Mary Balogh - A Secret Affair

What had she done after he had left—in her carriage?

She had dragged Stephen back to London with her, bearded Elliott in his den, packed the two of them off to Gloucestershire, and then dashed off to rouse the king.

All for a mentally handicapped stranger?

Hardly, compassionate as she undoubtedly was.

Elliott, on the seat opposite him in the carriage, yawned.

“You were staring fixedly into space when I dozed off, Con,” he said, “and you are still doing it when I wake up again. Worried about Jess, are you? You did a fine job of convincing him he has graduated with honors from Ainsley and has been promoted to Rigby. And I can be kind enough to my employees when I forget to be the autocratic duke.”

Constantine looked at him.

“I am deeply in your debt,” he said. “For everything.”

Elliott grinned.

“Do you imagine for one moment,” he said, “that I am going to let you forget it?”

Constantine chuckled.

“No,” he said. “I know you from of old.”

“Are you going to marry her?” Elliott asked.

And there it was. The idea his mind had been skirting about for days.

He wanted to marry. He wanted to have children. He wanted all those things he had avoided for years. He wanted to settle down.

But—with the Duchess of Dunbarton?

With Hannah?

It was like thinking of two different persons. But she was one and the same. She was both the duchess as he had always known her and Hannah as she had revealed herself since they became lovers. She could not be summed up in one word or one sentence. Even in one paragraph. Even in one book or one library. She was a vibrant, complex individual, and he loved her.

“The idea had not crossed my mind,” he said.

“Liar!” Elliott was still grinning.

“What made you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you wanted to marry Vanessa?” Constantine asked.

“I didn’t,” Elliott said. “She proposed to me, and I was so shocked that I said yes before I knew what I was doing and was stuck with the decision forever after.”

“If you don’t want to tell me,” Constantine said, “you can just say so, you know.”

Elliott held up his right hand.

“Honest truth,” he said. “By the time I loved her more than life, I was already married to her and didn’t have to go through all the agony of deciding how and where and when and whether to make my offer.”

“She might laugh at me,” Constantine said.

“It is a distinct possibility,” Elliott conceded after thinking about it for a moment. “She is a formidable lady, is she not? Not to mention beautiful. She could probably have any unmarried man in the realm she chose to set her sights upon. She might laugh at your suit, Con. She might also weep. That would be more promising.”

“The Duchess of Dunbarton, Elliott,” Constantine said. “I would have to be mad.”

“Why?” Elliott said. “You have much to offer, Con, and you are considerably more eligible today than you were a week ago.” He grinned again.

Constantine shrugged.

“Vanessa swears,” Elliott said, “that there is passion beneath all that sparkling white ice, Con, and that when the duchess finds an object upon which to focus it, she will be as constant as the north star. Vanessa tends to know these things. I would not dream of arguing with her upon such matters. I would turn out to be wrong, and she would gallantly refrain from saying I told you so, and I would feel like an idiot.”

“Hmm,” Constantine said.

“For your edification,” Elliott added, “she says that you have become that object, Con. You had better come with me to Moreland House as soon as we get back to town, by the way, and make your peace with Vanessa before you go off to Dunbarton House.”

“Right,” Constantine said before setting his head back and pretending to sleep so that there would be no more such talk.

He dozed off while wondering if she would laugh or weep if he offered her marriage.

Or whether he would give her the opportunity to do either.

HANNAH THOUGHT she must have been right to fear that Constantine would stay at Ainsley and so avoid the issue of their affair and the words she had so incautiously spoken to him when they were at Copeland. He did not return to London the day after the Earl of Merton or even the day after that.

But, she discovered after three days, neither did the Duke of Moreland. They were both still out of town. Hannah found that out when she met the duchess during the afternoon when they were both calling upon Katherine to see if she was still suffering morning sickness.

So perhaps he would return after all. The duke certainly would.

In the meantime, it did not take Hannah long to discover that she had tired of her new favorite almost as quickly as everyone had predicted. She had cast him off without pity, and he had gone off into the country to lick his wounds. She was looking about her for a new lover, who would have his moment in the sun before being cast off in his turn. Everyone wondered who he would be. There was no lack of eager candidates.

This, at least, was the gossip that was doing the rounds of London clubs and drawing rooms. It would have been amusing had she not been so consumed with anxiety lest she be the one abandoned.

There was nothing to be done, however, but to live up to expectations while she waited. She was certainly not going to stay at home like a recluse any longer. On one brilliantly sunny afternoon she donned her most dazzling white muslin dress and bonnet, added ostentatiously large diamonds to her earlobes and gloved fingers and one wrist, raised a white lacy parasol over her head, and sallied forth for a walk in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour.

Barbara and the Reverend Newcombe accompanied her. It was their last day in London. Tomorrow they would return to Markle, Babs in a carriage with her maid, the vicar on horseback beside it so that all the proprieties might be observed. Hannah had wanted them to spend their last afternoon in town alone somewhere together—she had suggested Richmond Park—but they had insisted upon remaining with her.

