Chapter 24 #2
“Did you tell anyone else what you told me in Hyde Park?” Lydia asked and Frances shook her head, badly shaken, before continuing to read, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“‘Given that the Duke of Westall did not marry for love, and that he appears not to be exercising his marital rights, can we assume that he had other, perhaps more pecuniary, reasons for entering this unusual arrangement…?’”
“Who has written it, and why?” Lydia questioned. “I told no one what you told me, I swear. No one was with us in Hyde Park but Henry and I’m sure he didn’t hear a word. He was too wrapped up in his newspaper and that blonde-haired woman with the large bosom.”
“Someone who hates me!” Frances almost sobbed.
“They’ve even published our names, when they usually only imply such things.
Oh, it’s horrible! How humiliating… Half of the ton must have read this and be laughing at me.
No wonder everyone was whispering when we came in.
I thought it was only because we were newly married. ”
“Would the Duke of Westall have confided in anyone? Or might any of the servants at Westall Park have overheard you talking together and sold such a story to the scandal writers?”
“No! At least, I don’t think so… Who would do something so vicious?”
A succession of wild possibilities rushed through Frances’ mind, each as improbable as the next: the Duke of Redford, Mrs. Betsworth, Nettie, Lydia’s brother Henry… None of them seemed likely to possess both information and motive. It made no sense at all.
“Oh Lydia, how can I go back out there now? Everyone will be mocking me and making fun of Ambrose. He doesn’t read these things and won’t even realize.”
Frances closed her eyes. Was this all her fault? It was her flaws that had made it impossible to have a normal marriage, after all. If she had only resigned herself to sharing Ambrose’s bed, they would not be in this situation.
“You must tell him,” Lydia said. “He might even be able to put a stop to it, you know. The Duke of Westall is a very rich man and must have a great deal of influence. If he speaks to the publisher of this rag, he might even be able to force them to print a retraction and apology.”
“Do you think so?” Frances wondered aloud.
She was obviously aware that Ambrose possessed a large fortune but it had never interested her before. As long as her home and living were secure, she had been content to leave the exact details of the duchy’s wealth to her husband and the bank.
“Well, my father has commented that you are now the wealthiest woman of his acquaintance, Frances,” Lydia told her.
“Apparently, the Duchy of Westall possesses some of the richest farming land in the country and my brother says that Ambrose has a knack for investing in new industries, especially steam power. Oh, and his mother was a mining heiress. Yes, I daresay Ambrose is very, very rich.”
“Then some of this scandal story makes no sense, does it?” said Frances, shaking the pamphlet. “How could Ambrose have ‘pecuniary reasons’ for marrying me, with my perfectly ordinary dowry, when he already has such a fortune?”
“It’s often the way of these things when they’re based on second-hand information and eavesdropping,” replied Lydia with a shrug. "Some parts are true and others nonsense. At least people who know him well will read that line and assume the rest is rubbish too. That is something.”
“You are right that I must tell Ambrose but I still don’t want to go back out there,” admitted Frances.
“Two more minutes, take some deep breaths and then we’ll go and find him together,” proposed her friend. “Once you’ve told the duke, you might be able to leave him to handle the matter and ignore it completely.”
“Ignore it?” Frances repeated, shaking her head and unable yet to imagine how she could when everyone was looking at her and exchanging crude gossip. “I wish I knew how.”
A few minutes later, the pamphlet now folded in Frances’ pocket, the two friends emerged back into the corridor, their faces fixed and Lydia’s arm linking her friend’s in support.
“There you are!” said Beatrice, skipping over to Frances and Beatrice as they walked back through the reception room. “I was about to come looking for you. Mother and Father have gone to dance and I’m going to dance with Ambrose too, unless you wish to dance first, Frances.”
“You may dance first, Beatrice,” Frances answered, reflecting that Ambrose might not wish to dance at all once he had spoken with her. “Where is my husband?”
“Oh, just inside the ballroom. We thought you might have gone straight there when you took so long. What is to do? Your faces are both like thunder.”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Beatrice,” Frances told her younger sister, after exchanging a quick glance with Lydia. “Forget the gloominess of tired old women like Lydia and I, and just enjoy your first ball tonight.”
She was sure that no scandal sheets would have crossed the threshold of Scovell Hall.
Nor were any of her sister’s friends likely to know the story.
Beatrice was first in her circle to come out and did not yet have any kind of network for London gossip.
Frances saw no reason to ruin her sister’s evening as well as her own and her husband’s.
Seeming to accept this assurance easily enough, Beatrice smiled and walked ahead of them towards the ballroom. A reel was now playing out on the dance floor and the banks of onlookers were thickening.
Ambrose did not seem to be where Beatrice expected and she stopped to look around the room before turning back to her companions.
“Lydia, you’re tallest, can you see him?”
