Traitor…
Recalling his wife’s face and voice as she had thrown that single word at him along with the pamphlet, Ambrose knew that she believed all of it. He was now condemned, as her father had been condemned, and all the love grown so slowly and patiently between them since the first night they met was smashed to pieces.
Love? Yes, he loved Frances, Ambrose realized with some surprise, and then accepted with no surprise at all. He had been falling in love with Frances from the first moment he saw her, and the last three days had been the physical expression of his love as well as his passion.
The realization was a bitter one, and grew bitterer with each negative report from his staff on Duchess Frances’ whereabouts. Frances believed the worst of him and had left him. Ambrose loved her and she would never believe it now. It was too late…
“Her Grace took a horse from the stables, Your Grace,” panted Johnson, rushing into the hallway. “One of the grooms saddled Lightning for her and she rode off down the east path.”
“Have my horse saddled directly,” ordered the duke instantly, striding towards the front door with a deep sigh as he recognized that Frances had taken one of the fastest horses. “I’ll go after her.”
“Already done, Your Grace,” the young footman responded, following Ambrose down the steps to finish delivering his words. “I knew you’d want to follow. Phantom will be ready by the time you reach the stables. There’s a saddlebag with water too.”
“Good man,” the duke commended, without turning.
“Good luck, Your Grace!” called the young man as Ambrose broke into a run towards the stables, only raising a hand in acknowledgement.
“I’ll need all the luck I can get,” the Duke of Westall told himself under his breath.
Chapter Thirty
Curled into a ball in the back of the anonymous black hired carriage, Frances wept, crying harder than she could remember since she was a child. She had ridden Lightning to the nearest coaching inn, left him stabled there and hired this carriage to take her to London, without any clear idea of where she would go afterwards
Frances’ sobs wracked her body just as the recurring vision of what she had seen in the study at Westall Park wracked her heart.
“How could you, Ambrose?!” she wept.
Ambrose with that woman! Annabelle Sinclair, of all people, after his promises to Frances, after all that they had done together, after everything she had experienced in Ambrose’s arms… She felt utterly betrayed.
These had been the most wonderful days of Frances’ life and yet they meant nothing now. Her marriage was all a lie from start to finish. Had Ambrose actually been with Annabelle Sinclair every time he went to London alone since their wedding?
The scandal sheet writer had apparently been right. The Duke of Westall did have a mistress. He had only married Frances for money, although she still did not understand quite how that could be. It was obvious to her now too on whom the fourth French nightgown had been bestowed.
The exact words Frances had overheard between Annabelle Sinclair and Ambrose in the study seemed shuffled and jumbled in her mind. When she tried to recall them, it only brought back the awful image of that woman with her arms about Ambrose.
Take me now!
Yes, Frances had definitely heard that much. Yes, Ambrose had betrayed her, just as her father had betrayed her mother.
Frances’ visit to Madame Rousset’s shop earlier that day had increased rather than decreased the unease sparked by the scandal sheet. When she introduced herself as the Duchess of Westall, the proprietress had been delighted and effusive.
“Ah, but of course you are the Duchess of Westall, so elegant and lovely as you are. I must congratulate you on your wedding and your choice of husband. Monsieur le Duc has excellent taste, does he not? You liked your nightgowns?”
The Duke of Westall seemed to be a well-known and favored customer, despite having been a widower for so long. The story of Ambrose not knowing his wife’s size and the offer to make adjustments both jangled on Frances’ nerves, especially when the Frenchwoman commented how obvious it was to her now that at least one of the gowns would be too large.
“Oh, far too much embonpoint for a slender figure like yours, Your Grace, even with an ample and shapely bust. I told him it must be so, but he would have it…”
Holding her nerve, Frances had agreed with Madame Rousset and promised to bring back the fourth nightgown for adjustment. The dressmaker seemed to easily accept Ambrose’s story, although Frances herself could not. Still, she hoped there was some other, innocent explanation, one that she had not yet considered.
Frances had held to that hope all the way from London to Westall Park. She had walked in the front door hoping that she would tell Ambrose what she had learned, and that he would laugh, his kind blue smile lighting up his handsome face, before pointing out some obvious and credible reason for the scandal sheet story and the nightgown mystery too.
In reality, Frances had walked into the hallway and heard Ambrose in conversation with someone, with a young woman. Stomach churning she had followed the voices to his study and listened there in frozen, non-comprehending horror for some seconds before she went inside and saw them together like that.
“Traitor!” she repeated to herself.
The carriage was slowing down now and Frances made herself sit up and peek around the blinds she had drawn down at the window. They were about twenty minutes from central London and she must decide what to do next.
The only people Frances felt she could bear to see right now were her mother and Beatrice. Yet, it felt impossible to simply drive up to the front door of Scovell Hall. Aside from the fact that she could not bear to see her father, it was also the most obvious place for Ambrose to look for her. If he cared to look for her…
