Mary Balogh - A Secret Affair

And his honesty?

“Please come to stay with me,” he said before either man could answer. “You need baths and rest and a good meal before anything else. Come.”

“When—” Elliott began.

“Four days,” Constantine said abruptly. “There is all the time in the world.”

And he went striding off ahead of them down the gravel path that led to the dower house.

Four days.

He could hear them coming behind him.

ELLIOTT AND STEPHEN went off to call on the judge the following morning, both dressed with immaculate elegance. Elliott would not allow Constantine to accompany them. Not that either he or Stephen could have stopped him if he had chosen to go anyway, but he reluctantly conceded that it was probably for the best that he remain behind.

Elliott sought him out alone before they left.

“I have been having a look around, Con,” he said, “and talking with some of your people. You are doing well here. You have been doing well for some time.”

Constantine looked at him, tight-lipped.

“Did that sound condescending?” Elliott asked with a sigh. “It was not meant to be. I am brimful of admiration. And contrition. And shame. It was not you with all those women, was it? It was—my uncle? Your father?”

Constantine said nothing.

“Mine was no better,” Elliott said. “I grew up believing him to be a paragon and devoted to my mother and my sisters and me. It was only after his death that I learned about his long-term mistress and the rather large family he had had with her. Did you know about them? The whole of the rest of the world seemed to, including my mother.”

“No,” Constantine said.

“I had been living a pretty wild existence for the previous few years,” Elliott continued. “I was suddenly terrified that I would turn out like him, that I would be a wastrel, that I would let down my mother and sisters as he had done. And so I lost all my humor, Con, all my sense of proportion. And when you resented my interference, as you saw it, in Jon’s affairs and did all in your power to annoy me, I only grew more irritable. Especially when I realized that things were not as they ought to be at Warren Hall, that my father had neglected his duty in yet another area of his life.”

It was, Constantine supposed, some attempt at an apology.

“Jonathan discovered the truth about your father?” Elliott asked.

“Yes. Two of the women—two sisters—came to talk to him when I was away one day,” Constantine said. “I had never seen him so upset, so disillusioned. Or so excited as on the day he concocted his grand scheme. I doubt I could have denied him my help in bringing that to pass even if I had disagreed with him. Which I did not. I had known for years. It had sickened me for years. But the little help I had been able to provide had been akin to wrapping a small bandage about a belly rip.”

“Con,” Elliott said after a short silence. “You were not innocent in what happened between us. I am almost certain that I asked. But even if I did not, you could have denied the charges, forced me to listen to the truth. I would have believed you. Good God, you were my friend. We were almost like brothers. But you did not want me to know. You did not want me to believe. You admitted it yesterday. For of course, as Jonathan’s new guardian, I would not have permitted him to continue to denude his own estate for the sake of what would at the time have seemed a mad project. And I would have been right. He ought not to have been allowed to be so reckless. I would also have been wrong. Colossally wrong. But none of us could have predicted that at the time. It would not have been easy for me, Con. By withholding the truth, you enabled both Jonathan and yourself to do what was right. But you forfeited our friendship in the process and made me into the sole villain. The pompous ass.”

“You were,” Constantine said.

“And you were the stubborn mule.”

They stared at each other. The stare threatened to become a glare until Elliott spoiled it all by allowing his lips to twitch.

“Someone should paint us,” he said. “We would make a marvelous caricature.”

“You are doing all this just for Jess?” Constantine asked.

“And for the Duchess of Dunbarton,” Elliott said. “And for Vanessa. She longs to forgive and be forgiven, Con.”

“To be forgiven?” Constantine said with a frown. “I am the one who wronged her. Horribly.”

“But you apologized,” Elliott said, “and she would not forgive you. I know she has felt bad about that ever since. When the duchess called on us with Stephen, Vanessa saw a chance for some redemption. Perhaps for all of us. If I came for any one person, I came for her. I love her.”

“I know,” Constantine said.

“And I came for you too,” Elliott said, looking sharply away. “You are, despite everything, someone I once loved. Perhaps someone I still love. Good God, Con, I have missed you. Can you fathom that? I believed all those things about you, and I missed you?”

“This is getting almost embarrassing,” Constantine said.

“It is,” Elliott agreed. “And Stephen is probably waiting for me. Before I join him, Con, will you shake my hand?”

“Kiss and forgive?” Constantine said.

“I will forego the kissing if it is all the same to you,” Elliott said, holding out his right hand.

Constantine looked at it and set his own in it.

“As I remember it,” he said, “you did not ask, Elliott. You assumed. But as you remember it, you asked, and I told you to go to hell. We can never know who is right. Maybe it is just as well. But you had just lost your trust in your own father, and I was desperate to preserve Jon’s dream. We never were good at talking to each other about pain, were we?”

“A gentleman never admits to feeling any,” Elliott said as they clasped each other’s hand tightly. “I have to put on all the full force of my pomposity now. I’ll try not to be an ass, though, Con. I’ll try my best to get Barnes reprieved. I hope my best is good enough.”

“So do I,” Constantine said fervently.

