Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Children did like such very bloodthirsty stories, Frances reflected to herself as she read aloud from Winnie’s well-thumbed book of fairy tales. The Duke of Westall lingered beside her chair, having provided voices and sounds for key junctures in the story, much to Winnie’s delight.
“Then the woodcutter cut open the dead wolf and Red Riding Hood’s grandmother climbed out of his stomach, for he had swallowed her whole, nightcap, spectacles and all,” Frances read, pleased to finally see a sleeping child’s face on the pillow when she glanced across from her chair at the beside. “That was the end of the Big Bad Wolf.”
“Shall I do the howl again?” asked the duke.
“No!” Frances hushed him in an urgent whisper, putting a restraining hand on his arm. “Winnie is asleep, look!”
Putting the book down, Frances realized from his laughing face that Ambrose had only been teasing her, and heat rose in her cheeks.
While the little girl was awake her innocent presence had been a shield from the magnetism of this man.
Now it seemed that this protection had fallen asleep too and the duke’s deep blue eyes seemed to touch Frances as they looked upon her.
How handsome and kind he was, and how perfectly shaped were his lips…Frances remembered the warmth of those lips and his tongue as he had kissed her on his bed, and the memory made her quiver inside.
“We must get dressed for dinner,” she blurted, averting her gaze and scrambling to her feet.
In her hurry, her foot caught against one leg of the chair and she would have stumbled if the Duke of Westall had not caught her in his arms and held her there.
“Careful!” he said softly, still smiling.
For a long, long moment, Frances found herself lost in his eyes and his intense but undemanding embrace.
A sensation she was beginning to understand as desire swept over her in gentle waves as pleasant as a warm sea.
While seemingly unthreatening, her mind warned that she could still be swept away in such a current.
Wrenching herself away with a supreme effort, Frances ran from the room.
She did not stop running until she was in her own chambers, with all doors bolted.
A puzzled but uncomplaining Nettie was dismissed for the evening with the assurance that no assistance would be needed with dressing or undressing that night.
Only then, alone and safe, although her heart still beat madly, did Frances stop and ask herself why she had run away.
“What is wrong with me?” she demanded of her reflection in the mirror, looking at the flushed young woman with half-unfastened hair. “Why must I do this?”
In less than an hour, Frances must go downstairs and eat dinner with her husband as though nothing had happened at all.
Perhaps Ambrose thought her a madwoman, one moment happy and the next deranged.
Or perhaps he would be frustrated with her, wishing for a more amenable and available wife who would welcome his attentions fully.
Whatever he might think of her, Frances was still the Duchess of Westall, however, and must play her part in the household.
Swallowing, she unfastened her day dress and shrugged it off together with her stays, before unpinning her hair and brushing it out around her shoulders. In the candlelight, it had a sheen like light-brown silk or moonbeams. The act of brushing soothed her somewhat and her pulse began to calm.
“Why am I not like other women?” Frances wondered aloud, still looking steadily at herself in the looking glass.
She turned her head to and fro, taking in her finely drawn profile and elegant neck.
Pushing her petticoat from her shoulders, she regarded the swell of her pale breasts, covering one with her hand just as the Duke of Westall had done that night, although it did not feel the same.
What would he have done next if Frances had not broken away?
Ambrose Clarke was an extremely handsome and personable man.
She had no doubt that there were many women who would be more than happy to go to his bed, married or not, and even if he had not been the Duke of Westall.
There would be yet other women willing to consort with him on account of his rank and fortune. All would envy Frances her position.
As ever, her reflection gave her no answers, and ever more questions filled her head. What if Ambrose ran out of patience eventually and demanded his marital rights? Was it inevitable that Frances must allow him to claim her in the end? Ought she simply to lie back and not resist the inevitable?
That thought made her shudder, even though the closeness of the duke’s warm body itself had never had this effect, even on his bed. Rather the very opposite… How confusing it all was!
A little over half an hour later, Frances descended the grand staircase in a blue silk evening dress, her hair put up tidily once more with large sapphire pins matched to her silver sapphire pendant.
She believed that she looked neat, elegant and calm.
Now, she must only manage to act in accordance with this veneer, her heart already speeding at the thought of simply seeing the duke again.
On the sideboard in the hallway, a folded piece of paper marked only for “Frances,” had been propped up prominently so that she saw it immediately as she turned towards the corridor where the dining room and main drawing room lay.
Her heart simultaneously leapt and fell at what was obviously a message from Ambrose Clarke. With both excitement and foreboding she picked it up and unfolded the page.
We need to talk. Come to the library before dinner.
A.