It had been a an evening of simple uncomplicated pleasures that showed every sign of continuing until morning. He had spotted Ellen in The Three Tuns, one of his favorite drinking dens, attached to a small theatre in Chelsea. Or had Ellen spotted him? Colin’s first memory of her was one of sparkling green eyes and a welcoming smile already focused in his direction.
His present bed partner had not been so forward as to approach him directly, but he had instantly suspected her intention when their gazes met. In the hours that had passed since then, he had proved that suspicion right, several times. It was always a joy to meet a lady of such uninhibited appetites.
“Mmm, lovely,” Ellen sighed, licking her lips suggestively after a first sip. “This may be the best champagne I have ever drunk.”
“I do like to have the best of everything,” Colin said, putting down his glass and kissing her shoulder as he returned to the bed. “Tell me where you live and I shall have a case sent to you tomorrow.”
It was nothing to the Duke of Redford to gift a lady champagne, perfume or small pieces of jewelry. He did so regularly and without expectation, seeing it only as another variety of conversation or caress between those who had already enjoyed some such intimacies and might wish to do so again.
“I will lose my reputation and my position if dukes start sending me cases of champagne!” she said in unconvincing protest, her full breasts shaking with laughter. “You forget that I am only a lady’s maid, Your Grace.”
“I shall send it in a plain box and mark it as being a gift from a relative. Do you have any aged uncles who might visit Paris for any reason..?”
“Oh, you are very persuasive,” she purred, allowing Colin to press her down on the bed again and kiss her lips. “I suppose I might have one or two such relatives I have never mentioned to anyone, now you come to mention it.”
“Good, then your kind uncle, or aunt if that is safer, will send you a well-wrapped case of champagne tomorrow. What is your address?”
For the first time that evening, Ellen looked slightly uncomfortable. Colin supposed this was not surprising. As a lady’s maid she must protect the reputation of her mistress as well as her own. She might well prefer to remain anonymous, even if it meant missing out on a gift.
“We are presently staying with the Dowager Countess of Delingford,” she told him after some hesitation. “She lives at Delingford House, off Bruton Street.”
“I am always discreet,” he assured her, vaguely recalling Lady Delingford as a kindly but deaf widow of advanced years who carried an ear trumpet and spoke loudly. “Neither you nor your mistress will be compromised, whoever she may be.”
Ellen smiled at him again now, her arms snaking back around his neck.
“What about you, Your Grace? Is there any danger of an angry wife or fiancée bursting in upon us here? Must I sneak out through the back door in the morning lest your neighbors inform her of my presence here?”
“Wife? Ha!” Colin chuckled, shaking his head. “No, danger of that, dear lady. I shall never marry. You may leave through the front door with your head held high.”
“A man after my own heart,” remarked his bed companion with amusement in her green eyes. “Marriage is very well for some, but I shall not be tempted.”
“You prefer to work?” he asked her curiously. “Such opinions are rarely heard from women, of any class.”
“My work is varied and my mistress an unusual woman,” Ellen told him laconically. “It does not seem such an odd preference to me. In any case, while more men claim not to want marriage, they usually fall in the end for a handsome face or a large fortune.”
“True,” he agreed, shifting slightly to allow her to sit up and reach again for her champagne, long blonde locks tumbling freely over her shoulders in the candlelight.
It was too soon yet to renew their embraces but he could still enjoy the sight of her and anticipate the pleasures hopefully still to come before the morning.
“That friend of yours that you mentioned earlier was one such man, wasn’t he?” Ellen asked casually, her emerald eyes meeting his over the top of her champagne glass. “The Duke of Westall.”
Colin nodded slow.ly. He did wonder vaguely how she would know that, but London was the heartland of gossip and maids were one of the main routes through which news and rumors flowed.
When he met the curvaceous blonde Ellen in The Three Tuns, she had been carrying a newspaper, open to the page of recent wedding and birth announcements. When he told her that he was the Duke of Redford, she had smiled and said that she had just been reading of him among the guests at the Duke of Westall’s recent wedding.
They had laughed together at the coincidence and Ellen had quickly agreed to share his table, then his carriage and then his bed.
“Yes,” Colin affirmed now. “Ambrose never planned to marry again, as you say. Likely he said so in public many times. Perhaps your mistress remarked on it.”
Ellen smiled prettily down into her champagne, maybe implying that she would not break any of her mistress’s confidences.
“What changed the Duke of Westall’s mind, I wonder?” she asked when she looked up again, putting down her glass and stretching her arms and shoulders. “I should not think that a man in his position needed a wife’s dowry, or anything elsereally. There was no scandal was there, to move things along so fast..?”
Colin shook his head, his gaze drawn back to those full breasts with their pert nipples, presently being pushed out in his direction.
“No. I do not believe Ambrose would have married anyone if it had not been for his father’s will,” he said distractedly, feeling a faint renewed stirring in his loins. “The matter was becoming urgent.”
“What could his father’s will have to do with it?” Ellen mused, her voice innocent but her expression seductive as she now stretched out her full body on the bed before his eyes again. “Dukedoms and great estates are passed down through blood, not bequests.”
