Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Come upstairs with me, Papa,” Winnie pleaded, at her father’s knee. “Duchess Frances said that if I come to her dressing room at six o’clock, I may help choose her jewelry for the ball tonight. I wonder which dress she will wear? There are so many in her wardrobe.”
Ambrose smiled, both at Winifred’s eagerness and at the thought of Frances upstairs now, preparing herself for the Marquis and Marchioness of Fordham’s ball.
He too was looking forward to seeing his wife in her ballgown, although he felt far less able to show this than Winnie, especially before Miss Winters, who hovered in the doorway of the library.
“It will be better if Miss Winters takes you upstairs,” he suggested. “Duchess Frances might not welcome a gentleman intruding while she is at her toilette. Nor am I sure that she would agree with my taste in jewelry…”
The duke’s hand went unobtrusively to a small packet in his jacket pocket.
In London earlier that week, he had also called at a jeweler and bought a fine string of faintly silvery pearls and matching earrings, easily imagining the luster of them against Frances’ pale skin.
There had never seemed the right moment to give them to her yet, however, and Ambrose still carried them with him.
“You’re not a gentleman, Papa,” Winnie objected, making him laugh aloud and her governess look disapprovingly at her charge. “You’re her husband and a duke. It’s different. Please, please, pleeeease!”
“I hope I am very much a gentleman, Winnie, as well as duke, and Frances’ husband,” he explained to his daughter, lifting her onto his lap. “Now, perhaps you could do something for me.”
Taking the suede case from his pocket, he took out the pearls and showed them to the fascinated child.
“They’re beautiful,” breathed Winnie, not daring to touch them although her eyes grew wide and her fingers reached out towards them. “Are they for Great-Grandmama?”
Again, Ambrose had to laugh.
“No, Great-Grandmama has several sets of pearls already, one of them promised to you someday, Winnie. I bought these for Frances but…Well, would you like to take these upstairs and give them to her for me?”
To his surprise, Winnie wriggled away and hopped down from his knee.
“No, you must do it, Papa. You can’t ask someone to give someone else’s present. It spoils it. You must come with me and give them yourself.”
Convinced by her childish logic, Winnie held out a small hand to him and with a sigh of resignation, Ambrose took it and pretended that she was pulling him to his feet.
“Very well, but you must go in first and make sure that Duchess Frances is ready to be seen. She will certainly count me as a gentleman, even if my own daughter has doubts.”
Dismissing Miss Winters and promising to return Winnie to the nursery shortly, the Duke of Westall allowed his daughter to take him up the stairs towards Frances’ suite.
He hoped that his wife would not count his presence too great an intrusion.
Since her family’s visit, Frances had been very sensitive and easily upset.
Knowing now how deep her psychological wounds went, Ambrose felt great compassion for her, as well as tenderness and a healthy amount of desire that he tried not to think about too much right now.
Might it take years, rather than months or weeks, to lure Frances to his bed and make her feel safe enough to lie with him there? The thought saddened and frustrated Ambrose a little, although he could not be angry at her.
Nor could he join Frances in blaming Lord Scovell so heavily for his past transgression.
While Ambrose had always been a faithful husband, he knew that many men were not, and that some wives were equally adulterous.
Still, many marriages also survived such choppy waters.
Ambrose found himself sharing Beatrice’s view that whatever had happened all those years ago, Lord Scovell was now, indeed, devoted to Lady Scovell.
Ambrose could, however, allow himself to feel anger towards Oswald Keeton for his persistent harassment of Frances. Personally, he suspected it was this, rather than purely that single shocking day in their childhood, that had turned Frances so far from the path of normal sexual curiosity.
The Duke of Westall was not a violent man by nature but still he wanted beat Lord Mulford to a pulp every time he thought of what the man might have done to Frances to earn her circumspect description to her young sister of his being “most inappropriate, in his words and actions.”
Even if it did take years, Ambrose could wait. It would be worth it, to one day feel Frances melt in his arms without nervousness or restraint and open herself completely to his touch. He would not hurry her, nor let her force herself to submit to his attentions.
