A Secret Affair

by Mary Balogh

  “You think he will let Jess go, then?” Constantine asked.

  “Do I think he will?” Elliott said. “Yes. Am I certain he will? No.”

  “Has he said when he will make his decision?” Constantine asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Stephen said.

  “But either way, Con,” Elliott said, “Jess will not be returning here. I am sorry. Promising to take him with me was the best I could do.”

  Constantine nodded. And his eyes went past Elliott’s shoulder, past the carriage to the driveway beyond. A single horse and rider were approaching at a canter.

  Everyone else had heard it too. They all turned.

  The judge had made his decision?

  It was a chance visitor?

  But they could all see as the horse drew closer that the rider was wearing bright livery and that it was looking slightly the worse for wear. He had clearly ridden a long way, probably without stopping except for a change of horse and a quick bite to eat.

  “By God,” Stephen said, “that is royal livery.”

  There was no doubt about it. The rider was a king’s messenger.

  He reined in his horse behind the carriage and looked about rather haughtily before focusing his attention on Elliott.

  “I am commanded to deliver a message to Mr. Constantine Huxtable,” he said.

  “I am he.” Constantine raised one arm—one bare arm dotted with wood shavings—and stepped forward.

  The messenger looked haughtier.

  “I can vouch for his identity,” Stephen said, sounding amused. “I am Merton.”

  The fellow reached into his saddlebag and withdrew two scrolls affixed with the royal seal.

  “I was to hand this to you first, sir,” he said, “on the express orders of His Majesty the King.”

  And he handed one of the scrolls to Constantine, who looked at it as if merely doing so would disclose its secrets. He exchanged glances with Elliott and Stephen, broke the seal, and unrolled the scroll.

  He felt the blood drain from his head. He licked his lips. The parchment shook in his hands. He looked up.

  “A pardon,” he said in a near whisper. And then he raised his head, looked about him, and raised his voice. He held the parchment aloft. “A pardon. A royal pardon for Jess. The king has repealed the sentence.”

  “If you will direct me to the judge concerned, sir,” the messenger said, “I will deliver a duplicate of that document into his hands without further delay.”

  No one heard him. There was cheering and laughter and the clapping of hands. And everyone spoke at once, the volume of voices increasing as everyone realized that no one was listening because everyone was talking. Almost everyone. Two of the weeders were dancing with each other in a circle, shrieking as they did so. The cook had thrown her apron over her face. Millie was wailing openly, tears pursuing each other in rivulets down her cheeks.

  Constantine shut his eyes tightly and lifted his face to the sky.

  “The minx,” he said fondly.

  “Well,” Elliott said, “so much for my being needed, Con.”

  But he was grinning when Constantine looked at him and stepped up to him and caught him up in a bear hug.

  “You were needed,” he said. “You were needed, Elliott. You are always needed.”

  And then he embarrassed himself horribly by sobbing, his forehead against Elliott’s shoulder.

  He felt Elliott’s free hand against the back of his head.

  “Devil take it,” Constantine said, taking a step back and swiping the back of his hand across his wet face. “Devil take it.”

  Elliott pressed a white linen handkerchief into his hand.

  “Love is allowed, Con,” he said.

  Stephen was blowing his nose into his own handkerchief.

  The king’s messenger was clearing his throat.

  “I was commanded to hand this to you next, sir,” he said and handed Constantine the second scroll.

  Constantine stared up at the rider as he took it. But the man was a messenger, not the message.

  What more was there for the king to say? Ha, ha, I did not mean it—Jess Barnes dies after all?

  Constantine broke the seal and unrolled the parchment and read.

  And then read it again.

  And then chuckled. And then laughed aloud as he handed it to Elliott. Elliott read it—twice—and then handed it off to Stephen before looking at Constantine and laughing with him.

  “I say,” Stephen said after a few moments. “Oh, I say.”

  And all three of them were laughing while everyone else looked on, wondering what the joke was.

