Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
“Ayoung woman at the front door asked that this message be delivered to you, Your Grace,” said the club footman with a small bow, entering the club lounge and proffering a letter on a silver tray to two men sitting by the mantelpiece.
Both the Duke of Westall and the Duke of Redford automatically leaned forward in their chairs to take up the folded paper. Then, looking at one another, they laughed. Ambrose sniffed the air unobtrusively, some part of his mind unnerved by a faint and not-yet-identified scent hanging there.
“Actually, letters from mysterious young ladies are far more likely to be for you than me, Colin,” Ambrose stated, sitting back in his chair again. “I am a respectable married man.”
“Did she leave a name, Simmons?” the Duke of Redford asked the footman, taking the letter without yet looking at it, and turning to offer small explanation to his companion. “I did recently gift a case of champagne to a certain young woman. Perhaps she writes to thank me.”
“No, Your Grace. The young woman said only that it was a message from her mistress,” the footman informed him, before bowing and retreating from the table.
“From her mistress? I suppose she was a lady’s maid,” the Duke of Redford muttered. “But I cannot understand this turn of events…”
Finally, he took a good look at the envelope as Ambrose waited, anticipating a good story, at least. Hopefully Colin had not got into any real scrape with this maid, or perhaps cost his bed partner her job through indiscretion…
Colin’s face changed again as he examined the writing on the front of the letter, and then held it out towards his friend.
“It is for you, Ambrose, not me.”
“For me?!” queried the Duke of Westall, his astonishment easily outweighing that of his companion.
As Ambrose took the letter, however, the scent grew stronger and became recognizable as the same perfume that had soaked the earlier message delivered to Westall Park - the very scent used by Miss Annabelle Sinclair…
“Letters from mysterious ladies already?” chuckled Colin, settling back with his brandy once more. “You’ve been married only a month yet, you old dog.”
“Don’t joke,” returned Ambrose with a grimace, breaking the seal. “There are some mysterious ladies whose attentions I could do without. In any case, whatever comes of my marriage, I made certain vows and intend to keep them.”
Colin held up a conciliatory hand and smiled.
“Forgive me. I shall not judge you by my own standards. It’s only disappointment talking for me really, now that I know my hot-blooded ladies’ maid has not written. Blonde hair, green eyes and the most bewitching manners, in and out of the bedroom…”
Ambrose was no longer listening to his friend’s digression, however. After reading Annabelle Sinclair’s note, he gave a disgusted grunt, crumpled the paper and tossed it into the unlit fireplace.
It was largely a repeat of the first message she had sent to Westall Park, only its language a little stronger and more definite. One line stuck rather firmly in his head, even after only a single reading.
I know that yours is not a true marriage and we need not pretend otherwise…
What the devil did she mean by that, the Duke of Westall puzzled angrily?
Colin cleared his throat, one eyebrow raised quizzically at Ambrose’s strong reaction.
“A disappointed old-flame? Or something more sinister?”
“I do not know what this damned woman is, or why she still pursues me,” Ambrose replied tersely, his brow creased and shoulders tense.
“I should really have sent the letter back. That’s what I did with the last one.
It arrived at breakfast, in front of Frances, and saturated in the same perfume.
I cannot imagine that my wife thought well of me. ”
He had not forgotten the expression on Frances’ face and the tone of her voice as she spoke about that letter.
It was not the anger that had stayed with him, but the hurt in her.
Ambrose had promised to love, honor and cherish this delicately beautiful young woman not so long ago, as well as to forsake all others.
Even if love was beyond his gift, his wife had a right to expect the rest of what he had promised her, and he was determined that she would have it.
“May I?” asked the Duke of Redford, and at Ambrose’s nod, he fished the paper from the ashes, brushed it off and un-crumpled it.
At first, Colin laughed ruefully at the contents but then his face froze and his finger moved up to rest on the address at the top of the paper.
“Miss Annabelle Sinclair, at Delingford House, off Bruton Street,” he said throatily. “It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
“Coincidence? What do you mean?”
“My champagne-loving lady’s maid works for a mistress who was staying at this address,” Colin admitted, the words coming slowly from his lips as though thinking aloud. “But I do not know what that means.”