When Frances had offered to kiss him in the study, it had both tempted Ambrose and pained him. Luckily, he believed he had done the right thing in holding her back and sending her to bed, alone.
If Frances ever kissed him from pure desire, rather than a passing wish to be a “normal” wife, that would be a different matter entirely. In those circumstances, self-control might be harder.
Erotic images raced through the duke’s head: Frances panting as he returned her passionate kisses, laying back with her skirt wreathed about her waist, writhing and moaning as his lips and tongue brought her to ecstasy, and then clinging to him in pleasured surprise as he filled her narrow channel for the first time.
They might even have a child from their union…
That thought jolted Ambrose back to the present and the reality of the child skipping along at his side while humming a happy song.
He shook his head, as if to dislodge the presently impossible fantasies.
There was likely a very long road to travel yet before he and Frances could realize such enjoyments as these.
Now approaching the corridor where both the duke and duchess’s rooms lay, Ambrose detached himself from Winifred.
“You must run ahead now and knock on the door to make sure that Duchess Frances is ready for visitors.”
Nodding eagerly, she raced down the corridor and banged on the door with great enthusiasm before blurting out all that she wanted to say in once long stream.
“Duchess Frances! It’s me, Winifred. Can I come in and help choose your jewelry now and I’ve brought Papa with me too and he says he’s a gentleman and I have to tell you…”
Ambrose could not help smiling although he also felt a twinge of self-consciousness. He walked slowly after his daughter, giving Nettie time to open the dressing room door and admit the child before he caught up.
“May I come in, Frances?” he called, stopping before he reached the half open door.
Inside, Winifred giggled and he heard her footsteps running back across the room. Flinging the door wide, she seized his hand again and pulled him over the threshold.
“Come in, silly Papa. I already told Duchess Frances that you had a present for her.”
Ambrose saw Frances first in the looking glass where she sat at her dressing table, and the sight of her took his breath away.
Tonight his duchess wore a deep blue silk, matched by those familiar sapphire hairpins.
Ambrose remembered taking them from her silken hair in the library and all that had followed, his mouth running dry at her half-covered bosom in its low-cut bodice and longing to cover her perfect breasts with his kisses all over again.
“You look very beautiful, Frances,” he told her with a formal bow of his head that he hoped hid his more animal reaction to her. “I will be lucky to have you on my arm tonight.”
“You look very handsome too, Papa,” insisted Winifred, gazing delightedly between the pair of them. “Doesn’t he, Duchess Frances? Isn’t my papa the most handsome man in the world?”
The ghost of a smile on Frances’ face broke through into a happy laugh as she turned in her seat to face them both.
“Yes, Winnie. Your father looks very handsome indeed. I am lucky to be going to the ball with such a partner, am I not?”
Her words pleased Ambrose more than he expected, and he found himself hoping that she meant them.
Had he taken more care than usual before the looking glass for this first ball together with his new wife, taking suggestions from his valet that he more often refused?
Judging by the neatness of his stock and the sparkle of his polished silver cufflinks, perhaps he had.
“I wish I could watch you dancing together,” Winifred sighed rather mournfully. “But I must eat my supper and go to bed at eight o’ clock.”
Impulsively, Ambrose went to Frances’ side and extended a hand.
“May I have the honor of this dance?” he asked her, with a deeper bow that made Winifred giggle.
When Frances laughed too, the duke took her hand and drew her into his arms, humming a waltz tune as he swirled them about the dressing room, to Winnie’s great delight and amused glances from Nettie.
Her body was as supple and alive in his arms as the first evening they had danced together at the Morgan ball.
Winnie clapped her hands when they stopped and Frances returned herself to her dressing table stool.
“You must dance every dance together,” she pronounced, “and tell me about it when you come home.”
“There is no other lady I wish to dance with,” Ambrose agreed with another bow of exaggerated gallantry for his giggling daughter.
