A Secret Affair (32 page)

It had been no coincidence that she had discovered the truth about her betrothed and her sister at that particular wedding, or that Dunbarton had attended it and escaped to the very room where she had unburdened herself to her father. It had been cosmic theater in progress. Except that only the scene had been set by the master producer. The script had not been written.

Even now, of course, she was fearful. She hid herself behind the Siren’s mask of the Duchess of Dunbarton. But that too was part of the pattern. She was still fragile. Like a person trapped in a burning building and clinging to the sill of an upper floor, she was afraid to take the final drop to the safety of the blanket being held below. She needed to be given time to do it in her own way, when she was ready.

But who was he to judge?

Besides, it would be a pity if the Duchess of Dunbarton were to disappear entirely. She was a magnificent, fascinating creature.

She was coming inside with the elderly man, Constantine could see, and she smiled warmly at
him
when she saw him standing there.

“Are you going to sit in the conservatory and enjoy the sunshine, Mr. Ward?” she asked.

“I am going up to my room to rest for a while,” he said. “You have exhausted me, Miss Hannah. I shall sleep and dream of you and of being a young man again like this one here.”

“Have you met Mr. Huxtable?” she asked. “He came here with me today. He is my friend.”

“Sir.” Constantine inclined his head. “May I help you to your room?”

“I can get there on my own, young man,” Ward said, “if you will hand me the cane propped against that chair. I thank you for your kindness, but I like to do things for myself while I can. I could have walked outside with my cane, but I was not going to refuse an offer to walk arm in arm with a lady instead, now, was I? And me a mere dock worker all my life.”

He chuckled and Constantine smiled.

“We will leave now,” the duchess said as the old man walked slowly away. “I hope the time has not been tedious for you.”

“It has not,” Constantine assured her.

Ten minutes later they were on horseback again and on their way back to Copeland. They did not speak until he had let them into the meadow beyond the lawn and shut the gate behind them and ridden half across the meadow.

“I think, Duchess,” he said, “that house is filled with happy people.”

She turned her head to smile at him.

“Mrs. Broome is a perfect manager,” she said. “And she has a wonderful staff.”

And
she
was happy when she was at that house, he thought. It was her marriage to the elderly duke that had brought her there.

The pattern of life.

And the pattern of Jon’s life had led to Ainsley, though he had not lived to see it.

And his own? Had he been born two days early—two days before his parents married—so that he would be illegitimate and unable to inherit the title himself? Had he found a better, more meaningful purpose for his life than he would have found as Earl of Merton? Was he better off,
happier
, than he would otherwise have been?

It was a dizzying thought.

Perhaps the circumstances of his birth had
not
blighted the whole of his life after all. Perhaps his secret affair with Jon’s dream was what his life was meant to bring him.

Perhaps he had benefited as much from Ainsley as the people who had passed through it.

“You are brooding,” she said.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “It is just my Mediterranean looks.”

“Which of course are quite splendid,” she said, sounding more like the old duchess. “No man without them could brood half as well.”

He laughed.

They rode onward in companionable silence until they came close to Copeland.

“I’ll take you back a different way,” she said. “There is something I want you to see.”

“Another
cause?”
he asked.

“Not at all,” she said. “Quite the opposite. A pure self-indulgence.”

And instead of riding into the park and across it on the shortest route to the house, she skirted about its outer wooded edge until by Constantine’s estimation they must be quite far behind the house. She drew her horse to a halt.

“It is best to go by foot from here,” she said, “and lead the horses.”

Before he could dismount and help her down, she had jumped down herself. She patted her horse’s nose, looped the reins about one hand, and led the way among the trees. Constantine followed and soon there was the illusion of being deep in a wilderness, far from civilization.

She stopped eventually and lifted her face to the high branches overhead. They had not spoken for five minutes or more.

“Listen,” she said, “and tell me what you hear.”

“Silence?” he suggested after a few moments.

“Oh, no,” she said. “There is almost never true silence, Constantine, and most of us would not welcome it if there were. It would be a little frightening, I believe, like true darkness. There would be only a void. Listen again.”

And this time he heard all kind of sounds—the breathing of their horses, birdsong, insect whirrings, the rustle of leaves in the slight breeze, the distant moo of a cow, other unidentified sounds of nature.

“That,” she said in a hushed voice sometime later, “is the sound of peace.”

“I believe you are right,” he said.

“The wilderness walk, if there were one,” she said, “would surely pass this way. It is perfect for such a project. There would be benches and follies and colorful plants and vistas and goodness knows what else. It would be easily accessible and wondrously picturesque. But not peaceful. Not as this is peaceful. We are a part of all this as we stand, Constantine. We are not a dominant species. We are not in control of it all. There is enough control in my life. This is where I come to find peace.”

He looped the reins of his horse loosely about a low tree branch and then took the reins from her hand and tied them there too. He took her by the arm, turned her so that her back was against the trunk of another tree, and leaned his body against hers. He cupped her face in both hands and kissed her mouth.

Devil take it but he was in love with her.

He had thought he would be safe with her. Safer than with any of his other mistresses. He had thought her vain, shallow. He had expected to enjoy nothing but raw lust with her.

The lust was there right enough.

And it was damnably raw.

But she was not safe at all.

For there was more than lust.

He was afraid to admit to himself that there might be considerably more.

