She did as he bade, and gladly, turning her head and stretching to press her lips to his. His tongue plundered her mouth, and his cock filled her sex, and his fingertips worked her just where she needed it. He had her wrapped in strength and adoration.

She didn’t want to come. She didn’t want this to ever end. This was the purest bliss she’d ever known.

But he was wicked and skillful and so cursed efficient. Within moments her whole body was racked by waves of pleasure.

His thrusts quickened, lost their elegance. Once again that coiled power in his thighs had her toes lifting off the ground. He broke the kiss and buried his face in her hair. Profane, inarticulate mutterings rained on her ear, making her pulse drum even harder.

“I don’t forget who you are,” he whispered. “And it’s you I want. So . . . damned . . . much.”

He withdrew, finishing with a few last thrusts between her thighs. His primal growl gave her a thrill of satisfaction.

And then he held her so tightly it grew difficult to breathe. But she didn’t mind.

“Well,” he said finally, hoarsely. “I hope that’s settled.”

“Quite.”

He slumped into the armchair and pulled her into his lap. They sprawled there, tangled and sweaty, filling the silence with ragged breaths. He lazily stroked her hair with one hand.

She pressed her face to his shirtfront. “Griff, that was . . .”

“I know,” he said. “I know. It was. I don’t mind saying I’m rather proud of it.”

“You should be.”

His chest rose and fell with a deep, satisfied sigh. “I feel like jaunting over to Piccadilly to wait for someone in passing to ask me, ‘How do you do?’ Simply so I could reply, ‘Just had the best sexual encounter of my life, thanks for asking.’ ”

She laughed, imagining that exchange. “Best of your life?” she couldn’t help but ask. “Truly?”

“Until later tonight, at least.” He nuzzled her neck. “Pauline. Every time with you is the best of my life.”

And how many more times would they have left? Too few, too few.

Ding . . . ding . . . ding . . .

As if it were some fateful portent of their time growing short, a nearby timepiece chimed the hour. Pauline looked over at the side table. She recognized it as the clock he’d been tinkering with all week.

“You were able to repair it,” she said.

He shushed her, and his breath warmed her earlobe. “Watch.”

From a little window in the front, a tiny couple emerged. A soldier and a lady. In halting, mechanical motions, they bowed to one another, twirled in a little waltz, then parted and retreated back into the clock.

“Oh, that’s charming.”

“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.

“Oh, it’s that new one,” Beth said. “Always wailing. He’ll be sent to the country soon, I hope.”

“Poor thing,” Pauline said. “I didn’t know we were so close to the nursery.”

Beth turned a page. “It’s straight across the corridor.”

She looked up, toward the corridor in question.

Oh, no.

Griff stood in the doorway, mildly rumpled and devilishly handsome as ever. But his face . . . Oh, his face had gone the color of paper. One look at him and she knew. He was in torment.

“I have to go, darlings. Beth will finish the story.”

They fretted and mewled and tugged at her skirts. “Will you come back, Miss Simms?”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m going home tomorrow night. I have a sister who’s missing me. And I’m missing her.” She gave Griff a cautious smile. “Perhaps his grace will visit another day.”

“I . . .” From the other room, the babe wailed again. He winced.

“I know,” she said to him and hurried to gather her bonnet and wrap. “We’ll leave at once.”

They made hasty strides for the front gate. Pauline struggled to keep pace. She knew Griff was racing his emotions, determined to outrun the epic landslide those cries had set off.

He couldn’t outrun it forever. The grief would catch up with him eventually, but she didn’t want to see him plowed under here. Not with so many people about.

She hurried toward the front entrance.

But then, without a word, he turned and passed through a side door instead. Pauline changed course and chased after him as they made their way to the street. His face had that same blank, unfocused look he’d worn the other day—the day when he’d walked off into the London streets and wandered them all night.

“Griff, wait,” she called. “You can’t leave me behind.”

“The carriage is in front. The coachman will take you home.”

“But what about you?”

He gestured aimlessly at the bustling, anonymous streets. “I need a walk. Some time. It will pass if I can just . . .” His voice failed.

Her heart ached for him. Perhaps he had successfully outrun these emotions for months now. But this was one race he was losing.

“Just leave me.”

“No,” she said as they reached the curb. “Not this time. I’m not leaving you alone.”

With a brisk wave, Pauline hailed a hackney cab. “What’s the name of that church?” she asked the driver. “The one all the way on the other side of London?”

The black-clad driver peered down his sharp nose at her. “St. Paul’s, you mean?”

“Right. We’re going there.” She climbed into the cab, knowing Griff would have to follow. He wouldn’t let her drive off alone.

“I don’t want to go to a bloody church.” He slung himself down across from her, folding his long legs into the cramped, dark cab.

“Neither do I, really. I just needed some destination that was far away. I know you need time, but you need to be with some—”

She bit the word off. He didn’t need someone. He needed her.

“I’m not leaving you alone right now,” she said. “That’s all.”

He tugged a silver flask from his breast pocket and began to unscrew the top. His fingers were too clumsy to manage it. With a disgusted curse, he hurled the flask into the corner of the cab.

Pauline bent to retrieve it, calmly unscrewed the cap and held the flask out to him. “Here.”

“You need to leave me.” His hands were clenched into fists on either knee. “I’m not in control of myself. I . . . I might lash out.”

As if he could ever hurt her. “I’ll duck,” she promised.