“Then let us find out,” said Ambrose grimly, waving to attract the attention of the footman now rearranging chairs across the room. “Simmons, bring us the club’s copy of Debrett’s peerage, if you please.”
Brief perusal of Debrett’s revealed the Dowager Countess of Delingford to be the aunt of Lord Chedwidden, Annabelle Sinclair’s father.
Delingford House in London was presumably Lady Delingford’s home under a life interest as part of her marriage settlement.
The dowager countess’s great niece was likely staying there during the London Season.
While superficial questions were quickly answered, deeper questions now suggested themselves to both men.
“How on earth did you end up on intimate terms with the lady’s maid of Miss Annabelle Sinclair?” demanded Ambrose.
“Why on earth is Ellen’s mistress pursuing you in such a brazen fashion?” Colin put to him at the same moment.
“You go first,” Ambrose insisted, aware that he would not be able to answer his friend’s question, lacking any real insight into the motives of Annabelle Sinclair.
Willingly enough, the Duke of Redford revisited his evening in Chelsea at the Three Tuns and his encounter with blonde-haired, green-eyed Ellen.
He was not a man to talk in detail of his bedroom conquests, but from the little he did say of what had occurred once the young woman came back to his apartments, Ambrose could quite imagine how the pair had spent the night.
“So, you see. That is all there is, I think. We were both in Chelsea, I picked Ellen up in the Three Tuns…”
“She picked you up,” Ambrose corrected his friend, having asked some telling questions about the logistics of this meeting as he listened.
“From what you say, this woman made a distinct effort to catch your attention, already knew something of you, ostensibly from a newspaper article, and planned to go home with you before you even suggested it. But why?”
“Why?” repeated Colin with an expression that was injured but amused, smoothing down his waistcoat and patting his perfectly coiffed hair. “Must she have an ulterior motive? Am I losing some of my youthful good looks and charm?”
“I’m sure there were at least five other lovely young women in that tavern, several only too willing to pass the night with a man of such good looks and general amiability. Still, this young woman, Ellen, seems to have been waiting there for you specifically, does she not?”
While Colin’s eyes were doubtful, they were also thoughtful.
“She was unusually keen,” he admitted, with a sigh. “These things are not always so speedily agreed between two strangers of any sense as they were between Ellen and me.”
“A woman of sense, you say?”
“Many maids are,” Colin defended himself with a shrug, misinterpreting Ambrose’s curiosity as mockery.
“Being a lady’s maid is a sought after position for a young woman from the lower classes.
This particular woman certainly had her share of sense, as well as sharpness of wit and full awareness of her own physical charms.”
Like her mistress, Ambrose thought to himself gloomily.
Both Annabelle Sinclair and her maid knew what they wanted from men and how to get it – although not with him.
This was the complete opposite of Frances, who neither knew what she wanted nor how to get it.
The thought of her filled him with both protectiveness and desire, neither of which were going to help clarify present matters.
“What did Ellen want from you?” Ambrose asked directly, refilling their glasses from the decanter left at their table.
“You make me blush, Westall!” Colin protested, although with humor. “Really, a gentleman should keep the confidence of the bedroom, I believe. She wanted nothing that I did not also want, or that was in any way remarkable in a healthy young woman.”
“I did not mean that,” Ambrose laughed, brushing this away. “Spare me the gruesome details. I am more interested in what you talked of, and particularly Ellen’s side of the conversation. It may throw some light on her mistress, a lady whom I wish would leave me severely alone.”
“We barely spoke of her mistress,” answered Colin, shaking his head.
“Ellen said only that they were presently at Delingford House. That is where I sent the champagne, under the pseudonym of generous old relatives. To ask anything more might seem as though I was trying to elicit gossip or blackmail material. No, we spoke more of you than of Annabelle Sinclair.”
“You spoke of me?” queried the Duke of Westall, his skin tingling as though sensing some impending danger. “In what way?”
“Well, Ellen had read of your wedding in the society pages of a newspaper that she showed me. That was where she saw me mentioned too apparently.”
“Apparently indeed,” said Ambrose with undisguised cynicism. “How very convenient. What did she say?”
The Duke of Redfern scrunched up his handsome face, evidently trying hard to recall what had, at the time, likely been inconsequential details.