  “WHAT IS IT about time, Babs?” Hannah asked from her favorite perch on the window seat of her private sitting room. “When one is enjoying oneself, it flies by like a bird frantic to reach its nesting ground after a long winter, and just as with that bird there is no stopping it. At other times, it crawls by like a tortoise dosed with laudanum.”

  Barbara worked at her embroidery.

  “There is no such thing as time,” she said. “There is only our reaction to the inexorable progress of life.”

  Hannah stared at the top of her head.

  “If I pretended to enjoy not knowing what is happening, then,” she said, “I would have news of it in a flash, Babs? Could the answer be that simple? Please say yes.”

  Barbara looked up and smiled.

  “I am afraid not,” she said. “Because the illusion of time creates time itself. Our reactions are too strong to halt it altogether. We are lamentably human. And wonderfully human too.”

  “You did not learn all this from your vicar, by any chance, did you?” Hannah asked suspiciously.

  “From discussions with him, yes,” Barbara admitted. “And from my private reflections and some reading that Simon suggested.”

  “If I cannot halt the illusion any more than I can reality,” Hannah said, “then there really is no point in knowing that it is illusion, is there? Or in deciding that it is, in fact, reality. And is my head spinning on my shoulders, or is that only illusion too?”

  Barbara merely laughed and lowered her head to her work again.

  “The king promised to help, Hannah,” she said.

  “But the king’s memory is notoriously unreliable,” Hannah said. “He means well, but he is easily distracted. I was not the only petitioner to see him that morning, or the last. The fact that he wept over my story means little. He weeps over everything that contains even one speck of sentiment.”

  “You must trust him,” Barbara said. “And the Duke of Moreland and the Earl of Merton. And Mr. Huxtable himself.”

  Hannah sighed and picked up a cushion to hug to her bosom.

  “It is so hard to trust anyone but oneself,” she said.

  “You have done all you can,” Barbara said. “More than all.”

  Hannah regarded the top of her head again for a while. She considered getting up from her perch and prowling about the room—again. She considered going outside for a brisker walk, but it was raining and the wind was blowing, and Barbara would insist upon going with her. And she would probably contract a chill and have to be dragged back from death’s door over the next week or so.

  Sometimes Barbara could be a severe annoyance.

  “You were supposed to go home as soon as we returned from Kent,” she said. “You were longing to go home even though you were too polite to say so. And yet here you sit, quietly patient, Babs. I would be raging if it were me.”

  “No, you would not.” Barbara looked up at her once more. “You are a far better person than you would have others believe, Hannah. If it were you, you would stay with me for as long as I needed you. We are friends. We love each other.”

  Hannah heard a gurgle in her throat and swallowed. She widened her eyes so that they would not fill with tears. She was dangerously close to becoming a watering pot these days. She had also been a virtual recluse since her visit to St. James’s Palace. Though her new friends had been obliging en
ough to call yesterday afternoon. They had come all together—the three Huxtable sisters and their sister-in-law—and had stayed for an hour and a half, far longer than a mere polite afternoon call required. They had been almost as anxious for news as she was.

  “You love your vicar,” she said. “You should be with him, Babs.”

  “I will be,” Barbara said. “We will be married for the rest of our lives after August. When I hear from him, I am as sure as I can be that he will tell me I have done the right thing in staying with you. I thought I would hear today. There will surely be a letter tomorrow.”

  She returned to work, and Hannah heaved a deep sigh.

  And then she held her breath, and Barbara sat with her needle suspended above her cloth.

  From a distance below them they had both heard the knocker being rapped against the street door.

  “Visitors,” Hannah said with an attempt at nonchalance. “They will be told I am not at home.”

  But she listened for the sound of footsteps outside the door, and when it came, she tensed and pressed the pillow against herself as though she must guard it with her life.

  “A gentleman for Miss Leavensworth, Your Grace,” her butler said when he opened the door.

  “Tell him—For Barbara?” Hannah said.

