Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare

staring forward at the wall.
    She gave the blank-faced servant an amused look and waved her hand before his eyes. “Hullo. Anyone home?”
    The footman remained still as a wooden nutcracker, until she gave up and sat down.
    Griff took his own seat and summoned the waiter with a look, ordering an assortment of dishes. He was famished.
    “Cor,” Miss Simms sighed, putting her elbows on the table and propping her chin on one hand. “I’m famished.”
    The duchess rapped the tabletop.
    “What now?” the young woman asked.
    “First, remove your elbows from the table.”
    Miss Simms obeyed, lifting her elbows exactly one inch above the surface of the table.
    “Second, mind your tongue. A lady never refers to the state of her internal organs in mixed company. And you will strike that word from your vocabulary at once.”
    “What word?”
    “You know the word to which I refer.”
    “Hm.” Dramatically thoughtful, Miss Simms put a fingertip to her lips and cast a glance at the ceiling. “Was it ‘famished’? Or ‘I’m’?”
    “Neither of those.”
    “Well, I’m confused,” she said. “I can’t recall saying anything else. I’m just a simple country girl. Overwhelmed by the splendor of this inhospitable establishment. How am I to know what word it is I shouldn’t say if your grace will not enlighten me?”
    A pause stretched, as they all waited to see whether his mother could be provoked into repeating such a common slang as “cor.”
    Griff reclined in his chair, happy to wait her out. This was the most enjoyment he could recall at a family dinner.
    His mother had been needing someone to manage. She certainly couldn’t browbeat him —no matter what measures she’d resorted to yesternight—and the servants at Halford House were too well-trained and stoic. He’d been flirting with the idea of getting her a mischievous terrier, but this was better by far. Miss Simms wouldn’t leave any puddles on the carpet.
    Perhaps after this week was over, he’d hire his mother another impertinent companion.
    But next time he’d find one who wasn’t so pretty.
    The girl sparkled. Sparkled , deuce her. Griff couldn’t help staring. Hours of coach travel hadn’t dislodged those sugar crystals dusting her form, and his eye couldn’t stop searching them out. They were like grains of brilliant sand strewn in her hair, clinging to her skin. Even tangled in her eyelashes.
    Worst of all, one tiny crystal had lodged itself just at the corner of her mouth. His awareness of it had long passed distracting and verged on maddening. Surely, he thought, at some point during dinner she would catch it with her tongue and sweep it away.
    If not, he’d be tempted to lean forward and tend to the cursed thing himself.
    “Miss Simms,” his mother said, “if you think you can trick me into repeating your vulgarities, you will be disappointed. Suffice it to say, slang, blasphemy, and cursing have no place in a lady’s vocabulary. Much less a duchess’s.”
    “Oh. I see. So your grace never curses.”
    “I do not.”
    “Words like cor . . . bollocks . . . damn . . . devil . . . blast . . . bloody hell . . .” She pronounced the words with relish, warming to her task. “They don’t cross a duchess’s lips?”
    “No.”
    “Never?”
    “Never.”
    Miss Simms’s fair brow creased in thought. “What if a duchess steps on a tack? What if a gust of wind steals a duchess’s best powdered wig? Not even then?”
    “Not even when an impertinent farm girl provokes a duchess to a simmering rage,” she replied evenly. “A duchess might contemplate all manner of cutting remarks and frustrated oaths. But even in the face of extreme annoyance, she stifles any such ejaculations.”
    “My,” Miss Simms said, wide-eyed. “I do hope dukes aren’t held to the same standard. Can’t be healthy for a man, always stifling his ejaculations.”
    Griff promptly broke the prohibition against elbows on the table, smothering a