“Kiss me,” she whispered.
This was all the encouragement that Ambrose needed. Seconds later, Frances was in his arms and his warm lips were on hers, brushing, pressing, opening. All the while, his hands caressed her hair, her shoulders and her waist, and his tongue then joined his lips.
Swept away on waves of sensation, Frances only gasped and clung to her husband as she found herself lifted in his strong arms and carried towards the duke’s large oaken bed. Lying together side by side, he renewed his kisses and Frances responded with an equal passion that astonished her and seemed to please him immensely.
It was only when the duke’s hand settled over one of her breasts beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown that Frances started. No one had ever touched like this before.
“So beautiful,” Ambrose murmured, his breathing heavier and his voice thickening.
Coming back to her senses, Frances realized that she was lying on a bed with a half-naked man and her dressing gown had been unfastened.
“I cannot!” she gasped, stiffening and then rolling away from him, before retying her dressing gown tightly.
The Duke of Westall made no attempt to pull her back, only nodding with resignation and giving a long sigh as he tried to get his own breathing under control.
“I am sorry if I was too impetuous, Frances. I will not rush you, but I do desire you, very much indeed…”
The way he looked at her made Frances want to lie back down, open her dressing gown and invite him to carry on. What on earth was happening to her?!
“I cannot,” she said again, getting to her feet. “I am sorry.”
Ambrose nodded, not moving from the bed as she stepped away.
“I will do nothing you do not wish me to do,” he reiterated part of his double-edged promise, his voice exciting Frances’ senses almost as much as his hands and lips had done a few moments earlier.
I also promise to do everything that you do want…
The unspoken second part of his promise echoed in her head even louder than the words he spoke aloud. Padding swiftly back to her own room, Frances closed and locked the door before sinking down onto the carpet and hugging her knees tightly. Where did these feelings come from and why could she not control them?
If her own body would not listen to her mind and heart when she was around the Duke of Westall then Frances knew that she must stay away from him as much as she could.
Chapter Eleven
“Married? Married?! How can he be married?” Annabelle Sinclair raged, throwing down the newspaper on the breakfast table, her beautiful features distorted by anger.
“What was that, dear?” asked an elderly woman in black at the other end of the table, putting an ear trumpet to her head. “Did you say that someone is married? Who is married?”
“The Duke of Westall, Aunt Ada,” Annabelle snapped.
“Who?” repeated her great aunt with a slight frown, trying to lean closer.
“Ambrose Clarke, the Duke of Westall,” the younger woman shouted down the table and muttered further to herself as she scanned the newspaper’s wedding announcement again, in case she had misunderstood something. “Damn his eyes! After all the effort I’ve put in.”
“The Duke of Westall… Is he a friend of yours, Annabelle?” her aged relative now inquired. “I don’t believe I know him, although I may have met his grandparents, of course. Their son married a very rich young woman, an heiress of some sort. It was the wedding of the Season that year and everyone talked of it…”
“No, you will not know him,” answered Annabelle shortly, cutting off her great-aunt’s reveries, before turning to the young maid who was trying to look unobtrusive as she cleared away the empty plates. “You, go and get Ellen for me. I must speak to her now.”
Eyes cast down fearfully, the maid dashed from the room on this errand.
“So, did he marry a friend of yours?” the deaf old woman continued to gently but persistently question her great-niece, still trying to make some sense of her agitation.
“Oh, for God’s sake, no! He did not.”
“Well then, why…”
Annabelle ignored this question and drummed her fingers impatiently on the table as she waited for Ellen, her personal maid.
Why would the old woman never shut up? Since Baron Chedwidden lost all his money and was forced to rent out their family’s London house, staying with Great Aunt Ada was theonly way in which Annabelle could take part in the Season and hopefully snare herself a rich husband. Still, sometimes the price of keeping company with the childless dowager Countess of Delingford seemed too high.
