“It didn’t matter.” Her chin lifted bravely. “I got another copy. And that time, I hid it somewhere else. When that book disappeared, I got another. Over and over again, until I found the way to outsmart him for good.”

“What was that?”

A little smile curved her lips. “I learnt it by heart. Page by page, cover to cover. I committed the entire thing to memory. He couldn’t beat that out of me, now could he?”

With a single fingertip, he tilted her face to his. Her eyes sparkled with the reflected torchlight. Brave and beautiful.

He marveled at the wild kaleidoscope of emotions she inspired in him. Violence, admiration, skin-scorching desire. The tenderness welling in his heart was almost too much to bear. No woman made him feel these things. Not all of them at once.

He cupped her chin in his hand and stroked the lovely cheek that had received such vile treatment. “You are never going back to that man again.”

“No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m going to have my very own circulating library, stocked with every book a proper young lady should never read.” She sent a look toward the house. “Just as soon as I can get back into that ballroom and earn it.”

He studied her delicate profile, amazed by the strength and determination writ there. She couldn’t know how remarkable she was.

Perhaps . . .

Oh, damn. Perhaps he ought to tell her. Gather her close, turn her face to his. Give her the truth.

You’re lovely. You’re clever. You’re turning me inside out, and I don’t like it. I don’t want to care for you. I’ve suffered enough over females who crawled inside my heart and deserted it after one week. But if I don’t say these words right now, I’m the lowest of the low. So here it is. You’re remarkable.

“Your stickpin,” she said.

“What?” His mind reeled. It was as if wild horses had been dragging his thoughts to Blitherington, Clodpateshire—and they’d stopped just shy of a dizzying cliff.

“Your stickpin.” She stared hopefully at the diamond stud embedded in his cravat. “It’s the answer. We can use it to cut the threads.”

Right. She was too clever by half.

Her fingers flew to his neck cloth and she started tugging at the diamond stud. “How does it come apart?”

“There’s a clasp.” He dug under the folds of his cravat to find it. “Here. I’ll hold the bottom and you take the top.”

She gripped the stickpin in her fingertips and began to twist it loose.

“Careful there,” he said. “Go slowly.”

The way this week was going, it would be just his luck that she’d rip the pin free, pitch forward on the bench, and bury the sharp end in one of his vital arteries.

“Almost have it,” she said.

He adored the way her delicate eyebrows knit in concentration, the way her bottom lip folded under her teeth. Oh, this was bad.

At last the golden pin popped free.

“Aha.” She held it up between them, eyes shining with triumph—as though it were the sword in the stone she’d loosed, or the key to Aladdin’s cave. Her smile could have lit the night sky. “We did it.”

Wasn’t that just his luck. She’d missed his vital arteries—and plunged the cursed thing straight into his heart.

“There,” she said, teasing his button loose. “Our bargain is rescued. We’re free of each other.”

“I don’t know about that.”

He drew her close and took her mouth in a kiss. He sank into her, reassuring himself that the taste of her remained the same despite this new, elegant attire. That though the curves of her body might be squeezed and shaped for public display, he knew how they felt. Supple, warm, strong and alive. He kissed her hungrily, relentlessly, savoring her natural ripe-berry taste and the intoxicating whisper of brandy on her lips. Pressing her further and faster than any decent man would—because he expected at any moment she’d push him away.

But she didn’t. She just kissed him back, drawing him closer with a tilt of her head and a soft, dreamy sigh. So generous, so achingly tender.

As he bent to kiss her neck, her fingers sifted through his hair, sending jolts of pleasure down his spine. Encouraged, he slid one hand to claim her breast. He needed to feel her, fill his grasp with her soft heat.

Instead, he got a handful of cotton batting.

“Deuced corset,” he growled.

“I thought you liked the corset.”

“I like this.” He slid his thumb under her neckline. “I like you.”

She sighed as he skimmed his touch lower, dipping to trace the curve of her slight, round breast. He found the tight knot of her nipple and rolled it back and forth.

When he claimed her mouth again, the shy sweep of her tongue . . . it rocked him in his boots. Again and again she caressed him. As though she were painting him with sweetness in languid strokes.

A low, feral growl of yearning rose in his chest. He wanted to thrust his hands under all this bothersome fabric, explore the precious silk of her skin. Feel her bared body pressed to his. Coax sounds of pleasure she’d never made.

He wanted . . . more. Hours and days and nights of this, and not a moment of feeling alone.

But he knew that didn’t work. Some of the loneliest moments in his life had been spent bodily tangled with somebody else. Perhaps she wasn’t entirely innocent, but that didn’t matter. He refused to drag this sweet, determined soul into depravity.

He pulled away from the kiss.

“Griff . . .”

“I shouldn’t have done this.” He withdrew his touch from her bodice and skimmed his lips over hers in a fleeting kiss. “I know we agreed that this . . .” He tilted his head and kissed her again, lingering. “ . . . shouldn’t happen again. Because it’s a very bad idea, this.”

He gave her one last, firm peck.

