With Miss Sinclair’s thick, black hair, hourglass figure and lips almost as red as the rubies at her throat, there were unlikely to be many gentlemen present who would not swap places with the Duke of Westall in a heartbeat. Perhaps he had told the truth about resisting Miss Sinclair’s wiles in the past, but that did not mean he might not succumb in the future…
“Is that some old flame of the duke’s or…” Beatrice jested, walking back towards them and then stopping as she realized that her joke might have struck too close to the mark. “Oh! I’m sorry, she isn’t…is she?”
“Whoever she is, I suspect that Ambrose would rather be speaking to Frances at this moment,” said Lydia loyally, squeezing her friend’s arm. “Look at his face, Frances. He doesn’t want to be there.”
“Yes, he doesn’t look at all pleased, does he?” agreed Beatrice critically. “That lady is certainly a beauty, but there’s something…predatory about her, don’t you think.”
“Exactly,” stated Lydia with a definite nod. “Anyway, I think that Frances is every bit as beautiful, although in a different way.”
“You need not pretend,” Frances told them. “I can see how lovely she is from here.”
“Yes, but you cannot see how lovely you are too,” responded Lydia. “Nor can you see how happy Ambrose is when he looks at you. He is not happy now, is he?”
“You have no reason to be jealous,” put in Beatrice, nodding at Lydia’s words. “Ambrose does not look happy at all. We should go and rescue him straight away.”
“I am not jealous,” Frances asserted automatically, biting her lip. “It is only…”
As she spoke, the Duke of Westall seemed to say something sharp to the woman in green and then walked abruptly away from her, brushing off her hand angrily when she tried to detain him.
This time, when Lydia tugged at her arm, Frances walked forward in step with her friend, and letting Beatrice lead them again.
Jealous? How could she be jealous? It would be absurd. Frances was in an arranged marriage and not even sharing a bedroom with her husband. She ought to have no strong feelings about him simply talking to another woman in public at a ball. Jealousy was for hot-headed lovers, not people like Frances and Ambrose.
And yet, if Frances never did share her husband’s bed, could she blame him if he one day brought some other woman to it? It was a possibility she had never properly considered before. Now that the idea presented itself, it made her feel faintly ill. If the woman in question was the dark-haired beauty with her red lips and flashing eyes, Frances thought she might go mad.
Yes, this was jealousy, she was forced to acknowledge dully. And if she felt jealous, it implied something else too, didn’t it? It implied love…
“Beatrice, are you ready for our dance?” Ambrose asked cheerfully enough as soon as they reached him, his expression and mood instantly improving now that he was away from the woman who was likely Annabelle Sinclair. “The next measure is a hornpipe, I believe.”
“I am very much ready,” Beatrice declared. “Unless, Frances would like to take my place?”
Frances quickly shook her head and forced a smile despite the churning of her stomach.
“I will wait my turn,” she told her sister.
“Our dance is the waltz,” Ambrose said, his midnight-blue eyes meeting Frances’ and holding her gaze with a pleasure that felt almost painful.
“Your duke doesn’t want that woman in green,” Lydia asserted to her friend in a whisper as Ambrose and Beatrice made their way to the dance floor. “He wants you, Frances. You must see it.”
Fighting back tears, Frances nodded and then steeled herself to stand there and smile as she watched Ambrose dance, knowing that half of the other spectators were watching her in turn – and likely pitying her husband.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Everyone will have seen it,” said Frances in despair, ceaselessly pacing the small unoccupied sitting room they occupied, as Ambrose read the pamphlet. “Everyone must know.”
Given his wife’s agitation, the Duke of Westall tried hard to keep his own expression calm although he could not help the tightening in his jaw at the reference to him marrying for pecuniary advantage. While he did not consider himself a man with secrets to hide, nor did he like to have his private life splashed across the public domain.
It was all naturally far more humiliating for Frances than for Ambrose, however, especially with their names being published. The truth at the article’s core could also not be denied, although it was no one’s business but theirs. He was already planning ways to track down the source of this story and scotch any further such publications.
“Not everyone,” he commented, reaching the end of the column and lowering the pamphlet. “Many who read this will also ignore it for the mean-spirited gossip that it is. I shall speak to my lawyer and call on the publisher tomorrow. If I can verify the source of this story, I shall warn them off too.”
“People have been talking of this pamphlet all night. I am a laughing stock and you are to be pitied.”
As Frances turned, Ambrose saw tears running down her cheeks and rose to his feet from the armchair where he had been sitting, feeling drawn to her like metal to a magnet. Despite every past experience and resolution to keep his distance, Ambrose drew her against his chest and after a brief moment of surprise but not struggle, she rested there, sobbing into his waistcoat.
“There is no reason to mock you, and no reason to pity me,” Ambrose told her softly, patting her back. “Only fools or those with vicious minds could think otherwise. They know nothing of our lives. Our marriage is our own business.”
“If you had married someone else, this would not have happened would it?” Frances said woefully, raising her face. “One day, you might wish that you had married someone else. If you had married Miss Sinclair, for instance…”
