“No, I don’t think you do,” he replied, wiping her tear with his handkerchief. “If you really wished to kiss me now, it would be the most wonderful thing in the world, but you are not ready, Frances. You are presently tired, afraid and hurt. I am not going to let you hurt yourself more by giving yourself to me unwillingly.”
Taking her arm, Ambrose walked her to the study door and then into the hallway, where he put a candlestick into her hand from a side table.
“Go to bed and sleep, Frances,” he advised her. “We might find that the world looks less bleak and desperate in the morning.”
As the Duke of Westall returned to his study and closed the door, Frances walked slowly up the stairs replaying every part of the conversation. She cursed her own failures of communication and the irrationality that always seemed to take her over when the past came into play.
Frances felt herself full of impossible contradictions, both lonely and yet wishing to be left alone; both wanting Oswald to be stopped and yet not for her husband to confront him; both longing to be a proper wife to Ambrose and yet terrified at the thought of going to his bed…
How could such a tangle ever be unravelled?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Come upstairs with me, Papa,” Winnie pleaded, at her father’s knee. “Duchess Frances said that if I come to her dressing room at six o’clock, I may help choose her jewelry for the ball tonight. I wonder which dress she will wear? There are so many in her wardrobe.”
Ambrose smiled, both at Winifred’s eagerness and at the thought of Frances upstairs now, preparing herself for the Marquis and Marchioness of Fordham’s ball. He too was looking forward to seeing his wife in her ballgown, although he felt far less able to show this than Winnie, especially before Miss Winters, who hovered in the doorway of the library.
“It will be better if Miss Winters takes you upstairs,” he suggested. “Duchess Frances might not welcome a gentleman intruding while she is at hertoilette. Nor am I sure that she would agree with my taste in jewelry…”
The duke’s hand went unobtrusively to a small packet in his jacket pocket. In London earlier that week, he had also called at a jeweler and bought a fine string of faintly silvery pearls and matching earrings, easily imagining the luster of them against Frances’ pale skin. There had never seemed the right moment to give them to her yet, however, and Ambrose still carried them with him.
“You’re not a gentleman, Papa,” Winnie objected, making him laugh aloud and her governess look disapprovingly at her charge. “You’re her husband and a duke. It’s different. Please, please, pleeeease!”
“I hope I am very much a gentleman, Winnie, as well as duke, and Frances’ husband,” he explained to his daughter, lifting her onto his lap. “Now, perhaps you could do something for me.”
Taking the suede case from his pocket, he took out the pearls and showed them to the fascinated child.
“They’re beautiful,” breathed Winnie, not daring to touch them although her eyes grew wide and her fingers reached out towards them. “Are they for Great-Grandmama?”
Again, Ambrose had to laugh.
“No, Great-Grandmama has several sets of pearls already, one of them promised to you someday, Winnie. I bought these for Frances but…Well, would you like to take these upstairs and give them to her for me?”
To his surprise, Winnie wriggled away and hopped down from his knee.
“No, you must do it, Papa. You can’t ask someone to give someone else’s present. It spoils it. You must come with me and give them yourself.”
Convinced by her childish logic, Winnie held out a small hand to him and with a sigh of resignation, Ambrose took it and pretended that she was pulling him to his feet.
“Very well, but you must go in first and make sure that Duchess Frances is ready to be seen. She will certainly count me as a gentleman, even if my own daughter has doubts.”
Dismissing Miss Winters and promising to return Winnie to the nursery shortly, the Duke of Westall allowed his daughter to take him up the stairs towards Frances’ suite.
He hoped that his wife would not count his presence too great an intrusion. Since her family’s visit, Frances had been very sensitive and easily upset. Knowing now how deep her psychological wounds went, Ambrose felt great compassion for her, as well as tenderness and a healthy amount of desire that he tried not to think about too much right now.
Might it take years, rather than months or weeks, to lure Frances to his bed and make her feel safe enough to lie with him there? The thought saddened and frustrated Ambrose a little, although he could not be angry at her.
Nor could he join Frances in blaming Lord Scovell so heavily for his past transgression. While Ambrose had always been a faithful husband, he knew that many men were not, and that some wives were equally adulterous. Still, many marriages also survived such choppy waters. Ambrose found himself sharing Beatrice’s view that whatever had happened all those years ago, Lord Scovell was now, indeed, devoted to Lady Scovell.
Ambrose could, however, allow himself to feel anger towards Oswald Keeton for his persistent harassment of Frances. Personally, he suspected it was this, rather than purely that single shocking day in their childhood, that had turned Frances so far from the path of normal sexual curiosity.
The Duke of Westall was not a violent man by nature but still he wanted beat Lord Mulford to a pulp every time he thought of what the man might have done to Frances to earn her circumspect description to her young sister of his being “most inappropriate, in his words and actions.”
Even if it did take years, Ambrose could wait. It would be worth it, to one day feel Frances melt in his arms without nervousness or restraint and open herself completely to his touch. He would not hurry her, nor let her force herself to submit to his attentions.
When Frances had offered to kiss him in the study, it had both tempted Ambrose and pained him. Luckily, he believed he had done the right thing in holding her back and sending her to bed, alone.
If Frances ever kissed him from pure desire, rather than a passing wish to be a “normal” wife, that would be a different matter entirely. In those circumstances, self-control might be harder.