She kept her eyes resolutely closed. Those long eyelashes lay like fans on her cheeks. “What was it again, this thing we’re not doing? Perhaps you could demonstrate one more time.”

Sweet heaven. He wanted to demonstrate for hours, all over her body. That was the problem.

He kissed the tip of her nose, once. “There.”

She opened her eyes, and their brilliant green savaged him. “You are a ruthless tease.”

“You are an impertinent minx.”

“Well.” She smiled and shrugged, unrepentant. “That is what you wanted.”

Yes. Damn it, it was. Apparently, after years of seducing every worldly, sophisticated woman in London, an impertinent minx of a serving girl was exactly what he wanted.

But Griff vowed to himself then and there . . .

This was one woman he would never have.

Chapter Eleven

“Last night was perfection.”

The duchess drizzled a precise spiral of honey atop her buttered toast. Pauline briefly wondered if the older woman had chosen the citrine pendant at her throat to match her breakfast.

But she pushed the query aside, thinking it best to work one puzzle at a time.

“Perfection?” she echoed. “Last night? But it was terrible. I was terrible.”

“My girl, we cannot argue with results.” She waved a hand over a gilt-edged salver heaped with sealed envelopes. “So many invitations already.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. Think of gemstones. Some jewels are prized for their exquisite cut and polish. Others are coveted by collectors, even when riddled with flaws, simply because they are so very rare.”

“But I’m not rare in any way,” Pauline objected. “I’m exactly the opposite. I’m common.”

The duchess made a contrary snort over her bite of toast. “He danced with you.”

“For all of ten seconds. Perhaps fifteen.”

“That was more than enough. You don’t understand. My son never dances. It’s been years since he’s danced with any unmarried lady, for the exact purpose of avoiding this speculation.”

Pauline sighed. “But . . . but he only danced with me to escape his bothersome friend.”

“The two of you disappeared into the gardens, and when you returned his cravat was mussed.”

“We had to remove his stickpin. The duke’s button was caught on my seam, and he couldn’t get loose.”

“Oh, I know he couldn’t get loose.” The duchess teased a folded newspaper out from beneath the heap of envelopes. “Precisely as it’s printed in the Prattler. ‘The Duke of Halford, Snared at Last.’ ”

Oh, no.

Pauline cringed as she scanned the newspaper gossip column. Just as the duchess had said, it was filled with speculation about the duke and “the mysterious Miss Simms.”

Any thrill of overnight fame was lost on her. She was consumed by the common girl’s worst daily fear: that of losing her post.

If the duchess was this happy with the results of last night, Pauline knew one thing.

The duke would not be.

He couldn’t blame her for this scandal sheet, could he? If the evening had ended in anything other than humiliation, it was all his fault. He was the one who’d caught her when she slipped, tangling their clothing. He was the one who’d danced her out into the garden.

He was the one who’d kissed her. Touched her, so sweetly.

The duchess whisked the newspaper aside. “We’ve made excellent progress, but there remains a fair bit of road ahead. And you have your elbows on the table.”

Pauline removed them grudgingly.

“This morning, our task is accomplishment.”

“Accomplishment?”

“The next time you attend a social event, you’ll stay longer than an hour. As is the case with all young gentlewomen in attendance, you may be called on to exhibit.”

“Exhibit?” Pauline laughed.

Oh, this would be a joke. Her worries about accidentally succeeding in this duchess-training endeavor all melted that instant—like so much butter scraped across her warm, evenly browned point of toast. No scorched bread in this house.

“You mean to make me an accomplished lady in one morning? That’s impossible.”

“I mean to find the natural talent you already possess. There must be one.”

Pauline paused, toast halfway to her mouth. “Your grace . . .”

She set the toast aside, suddenly uneasy. The duchess thought she had a hidden talent. Her, Pauline Simms. It was so strange—and rather wonderful—to have someone who believed in her, even this small bit.

Though Spindle Cove was stocked with unconventional ladies, none of them had ever taken much time to know Pauline. Her own mother was a sad, defeated shadow of a woman. She’d never had anyone like the duchess in her life—a guiding feminine presence who not only believed she could be something better than a farm wife or serving girl, but demanded she try.

But the more she came to treasure the duchess’s confidence in her, the more Pauline worried about how this week would end. She hated the idea of watching the older woman’s dreams unravel.

She said, “Please believe me when I tell you, nothing remotely matrimonial is ever going to transpire between me and the duke. It just . . . won’t happen. Nevertheless, your grace, I’m starting to like you. You’ve been kind to me in moments, and I know you have a good heart under all that phlegm. I don’t want you to form lofty expectations, only to have your plans spoiled.”

In response, the duchess only gave a slight smile. She lifted a spoon and tapped at her egg sitting in its enameled cup. A delicate lattice of cracks bloomed over the egg’s smooth shell.

Tap, tap, tap.

Pauline reached out with her own spoon and gave the egg a good, hard crack. She didn’t know how else to make the older woman listen.

“Your grace, you must take me seriously. I’m trying to tell you to give up your hopes of grandchildren—at least, any mothered by me—and you’re calmly eating a boiled egg. Are you losing your hearing?”