They were soon surrounded by people, most of them male, though not all. Margaret and Katherine were together in an open barouche and stopped to talk for a while. Katherine, upon learning that Barbara was to leave the next day, insisted that Hannah come to dine in the evening. And Margaret invited her to attend the opera with them the evening after.

“We have almost but not quite persuaded Duncan’s grandpapa to come with us,” she said. “If he knows you are to be of our party, Hannah, he will surely come.”

“Then tell him I have accepted only on condition that he does too,” Hannah said. “Tell him that if he fails to come, I shall be at Claverbrook House the following morning to demand an explanation from him.”

Barbara and the Reverend Newcombe were talking with Mr. and Mrs. Park and another couple.

The barouche drove on, and Hannah was swallowed up in a circle of her old male friends, some of whom were also would-be suitors, and a few new admirers. It felt very comfortable, she thought after a few minutes, to be back within the old armor, playing the part of the Duchess of Dunbarton while guarding the more fragile person of Hannah Reid safely within.

And yet it was a part that could not be played indefinitely. She had not realized that until now. She certainly had not realized it at the start of the Season. Playing the part had been easy and even enjoyable while the duke had lived. There had been his company, his companionship, and—yes—his love in which to bask when she was not on public display. But now? There was only loneliness to look forward to after she went home. And Babs was leaving tomorrow.

Would new friends and old be enough in the coming days and months—and years?

Oh, Constantine, where are you? And are you going to avoid me if and when you return?

She was laughing at something Lord Moodie had just said and tapping him sharply on the sleeve of his coat when her court parted down the middle to let a horse through. A queer sort of hush descended too.

It was an all-black horse.

Constantine’s.

Hannah looked up and gave her parasol a violent enough twirl to create a slight breeze about her head.

Constantine. All in black except for his shirt. Narrow-faced. Dark-eyed. Unsmiling. Almost sinister. Almost satanic.

Her dearly beloved.

Goodness, where had those fanciful words sprung from? The marriage service?

“Mr. Huxtable?” Her eyebrows arched upward.

“Duchess.”

Her court hung upon their words as though they had delivered a lengthy monologue apiece.

“You have deigned to favor London with your presence again, then?” she asked.

Her court sighed with almost inaudible approval of her disdain for a man who had come back after she had rejected him. His time was over, that near-silent sigh informed him. The sooner he rode on and bore his heartbreak with some dignity, the better for all concerned.

For answer, he held out one hand, clad in skin-tight black leather. His eyes held Hannah’s with an intensity that made it impossible for her to look away.

“Set your foot on my boot,” he said.

What?

“Oh, I say,” one unidentified gentleman protested. “Can you not see, Huxtable, that her grace …”

Hannah was not listening. Her eyes were fighting a battle of wills with Constantine’s. She was dressed as unsuitably for riding as she could possibly be. If he wanted to speak with her, it would be far easier and infinitely more gallant for him to descend from his horse’s back. But he wanted to see her—and he wanted the ton to see her—make a spectacle of herself. He wanted to provide the ton with talk of scandal to last a month. He wanted to show the world that he was master, that he had merely to snap his fingers for her to come running.

She gave her parasol one more twirl and looked mockingly up at him.

There was another near-inaudible sigh of approval. If Hannah had looked about her, she would have seen that her court had grown in number and that its members were no longer all male. There was already fodder enough here for drawing room conversation to last a fortnight.

Hannah slowly and deliberately lowered and furled her parasol before handing it without a word or a glance to Lord Hardingraye beside her. She took two steps forward, lifted her skirt with one hand to set her very delicate white slipper on the high gloss of Constantine’s hard black riding boot, and reached up her other hand to set in his—white silk on black leather.

The next moment, without any further effort on her part, she was seated sideways on the horse in front of his saddle, and his black-clad arms and hands bracketed her front and back so that even if she had been inclined to fear for her safety she could not possibly have done so.

She was not inclined to fear.

She turned her head and looked into the very dark eyes, now almost on a level with her own.

He was turning the horse, and the crowd was moving back out of his way. The crowd also had a great deal to say and was saying it—to her, to him, to one another. Hannah did not even try to listen. She did not care what they were saying.

He had come.

And he had come to claim her.

Had he?

“That,” she said, “was very dramatic.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” he said. “I understood upon my return, which was a mere couple of hours ago, by the way, that I was your scorned, rejected swain. For very pride’s sake I had to make some extravagant gesture.”

“It certainly was extravagant,” she said as he weaved his horse skillfully among the horses and carriages that half clogged the path ahead.

“Am I?” he asked.

“Scorned?” she said.

“Rejected.”

“And a swain,” she said. “I like the image of you as a swain. My dress is going to be ruined, Constantine. It will smell of horse for the rest of its life.”

They were not quite clear of the crowd. They were fully visible to every part of it. And there were probably very few people among it who were not taking full advantage of that fact.

He kissed her anyway—full on the lips, with open mouth. And it was no token peck. It must have lasted a full fifteen or twenty seconds, which under the circumstances was an eternity.