Frances closed her eyes. Was this all her fault? It was her flaws that had made it impossible to have a normal marriage, after all. If she had only resigned herself to sharing Ambrose’s bed, they would not be in this situation.
“You must tell him,” Lydia said. “He might even be able to put a stop to it, you know. The Duke of Westall is a very rich man and must have a great deal of influence. If he speaks to the publisher of this rag, he might even be able to force them to print a retraction and apology.”
“Do you think so?” Frances wondered aloud.
She was obviously aware that Ambrose possessed a large fortune but it had never interested her before. As long as her home and living were secure, she had been content to leave the exact details of the duchy’s wealth to her husband and the bank.
“Well, my father has commented that you are now the wealthiest woman of his acquaintance, Frances,” Lydia told her. “Apparently, the Duchy of Westall possesses some of the richest farming land in the country and my brother says that Ambrose has a knack for investing in new industries, especially steam power. Oh, and his mother was a mining heiress. Yes, I daresay Ambrose is very, very rich.”
“Then some of this scandal story makes no sense, does it?” said Frances, shaking the pamphlet. “How could Ambrose have ‘pecuniary reasons’ for marrying me, with my perfectly ordinary dowry, when he already has such a fortune?”
“It’s often the way of these things when they’re based on second-hand information and eavesdropping,” replied Lydia with a shrug. "Some parts are true and others nonsense. At least people who know him well will read that line and assume the rest is rubbish too. That is something.”
“You are right that I must tell Ambrose but I still don’t want to go back out there,” admitted Frances.
“Two more minutes, take some deep breaths and then we’ll go and find him together,” proposed her friend. “Once you’ve told the duke, you might be able to leave him to handle the matter and ignore it completely.”
“Ignore it?” Frances repeated, shaking her head and unable yet to imagine how she could when everyone was looking at her and exchanging crude gossip. “I wish I knew how.”
A few minutes later, the pamphlet now folded in Frances’ pocket, the two friends emerged back into the corridor, their faces fixed and Lydia’s arm linking her friend’s in support.
“There you are!” said Beatrice, skipping over to Frances and Beatrice as they walked back through the reception room. “I was about to come looking for you. Mother and Father have gone to dance and I’m going to dance with Ambrose too, unless you wish to dance first, Frances.”
“You may dance first, Beatrice,” Frances answered, reflecting that Ambrose might not wish to dance at all once he had spoken with her. “Where is my husband?”
“Oh, just inside the ballroom. We thought you might have gone straight there when you took so long. What is to do? Your faces are both like thunder.”
“Nothing for you to worry about, Beatrice,” Frances told her younger sister, after exchanging a quick glance with Lydia. “Forget the gloominess of tired old women like Lydia and I, and just enjoy your first ball tonight.”
She was sure that no scandal sheets would have crossed the threshold of Scovell Hall. Nor were any of her sister’s friends likely to know the story. Beatrice was first in her circle to come out and did not yet have any kind of network for London gossip. Frances saw no reason to ruin her sister’s evening as well as her own and her husband’s.
Seeming to accept this assurance easily enough, Beatrice smiled and walked ahead of them towards the ballroom. A reel was now playing out on the dance floor and the banks of onlookers were thickening.
Ambrose did not seem to be where Beatrice expected and she stopped to look around the room before turning back to her companions.
“Lydia, you’re tallest, can you see him?”
Lydia craned her neck and then nodded.
“Yes, there is is, just over in that corner, talking to the woman in green with the black hair and rubies. Do you see?”
“No, are you sure? I only see the Dowager Viscountess of Uxterforth and her sister.”
“Not that corner, Beatrice, this one here…”
Frances had spotted them immediately, even if Beatrice had not. The hairs on her arms rose and her blood ran coldas she watched her husband in apparently close conversation with the striking young lady Lydia had indicated. The woman’s expression was intent and somehow hungry while Ambrose’s face seemed both tense and animated as he spoke. What could he be saying to her..?
“Frances?” Lydia pulled at at her arm, making Frances realize that her feet were rooted to the spot. “Frances?”
“One moment,” Frances answered, still watching Ambrose and the dark-haired woman with a kind of horrified fascination.
Lydia followed her gaze and made her own appraisal of the scene while Beatrice tapped her foot impatiently, a few steps ahead and eager to be dancing.
“Who is that?” Lydia asked Frances under her breath.
“We have not been introduced,” feinted Frances, although she felt well able to guess the identity of the woman without any formal introduction.
Even on such slight evidence as she had, Frances felt sure that this was the mysterious Miss Annabelle Sinclair, who had apparently pursued the Duke of Westall before his marriage and written him an inappropriate letter after it. While she had never before doubted Ambrose’s account of his relations with this woman, Frances had also never supposed that her would-be rival was so very beautiful.
