Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Everyone will have seen it,” said Frances in despair, ceaselessly pacing the small unoccupied sitting room they occupied, as Ambrose read the pamphlet. “Everyone must know.”
Given his wife’s agitation, the Duke of Westall tried hard to keep his own expression calm although he could not help the tightening in his jaw at the reference to him marrying for pecuniary advantage.
While he did not consider himself a man with secrets to hide, nor did he like to have his private life splashed across the public domain.
It was all naturally far more humiliating for Frances than for Ambrose, however, especially with their names being published.
The truth at the article’s core could also not be denied, although it was no one’s business but theirs.
He was already planning ways to track down the source of this story and scotch any further such publications.
“Not everyone,” he commented, reaching the end of the column and lowering the pamphlet.
“Many who read this will also ignore it for the mean-spirited gossip that it is. I shall speak to my lawyer and call on the publisher tomorrow. If I can verify the source of this story, I shall warn them off too.”
“People have been talking of this pamphlet all night. I am a laughing stock and you are to be pitied.”
As Frances turned, Ambrose saw tears running down her cheeks and rose to his feet from the armchair where he had been sitting, feeling drawn to her like metal to a magnet.
Despite every past experience and resolution to keep his distance, Ambrose drew her against his chest and after a brief moment of surprise but not struggle, she rested there, sobbing into his waistcoat.
“There is no reason to mock you, and no reason to pity me,” Ambrose told her softly, patting her back. “Only fools or those with vicious minds could think otherwise. They know nothing of our lives. Our marriage is our own business.”
“If you had married someone else, this would not have happened would it?” Frances said woefully, raising her face. “One day, you might wish that you had married someone else. If you had married Miss Sinclair, for instance…”
“Never,” Ambrose stated with absolute certainty, cutting off even the verbalization of this unpleasant idea. “I married you, Frances, not Annabelle Sinclair or anyone else. I married you.”
“But she is very beautiful, isn't she?” Frances added sadly. “I saw you talking to her earlier, I think.”
“You saw her talking to me,” corrected the duke. “Believe me, I had no desire for her conversation, or anything else.”
“Do you promise?” Frances asked.
Ambrose was surprised by this request and the strength of feeling in his wife’s presently misty grey eyes.
He had only exchanged a few words with Miss Sinclair, most of them forming repeated requests for her to leave him alone and an implied threat to write to her father if she did not.
Had Frances witnessed and misconstrued this?
“Yes, I promise. I have never felt a moment’s desire for Miss Sinclair’s company or person and I never will. I only…”
…I only want you…
Ambrose stopped before he could speak the words on the tip of his tongue.
He must not overstep the line he knew was still there between him and Frances.
She might have allowed him to comfort her in distress, and this was progress of a kind in their journey towards intimacy.
Still, it did not mean she was ready to hear or respond to such avowal of desire.
As Frances laid her head back against his chest, Ambrose exhaled quietly.
No, he could not yet tell her that hers was the only beauty that now excited him, that her lips were the only ones he hungered to kiss, and that he longed to give her physical pleasure as much as he longed for his own satisfaction in her arms…
“What do we do now?” Frances asked him after a few more minutes of closeness during which her breathing calmed once more and her voice settled back to its usual measured tones.
“We go out there and we dance every dance,” Ambrose proposed after a moment’s thought. “Let us give no more notice to that ridiculous pamphlet and its author tonight, nor to irritants like Annabelle Sinclair. We are here to enjoy ourselves, so let us do so.”
In his arms, Frances laughed and then extricated herself. Her face was a little pink and damp from her crying but as delicately lovely as ever to Ambrose’s eyes.
“May I have the next dance and the next and the next?” he asked her, making a deep formal bow and extending his hand. “And the one after that too?”
Smiling, Frances smoothed her dress and nodded before dropping a curtsey and putting her hand in his.
“I am yours, Your Grace,” she accepted.
One day, Ambrose thought with a stab of longing. Not quite yet, but one day…
“Seriously? Are you sure that’s wise, Colin?” the Duke of Westall questioned his friend, putting his glass down on the table with a loud clink after listening to his incredible suggestion.
“Perhaps not, but life is short,” the Duke of Redford returned with a grin, leaning back in his comfortable armchair in the lounge of their club. “It’s worth a try isn’t it?”
“The woman is an absolute snake! She has already used you once and you’re ready to welcome her back into your life with open arms. It sounds like madness to me.”
“Maybe I liked being used like that,” Colin laughed at him.
“Maybe I’m not the clean-cut family man that you are, Ambrose.
In any case, I am a big boy and can look after myself.
Nor do I think Ellen is entirely so bad as you make out, and I’m certainly willing to take my chances. Her mistress however…”
Here, Colin stopped and shook his head. Ambrose leaned forward and looked earnestly at him.
“Maybe they are as bad as one another, Colin. I can’t ask you to sacrifice yourself for my benefit.”
“Sacrifice myself?” repeated Colin with a chuckle, putting his hands behind his head and adopting a posture of great insouciance.
“I haven’t really thought about it in that light but believe me, I’m hardly going to suffer.
I also feel I owe something for being taken in and giving Ellen information about you, especially as some of it turned up a scandal sheet. ”
“Joking aside, Miss Sinclair is a nasty piece of work and I have no reason to think any better of her employee.”
“Oh, tosh and nonsense, Ambrose. Maybe Ellen is only intelligent, resourceful and independent in a world that does not value such qualities in young women of the working classes. I expect she works for money far more than loyalty, and perhaps not too much money at that.”
