Ambrose nodded, leaning forward in his chair but making no attempt to touch her.
“And I promised you never to do anything you did not want, a promise I shall always keep.”
“Then, why must we have this conversation?” Frances followed up nervously. “What can there be to say?”
“Frances, between complete avoidance and sharing a bed, there is a very wide country,” the duke pointed out. “There isfriendship there as well as passion, and love for some, I suppose. Have you never wished to visit such lands at all, or even to look upon them?”
Ah, why must he be so reasonable and understanding? Frances might have railed against a petulant or dishonorable man, or run away again from someone who made any attempt at physical compulsion. Ambrose, however, only looked upon her with those deep blue eyes and spoke words that made her tingle and ache, and then quake with fear at the power of her own longing.
“I am frightened,” Frances confessed after a too-long silence, although she had not intended to tell him anything quite so personal. “Being…close to someone…frightens me. Can you understand that?”
The puzzlement on his face told her that he did not.
“What is it that frightens you?” Ambrose questioned her lightly. “You do not think that I would hurt you, do you? I assure you that I am not a brute.”
Frances hung her head, not wishing him to believe this explanation when it was so far from the truth of either of them.
“I am afraid of what I feel, Ambrose, not of what you are,” she replied, her voice emerging as barely a whisper. “You have done nothing wrong. It is only that I…”
She had said so little and yet it was far more than she had ever admitted to anyone else. The Duke of Westall did not frown or laugh at her. He only nodded and continued to regard her thoughtfully.
“I cannot imagine that what you feel is anything so very dreadful,” said the duke. “Do you enjoy my company, or do you find me physically repulsive?”
Frances laughed at this, a little bitterly. Having begun her confession, she supposed she might as well explain it as best she could.
“I enjoy your company. I always have. Do you know, that when you pulled me onto the dance floor that night, it was the first time a man touched me and I didn’t shudder?”
The duke’s handsome smile broadened with this admission.
“I take compliments where I can get them. I can only thank you for your understanding of my impetuous behavior that night and suggest that some of your previous dance partners were not gentlemen.”
“Indeed,” Frances agreed, thinking of the Earl of Mulford, her most persistent follower and certainly no gentleman.
“It seems to me that if you enjoy my conversation and my partnership on the dance floor, that you might enjoy my company in other ways, if you allowed yourself.”
If this was a proposition, it was so mildly and kindly spoken that it did not feel like one. That deep blue gaze was only interested and inquisitive as her own eyes dared to meet it but Frances’ roiling emotions disturbed her so much that Ambrose might as well have seized her up from the chair and kissed her.
“I cannot share your bed,” she reiterated, her voice catching in her throat and the neckline of her dress feeling tight and constricting.
“Do not think of that now,” he responded without judgement or urgency. “Why not think instead of holding my hand? That is a simpler act to countenance, is it not? There is no danger in it, surely.”
The Duke of Westall held out a hand towards her as he spoke, his smile encouraging her to take it. After a few seconds, Frances laid her trembling fingers in his broad warm palm and looked warily across at him, her heart thumping in her chest.
The duke squeezed her hand very gently and then stroked her fingers lightly with his other hand.
“Your hands are as graceful as the rest of you, Frances,” he told her, then turning her palm over, stroked that too.
Little tongues of fire licked at her belly from only these slight touches and her breath came faster.
“Does that feel good?” the duke asked her and then raised the back of her hand briefly to his lips and kissed it when she nodded.
“It frightens me how good it feels.”
“There is nothing to fear here, nothing to fear from me,” Ambrose said again, his tone low and soothing. “When a man and woman touch like this, even just hands, it should feel pleasurable to both parties. If it did not, I would stop. You too may stop whenever you wish.”
Somehow, both of her hands were now in his and he was kissing and caressing each of them lightly and unhurriedly as he spoke. Frances closed her eyes and sighed. She did not want him to stop but feared the reactions of her own body and mind to his touch.
A door was opening in Frances’ imagination, and for the first time, she saw the lands of intimacy that the Duke of Westall had described. The pleasure of his lips on her skin was burning away all rational thought. What if she lost control of herself, as other people did? Should she draw back her hands and end this encounter now before it was too late..?
