“I took some woodland flowers with me to the perfumery and asked them to concoct a scent as close as possible,” the duke confessed. “Was it worth the effort?”
“Very much,” Frances murmured, dabbing a tiny amount on her wrist and smelling it again. “Thank you.”
In the drawing room, Winifred also pronounced the new perfume lovely although her attention was far more on her peppermints and the cake that arrived with their tea. She did not notice the adult maneuvering that occurred while the teawas being laid out, with both the Duke and Duchess of Westall lingering at opposite ends of the mantelpiece, each watching the other and delaying taking a seat.
Ambrose had hoped that Frances might be induced to at least sit beside him today. At meals, they had always sat at opposite ends of the table, and whenever she could, Frances took a seat beside Winifred in the drawing room. While not exactly afraid of him, he could tell that she was wary of something.
Today, Winnie had plumped herself down right in the centre of a sofa, in front of the tea trays, leaving a single space on either side of her. It would be odd for either of them not to wish to sit with her, or to choose a separate seat far from the table. The duke supposed that his plan to sit beside Frances might be foiled.
Then, he had a stroke of inspiration.
“I can see you eying that cake,” he told Winnie good-humoredly as he approached the sofa. “Don’t think that you can get away with two slices, not with peppermints too…”
Scooping up the laughing child as he talked, Ambrose took the same seat in the centre of the sofa, with Winnie now on his knee.
“Miss Winters told Duchess Frances that I deserved a treat because I did so well in my lessons today,” she reminded her father.
“So you do,” he agreed, putting a small slice onto a plate and giving it to his daughter, before taking a larger piece for himself. “But we can’t have you making yourself sick. That would be no treat at all.”
While they were talking, Frances had approached the sofa and sat down beside them, as Ambrose had hoped. Although she was smiling, her carriage still seemed tense.
“Would you like cake too?” Ambrose asked “Before Winnie and I devour the whole lot between us.”
“I can take some,” she said, leaning forward to the tray. “You have your hands full.”
Small talk and Winnie’s innocent chatter carried them through tea without any great awkwardness. Frances was beginning to look more relaxed as the clock struck six and Miss Winters and the nursery maid arrived to take Winnie away for her bath and weekly hair washing.
“You will come upstairs and read me a story tonight, won’t you?” the girl asked, turning back to them from the doorway.
“Which one of us?” Ambrose asked, smiling at both his child and new wife. “Whose turn is it to read to you tonight?”
“Both of you, of course,” Winnie returned, as though this answer was obvious.
Chapter Fourteen
Children did like such very bloodthirsty stories, Frances reflected to herself as she read aloud from Winnie’s well-thumbed book of fairy tales. The Duke of Westall lingered beside her chair, having provided voices and sounds for key junctures in the story, much to Winnie’s delight.
“Then the woodcutter cut open the dead wolf and Red Riding Hood’s grandmother climbed out of his stomach, for he had swallowed her whole, nightcap, spectacles and all,” Frances read, pleased to finally see a sleeping child’s face on the pillow when she glanced across from her chair at the beside. “That was the end of the Big Bad Wolf.”
“Shall I do the howl again?” asked the duke.
“No!” Frances hushed him in an urgent whisper, putting a restraining hand on his arm. “Winnie is asleep, look!”
Putting the book down, Frances realized from his laughing face that Ambrose had only been teasing her, and heat rose in her cheeks. While the little girl was awake her innocent presence had been a shield from the magnetism of this man. Now it seemed that this protection had fallen asleep too and the duke’s deep blue eyes seemed to touch Frances as they looked upon her.
How handsome and kind he was, and how perfectly shaped were his lips…Frances remembered the warmth of those lips and his tongue as he had kissed her on his bed, and the memory made her quiver inside.
“We must get dressed for dinner,” she blurted, averting her gaze and scrambling to her feet.
In her hurry, her foot caught against one leg of the chair and she would have stumbled if the Duke of Westall had not caught her in his arms and held her there.
“Careful!” he said softly, still smiling.
For a long, long moment, Frances found herself lost in his eyes and his intense but undemanding embrace. A sensation she was beginning to understand as desire swept over her in gentle waves as pleasant as a warm sea. While seemingly unthreatening, her mind warned that she could still be swept away in such a current.
Wrenching herself away with a supreme effort, Frances ran from the room. She did not stop running until she was in her own chambers, with all doors bolted. A puzzled but uncomplainingNettie was dismissed for the evening with the assurance that no assistance would be needed with dressing or undressing that night.
Only then, alone and safe, although her heart still beat madly, did Frances stop and ask herself why she had run away.
