Any Duchess Will Do (Spindle Cove #4)(9)

“That’ll do, Major.” Pauline clapped her hands. Then she ushered her guests inside. “This way, your graces. Don’t be bashful. Our home is yours. We’re all family now.”

The door lintel was low and the duke was tall. He would have to duck to avoid bashing his head. He paused at the threshold. For a moment Pauline thought he’d simply turn around, return to the carriage, and drive off to London.

But he didn’t. He bent at the waist and passed through the doorway in a single, fluid motion.

She had to smile at that. The arrogant duke, literally stooping to enter her family’s cottage.

Once inside, the two visitors swept a look around the small, sparsely furnished abode. It wasn’t difficult to take in the whole dwelling at a glance. The house was only some dozen paces wide. A stone hearth, a few cupboards, table and chairs. Faded print curtains fluttered in the two front windows. To the side, an open doorway led to the only bedroom. A ladder climbed to the sleeping loft she and Daniela shared.

The rear doorway led to the exterior area where they did all the washing. Soft splashes indicated someone was washing up after the noon meal.

“Mother,” she sang out, “look who I brought home from the Bull and Blossom. The ninth Duke of Halstone and his mum.”

“Halford,” the duchess corrected. “My son is the eighth Duke of Halford. He’s also the Marquess of Westmore, the Earl of Ridingham, Viscount Newthorpe, and Lord Hartford-on-Trent.”

“Oh. Right. Suppose I should learn it all proper, shouldn’t I? I mean, seeing as how it’ll be my name, too.” She grinned broadly at the duke. “Fancy that.”

His lips quirked a fraction. Whether in irritation or amusement, she didn’t dare to guess.

“Will you sit?” she asked the duchess.

“I will not.”

“If you need the privy,” she informed them in a confidential tone, “you go through that door, back around the woodpile, and left at the pigs.”

“Pauline?” Mother came through the back door, wiping her hands on a towel.

“Mother, there you are. Has Father gone back to the fields?”

“No,” said Amos Simms, darkening the same doorway her mother had just traversed. “No, he ’asn’t. Not yet.”

She found herself holding her breath as her father peered at the duke, then the duchess.

Lastly, he turned a menacing glare on Pauline.

A sharp tingle of warning volleyed between her shoulder blades. She would pay for this later, no doubt.

“What’s all this, then?” her father demanded.

Pauline swept an arm toward her guests. “Father, may I present His Grace, the eighth Duke of Halford, and his mother. As for what they’re doing here . . .” She turned to the duke. “I should let his grace explain it.”

Oh, excellent. The girl wanted him to explain it.

Griff exhaled, running a hand through his hair. There was no satisfactory explanation he could offer. He had no bloody idea what he was doing in this hovel.

Something sharp jabbed him in the kidney, nudging him forward. That damned parasol again.

Oh, yes. He recalled it now. There was a reason he was here, and the Reason Herself needed a sharp lesson in minding her own affairs.

He snatched the parasol from his mother’s grip and presented it to the farmwife. “Please accept this gift as thanks for your hospitality.”

Mrs. Simms was a small woman with stooped shoulders. She looked as faded and wrung out as the dish towel in her red-knuckled hands. The woman stared at the furled parasol, seemingly dumbfounded by its tooled ivory handle.

“I insist.” He pressed it toward her.

She took it, reluctantly. “That’s v-very kind, your grace.”

“Never enter a house empty-handed. My mother taught me that.” He shot the duchess a look. “Mother, sit down.”

She sniffed. “I don’t believe I—”

“Here.” With his boot, he hooked a rough wooden bench and pulled it out from the table. Its legs scratched across the straw-strewn dirt floor. “Sit here. You are a guest in this house.”

She sat, arranging her voluminous skirts about her. But she didn’t try to look pleased about it.

For the next minute or so, Griff learned how it felt to be a menagerie exhibit, as the collected Simms family stood about, gawking at them in silence.

“Mrs. Simms,” he finally said, “perhaps you’d be so kind as to offer us some refreshment. I would have a word with your husband.”

With evident relief at her dismissal, Mrs. Simms drew her daughter into the kitchen. Griff pulled a cane-backed chair away from the table and sat.

As Simms settled on the other chair, the burly farmer narrowed his eyes. “What can I do for you, yer grace?”

“It’s about your daughter.”

Simms grunted. “I knew it. What’s the girl done now?”

“It’s not something she’s done. It’s what my mother would like her to do.”

Simms cut a shrewd glance toward the duchess. “Is her grace needing a scullery maid, then?”

“No. My mother would like a daughter-in-law. She thinks I need a wife. And she claims she can make your girl”—he waved in the direction of the kitchen—“into a duchess.”

For a moment the farmer was silent. Then his face split in a gap-toothed grin. He chuckled, in a low, greasy way.