“Hubert,” he said, “pass me one of those oranges. Let me give you a hand.”

Sometime later he congratulated the lad on a job well done, left the courtyard littered in orange rinds, and went in search of Pauline. At last, he found her in the infirmary.

Such a cozy scene. His repaired clock occupied the center of the fireplace mantel. On the hearth rug, Pauline had three little ones piled in her lap like kittens, as an older girl read aloud to them all from a book of fairy stories.

The irony ripped open his chest and went straight for his heart. This picture before him—Pauline, children, sweetness, the fairy-tale ending—it was everything he could want in life. And everything he could never have.

He hadn’t wanted to fall in love with her. Lord knew, he’d tried his best to avoid it. But now it was too late. And he couldn’t even employ the younger man’s trick—talking himself out of the emotion, pretending he felt something less. Perhaps his heart did lie at the bottom of a black, fathomless well, where he’d succeeded in ignoring it for years. But he’d dug deep while waiting for his daughter. Now the pump had been primed.

He knew what it was to love. And this was it.

God help him.

He remained silent in the doorway, unwilling to interrupt. Not knowing what he’d say, if he dared. He’d probably blurt out a stream of desperate raving. Don’t leave me, I love you, I can’t go on without you. He’d send the children screaming. They’d have nightmares for weeks.

So he just stood there, silently reeling on the edge of life-long desolation.

Until a thin, high-pitched sound pushed him over the edge.

Pauline snuggled the little ones close. Beth had reached the most delightfully gory part of the story—the bit with the dragon who plucked out black hearts with a single claw. But just as the heroine of the story prepared to face the ultimate test, they were interrupted by the high, keening cry of an infant.