“Well, not every dance,” Frances demurred, also enjoying the game. “Your papa must also dance with my sister Beatrice as it will be her first ball tonight, and perhaps my friend Lydia too. Then, sometimes we might both be tired.”
Now, Ambrose took the pearls from his pocket and presented the small packet to Frances.
“I bought them for you in London,” he told her. “You need not wear them tonight but I have been carrying them around too long.”
Winifred came to stand beside her stepmother as Frances unwrapped the pearls and held them up with a smile of appreciation. Nettie too put down the clothes she had been folding and came to inspect the duke’s present.
“They’re very lovely,” Frances told him, her eyes and voice full of unexplained emotion. “Far finer than the pearls I have. Thank you. Still, tonight I promised Winnie that she could help choose my jewelry and I always keep my promises.”
“You should wear that and those,” Winnie said immediately, pointing to the new pearl necklace and earrings as though this answer was obvious.
“They do complement the blue of your dress, and your complexion, Your Grace,” added Nettie tactfully.
“It seems to be decided, Ambrose,” Frances laughed, meeting his eyes in the looking glass again. “Could you help me, Nettie?”
As she was about to pass the necklace to her maid, Winnie spoke up again.
“Papa must put it on. It was his present after all.”
Seeing the faint but very becoming blush on Frances’ cheeks, Ambrose’s eyes flashed an apology to her in the looking glass. Unexpectedly, she nodded and held out the pearls to him.
Taking this cue, Nettie returned to her other tasks and Winifred continued to watch them as though they were players on a stage.
“Very well,” said Ambrose, coming close behind Frances and breathing in the wildflower scent that she must have applied.
The combined perfume of flowers and soft, warm skin made him ache and tingle.
Taking a deep breath, he focused his attention instead on the fastening of the necklace and then leaned forward to place it around her throat.
The pearls spilled down her throat and rested on the white slopes of her breasts.
God, how shapely they were, and so sensitive to his lips…
Controlling his breathing carefully, Ambrose fastened the necklace securely and stood back to admire her again.
“There,” he said. “What do you think?”
“It does go well with the dress,” Frances told him.
“There are earrings too,” Winifred reminded them, pointing to the two small clasped clusters of pearl on the dressing table. “Put them on too, Papa.”
“Frances might better do that,” he tried to excuse himself. “I would not want to hurt her accidentally with those clasps.”
“But they are your present,” the child insisted, “and anyway, you are always gentle.”
A little more uncertain than she had been about the necklace, Frances met his eyes again in the mirror.
“I am sorry,” he whispered as he leaned forward and picked up the earrings. “Tell me to stop and take Winnie to the nursery if this is too much.”
After a moment’s thought, Frances shook her head.
“Winnie is right. You are always gentle,” she said to his reflection in the looking glass. “I believe I can trust you.”
With the greatest care, Ambrose fastened first one earring and then the other to the lobes of Frances’ ears, darts of desire rushing from his fingertips into his belly wherever they touched her satin skin.
When he stood back again, he noted that faint flush had now spread from her cheeks, right across her throat and bosom.
Briefly he wished that they were alone before acknowledging regretfully that it was probably only the presence of the child and the maid that let Frances feel safe enough to allow even these small intimacies.
“You really will be the most beautiful woman there tonight,” Ambrose told her honestly before tearing his gaze away. “But now, I must take this young lady back to the nursery where I believe her supper and bath await her.”
“Miss Winters is reading my story tonight,” said Winnie without enthusiasm. “She always reads exactly what is on the page and never does the voices like Papa.”
“We are all different, Winnie,” replied Frances, in explanation rather than rebuke and kissed the little girl goodnight. “Miss Winters tells her own kind of stories and you will enjoy them too if you listen well and use your imagination."
“I will see you downstairs whenever you are ready, Frances,” the duke told his wife, lifting Winnie in his arms as the easiest means of detaching her interest in the jewelry boxes.
“Remember to tell me everything about the ball tomorrow, Duchess Frances,” the little girl called back to her as she was carried from the room. “I should like that even more than a bedtime story…”