Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
“The finest flowers of Westall Park,” pronounced the Duke of Westall, descending the steps from the terrace down to the lawn where Winifred and her new stepmother were playing with hoops and balls. “Both literal and metaphorical.”
Winnie smiled adoringly and ran to her father, eager to hug him and then have the little handful of wild flowers from the woodland threaded in her hair as usual. Frances looked to him more cautiously and faltered, only following the child’s footsteps after a moment’s hesitation.
“Papa always picks the prettiest flowers,” Winnie said as Ambrose tucked several into her braids or behind her ear. “When he goes walking, he always looks for my favorite color and brings them for me.”
“Ah, but is your favorite color today red, yellow or pink?” Ambrose laughed, putting the remaining blooms into her small fingers while keeping hold of a second bunch in his other hand. “I brought three colors for you, to be sure of getting it right.”
“I like all of them today,” his daughter giggled and then pointed to the second set of flowers, all white, pastel pink and pale violet. “Are those ones Duchess Frances’ favorite colors?”
“I do not know,” he admitted, with an enquiring glance to his new duchess. “But I do know that they are all colors that become her very well. You do know that you may call Frances ‘Stepmother’ now, don’t you Winnie?”
Winifred pulled a face but then looked at both adults a little uncertainly.
“Stepmother is an ugly word and I like Frances,” she tried to explain to her father. “I’m glad that you got married and that she is the Duchess of Westall and has come to live with us. Do I really have to call her ‘Stepmother?’”
“Winnie may call me what she wishes,” Frances said immediately, taking the girl’s hand with a smile. “As long as she understands that I am her family now too, it does not matter.”
“I’m glad you are here, Duchess Frances,” Winnie responded, snuggling in close to her stepmother.
“So am I,” Ambrose added, regarding them both with warm satisfaction, reflecting that he seemed to have made a good decision in choosing his second wife, or at least a stepmother for his child.
“We have been having great fun this morning, haven’t we, Winnie?” said the duchess to the happy girl. “We’ve roamed over half the gardens. I dare say we will both be very hungry at luncheon.”
Winifred nodded.
“There’s still more I must show you, Duchess Frances. There’s places here no one knows but me, not even Father or Mrs. Betsworth or Mr. Jolley the head gardener…”
Frances’ first weeks at Westall Park had been a great success from the perspective of seeing his daughter bonding with this new parental figure.
Having visited several times, his grandmother had also been extremely complimentary about the new duchess and the way Frances took such great interest in Winifred’s life, from her meals to her schoolbooks, to her pets and hobbies.
Winnie certainly welcomed this attention and took pride in being her stepmother’s guide around the estate. When the little girl was not in the schoolroom with Miss Winters, she and Frances seemed almost inseparable and Ambrose was glad of it.
This was not only for his daughter’s sake but also because it gave him some non-threatening justification for seeking out Frances.
They must surely get to know one another, even in a marriage of convenience, and Ambrose already grasped that his wife did not like to be directly pursued, whether by an unwanted dance partner at a ball, or a husband whose desire was sparked by her graceful figure.
So, if Winnie wanted her bedtime story from Frances, Ambrose might linger in the corridor to listen.
If Winnie wanted to play ball in the garden with Frances, Ambrose might reasonably bring them flowers from the nearby woodland.
He must tread softly until his new wife beckoned him closer, a development that still seemed some way in the future.
The Duke of Westall was increasingly certain that Frances had been avoiding him since that passionate embrace in his bedroom on her first evening at Westall Park.
Every time Ambrose thought again of those minutes, he had to take a deep breath and recompose himself.
It had ended all too soon, but even such short tastes of Frances’ lips made him want far more…
“You’re daydreaming, Papa!” laughed Winifred, making him realize that she had been addressing him.
“I was trying to get you to tell Duchess Frances about the old herb garden and the boarded well that I’m not allowed to play near.
Miss Winters tells me not to daydream but that’s when I’m inside. Is it better to daydream outside?”
“We all daydream sometimes, Winnie,” her father answered, patting her head. “Miss Winters is right that it is best not done in the schoolroom.”
“In any case, I’m sure your father was thinking of something useful,” Frances remarked further, presumably having no clue that the duke’s mind had strayed back to the brief encounter of their wedding night.
“Were you, Papa? What were you thinking about?” Winnie now pursued him.
“The past is past and the present is pleasant,” he answered humorously, his actual thoughts certainly not appropriate for his audience.
Unbidden, a brief memory of Ambrose’s first wedding night had also come back to him as he reflected on his second.
He and Charlotte had sat up late drinking champagne and comparing favorite books.
They not consummated their marriage for several days, both being young and unsure in bedroom matters, and neither of them feeling any great urgency.
Ambrose and Charlotte never had really felt that overpowering physical instinct that drove coupling in both the human and animal world.
It was only after Charlotte’s death that the attention of a series of comforting widows had demonstrated to Ambrose that this urge really existed and could bring something close to ecstasy.
Intriguingly, he felt echoes of it simply standing next to Frances, whatever that meant.
Ambrose supposed that Frances herself had as little idea of such sensations as he and Charlotte at the start.
Well, he must be patient and wait for her desire and curiosity to overcome her reticence.
He already knew that he would rather have Frances in his bed than any number of discrete widows of means, even if it took weeks or months to lead her there.
“All very well for the past and present, but what about the future?” Frances asked as Winnie laughed at her father’s silly wordplay.
“Yes, what shall we do next, Father?” his daughter asked. “What would you like to play?”
Ah, another question that the Duke of Westall could not answer entirely honestly.
At this moment in the gardens, Ambrose would like to thread wild flowers into Frances’ hair, caressing her graceful neck and silken locks as she sighed with pleasure.