  “A Reverend Newcombe, Your Grace,” he said, glancing at Barbara. “Shall I inform him that you are from home?”

  “Simon?” Barbara spoke softly. Her needle was still suspended above her work. Suddenly, Hannah thought, she looked quite incredibly beautiful.

  “Show him up here, if you please,” Hannah said.

  She never entertained visitors in her private parlor.

  She swung her legs to the floor as the butler withdrew, and cast aside the cushion. Her first instinct was to hurry from the room, to leave the field clear for the reunion of the lovers. But she could not resist seeing it for herself and meeting Barbara’s betrothed.

  Barbara was calmly and methodically putting away her embroidery and then checking to see that her hair was tidy and that no crumbs of her tea remained on her dress. She looked up at Hannah.

  “This is why there was no letter from him today,” she said. “He has come in person.”

  She was still radiating beauty. Her eyes were huge and luminous.

  It was the look of love, Hannah thought. She had seen it in her own looking glass lately. And much good it would do her.

  The door opened again after a token tap.

  “The Reverend Newcombe for Miss Leavensworth,” the butler said.

  And in stepped the most ordinary young gentleman Hannah could possibly have imagined. He was just as Barbara had described him, in fact. He was neither tall nor sturdily built nor handsome. He was dressed soberly and decently and quite without flair. But as soon as his eyes lit upon Barbara, he smiled—and Hannah knew why her friend, who had routinely rejected a number of perfectly eligible suitors throughout the years of her youth, had finally lost her heart to this man.

  She was beaming back at him.

  Goodness, Hannah thought, if it had been her, she would have hurtled across the room by now with a bloodcurdling shriek and launched herself at him.

  “Barb,” he said.

  “Simon.”

  After which loverlike outburst they both recovered their manners and turned their attention to Hannah.

  “Hannah,” Barbara said, “may I have the honor of presenting the Reverend Newcombe? The Duchess of Dunbarton, Simon.”

  The vicar bowed. Hannah inclined her head.

  “You have come in person to bear Barbara off homeward,” she said. “I do not blame you, Mr. Newcombe. I have been very selfish.”

  “I have come, Your Grace,” he said, “because my future father-in-law very kindly offered to take my Sunday services for me and allow me a short holiday in London, even though I will be having another after my nuptials. I came because it seems years rather than merely weeks since I last saw Barbara. And I came because you are in distress and I thought perhaps I could offer you some spiritual comfort.”

  Hannah bit her lower lip. Laughter would be inappropriate. And indeed, though part of her wanted to dissolve into giggles, a nobler part of her was deeply touched.

  “I thank you, sir,” she said. “It is an anxious time. A man’s life is at stake, and I care even though I have never met him and probably never will. Someone I have met has a deep emotional involvement in the matter, and I have a deep emotional involvement with him.”

  She had not meant to put it quite like that. But the words were out now, and they were the truth. One ought to tell the truth to a clergyman.

  “I understand, Your Grace,” he said, and it seemed to Hannah that indeed he did.

  “I have urgent business elsewhere in the house,” she said, “and must be an imperfect hostess, I am afraid, Mr. Newcombe, and quit this room. I will leave you Barbara, however. I daresay she will do her best to entertain you in my absence.”

  “I daresay she will, Your Grace,” he agreed.

  Hannah smiled at him, and he smiled back with such sweet good humor that she might have fallen in love with him herself if there had been a vacancy in her heart.

  She smiled and winked at Barbara with the eye that was farthest from the Reverend Simon Newcombe and hurried from the room just as if she really did have a thousand and one tasks awaiting her.

  What was happening in Gloucestershire? And why did no one think to write to her?

  THE REVEREND NEWCOMBE had come all the way to London, and the most entertaining thing he could find to do on his first full day there was visit a bookshop on Oxford Street that he remembered from his student days.

  He had come to Dunbarton House to invite Barbara and Hannah to accompany him. And Barbara was glowing with enthusiasm at the prospect.