She kissed him back, her arms twined about his neck, and soon she was away from the tree and caught up in his arms, and kisses became urgent and fevered. He glanced down at the forest floor and saw that it would make about as unsuitable a bed as it was possible for a piece of ground to make. He spread his hands over her buttocks and pressed her against his erection. She sighed into his mouth and drew back her head.

“Constantine,” she said, “I will not dishonor my other guests by making love with you on Copeland land.”

“Making love?” he said, looking pointedly downward. “On
this
mattress? I think not, indeed. I was merely claiming what remained of the prize I won earlier. And a very generous prize it was, I must say. I will race with you any day of the week, Duchess.”

“Next time,” she said, “I will ride Jet, and
you
can ride Clover. And
then
we will see a different winner.”

“Never in a million years,” he said. “And if you
did
win, if I allowed you to, what prize would
you
claim?”

He grinned lazily.

“If you allowed me to win?” She was suddenly all haughty duchess. “If you
allowed
it, Constantine?”

“Forget I said that,” he said. “What prize would you claim?”

“I would have you put a notice in all the London papers,” she said, “informing the
ton
that you had been bested in a horse race by the Duchess of Dunbarton, and that
you had not allowed her to win.”

“You would make me the laughingstock?” he asked.

“Any man who is afraid to be bested by a
woman
once in a while,” she said, “is not worthy of her in any capacity whatsoever. Even as her lover.”

“Has your cook baked any humble pies today?” he asked her. “If so, I shall eat one whole as soon as we get back to the house. Am I forgiven?”

She laughed and tightened her arms about his neck and kissed him again.

“I am glad we are here,” she said. “More and more I discover that
I am happier in the country than in London. I am enjoying these few days so very much. Are you?”

“Well,” he said, “they are sadly sexless, you know, Duchess. But enjoyable nevertheless.”

He tightened his arms about her waist, lifted her off the ground and twirled her once, twice about before setting her feet down again and smiling into her eyes.

They
were
sadly sexless days. Why, then, was he feeling so exuberant? So … happy?

They stared at each other, and suddenly the air about them pulsed with unspoken words. Words he was afraid to speak aloud lest he discover later tonight that he had been overhasty. Words she might have spoken aloud but did not. Did he imagine that she had words to say?

Could it be that this was more than the simple euphoria of being in love?

He did not know. He had never been in love before.

He certainly did not know that other thing, that love that went beyond the euphoria. That forever-after thing.

How
did
one know?

And so the words remained unspoken. On his side, certainly. And perhaps on hers too.

They retrieved their horses and wound their way through the trees until they came out onto open ground at one end of the lake. They walked side by side, easier though it would have been to walk single file. They were hand in hand. Their fingers were laced.

It felt more intimate than an embrace.

H
ANNAH HAD NOT PLANNED
anything specific for the evening. She thought her guests would appreciate a quiet time in which they might do whatever they pleased. Marianne Astley, however, suggested a game of charades soon after the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room following dinner, and everyone seemed happy to join in.

It went on for a couple of hours until some people began to drop out and declared their intention of merely watching.

Hannah found herself drawn to one side by Lady Merton.

“I am going to step outside onto the terrace for some air, if I may,” the latter said, indicating the open French windows. “Will you join me?”

Hannah glanced around. No one would need her for a while. Barbara, flushed and animated, was acting out a phrase for her team, which was yelling out responses that elicited laughter and a few jeers from the opposing team.

“It
is
warm in here,” Hannah said.

It was cool outside but not unpleasant enough on the bare flesh of their arms to send them scurrying inside for shawls.

Lady Merton linked an arm through hers, and they strolled across the terrace and a little way out onto the lawn, where the light from the drawing room still made it possible for them to see where they were going.

“Miss Leavensworth is a lovely lady,” Lady Merton said. “You and she have been friends all your lives, she was telling us earlier.”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “I have been very fortunate.”

“But she lives far away from you most of the time,” Lady Merton said. “That is unfortunate. I have a dear friend who was once my governess and was then my companion. But always she was my friend, the one in whom I could confide anything and everything. She married last year, just before Stephen and I did. She is happily wed, I am glad to say, and she lives in London most of the year with Mr. Golding, her husband. I miss her even so. Close friends need to
be
close.”

“I am always thankful,” Hannah said, “that someone invented paper and ink and pens—and writing.”

“Yes,” her companion agreed. “But without Alice by my side almost every moment of the day last spring, I would have been dreadfully lonely. I was a widow, I was widely believed to have killed my husband, and I had been abandoned by my husband’s family and for a while by my own brother too.”

This, Hannah realized, was not just idle chatter.

“Even with Alice I was frequently lonely,” the countess said. “Until I met Stephen, that was, and was adopted by his family. They did not take to me easily, as you may imagine. But they are remarkable ladies, his sisters. They grew up in humble surroundings and in near-poverty, and seem far more able to see to the heart of a matter than many other members of the beau monde. And far more capable of compassion and understanding and true friendship.”

“You were fortunate indeed, Lady Merton,” Hannah said.

“You may call me Cassandra if you wish,” the countess said.

“Cassandra,” Hannah said. “It is a lovely name. I am Hannah.”

They stopped walking and both looked up at the moon, which had just drawn clear of a cloud. It was just off the full and looked lopsided.