Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“Another glass of champagne, dear lady?”
The Duke of Redford tied the belt of his scarlet silk dressing gown and went to the table where the open bottle sat in its ice bucket beside two now-empty glasses.
His valet and factotum had made himself scarce for the evening as was there usual arrangement when his master brought women back to his bachelor lodgings.
“Yes, if you will have one too, Your Grace,” answered the blonde-haired and buxom young woman in his bed, sitting up and stretching luxuriously. “I do adore champagne although I rarely get the chance to drink it, any more than I get the chance to roll in silk sheets like yours.”
“Your wish is my command,” he replied, pouring the wine with a smile.
It had been a an evening of simple uncomplicated pleasures that showed every sign of continuing until morning.
He had spotted Ellen in The Three Tuns, one of his favorite drinking dens, attached to a small theatre in Chelsea.
Or had Ellen spotted him? Colin’s first memory of her was one of sparkling green eyes and a welcoming smile already focused in his direction.
His present bed partner had not been so forward as to approach him directly, but he had instantly suspected her intention when their gazes met.
In the hours that had passed since then, he had proved that suspicion right, several times.
It was always a joy to meet a lady of such uninhibited appetites.
“Mmm, lovely,” Ellen sighed, licking her lips suggestively after a first sip. “This may be the best champagne I have ever drunk.”
“I do like to have the best of everything,” Colin said, putting down his glass and kissing her shoulder as he returned to the bed. “Tell me where you live and I shall have a case sent to you tomorrow.”
It was nothing to the Duke of Redford to gift a lady champagne, perfume or small pieces of jewelry. He did so regularly and without expectation, seeing it only as another variety of conversation or caress between those who had already enjoyed some such intimacies and might wish to do so again.
“I will lose my reputation and my position if dukes start sending me cases of champagne!” she said in unconvincing protest, her full breasts shaking with laughter. “You forget that I am only a lady’s maid, Your Grace.”
“I shall send it in a plain box and mark it as being a gift from a relative. Do you have any aged uncles who might visit Paris for any reason..?”
“Oh, you are very persuasive,” she purred, allowing Colin to press her down on the bed again and kiss her lips. “I suppose I might have one or two such relatives I have never mentioned to anyone, now you come to mention it.”
“Good, then your kind uncle, or aunt if that is safer, will send you a well-wrapped case of champagne tomorrow. What is your address?”
For the first time that evening, Ellen looked slightly uncomfortable. Colin supposed this was not surprising. As a lady’s maid she must protect the reputation of her mistress as well as her own. She might well prefer to remain anonymous, even if it meant missing out on a gift.
“We are presently staying with the Dowager Countess of Delingford,” she told him after some hesitation. “She lives at Delingford House, off Bruton Street.”
“I am always discreet,” he assured her, vaguely recalling Lady Delingford as a kindly but deaf widow of advanced years who carried an ear trumpet and spoke loudly. “Neither you nor your mistress will be compromised, whoever she may be.”
Ellen smiled at him again now, her arms snaking back around his neck.
“What about you, Your Grace? Is there any danger of an angry wife or fiancée bursting in upon us here? Must I sneak out through the back door in the morning lest your neighbors inform her of my presence here?”
“Wife? Ha!” Colin chuckled, shaking his head. “No, danger of that, dear lady. I shall never marry. You may leave through the front door with your head held high.”
“A man after my own heart,” remarked his bed companion with amusement in her green eyes. “Marriage is very well for some, but I shall not be tempted.”
“You prefer to work?” he asked her curiously. “Such opinions are rarely heard from women, of any class.”
“My work is varied and my mistress an unusual woman,” Ellen told him laconically. “It does not seem such an odd preference to me. In any case, while more men claim not to want marriage, they usually fall in the end for a handsome face or a large fortune.”
“True,” he agreed, shifting slightly to allow her to sit up and reach again for her champagne, long blonde locks tumbling freely over her shoulders in the candlelight.
It was too soon yet to renew their embraces but he could still enjoy the sight of her and anticipate the pleasures hopefully still to come before the morning.
“That friend of yours that you mentioned earlier was one such man, wasn’t he?” Ellen asked casually, her emerald eyes meeting his over the top of her champagne glass. “The Duke of Westall.”
Colin nodded slow.ly. He did wonder vaguely how she would know that, but London was the heartland of gossip and maids were one of the main routes through which news and rumors flowed.
When he met the curvaceous blonde Ellen in The Three Tuns, she had been carrying a newspaper, open to the page of recent wedding and birth announcements.
When he told her that he was the Duke of Redford, she had smiled and said that she had just been reading of him among the guests at the Duke of Westall’s recent wedding.
They had laughed together at the coincidence and Ellen had quickly agreed to share his table, then his carriage and then his bed.
“Yes,” Colin affirmed now. “Ambrose never planned to marry again, as you say. Likely he said so in public many times. Perhaps your mistress remarked on it.”
Ellen smiled prettily down into her champagne, maybe implying that she would not break any of her mistress’s confidences.
“What changed the Duke of Westall’s mind, I wonder?
” she asked when she looked up again, putting down her glass and stretching her arms and shoulders.
“I should not think that a man in his position needed a wife’s dowry, or anything else really.
There was no scandal was there, to move things along so fast.. ?”
Colin shook his head, his gaze drawn back to those full breasts with their pert nipples, presently being pushed out in his direction.
“No. I do not believe Ambrose would have married anyone if it had not been for his father’s will,” he said distractedly, feeling a faint renewed stirring in his loins. “The matter was becoming urgent.”
“What could his father’s will have to do with it?” Ellen mused, her voice innocent but her expression seductive as she now stretched out her full body on the bed before his eyes again. “Dukedoms and great estates are passed down through blood, not bequests.”
