“They do complement the blue of your dress, and your complexion, Your Grace,” added Nettie tactfully.
“It seems to be decided, Ambrose,” Frances laughed, meeting his eyes in the looking glass again. “Could you help me, Nettie?”
As she was about to pass the necklace to her maid, Winnie spoke up again.
“Papa must put it on. It was his present after all.”
Seeing the faint but very becoming blush on Frances’ cheeks, Ambrose’s eyes flashed an apology to her in the looking glass. Unexpectedly, she nodded and held out the pearls to him.
Taking this cue, Nettie returned to her other tasks and Winifred continued to watch them as though they were players on a stage.
“Very well,” said Ambrose, coming close behind Frances and breathing in the wildflower scent that she must have applied.
The combined perfume of flowers and soft, warm skin made him ache and tingle. Taking a deep breath, he focused his attention instead on the fastening of the necklace and then leaned forward to place it around her throat. The pearls spilled down her throat and rested on the white slopes of her breasts. God, how shapely they were, and so sensitive to his lips…
Controlling his breathing carefully, Ambrose fastened the necklace securely and stood back to admire her again.
“There,” he said. “What do you think?”
“It does go well with the dress,” Frances told him.
“There are earrings too,” Winifred reminded them, pointing to the two small clasped clusters of pearl on the dressing table. “Put them on too, Papa.”
“Frances might better do that,” he tried to excuse himself. “I would not want to hurt her accidentally with those clasps.”
“But they are your present,” the child insisted, “and anyway, you are always gentle.”
A little more uncertain than she had been about the necklace, Frances met his eyes again in the mirror.
“I am sorry,” he whispered as he leaned forward and picked up the earrings. “Tell me to stop and take Winnie to the nursery if this is too much.”
After a moment’s thought, Frances shook her head.
“Winnie is right. You are always gentle,” she said to his reflection in the looking glass. “I believe I can trust you.”
With the greatest care, Ambrose fastened first one earring and then the other to the lobes of Frances’ ears, darts of desire rushing from his fingertips into his belly wherever they touched her satin skin. When he stood back again, he noted that faint flush had now spread from her cheeks, right across her throat and bosom.
Briefly he wished that they were alone before acknowledging regretfully that it was probably only the presence of the child and the maid that let Frances feel safe enough to allow even these small intimacies.
“You really will be the most beautiful woman there tonight,” Ambrose told her honestly before tearing his gaze away. “But now, I must take this young lady back to the nursery where I believe her supper and bath await her.”
“Miss Winters is reading my story tonight,” said Winnie without enthusiasm. “She always reads exactly what is on the page and never does the voices like Papa.”
“We are all different, Winnie,” replied Frances, in explanation rather than rebuke and kissed the little girl goodnight. “Miss Winters tells her own kind of stories and you will enjoy them too if you listen well and use your imagination."
“I will see you downstairs whenever you are ready, Frances,” the duke told his wife, lifting Winnie in his arms as the easiest means of detaching her interest in the jewelry boxes.
“Remember to tell me everything about the ball tomorrow, Duchess Frances,” the little girl called back to her as she was carried from the room. “I should like that even more than a bedtime story…”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Ispoke to Lady Fordham and Lord Mulford is not on the guest list,” Ambrose told Frances without preamble as he handed her into the carriage outside the house and then climbed in after her. “I shall let it be generally known that we will never attend any event where he is a guest. We need not explain ourselves further. Hosts and hostesses must make their plans accordingly.”
While these words were mildly spoken, he was still presenting Frances with afait accompli.She blinked with consternation but then found herself sighing with relief from a tension she had not realized she carried.
With regard to her tormenter, Frances was glad now that Ambrose had ignored all her previous protests against his interference. Maybe Ambrose saw the matter more clearly than she did, not having been harried and ground down by Oswald for so many years. Maybe Oswald really would stay away now that Ambrose had made his position clear.
Something in her husband’s dogged adherence to his own principles also roused Frances’ admiration. Ambrose had told her that he would not accept Lord Mulford harassing her and what he intended to do about it. Then he had done it, regardless of Frances’ wrongheaded outbursts or any social inconvenience he might incur as a result of his actions.
