A Secret Affair (18 page)

W
HEN
C
ONSTANTINE ARRIVED
at Dunbarton House, he discovered that there were several guests already in the drawing room, all of whom he knew with varying degrees of familiarity. The only two he really saw, though, were Elliott and Vanessa, Duke and Duchess of Moreland.

Hannah came toward him, right hand extended. Her customary half-smile and slightly drooped eyelids were firmly in place.

“Mr. Huxtable,” she said, “how charming of you to come.”

“Duchess.” He bowed over her hand, which she slid from his grasp before he could carry it to his lips.

“You know everyone, I would imagine,” she said. “Do fetch yourself some tea and cakes and mingle.”

She gestured vaguely toward a table where a maid was serving tea.

And she was gone to join Elliott and Vanessa, with whom she sat and talked for a while to the exclusion of everyone else.

This was deliberate? Constantine wondered.

But yes, of course it was.

Elliott, who had pokered up considerably when he walked into the room, was soon engaged in the conversation. He looked relaxed, interested, happy. He surely smiled far more than he had used to do. Although inevitably the two of them found themselves in a room together fairly frequently during the spring Season and were even sometimes forced to come face-to-face and be civil to each other, Constantine rarely
looked
at his former friend these days. But it was true, and he had seen it before without really analyzing it. Elliott was happy. He had been married for nine years, he had three children ranging in age from eight to less than one, and he was contented.

Constantine could remember the time when Elliott had viewed marriage as a leg shackle to be avoided for as long as it was humanly possible to do so. In the meantime he had squeezed enjoyment out of every moment of every day. They both had. The wilder the escapade, the better they had liked it. The death of Elliott’s father had changed all that—and him. For suddenly he had been a viscount and a duke’s heir—and guardian of Jonathan, Earl of Merton. And suddenly he had become grim and humorless and consumed by an excessive devotion to duty.

Constantine took his plate and his cup of tea and mingled, as he had been instructed to do. He was good at mingling. But what lady or gentleman was not? The ability to engage in social chitchat was an essential attribute of gentility.

One thing about chitchat, though, was that it left the mind largely free to wander and engage in any thoughts or observations it pleased.

Vanessa was aging well. She must be in her thirties now. She had never been as beautiful as her sisters, but she had always been warmhearted, vivacious, and fun-loving, and those qualities transcended mere physical good looks. Constantine had liked her from the start.
When she had arrived at Warren Hall with Stephen and her sisters not very long after Jon’s death, he had been consumed by hatred and resentment. He had stayed for their arrival only because Elliott had ordered him to leave. But the strange thing about losing Jon was that he had not gone away when his body had been consigned to the ground in the churchyard. He had taken up residence somewhere in Constantine’s being that felt suspiciously close to his heart, and it was impossible to look at certain things and people and not see them as Jon would have done.

Jon would have
adored
discovering new cousins. New people to love.

And Vanessa, even more than the other three, had been very easy to like, impossible to dislike.

For years now he had tried not to think about Vanessa at all. He had hurt her. He had deliberately introduced her to Elliott’s ex-mistress at the theater one evening soon after her marriage, and then he had escorted the ex-mistress to a ball hosted by Elliott and Vanessa. The whole of the
ton
had seen her there. He had done it to embarrass Elliott, of course. But he had ended up causing Vanessa humiliation and untold suffering. Elliott had told her other unsavory things about him, and in the very direct way with which she seemed to confront all the problems in her life, she had taken him aside at Vauxhall one night and told him exactly what she thought of him and added that she wished she might never see him again and that she would never willingly speak with him in the future. It was a promise she had kept.

The memory of it all still needled at his conscience. And there was no mortal thing he could do about it. He had apologized at the time for deliberately exposing her to such humiliation. She had refused to forgive him. There was nothing else to be said.

Why
had
the duchess invited both him and them here this afternoon when she knew they were estranged? What game was she playing? And for how long would he allow it to go on?

Not long, he decided. He would make that clear to her when he drove her in the park later. Not that there would be much chance for private conversation there. He would just have to make some.

The duchess did not spend all her time with Elliott and Vanessa. She circulated among her guests and proved herself to be a warm and welcoming hostess. Constantine had attended a few of her balls in the past, but he had never before been at any of her more intimate gatherings.

Lord Enderby asked her if she would do him the honor of driving in the park with him later.

“But I must decline,” she said, “with regret, Lord Enderby. I have already accepted an invitation from Mr. Huxtable.”

All eyes turned his way, Constantine realized. If anyone had discounted the gossip that must have been circulating for the past week or so, then they probably doubted no longer. For he certainly had not invited her here during her tea, had he? It must have been prearranged, then.

“Perhaps some other time,” she told Enderby.

Her words acted like a signal to everyone to take their leave. Constantine stood at one of the windows, looking out, his hands clasped at his back while the duchess bade her guests farewell.

“I shall fetch my bonnet and meet you on the pavement,” she told him when the two of them were alone.

And she had gone before Constantine turned around.

Was it his imagination that there had been a slight chill in her voice when she addressed him?

What was this all about?

But suddenly he knew. Or was pretty sure he knew. It was dense of him not to have realized it sooner, in fact—as soon as her terse little note arrived this morning. Or when she had disappeared without a word last night.

He had asked some intrusive questions of her friend last evening, and she had somehow found out.

Where was Miss Leavensworth this afternoon, anyway?

He made his way downstairs. His curricle had already been brought up to the door, he could see.