“Under his father’s will, if Ambrose had not married by the end of this summer, he would have forfeited a very large fortune from his mother’s family,” the Duke of Redford told her shortly, feeling less and less interested in his friend’s private affairs and hoping that Ellen’s own interest would soon fade.
“A matchmaker matched him with Lady Frances.”
“So, he arranged a quick marriage only to keep this fortune?” Ellen summarized with a laugh. “How very neatly the Duke of Westall arranges his life!”
“Why are you asking…”
Before the Duke of Redford could complete this question, Ellen took the champagne glass again from the bedside table and tipped it deliberately so that the effervescent liquid trickled freely over her voluptuous bosom and down to her navel.
“Oh dear, I have spilt my champagne and soon I shall be all sticky,” she complained huskily, her green eyes offering invitation and challenge, neither of which Colin was minded to decline.
“I know just what to do about that,” he growled in return and applied his mouth to her breasts once more.
The letter that arrived for her that morning was so vile that Frances took it straight to the kitchens and threw it into the perpetual fire burning at the range, only vaguely aware of the curious glances of the kitchen staff.
“Is everything well, Your Grace?” asked the voice of Mrs. Betsworth as Frances watched the paper glow orange in the flames and then turn swiftly to ash.
“Oh, I…” Frances shrugged her shoulders, unsure how to explain either Oswald Keeton’s horrible message or the effect it had on her, but knowing she must say something in response.
“Someone who wasn’t invited to the wedding has taken exception and wrote to express their views.
It was an unpleasant letter and I have burned it. ”
“That sounds like the best thing to do,” remarked the housekeeper approvingly. “It was for the duke and your family to decide the guest list, not anyone else.”
Frances nodded but felt herself beginning to tremble with delayed reaction to the letter. How could Oswald write such terrible things and make such strange and awful accusations against her family? Worst of all had been the final threat.
Believe me, Frances, I shall make you pay for all your offenses against me, one way or another…
From the scrawl of the writing, Frances guessed that Lord Mulford must have been drunk when he wrote, which provided some explanation but no excuse.
He had never written to her at Scovell Hall, likely not wishing to ruin his reputation before her parents, nor give Frances any ammunition to use against him.
Now, his rage at her marriage had apparently overcome any such scruples.
“Shall I walk back to the main house with you and you can give me your instructions for flowers in the public rooms?” the housekeeper asked and Frances nodded gratefully, glad to have some direction and distraction.
My family were happy until your damned father came along, and you his willing helper. It wasn’t enough to destroy their marriage, you killed them too…
What was Oswald even talking about? He and Frances had been there together that day in the garden when they came upon Lord Scovell and Lady Mulford in flagrante delicto.
They had both seen the same thing. While Frances had interpreted the incident very literally for what it was – adultery and betrayal – Oswald appeared to have built a whole conspiratorial fantasy around it.
My perfect revenge would be to ruin you as your father ruined my mother. I hope your husband would treat you in the same way that my father treated my mother and suffer the same fate…
Ruined? Lady Mulford had never been ruined, at least not publicly.
Nor had the former Lord and Lady Mulford ever enjoyed a particularly happy marriage.
Their rows had been legendary in the district, even among the children.
When Frances grew up she also came to understand why so many pretty maids and handsome footmen were summarily appointed and then dismissed from Mulford Manor.
Perhaps his wife’s dalliance with a neighbor had been the final straw for Oswald’s father but that marriage had been on the rocks since the day it began.
Old Lord Mulford abandoning his family surprised no one.
After the pair’s early deaths, talk of the former indecent goings on at Mulford Manor was muted although everyone knew of them. Except, apparently, Oswald Keeton.
You were the excuse for your father to visit Mulford Manor and the decoy to distract me, so that he could have his way with my mother. Once I imagined you a friend, but now I see that you were a deceiver from your very earliest years…
That was an accusation bordering on madness, surely. Could Oswald Keeton honestly believe that a child of such tender years could in any way be have been in league with her adulterous father and helping to further his nefarious aims?!
Learning of her father’s faithlessness to her then-ailing mother had shocked Frances profoundly that day, and in some ways she had never recovered.
Realizing that she had been made a pawn to cover Lord Scovell’s visits to his lover had made the crime unforgivable.
Every time Edmund Harcourt had taken Frances to Mulford Manor, ostensibly to play with Oswald, it had really been an opportunity to continue his affair with Lady Mulford.
How many other women might there have been too? ! Her poor mother!
Now, as both Oswald’s loathsome words and the pain of old betrayal tormented her, not only were Frances’ hands shaking but her knees felt weak and tears pricked her eyelids.
Despite her best efforts, none of this missed the eagle eyes of the housekeeper. Once away from the other servants, Mrs. Betsworth paused at the end of a passageway and looked at her mistress more appraisingly.
“You seem to have had a shock, Your Grace. I suggest you sit down in the small parlor for a while and I shall have some hot sweet tea brought for you.”
Although initially minded to refuse, Frances could not deny the turmoil of her mind or the weakness of her body.
“Thank you, Mrs. Betsworth. That would be very welcome. I shall rest for a few minutes.”
Allowing the housekeeper to steer her into a cosy but little-used parlor room, Frances sank down on a chair and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths and trying to dispel all traces of Oswald Keeton from her mind.
“Would you like me to fetch His Grace?” Mrs. Betsworth asked from the doorway and Frances’ eyes sprang open again in alarm. “I am sure he would want to know if you are taken ill.”
“No!” she gasped. “I do not want the duke to see me like this, so upset over a silly letter. It would make me ridiculous. I shall be well again presently, I assure you.”
Looking rather doubtful, the housekeeper nodded but departed on her errand to obtain the promised tea. Alone in the parlor, Frances sank her head into her hands.