Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was a little after eleven o’clock when Ambrose heard the sound of carriage wheels approaching along the drive at Westall Park.
Jumping up from his seat in the library and casting down the letter that the Duke of Redford had written from Paris, he strode to the window and saw a coach approaching in the distance.
While it was still too far away to make out any crest on the vehicle, his gut, or perhaps only his hopes, told him that it was one of Lord Scovell’s coaches. It was hard to stop himself from rushing outside and racing ahead down the path to meet the coach, as he wished to do.
More soberly, he hoped that Winnie had neither seen nor heard the vehicle from the nursery schoolroom, in case he was wrong about its provenance.
Even after three days of absence, little Winifred was missing her stepmother terribly.
Ambrose’s explanation that Frances was sick and resting at her parents’ house sufficed for now, but could not be stretched out for ever.
The house had seemed terribly empty without Frances’ presence, far emptier than it had ever seemed in the all years that he and Winnie had lived here together without her.
The emptiness was made worse by the pitying glances of servants whenever they thought Ambrose unaware.
Evidently, many of them thought that Frances had left him after that incident with Annabelle Sinclair, and they might be right.
As for Ambrose’s bed, it had never felt so large and cold, even though he had slept alone there most of the time since inheriting the duchy. He dreamed of Frances’ warmth and kept one of the silk nightgowns she had worn beneath a pillow, hoping that its scent would not fade too quickly.
By the time the coach pulled up before the house, its doors emblazoned with the Scovell crest, Ambrose was walking down the steps and waving a footman aside to open the door himself.
There was only one occupant, and Frances met his eyes rather shyly.
“Welcome home,” he said with a small bow, just as wary of embracing her now as he had been at the start. “We have a lot to talk about.”
The Duke of Westall took a deep breath and waited for Frances to make herself comfortable in the library chair while he stood by the mantelpiece. While still a little pale, she seemed well and quite as delicately lovely as ever in a light blue summer dress.
“Where shall we start, Frances?” he opened, knowing that it would hurt to gaze on his wife for too long without hope.
“As I said in my letter, you may ask any questions you wish. It is better to clear the air. Then we can see whether we can start again. I have already explained about my father’s will and hope that at least is clear. ”
“Why did the scandal sheets say that you had a mistress?” Frances asked first, without further preamble.
“Because Annabelle Sinclair told them so. It was a deliberate lie and they printed it anyway. As the maid who acted as her intermediary with these publications is presently in Paris with Colin I do not think we will be seeing any more such stories.”
“With Colin?” Frances queried and Ambrose laughed and waved his hand.
“You may read his letter from Paris later. It is very funny. But coming back to your original question, there was no more basis to this rumor than Miss Sinclair’s imagination.”
“Then why were you kissing her?” his wife asked and Ambrose immediately shook his head.
“I was not kissing her, she was kissing me,” he corrected as calmly as he could. “There is a huge difference. You must have seen that, or at least seen me throw her off. I did not invite her here and I had the servants remove her from the estate.”
Frances thought about this for a few minutes as though trying to recall the scene and then nodded.
“Yes, I do remember it like that. But what about the fourth nightgown? Where did that go if you did not give it to Annabelle? I spoke to Madame Rousset and I know you bought another, larger nightgown as well as the three your gave to me. If you still have it, I should like to see it.”
At this question, Ambrose burst into laughter.
“The fourth nightgown is in Paris, adorning the body of Ellen Yates, Miss Sinclair’s former maid. It is much appreciated by the Duke of Redford. I originally went to Madame Rousset’s on Colin’s behalf but found myself imagining half of the nightgowns on you.”
“Oh!” said Frances, coloring prettily at this rather blunt explanation. “That is…not at all what I imagined.”
As she laughed, Ambrose saw that dimple again at the corner of her smiling mouth and was instantly bewitched.
“What else would you like to know?” he asked her.
“Where have you been going in London when you are there alone?”
It was curiosity that Ambrose heard in his wife’s voice now, far more than suspicion and it soothed his heart. Frances had not come here to break with him, although there was no guarantee that she might not still do it.
“Many places. I have called on the publishers and writers of scandal sheets and paid them for information. I have met with the Duke of Redford at our club, and plotted how to foil the schemes of Miss Annabelle Sinclair, including our successful plan to tempt her maid away to the Continent with Colin.”
“You connived in a young woman’s seduction?” Frances remarked with a doubtful frown and Ambrose shook his head.
“Ellen Yates first seduced Colin in order to pump him for information, rather than the other way around. He found that he enjoyed it and was keen both to repeat the experience and to help me in doing so. If you have a care for anyone involved in this particular European adventure, let it be Colin.”
Frances could not help laughing now even though this story was rather shocking. Well, he had vowed that he would be completely honest in answering her questions. As she giggled, Ambrose continued to list his less colorful activities in London.”
