A Secret Affair (8 page)

Or so Hannah guessed as the coachman handed her down onto the pavement outside his door and she looked curiously up and down the street. It was still daylight. They were to dine relatively early.

A servant had already opened the door of the house. Hannah lifted the hems of her cloak and dress, climbed the steps, and swept past him into a square, spacious hall with a black and white tiled floor and landscapes in heavy gilded frames hanging on the walls.

Constantine Huxtable was standing in the middle of the hall, all in black, as usual, and looking really very satanic indeed.

“Duchess?” He made her an elegant bow. “Welcome to my home.”

“I hope,” she said, “your chef has excelled himself this evening. I have not eaten since the garden party, and I am famished.”

“He will be dismissed without a reference tomorrow morning if he has not,” he said, stepping forward to take her cloak.

“How very ruthless you are,” she said and stood where she was, a few steps inside the door.

He pursed his lips slightly and came even closer in order to lower her hood and then undo the clasp that held her cloak closed at the throat. He removed the garment and handed it to the silent servant without taking his eyes off her. They moved very deliberately down her body and back up to her head and down to her eyes.

There was not a flicker of surprise in his eyes. But there was
something
there. Some suggestion of heat, perhaps. He
had
been taken by surprise.

Hannah wished that after all she had brought a fan.

“You are looking particularly lovely this evening, Duchess,” he said and offered her his arm.

He led her to a room that was small and square and cozy. Heavy draperies drawn across the window shut out the last vestiges of the daylight. The only light came from the fire crackling in the hearth and two long tapers in crystal holders set on a smallish table in the middle of the room. The table was set for two.

This was not the dining room, Hannah guessed.

He had chosen a more intimate setting.

He crossed to a sideboard and poured two glasses of wine before pulling on a bell rope. He handed one of the glasses to Hannah.

“On an empty stomach, Mr. Huxtable?” she asked. “Do you wish to see me dancing on the table?”

“Not on the
table
, Duchess,” he said, clinking his glass against hers in a silent toast.

She sipped her wine.

“But I need no encouragement to dance elsewhere,” she told him. “The wine will be wasted on me.”

“Then I hope that at least it tastes good,” he said.

It did, of course.

The butler and a footman entered with their food, and they took their places at the table.

The chef was excellent, Hannah soon discovered. They ate in near-silence for a while.

“Tell me,” she said at last, “about your home, Mr. Huxtable.”

“About Warren Hall?” he said.

“That
was
your home,” she said. “It is the Earl of Merton’s now. Do you have a good relationship with him?”

But they had been riding in the park together.

“An excellent one,” he said.

“And where do you live now?” she asked.

He indicated the room with one hand.

“Here,” he said.

“But not all year,” she said. “Where do you live when you are not in town?”

“I have a home in Gloucestershire,” he told her.

She stared at him while their soup bowls were removed and the fish course was set before them.

“You are not going to tell me about it, are you?” she said. “How tiresome of you. Another secret to add to the one concerning your quarrel with the Duke of Moreland. And to add to the mystery of why you have an excellent relationship with the Earl of Merton when he stole the title that should rightfully be yours.”

He set his knife and fork down quietly across his plate. He looked into her eyes across the table. His looked very black.

“You have been misinformed, Duchess,” he said. “The title was never to be mine. There was never any question that it might be. It was my father’s and then my younger brother’s, and now it is my cousin’s. I have no reason to resent any of them. I loved my father and
brother. I am fond of Stephen. They are all family. One is meant to love family.”

Ah, she had rubbed him on the raw. His voice and manner were perfectly controlled, but …

Too
controlled?

“Except the Duke of Moreland,” she said.

He continued to look at her and neglect his food.

Their plates were borne away and another course brought on.

“And what about
your
family, Duchess?” he asked.

She shrugged.

“There is the duke,” she said. “The current duke, that is. He is blameless and harmless and about as interesting as the corn and the sheep upon which he dotes. And the duke, my husband, had an army of other relatives, with none of whom he was remotely close.”

“And
your
family?” he asked.

She picked up her glass, twirled it slowly for the pleasure of seeing the light of the candle refracted off the crystal, and sipped the wine.

“None,” she said. “And so there is nothing to say. No secrets to hide or divulge. Let me tell you about
my
home in Kent—Copeland. The duke bought it for me five years ago. He always referred to it as my quaint little country box, but it is neither quaint nor little nor a box. It is a manor, even a mansion. And it has a park that rolls away in all four directions from the house in a rural splendor that is half cultivated, half not. At least, it is
all
well kept, but it is all natural woodland and natural grassland and a natural lake. There are no arbors or parterres or wilderness walks. It really is quite … rustic. That is something the duke might have called it without any sacrifice of accuracy.”

She cut into her beef, which looked and felt as if it had been cooked to perfection.

“It is all perhaps a little
too
natural for you, Duchess?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I fear it is. I feel that I
ought
to impose my human will upon it all, that it ought to look
pretty
, as the garden this afternoon looked pretty.”

“And yet?” He paused in his eating again.

“And yet,” she said, “I confess to liking it as it is. Nature needs to be tamed sometimes. It is only civilized. But ought we to force it to be something it is not meant to be just for the sake of beauty? What
is
beauty?”