He was sure that she would enjoy his touch, if she allowed herself to do so.
For some reason, she was still not ready to grant herself that permission. Therefore, he must hold back.
“Why don’t you put some flowers in your stepmother’s hair?” he suggested to his daughter, offering her the second little nosegay.
“Don’t you want to do it?” Winifred asked innocently, glancing between the two of them as they both laughed and looked away from one another.
“One flower, please, Winnie,” Frances said, crouching down beside the child and smelling the small bouquet. “Mmm. What a lovely scent! Now, I must go and speak to Mrs. Betsworth about the menus for next week as I promised. I’m sure your father will play with you until luncheon.”
As Frances walked away a few minutes later with a single white anemone in her hair, the Duke of Westall’s eyes followed her lissome form across the lawn.
“I wish Duchess Frances could have stayed too,” Winnie sighed wistfully, taking her father’s hand. “I like her better than anyone, except you and Great-Grandmama, Papa.”
“How was London?” Frances asked as Ambrose hurried up the steps of Westall Park a few days later, laughing to see the little reception committee waiting for him by the front door.
“Very well indeed. My appointment at the bank took less than an hour and I had luncheon at my club with the Duke of Redford. Colin sends his regards…”
“Did you bring presents?” Winifred interrupted, much to Frances’ amusement. “You always bring a present when you go to London.”
“Your father was only absent for a day, Winnie,” Frances reminded the little girl. “Surely, you cannot expect a present every time he is gone for a day. Come, let us all go inside and have tea. Miss Winters said that you did well in your lessons today and should have a treat.”
Ambrose enjoyed the look of delight on Winnie’s little face as he produced the usual small bag of peppermints and held them out to her.
“I would never forget your present,” he told her gravely.
“You see?” Winnie said, turning happily to the now-laughing Frances. “My papa always brings a present from London.”
“I should not have doubted you,” Frances said, turning to face Ambrose, as Winnie skipped away ahead of them.
“I brought something for you too,” the duke told her as they walked towards the drawing room. “I hope you like it.”
“For me?” Frances queried, looking startled as he took the small package wrapped in paper and ribbon from his pocket and presented it to her.
“For you,” Ambrose confirmed, enjoying her surprise. “I believe it is permitted for a man to buy a present for his wife now and then.”
“I keep forgetting that I am married,” Frances confessed, accepting the package with a faint blush.
“Then I suppose must keep reminding you,” he teased. “How forgettable I must be that my wife of only a few weeks’ standing has already stopped thinking of me…”
“Not at all!” protested Frances, her grey eyes meeting his briefly with some flaring of emotion. “You are most kind, Your Grace, and an excellent father and…not at all forgettable.”
“Ambrose,” he reminded her. “My Christian name is Ambrose and my wife should use it.”
“Ambrose.”
What was she thinking, Ambrose wondered?
Frances’ eyes had quickly dropped back down to the package and she was hiding her expression in its unwrapping.
He saw her smile as she retrieved the small vial of scent it contained.
When she opened the stopper and inhaled it with closed eyes, the pleasure on her face was all the response Ambrose could have hoped for.
“It smells like the wildflowers you picked the other day,” she observed. “How very lovely!”
“I took some woodland flowers with me to the perfumery and asked them to concoct a scent as close as possible,” the duke confessed. “Was it worth the effort?”
“Very much,” Frances murmured, dabbing a tiny amount on her wrist and smelling it again. “Thank you.”
In the drawing room, Winifred also pronounced the new perfume lovely although her attention was far more on her peppermints and the cake that arrived with their tea.
She did not notice the adult maneuvering that occurred while the tea was being laid out, with both the Duke and Duchess of Westall lingering at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, each watching the other and delaying taking a seat.
Ambrose had hoped that Frances might be induced to at least sit beside him today.
At meals, they had always sat at opposite ends of the table, and whenever she could, Frances took a seat beside Winifred in the drawing room.
While not exactly afraid of him, he could tell that she was wary of something.
Today, Winnie had plumped herself down right in the centre of a sofa, in front of the tea trays, leaving a single space on either side of her.
It would be odd for either of them not to wish to sit with her, or to choose a separate seat far from the table.
The duke supposed that his plan to sit beside Frances might be foiled.
Then, he had a stroke of inspiration.
“I can see you eying that cake,” he told Winnie good-humoredly as he approached the sofa. “Don’t think that you can get away with two slices, not with peppermints too…”
Scooping up the laughing child as he talked, Ambrose took the same seat in the centre of the sofa, with Winnie now on his knee.
“Miss Winters told Duchess Frances that I deserved a treat because I did so well in my lessons today,” she reminded her father.
“So you do,” he agreed, putting a small slice onto a plate and giving it to his daughter, before taking a larger piece for himself. “But we can’t have you making yourself sick. That would be no treat at all.”
While they were talking, Frances had approached the sofa and sat down beside them, as Ambrose had hoped. Although she was smiling, her carriage still seemed tense.
“Would you like cake too?” Ambrose asked “Before Winnie and I devour the whole lot between us.”
“I can take some,” she said, leaning forward to the tray. “You have your hands full.”
Small talk and Winnie’s innocent chatter carried them through tea without any great awkwardness. Frances was beginning to look more relaxed as the clock struck six and Miss Winters and the nursery maid arrived to take Winnie away for her bath and weekly hair washing.
“You will come upstairs and read me a story tonight, won’t you?” the girl asked, turning back to them from the doorway.
“Which one of us?” Ambrose asked, smiling at both his child and new wife. “Whose turn is it to read to you tonight?”
“Both of you, of course,” Winnie returned, as though this answer was obvious.