“I have visited the Dowager Lady Delingford and apprised her of her great-nieces doings, as well as writing to Baron Chedwidden. Miss Sinclair has already been taken home and I dare say she will be spending far more time in the countryside in future. Most recently, I have been meeting with solicitors and barristers to bring a case against Lord Mulford for the incident at Scovell Hall.”
“Will I have to give evidence?” Frances asked quietly, her eyes more frightened that she liked him to see. “Will my name be in all the newspapers?”
Ambrose shook his head.
“You will not, and no. I have it on good authority that Lord Mulford plans to flee abroad very soon. He fears facing a substantial fine, which, given his profligate lifestyle, he cannot afford to pay. Nor does he wish to undergo the assessment for insanity which the court might order when evidence is submitted. We have found ample witnesses among his own staff.”
Frances shivered and nodded, drawing her wrap more closely about her shoulders, making Ambrose long to warm her more thoroughly in his arms. How far away were they from that?
Still some way, he judged from Frances’ body language, and yet he had to be encouraged that she had come there at all today, and that she had come alone.
“I wanted to thank you, Ambrose,” his wife said then. “You have been so very kind to me from the start, even when I have made your life very difficult. You have been patient with my fears, taught me so much, defended me from enemies…”
Ambrose shook his head and frowned, cold dread creeping into his veins .
“You mean to give compliments, but I do not like to hear you speak like this,” he blurted out. “It sounds too much as though you’re saying goodbye to me.”
“Oh Ambrose,” Frances exclaimed, her lip quivering with emotion. “I sometimes feel that I am broken.”
“To me you are perfect,” he declared passionately, and then without warning, dropped to his knees before Frances and took one of her hands.
“Don’t thank me, Frances,” he urged. “Make demands of me. I am your husband and it is your right. You have a right to my support, my protection and my body. Everything I pledged to you at the altar is yours. I need you to make demands of me. Can you understand that?”
Her graceful hand curled around his and, to his pleasure, he saw Frances’ lips part, as though in the earliest stage of desire.
“To have and to hold, to love and to cherish,” Ambrose reminded her, caressing her hand. “I am bound to love you, comfort you, honor you and keep you, forsaking all others.”
“Love?” she questioned, her grey-blue eyes .
“Love,” Ambrose affirmed, determined to hide nothing from Frances now.
“I love you Frances, as I have never loved a woman before. There is no one else for me. There could never be anyone else. I know that you didn’t come into this marriage looking for love, and I do not ask you for it, but do you think you can trust me again? ”
Frances looked back at him with a gaze that was tremulous and slightly tearful but also filled him with hope.
“I do love you, Ambrose. I do trust you. I just don’t know the way back to where we were.”
“Shall I show you the way?” he suggested with a smile, sitting back on his heels.
Shall I show you the way..?
As Ambrose spoke, a vanished horizon seemed to reappear from the darkness and open up again in Frances’ mind.
Smiling, Frances reached out and caressed her husband’s jaw, presently smooth but sometimes slightly rough with stubble in the mornings when she rolled over in bed and kissed him.
Ambrose pressed his face into her palm and looked at her with those midnight-blue eyes that were equally capable of melting her heart and other portions of her anatomy.
Everything again felt as though it might be possible, as long as Frances could reach out and take Ambrose’s hand metaphorically as well as literally.
“My love,” she said, keeping her hand pressed to his face until he turned his lips to kiss her palm, and the warmth that only Ambrose caused began to suffuse her body,. “Ambrose, I…I want you. I need you to make love to me. I need to feel you in me again. That is the way back, isn’t it?”
“Your wish is my command,” he growled low in his throat, scooping Frances up from the chair in a display of that protective strength that aroused her at a primal level and drew an immediate sigh of longing from her lips.
Kissing her lips, Ambrose carried her to that familiar sheepskin rug where he had already claimed her so many times and with such pleasure that the very sight of it made her heart rush and her belly spark with lust.
A further powerful wave of love and lust swept over Frances in Ambrose’s arms, remembering how Ambrose had dashed Oswald Keeton away from her at the folly and sent him flying, bloodied, across the ground. This man was hers and he was willing and able to love her and protect her.
Safe now in this understanding, Frances’ lips parted easily to Ambrose’s tongue and her thighs to the caresses of his hands. Soon she was yet again in that state of hot, sticky excitement where she knew Ambrose liked to hold her as long as he could.
Frances gasped her longing both for the peak of her pleasure and the entrance of the manly shaft, so hard and hot in her hand and then in her tight velvet passage.
Her bottom bumped on the soft rug as Ambrose filled her, Nothing then mattered but the union of their bodies, the spasming of her womanhood and the leaping of Ambrose’s seed deep within her.
“I love you, my beautiful wife,” Ambrose whispered in her ear as they came to rest.
“I’m yours,” Frances murmured back, wrapping her legs about his waist to hold him inside. “I’ve come home.”