  Hannah gazed from one to the other of them as they all sat in the drawing room drinking coffee. It really was quite extraordinary. It was not even a shop for new books. It was probably filled with dust. It was undoubtedly filled too with old tomes so dry that they were crumbling away to create more dust.

  “You must come with us, Hannah,” Barbara pleaded. “You have scarcely been over the doorstep for several days, and the sun is shining again today. You must not fear that you will be in the way.” She blushed.

  “I fear no such thing,” Hannah said. “You are both too polite to admit even to yourselves that my presence would be de trop. I shall go walking in Hyde Park this afternoon and receive my court and learn all the newest gossip with which to regale you both at dinner. You will dine here, Mr. Newcombe?”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” he said, inclining his head. “I—”

  He was interrupted by a tap on the drawing room door.

  “The Earl and Countess of Merton wish to know if you are at home, Your Grace,” the butler said when he had opened it.

  Hannah shot to her feet. Cassandra? And the earl too?

  “Show them up,” she said.

  It was as much as she could do not to run after him and overtake him on the stairs so that she could arrive in the hall ahead of him and discover what had happened.

  “The Earl of Merton,” Barbara was explaining to her vicar, “went to Ainsley Park with the Duke of Moreland to see what they could do to intercede for the condemned man.”

  “Yes,” the Reverend Newcombe said, “I remember the names from your letter, Barb. And now the earl has returned, perhaps with news. Let us hope it is good news. Your concern for a poor misguided man, Your Grace, does you great credit. But it does not surprise me. Barbara has told me—”

  Hannah stopped listening. Not because she was being deliberately impolite, but because her thoughts were whirling out of control. She stepped as close to the door as she could and not be bowled over by it when it opened again. She clasped her hands at her waist. She tried to gather her dignity about her.

  The Duke of Moreland had not come with the earl? Constantine had not?

  There was a tap on the door and it
opened again. “The Earl and Countess of Merton, Your Grace,” the butler announced.

  The earl looked travel worn. Although his clothes did not look unduly rumpled or his face unshaven, there were signs of weariness about his eyes, and it seemed to Hannah that he must have returned home to Merton House only long enough to see his wife. And Cassandra was—beaming.

  “All is well,” she said and hurried forward to catch Hannah up in her arms. “All is well, Hannah.”

  Hannah sagged with relief as she submitted to the hug.

  “I daresay you knew as much, Your Grace,” the earl said. “It is you who must have persuaded the king to intervene. But I suppose you have been anxious anyway to hear that the pardon arrived in time. It did. With three days to spare, in fact.”

  Only three days?

  “It was a complete pardon,” he added. “Jess Barnes is free. I promised Con when I left that I would let you know within an hour of my return to London. And I took the liberty of traveling here in your carriage, Your Grace. Con will come with Elliott later.”

  “With the Duke of Moreland?” Hannah raised her eyebrows. “The two of them together in one carriage?”

  He grinned.

  “And they will probably not even come to blows,” he said. “Or preserve a stony silence either.”

  “They have settled that foolish quarrel?” Hannah asked.

  “They have,” he said. “For the first time I have seen them together as they must have been most of their lives before I met them both. They talk incessantly and joke—and even argue. And lest you need more assurance, I will add that it was upon Elliott’s shoulder Con chose to weep when he read the king’s pardon even though mine was just as close and just as available.”

  “Oh.” Hannah pressed her hands together and brought her mouth down to the tips of her fingers. She closed her eyes and pictured Constantine weeping. How embarrassed he must have been. And how furious he would be if he knew that his cousin was telling her about it.

  Men could be very foolish about such things.

  How strange that one could be so wrong about another person. She had always called him the devil to herself. He looked dark and dangerous enough to justify the name. He was quite the opposite. He was all light and love and compassion. Oh, and perhaps a little dark and dangerous too. He was a dizzying mix of human qualities, in fact—as most people were.