A Secret Affair

by Mary Balogh

  “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.

  HANNAH 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.

  “Hannah,” Cassandra said, “we made a mistake.”

  “We?” Hannah asked.

  “Stephen and his sisters did not even know of Constantine’s existence until they arrived at Warren Hall and met him,” Cassandra said. “They loved him immediately, and of course they felt dreadfully sorry for him because he had recently lost his last surviving brother. They understood how difficult it must have been for him to see them take over his home and to see Stephen take the title that had so recently been his brother’s. And of course there was all that business of his having been born just a couple of days too early to be able to inherit himself. Constantine is a very private and secretive man, and he has a long-standing quarrel with Elliott and now with Vanessa too, but nevertheless the rest of them are desperately fond of him and want above all to see him happy.”

  “I have no intention of marrying him,” Hannah said, keeping her eyes on the moon. “Or of breaking his heart. We are engaged in an affair, Cassandra, as I am sure you are all very well aware, but not of the heart.”

  She was not at all sure she spoke the truth, but it was probably the truth from his perspective, and that was all that mattered to his family. Though this afternoon …

  “But that is the whole point,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “We were concerned, Hannah. Although Constantine is in his thirties and well able to look after his own affairs, nevertheless you are different from other women. We thought it altogether possible that you would toy with his affections, humiliate him, perhaps even hurt him. While we did not believe we needed to protect him from you—that would have been absurd—we did believe we ought to show our disapproval when we could.”

  “And so,” Hannah said, “you refused my invitation to come here. It was your right. There is never any compulsion to accept invitations that are not to one’s liking. I never do. The duke taught me to assert myself in such ways. He taught me not to endure unnecessary boredom or to suffer fools gladly all in the name of obligation where there is no obligation. You do not owe me an explanation of why you refused, or why you changed your minds and came.”

  “Hannah,” Cassandra said, “I was horribly misjudged when I arrived in London last year, and I was ostracized. There is no worse feeling, much as one may tell oneself that one does not care. You are not ostracized by society. Quite the contrary, in fact. But you are misjudged.”

  “Perhaps,” Hannah said, drawing Lady Merton toward a bench beneath an oak tree close by, “I choose to be misjudged. There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is privacy even in the most public situation, in knowing that one can very effectively hide in full sight.”

  They seated themselves and Cassandra laughed softly.

  “I was destitute as well as everything else when I arrived in London last year,” she said, “and I had other persons dear to me to support as well as myself. I decided that the only way I could do it was to find a wealthy protector. And so I went to a ball to seduce Stephen, who looked to me like an angel. I made the mistake of believing that angels must also necessarily be weak and easily led—but that is another story. I can remember standing in that ballroom, an empty space all about me, everyone shocked that I would have come there uninvited, and wishing that I could curl into a tiny ball and simply disappear. I was sustained by the realization that no one knew me, that my real self was safely hidden deep within the brazen red-haired axe-murderer everyone thought they saw.”

  “But the Earl of Merton danced with you,” Hannah said.

  “That too is another story,” Cassandra said. “I of all people ought to have realized when I saw you earlier this spring that what I saw was not the real Duchess of Dunbarton.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said, “she is very real indeed. I am the Duchess of Dunbarton. I married the duke when I was nineteen, and though the world will always believe that he married me for my youth and beauty and that I married him for his title and wealth, nevertheless I was his wife. And now I am his widow. He taught me how to be a duchess, how to hold my head high, how to control my own life and never let myself be exploited, for my beauty or any other attribute. I like the person he helped me to become, Cassandra. I am comfortable as the Duchess of Dunbarton.”

  “I expressed myself poorly,” Cassandra said. “What I meant was that looking at you, I ought not to have believed that I was looking at the complete you. Even yet I do not presume to believe that I know you. But Margaret told us about how kind you were to Duncan’s grandfather when you called on her at Claverbrook House and how you kissed his cheek before you left. And about how you came to invite our children to this house party even though we had all rejected your invitation. And for the last two days I have seen a side of you that no one is allowed even to glimpse when you are in town. You are a warm, hospitable, generous, fun-loving person, Hannah, and I wanted you to know that I misjudged you. We all want you to know that.”

  “You were the one chosen to have this word with me, then?” Hannah asked, not knowing whether to be amused or somehow hurt.

  “Not at all,” Cassandra said. “But we did talk at length this afternoon while you were gone somewhere with Constantine and the children were either sleeping or playing elsewhere. And we agreed that we really must find a way of telling you how sorry we are that we rejected you on so little evidence.”

  “You owe me nothing,” Hannah said.

  “Of course we do not,” Cassandra agreed. “But we all want to offer our friendship, if you will accept it after such a shaky start.”

  “On condition that I do not hurt Constantine?” Hannah asked.

  “He has nothing to do with it,” Cassandra said. “He is well able to take care of himself. And we now know that you are not the sort of person who would willfully lead him a dance and humiliate him. If he ends the affair at the end of the Season, or if you do, or if you part by mutual consent, that is entirely a matter between the two of you. But I think I would like you as a friend, Hannah, and Margaret and Katherine feel the same way. If it means anything to you, Vanessa told us just last week that she has always liked you and admired you, that you were altogether too good for Constantine.”

  She laughed softly again.

  That was going to have to end, that silly quarrel, Hannah thought. The Duke of Moreland had certainly been at fault in the way he had jumped to conclusions about his cousin and best friend and accused him of really quite heinous crimes. But Constantine had been equally at fault in choosing to take offense to such a degree that he did not even try to explain how much he had been misjudged.

  Misjudged. That word again.

  She had been offered the friendship of three ladies whom she believed she could like very well if given the chance. Perhaps four. The Duchess of Moreland claimed to like and admire her.

  And it was, apparently, an
unconditional friendship she was being offered.

  “We have been discovered,” Cassandra said, and Hannah looked up to see the Earl of Merton and Constantine crossing the lawn toward them. “Angel and devil. It was how I saw them the very first time I set eyes upon them in Hyde Park one afternoon last year. And Stephen really is an angel.”

  Hannah’s heart turned over—even though she had seen Constantine in the drawing room just fifteen minutes or so ago. This celibacy was proving to be very hard on the emotions. Not just because she longed to make love with him—though she did—but because the abstinence made her think about their relationship. And she did not like the direction her thoughts were taking.

  At least, she did, but …

  But what had he been about to say out in the woods this afternoon when he had chosen to remain silent instead? Words had been fairly bursting from him.

  As they had from her.

  She was going to get dreadfully hurt after all. She should never have believed she could play with fire and not get burned.

  Or perhaps she would not get hurt. Perhaps …

  “We have come to be congratulated on our win,” the earl called when the men were within earshot. “Which you did not remain to witness.”

  “Of course,” Constantine said, “we have been accused by the other side of winning only because we had Miss Leavensworth on our team. But that sounds like sour grapes to me.”

  “The other side was my side,” Cassandra said. “I cannot think of any one of my former teammates who is capable of sour grapes, Constantine. And any team that had Miss Leavensworth on it would have an unfair advantage.”

  “Well, there you are, Cass,” the earl said. “You are biased. We might as well change the subject before we come to blows.”

  He propped one foot on the bench at his wife’s side and draped an arm over his leg. Constantine leaned one shoulder against the trunk beside Hannah and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “It is so beautifully silent out here,” the earl said after a few moments.

  “Not so,” Constantine said. “If you really listen, Stephen, you will hear wind in the trees, a nightingale singing, laughter from the drawing room, among other sounds. All contributing to a sense of quiet well-being. Hannah taught me that this afternoon when we were strolling in the woods.”