“W
HERE WAS
M
ISS
L
EAVENSWORTH
this afternoon?” Constantine asked as soon as he had handed Hannah up to the high seat of his curricle and come around to the other side to take his seat beside her. He gathered the ribbons in his hands.

Hannah loved riding in curricles. But this afternoon’s drive was not for enjoyment. She was feeling out of sorts. She opened her parasol and raised it above her head.

“She had a letter at breakfast time from relatives of the Reverend Newcombe, her betrothed,” she said. “They are in town for a few days and invited her to visit Kew Gardens with them and their children today.”

“That will be pleasant for them all,” he said. “And they have the ideal weather for such an excursion. Not too hot and not too windy.”

“One might, I suppose,” she said as he turned the curricle out of the square, “converse comfortably about the weather until we reach the park, Mr. Huxtable. I would prefer to inform you that I am extremely displeased with you.”

“Yes,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “I rather guessed you were.”

“I discovered Barbara close to tears in the ladies’ withdrawing room partway through last evening,” she said.

“Ah,” he said and faced front again.

“She believed she had betrayed my trust in her,” she said. “She feared I would put an end to our friendship. But, being the incurably moral and upright lady she is, she felt compelled to confess rather than hide what she had done.”

He did not ask her what she was talking about. Instead, he skillfully guided his horses around a slow-moving cart.

“I grew up in the village of Markle in Lincolnshire,” she said, “the daughter of Mr. Joseph Delmont, a gentleman of no particular social significance or fortune. I had one sister, Dawn. She is now Lady Young, wife of Sir Colin Young, baronet. It was at the wedding of his cousin, now deceased, that I met the Duke of Dunbarton, whom I married five days later. I have not been back to Markle or had any communication with any member of my family since then. Is there
anything else
you wish to know, Mr. Huxtable?”

He gazed steadily ahead. A large and ancient town carriage was lumbering toward them down the very center of the road, despite some rather blistering remarks that were being hurled at its oblivious coachman by other occupiers of the road. Constantine was compelled to move the curricle over to avoid a collision. His lips were pursed.

“About why I have never been back home, perhaps?” she suggested.

She could actually
feel
her heart thumping in her bosom. She could hear it hammering in her ears. And then she realized that the carriage belonged to the Dowager Countess of Blackwell and that lady was nodding regally in her direction from one of the windows. Hannah smiled and raised a hand.

“I will tell you why,” she said, answering her own question when he did not. “During that wedding I discovered Colin Young, my
fiancé
, behind the rose arbor with my sister, in a situation that could be described as compromising only if one were trying very hard not to shock one’s listener by being more graphic. And after they had …
parted
and set themselves to rights, they were both defiantly defensive rather than ashamed or apologetic or horrified to be discovered. She was sick to death of always being in my shadow, Dawn told me, of never being noticed because everyone wanted to look only at
me
, of forever feeling
ugly
. She
loved
Colin, and he loved her, and what was I going to do about it? And she was perfectly right, Colin said. He was relatively new to the neighborhood and had been dazzled by my beauty at first until he got to know Dawn and realized that character
was of more importance than anything else. And that
love
was. He was very sorry, but he had decided that he wanted a real woman instead of just a beauty. Not that he meant any offense, of course. I really
was
lovely. He hoped I would understand and free him from an obligation that had become irksome to him.

“As if I were unreal. As if I were incapable of love or companionship. As if I were incapable of being
hurt
just because I was
lovely
.

“And when I drew my father into the library and threw myself into his arms for comfort and support, he sighed and told me how my beauty had been nothing but a trial to him all my life—or ever since my mother died when I was thirteen, anyway. I had always been her favorite, but he was mindful of the fact that he had
two
daughters. All the girls had always admired me and wanted to be my friend and virtually ignored Dawn, and all the young men had always buzzed around me and vied for my attention and taken no notice whatsoever of my sister. Must I begrudge her happiness now when she had found love despite everything? If I had had one ounce of sisterly affection in my body, I would have seen how the wind was blowing weeks earlier. Was I going to be selfish, as usual, and refuse to release Colin Young from a promise he had made hastily and regretted almost immediately? Could I not think of someone else for once in my life? It was not as though I could not find someone else anytime I wished.

“But all my life—or so it seemed to me—I had tried to be like everyone else. And I had loved Dawn and tried to make other people like her. I never understood why she was not generally liked. It was
not
that I pushed her back into my shadow. It was
not
. And she had a way sometimes of taking my friends or my admirers away from me and gloating afterward. We were not always friends. Sometimes we fought quite viciously, and I daresay I was as guilty of nastiness as often as she was. But she was my
sister
. I
loved
her. It had never occurred to me that she would try to take my betrothed. I was
engaged
. The time for games was over.

“Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it
was
all my fault. Perhaps …”

She paused for breath. Actually she gasped for breath. The gate into the park was just ahead.

“Duchess,” Constantine said.

But she held up a staying hand. She had not finished yet.

“I
loved
him,” she said. “It had not occurred to me to withhold any part of my heart from him. I had eyes for no man but him. I
knew
that my beauty was often a liability. I
knew
that sometimes other girls resented me when there were young men around. I tried
not
to be beautiful. Even as a child I tried because it embarrassed me always to have my mother complimented on my looks in the hearing of Dawn and other girls, and to have her look at me with pleasure and rearrange my ringlets to look just so. I tried wearing plain clothes when I was old enough to choose for myself and a plain hairstyle. I tried hanging my head and staying quiet in company. I tried to show that I was not conceited. But finally, with Colin, I felt free to love and to be myself at last.