“The scandal sheet publisher paid her decently,” the Duke of Westall grumbled, having paid a visit to the said gentleman with his lawyer earlier that day. “Not for the first time either. I imagine Ellen does rather well for herself on the side.”
Once assured that Ambrose was seeking information rather than any kind of legal redress, the publisher had been all too ready to cooperate, for a price.
The writer of the column too had been quite amenable to answering questions for money, confirming that a woman fitting Ellen’s description had provided the basis of the whole story, and many others in the past.
Again, Colin only laughed.
“She certainly does. Incidentally, I’m minded to send her some silk underwear with my invitation to meet. It would be very indiscreet to send more champagne, and yet I doubt she will reply unless I make it worth her while.”
“You’re not going to take any notice of my warnings at all, are you?” sighed Ambrose.
“None whatsoever,” agreed Colin cheerfully.
“I believe my plan is a good one. I shall lure Ellen back to my rooms, allow her to have her wicked way with me, and then present her with more money than she has ever seen in her life, along with an invitation to join me on an all expenses paid six-month tour of southern France and Italy.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” asked Ambrose with a cynical lift of his eyebrow.
“From your side, very little. Miss Sinclair will be deprived of her right hand, we will learn more of her intentions and how to thwart them, and there will be no more obstacles on your road to love with the fair Frances. From my side, I dare say Ellen will eventually rob me blind and leave me for a dashing Italian nobleman, but such is life.”
Ambrose winced, not at the idea of Colin being cheated and abandoned, but at the mention of the word “love.”
“I should very much like Frances to be happy,” he said carefully. “Neither of us married for love, but she is my wife, and I must take care of her.”
“As you will,” replied Colin with a shrug of his shoulders, in no mood to argue over semantics when he had such adventures ahead of him.
“I’ll call for a writing set and start on my letter to Ellen.
Do you think Simmons would object to going out and getting some ladies’ underwear for me… ? You think he would?”
“I shall do it while you write,” Ambrose pronounced. “I think I know better what you have in mind, as well as where a woman of taste would shop for such items.”
“Perfect. It would not do at all to try and lure a woman like Ellen with a pair of thick woolen stockings such as my grandmother wore.”
“What size, approximately?” Ambrose asked and Colin made a not-very-useful gesture with his hands, indicating only that he remembered the curves of Ellen’s body.
Still doubtful over such a madcap scheme as his friend had devised, Ambrose donned his coat and left the club.
Although he walked in the direction of the Bond Street shopping district where his first wife had always bought her clothing, the Duke of Westall had no intention of braving the busy crowds there.
Instead, he turned off the main road slightly earlier and strolled along a side street towards a smaller women’s outfitter he had learned to know only after Charlotte’s death.
A neatly written sign in the shop window promised the latest Parisian styles in day and nightwear and Ambrose smiled, thinking that a Parisian silk and lace nightgown was probably exactly what Colin had in mind.
A bell rang as he pushed the door open, and a short, respectable-looking French woman with a grey-bun came out from a backroom, with fabric and ribbons over one of her shoulders. She smiled when she saw him and dropped a neat curtsy in response to the polite inclination of Ambrose’s head.
“Bonjour, Madame Rousset. Comment ca va?”
“All the better for your visit, Your Grace,” laughed the little Frenchwoman. “Welcome back. How may I serve you today?”
“I am looking for a present for a lady,” Ambrose said. “Something intimate but stylish.”
“Ah, you have a new duchess, do you not?” she laughed knowingly. “I read of it in the newspaper. Félicitations!”
Ambrose nodded, finding himself in a bind.
He could hardly admit that he was buying underwear for a woman other than his wife without Madame Rousset leaping to entirely the wrong conclusion.
While he had certainly shopped here for gifts for lovers after his wife’s death without any shame, he did not want to be classed among the men who deceived their wives.
“Thank you, Madame. I do indeed have a new wife and I wish to give her a little surprise,” Ambrose said, following Madame Rousset into the warren of rooms behind the main shop.
Frances would indeed be surprised to be presented with a French nightgown, and if Ambrose had found it hard to give her the pearls, he did not know yet how he would manage it.
“You think of something smaller today, like silk stockings, or garters perhaps? For larger items, it is better that she visits so I can measure.”
“Well, I was thinking more of a nightgown. In fact, I think I shall buy two,” Ambrose proposed, solving his conundrum. “If they don’t fit, I shall bring my wife here to have them adjusted.”
“A lady cannot have too many nightgowns,” Madame Rousset said solemnly, possibly thinking him mad but knowing him to be rich and happy to sell him what he wanted on his own terms. “You know your wife’s size?”
Closing his eyes, Ambrose could easily picture the slim curves of Frances’ waist, hips and shapely breasts.
From past experience with women’s nightgowns, he could probably have guessed sizing to within an inch or two.
However, from Colin’s rough steer, it seemed likely that Ellen was rather larger.
A gown fitting one woman would not fit the other.
“Forgive me, Madame, we are only married a month,” Ambrose excused himself. “I should buy two different sizes, just in case.”
The Frenchwoman tutted indulgently and made a quick remark in French about gentlemen’s understanding of women’s clothing.
“For a surprise present, you should always consult a lady’s maid,” she advised him, beginning to lay out some nightgowns on a table for inspection. “I tell this to all my gentlemen. The lady’s maid will know all her secrets, including the size of her dresses.”
Ambrose laughed a little harder than the joke merited but then straightened his face and began to look seriously at the nightgowns.
Despite his best intentions, he visualized Frances wearing each of them, and then wearing nothing at all as he slid the sheer material from her shoulders to pool at her feet…
The Duke of Westall left the little shop with a package of four of the finest French nightgowns in various designs and sizes.