Lydia craned her neck and then nodded.
“Yes, there is is, just over in that corner, talking to the woman in green with the black hair and rubies. Do you see?”
“No, are you sure? I only see the Dowager Viscountess of Uxterforth and her sister.”
“Not that corner, Beatrice, this one here…”
Frances had spotted them immediately, even if Beatrice had not.
The hairs on her arms rose and her blood ran cold as she watched her husband in apparently close conversation with the striking young lady Lydia had indicated.
The woman’s expression was intent and somehow hungry while Ambrose’s face seemed both tense and animated as he spoke. What could he be saying to her..?
“Frances?” Lydia pulled at at her arm, making Frances realize that her feet were rooted to the spot. “Frances?”
“One moment,” Frances answered, still watching Ambrose and the dark-haired woman with a kind of horrified fascination.
Lydia followed her gaze and made her own appraisal of the scene while Beatrice tapped her foot impatiently, a few steps ahead and eager to be dancing.
“Who is that?” Lydia asked Frances under her breath.
“We have not been introduced,” feinted Frances, although she felt well able to guess the identity of the woman without any formal introduction.
Even on such slight evidence as she had, Frances felt sure that this was the mysterious Miss Annabelle Sinclair, who had apparently pursued the Duke of Westall before his marriage and written him an inappropriate letter after it.
While she had never before doubted Ambrose’s account of his relations with this woman, Frances had also never supposed that her would-be rival was so very beautiful.
With Miss Sinclair’s thick, black hair, hourglass figure and lips almost as red as the rubies at her throat, there were unlikely to be many gentlemen present who would not swap places with the Duke of Westall in a heartbeat.
Perhaps he had told the truth about resisting Miss Sinclair’s wiles in the past, but that did not mean he might not succumb in the future…
“Is that some old flame of the duke’s or…” Beatrice jested, walking back towards them and then stopping as she realized that her joke might have struck too close to the mark. “Oh! I’m sorry, she isn’t…is she?”
“Whoever she is, I suspect that Ambrose would rather be speaking to Frances at this moment,” said Lydia loyally, squeezing her friend’s arm. “Look at his face, Frances. He doesn’t want to be there.”
“Yes, he doesn’t look at all pleased, does he?” agreed Beatrice critically. “That lady is certainly a beauty, but there’s something…predatory about her, don’t you think.”
“Exactly,” stated Lydia with a definite nod. “Anyway, I think that Frances is every bit as beautiful, although in a different way.”
“You need not pretend,” Frances told them. “I can see how lovely she is from here.”
“Yes, but you cannot see how lovely you are too,” responded Lydia. “Nor can you see how happy Ambrose is when he looks at you. He is not happy now, is he?”
“You have no reason to be jealous,” put in Beatrice, nodding at Lydia’s words. “Ambrose does not look happy at all. We should go and rescue him straight away.”
“I am not jealous,” Frances asserted automatically, biting her lip. “It is only…”
As she spoke, the Duke of Westall seemed to say something sharp to the woman in green and then walked abruptly away from her, brushing off her hand angrily when she tried to detain him.
This time, when Lydia tugged at her arm, Frances walked forward in step with her friend, and letting Beatrice lead them again.
Jealous? How could she be jealous? It would be absurd.
Frances was in an arranged marriage and not even sharing a bedroom with her husband.
She ought to have no strong feelings about him simply talking to another woman in public at a ball.
Jealousy was for hot-headed lovers, not people like Frances and Ambrose.
And yet, if Frances never did share her husband’s bed, could she blame him if he one day brought some other woman to it?
It was a possibility she had never properly considered before.
Now that the idea presented itself, it made her feel faintly ill.
If the woman in question was the dark-haired beauty with her red lips and flashing eyes, Frances thought she might go mad.
Yes, this was jealousy, she was forced to acknowledge dully. And if she felt jealous, it implied something else too, didn’t it? It implied love…
“Beatrice, are you ready for our dance?” Ambrose asked cheerfully enough as soon as they reached him, his expression and mood instantly improving now that he was away from the woman who was likely Annabelle Sinclair. “The next measure is a hornpipe, I believe.”
“I am very much ready,” Beatrice declared. “Unless, Frances would like to take my place?”
Frances quickly shook her head and forced a smile despite the churning of her stomach.
“I will wait my turn,” she told her sister.
“Our dance is the waltz,” Ambrose said, his midnight-blue eyes meeting Frances’ and holding her gaze with a pleasure that felt almost painful.
“Your duke doesn’t want that woman in green,” Lydia asserted to her friend in a whisper as Ambrose and Beatrice made their way to the dance floor. “He wants you, Frances. You must see it.”
Fighting back tears, Frances nodded and then steeled herself to stand there and smile as she watched Ambrose dance, knowing that half of the other spectators were watching her in turn – and likely pitying her husband.