He still felt sore that he was going to have to remain behind at Ainsley, idle and helpless. But for the moment the best he could do was let his cousins go and do what he could not. Or at least try.

And if they failed?

He would grapple with that when the time came.

When? Not if?

He headed off for the farm, hoping there was some hard manual labor in which he could immerse himself.

***

FOR THE NEXT three and a half hours he was, Constantine soon became aware, the focus of attention at Ainsley. He was chopping wood beside the stable block. He had stripped to the waist and was giving the task his full attention and every ounce of strength and energy he could muster. Nothing in the world mattered except piling up enough wood to last through next winter—and perhaps even the winter beyond that.

The grooms and stable hands were all at work in the stables. None of them took a break, even when midday came and went. But every single one of them found some plausible reason for appearing at the stable yard gate with strange regularity. No fewer than three of the women were weeding the kitchen garden even though Constantine had observed just two days ago that there was not a weed in sight. Perhaps it was the hunt for new ones that was taking them so long. Two of the boys were handing him logs to chop when one would have been quite sufficient. Millie carried out a tray of drinks and oatmeal biscuits twice and stayed to help one of the boys stack the wood against the outer wall of the stables the second time. The cook came to the side door, presumably to see what had happened to Millie. But instead of calling her to come back or returning to the kitchen after seeing that she was busy, she stayed where she was for some time, drying her hands on her apron. They must have ended up being the driest hands in England. Roseann Thirgood was giving her group of reading pupils a lesson outdoors, perhaps because the weather was warm and the wind gentle enough that it took only two hands to hold open the pages of each book. Another of the women felt it necessary to shake her duster out of a side window of the house every few minutes and to lean out to see where the dust landed.

They all knew, of course, that Elliott and Stephen had gone to talk to the judge, though Constantine had not told anyone. And they all knew why he was chopping wood so ferociously. None of them spoke to him. Or to one another, for that matter. Except Roseann to her pupils, he assumed, though he did not hear any of them.

And then everyone who had disappeared for a few moments reappeared, and everyone who was busy—or pretending to be—stopped work, and the weeders straightened up, and Millie dropped the two pieces of wood she was carrying. The cook dropped her apron. Constantine paused, the axe poised above his shoulder.

Horses.

And carriage wheels.

He lowered the axe slowly and turned.

The same ducal carriage as yesterday. The same coachman and footman, their livery brushed to a new smartness since yesterday.

Constantine even forgot to breathe for a moment. If he had thought about it, he would have been willing to wager that everyone else forgot too.

The carriage did not proceed all the way to the front doors. It stopped outside the stables. Perhaps the men inside had seen the scattered crowd and Constantine in their midst.

Stephen jumped out first, without waiting for the steps to be put down. He looked about him and then at Constantine, who felt rooted to the spot. He had not moved closer to the carriage.

“It hangs in the balance,” Stephen called for all to hear.

An unfortunate turn of phrase.

Elliott also descended without benefit of steps.

“The judge is to consider the matter,” he said, also loudly enough for everyone to hear. “His final verdict is by no means sure, but if he does reprieve Jess Barnes, it will be into my keeping and on condition that I take him far away from here and never allow him to return to any part of Gloucestershire.”

Constantine was almost convinced he heard a collective exhaling of breath. Or perhaps it was only his own he heard.

He set down the axe against a stack of unchopped wood and walked closer to his cousins, who were walking closer to him.

“Elliott was absolutely magnificent, Con,” Stephen said. “I almost quaked in my boots myself.”

“No, you did not,” Elliott said. “You were too busy oozing your legendary charm, Stephen. I was almost dazzled myself.”

“But the judge was not quite convinced,” Constantine said.

“To give the man his due,” Elliott told him, “he has backbone, Con. I had the impression that as the day draws closer, he is beginning to regret the harshness of the sentence but has been unable to see a dignified way out. You must have softened him up. He wants to give us what we ask, but he does not want to give the impression that he has been overawed by a couple of men with titles but really no authority over him.”

“You think he will let Jess go, then?” Constantine asked.

“Do I think he will?” Elliott said. “Yes. Am I certain he will? No.”

“Has he said when he will make his decision?” Constantine asked.

“Tomorrow,” Stephen said.

“But either way, Con,” Elliott said, “Jess will not be returning here. I am sorry. Promising to take him with me was the best I could do.”

Constantine nodded. And his eyes went past Elliott’s shoulder, past the carriage to the driveway beyond. A single horse and rider were approaching at a canter.

Everyone else had heard it too. They all turned.

The judge had made his decision?

It was a chance visitor?

But they could all see as the horse drew closer that the rider was wearing bright livery and that it was looking slightly the worse for wear. He had clearly ridden a long way, probably without stopping except for a change of horse and a quick bite to eat.

“By God,” Stephen said, “that is royal livery.”

There was no doubt about it. The rider was a king’s messenger.

He reined in his horse behind the carriage and looked about rather haughtily before focusing his attention on Elliott.

“I am commanded to deliver a message to Mr. Constantine Huxtable,” he said.

“I am he.” Constantine raised one arm—one bare arm dotted with wood shavings—and stepped forward.