“Now there,” he said, “is a question for the ages.”

“You must come and see for yourself,” she said, “and tell me what you think.”

“I
must
come?” He raised his eyebrows. “To Kent?”

“I shall arrange a brief house party a little later in the Season when everyone is starting to find the endless round of balls here tedious,” she said. “It will all be perfectly respectable, I assure you, though everyone will know by then, of course, that we are lovers. People always
do
know these things, even when they are not true. Which will not be the case with us. You will give me your opinion about the park.”

“And you will follow my advice?” he asked.

“Quite possibly not,” she said. “But I will listen anyway.”

“I am honored,” he said.

“And I am full,” she announced. “You will give your chef my compliments, Mr. Huxtable?”

“I will,” he said. “He will be vastly relieved to know that he is not to be dismissed tomorrow morning. Do you not want cheese or coffee? Or tea?”

She did not. She had been trying all evening to distract herself with conversation. And she had been trying to pretend to herself that she was hungry—which she ought to be since she really had not eaten since the garden party, when he had filled a plate with dainties for her from the table on the upper terrace.

She rested one elbow on the table, set her chin in her hand, and gazed at him between the two candles.

“Only dessert, Mr. Huxtable,” she said and felt all the delicious anticipation of what she had dreamed about through the second half of her year of mourning and planned during the months since Christmas.

Anticipation and trepidation too. She must certainly not show the latter. It would seem quite out of character.

She was so glad it was him. She would have been disappointed if he had not been in town this year. Not devastated. She had had other, perfectly eligible alternatives in mind. But none quite to match Constantine Huxtable.

She thought he might be an extraordinary lover. In fact, she was quite confident that he would be.

And she was about to find out if she was right. He had stood up, pushing his chair out of the way with the backs of his legs, and he was coming the short distance around the table to offer her his hand.

It was warm and firm, she discovered as she set her own in it. And he seemed somehow taller and broader when she got to her feet. His cologne, the same as she had noticed before, wrapped about her senses again.

“Let us go and have it, then,” he said, “without further ado.”

She looked up at him through her eyelashes.

“I do hope
this
chef does not disappoint,” she said.

“If he does, Duchess,” he said, “I shall not only dismiss him in the morning, I shall also take him out to some remote spot and shoot him.”

“Drastic measures indeed,” she said. “And what a waste it would be of all that Greek beauty. But doubtless it will be quite unnecessary. For he will
not
disappoint. I will not allow it.”

He tucked her arm through his and led her from the room.

T
HE
E
NGLISH LANGUAGE
was sometimes quite inadequate to express one’s thoughts, Constantine had been realizing all evening. What words were there to describe something that was more beautiful than beautiful and more perfect than perfect?

He had always thought of the Duchess of Dunbarton as a perfectly beautiful woman even when he had not felt particularly drawn to her.

Tonight she exceeded those superlatives.

He could not remember ever seeing her in any color but white.
He had always thought it remarkably clever of her to make that single color her signature, so to speak. But of course, this departure from the norm was equally clever—and stunning.

She looked … Well, she looked those words that did not exist.
Stunning
was perhaps the only word that was even remotely adequate.

His cook might have served them leather and gravel for all the attention he had paid to his meal. And all the while he had had to concentrate hard upon not gawking.

The color of her gown and jewels transformed her from an ice queen into some sort of fertility goddess. And her hair, which every male member of the
ton
had probably dreamed of seeing tumble about her shoulders, was in a billow of riotous waves down her back while it hugged her head in shining smoothness.

The décolletage of her gown left little to the imagination and yet teased it nevertheless. Just one inch lower …

Monty had called her dangerous that afternoon in Hyde Park.

She was more dangerous than the Sirens of mythology.

And she had carried on a conversation that contained almost none of the innuendo that usually characterized their verbal exchanges. Indeed, when she had got to talking about her home in Kent, she had sounded … warm. As if she genuinely liked the place.

She was very, very clever. He was going to have to be very careful, he thought as he led her in silence up the stairs in the direction of his bedchamber. Though he did not know quite over
what
he needed to exercise care. They were about to become lovers, after all. And they would remain lovers, probably, for the whole Season.

Not any longer than that, of course. And if she wished to make it not so long, well then, that was her choice. He was not going to be heartbroken, was he?

There was a single branch of candles burning on the low chest in the corner of his room. The bedcovers had been turned back, the curtains drawn across the window, a wine decanter and glasses left on a tray beside the bed. Everything was ready.

He closed the door behind them.

The Duchess of Dunbarton sighed audibly as she slipped her arm from his and turned toward him. It sounded almost like the purr of a contented cat.

“There is nothing quite like the pleasure of anticipation, is there?” she said. “It has been humming through my blood since this afternoon, I must confess. I am not at all sorry I decided to cancel my earlier appointment and come here instead.”

She set the tip of her finger lightly against the point of his chin and moved it slowly back and forth. Her eyes followed her finger.

“I am not altogether sorry either,” he admitted.

“You will savor every moment, I trust,” she said. “I do hope you are not one of those men who feel they must demonstrate their masculinity by the speed with which they run the race.”

Her eyes came up to his though she did not raise her head.

“Alas, Duchess,” he said, “I
do
plan to run a race. A marathon. Do you know your Greek history?”