A Secret Affair

by Mary Balogh

  Hannah smiled.

  “I am glad you are happy,” she said, taking a step closer to her sister. “And your children really are a delight, Dawn. I look forward to getting better acquainted with them as time goes on. I’ll be in Markle for Barbara’s wedding. We will be staying with Papa.”

  “Barbara will be grand,” Dawn said, “having an earl and countess on her guest list. No one will talk of anything else for a month or more.”

  Hannah took another step forward and hugged her sister. It was a reconciliation of sorts, she thought as Dawn’s arms came about her. They would probably never be as close as sisters ought to be. Perhaps Dawn would always resent her even though she had got Colin, of whom she seemed genuinely fond. And she had their five children, who really were good-natured and prettily behaved.

  But at least now they had been restored to each other. At least now they could begin to build a new relationship with each other. There was the whole of the future ahead of them. There was always hope.

  “I had better go,” Dawn said. “Colin and the children will be waiting for me.”

  Hannah watched her go before closing the dressing room door. There was one more thing she needed to do before putting on her bonnet and going downstairs to join her father.

  She reached down one side of her portmanteau and drew out a small square box. She opened it and set it on the dressing table while she looked down at her wedding ring and then slid it slowly off her finger. She held it for a moment and raised it to her lips.

  “Good-bye, my dearest duke,” she whispered. “You would be happy for me today, would you not? You predicted it would happen. And you would be a little sad too, perhaps? I am happy. And a little sad. But you are with your love, and I will be with mine. And always a little part of us will belong to each other.”

  She set the ring down carefully inside the box, hesitated a moment, and then closed the lid resolutely and set the box back in the portmanteau.

  She reached for her bonnet.

  And suddenly there was such a welling of excitement within her that her fingers all felt like thumbs as she tied the ribbons into a bow beneath her right ear.

  THE CHAPEL WAS CROWDED to capacity, as Constantine had known it would be even though there were very few guests apart from family. There was the slight buzz of hushed conversation behind him and the fidgetings and louder, higher-pitched voices of all the children.

  So many of them. The family was growing. And it had not stopped yet. Katherine and Monty were in the process of doubling the size of their family. Cecily was expecting to give birth any day now.

  And it was not just family. Phillip Grainger’s wife was large with child and had two others in the pew beside her. Phillip, one of Constantine’s oldest friends, was his best man.

  It all felt very comforting, somehow. Family. And this morning he was to become a married man himself. A family man. Oh, he hoped he was to be a family man.

  But he was not even married yet.

  Would Hannah be late? It would be strange if she were not.

  There were five interminable minutes to wait even before she was late. What had he said about cultivating patience?

  He wished he had eaten some breakfast.

  He was thankful he had not.

  And he was, dash it all, getting nervous.

  What if she was having second thoughts?

  What if an old duke had popped up out of a deep chair somewhere in Finchley and eloped with her?

  And then there was the sound of carriage wheels—after all of the guests had surely arrived. It was only three minutes to eleven.

  The carriage stopped. Of course. There was nowhere else to go along this trail except the chapel.

  There was a greater hush within. Everyone had heard what he had heard.

  And then the vicar appeared in the doorway and instructed the congregation to stand. And he walked down the aisle toward the altar and left the doorway clear for Delmont, Hannah’s father, and for Hannah herself.

  A vision of all that was beautiful in soft pink.

  His bride.

  Oh, Lord. His bride.

  He took half a step toward her and stopped. He was supposed to stay where he was. She was supposed to come to him.

  And she did so until she stood beside him, her arm still drawn through her father’s though she was smiling at him through the froth of a pink veil that was draped over the brim of her straw bonnet.

  He smiled back at her.

  And why they had spent so much time discussing where they would marry and how many people they wanted as their guests he really did not know. It did not matter where they were. And for the moment it did not matter who was there to witness them exchanging vows that would bind them in law and in love for the rest of their days.

  It did not matter.

  “I do,” he said when the vicar had asked him what he was prepared to do in order to make Hannah his wife forever.

  “I do,” she said in return.

  And then he was reciting vows, prompted by the vicar, and she was reciting them in her turn. And Phillip was handing him the shiny gold band of her wedding ring and he was slipping it onto her bare ring finger. And suddenly—

  Ah, suddenly it was all over, the anticipation and the excitement, the baseless fears.

  They were man and wife.

  And what God had joined together, no power on earth could put asunder.

  “Hannah.” He lifted the veil back from her face and gazed into her eyes.

  They gazed back into his own, wide and guileless and trusting.

  His wife.

  And suddenly he was aware of shufflings and murmurings, a child’s piping voice, a single cough. And he was aware again of where they were and who was here with them. And he was glad that family and friends were here to celebrate with them.

  He felt a warm rush of pure happiness.

  Hannah—his wife—smiled at him, and when he went to smile back, he realized that he was already doing it.

  THERE WERE NO CARRIAGES outside the chapel. They would all walk back to Warren Hall, the bride and groom leading the way.

  But not immediately.

  When they had stepped outside the church, Hannah looked at her new husband, her hand slipping from his arm so that she could clasp his hand instead.

  “Yes,” she said softly as if he had said something.

  Her husband. Oh, he was her husband.

  And they turned together, as if they had discussed it beforehand, and made their way into the churchyard. They stopped at the foot of one small and simple mound of grass. A headstone bore the five-line inscription, Jonathan Huxtable, Earl of Merton, Died November 8, 1812, Aged Sixteen Years, Rest in Peace.

  They stood side by side, looking down at it, their hands clasped tightly.

  “Jonathan,” Hannah said softly, “thank you for living a life so rich with love. Thank you for living on in Constantine’s heart and in your dream at Ainsley Park.”

  Constantine’s clasp on her hand was almost painful.

  “Jon,” he said, his voice a whisper of sound, “you would be happy today. But you were always happy. Go in peace now, brother. I have kept you too long. I always was selfish. Go in peace.”

  A tear dripped from Hannah’s chin to the neckline of her wedding dress. She dried her eyes with the gloved fingers of her free hand.

  “I love you, Hannah,” Constantine said almost as softly.

  “I love you too,” she said.

  And they turned toward their wedding guests, who were crowded about the path outside the chapel doors, talking and laughing. Children darted about, their voices raised in high-pitched chatter.

  Constantine laced his fingers with Hannah’s and they walked toward their family and friends, smiling with exuberant joy.

  And the air rained rose petals.

  IT WAS A PERFECT AUTUMN DAY. Not perfect enough for the baby’s nurse, perhaps. But then her anxieties would have denied him any outing at all until he had attained at leas
t his first birthday. She would have made a hothouse plant of him if she had her way—which she had on all sorts of other issues since she had experience at her job and clearly loved the baby with all her grandmotherly heart.

  Hannah had found her when her former “family” had outgrown its need for her and she had applied for a position at Land’s End, though she had admitted during an interview that she dealt better with infants than with the elderly. Beggars could not be choosers, however.

  The day really was perfect. The heat of summer had gone, but the chill of winter had not yet arrived. There was not a sign of a rain cloud, or any other cloud for that matter. And the wind had taken a holiday. So had yesterday’s light breeze. The sky was a riot of color. Not the sky itself, of course, which was a uniform blue, but the tree branches against it. Reds mingled with yellows and oranges and browns of all shades, as well as a few hardy greens. And very few leaves had yet fallen to the ground.

  It would have been a lovely day for a ride—for a gallop across country and yet another challenge to a race. Hannah still held out hope of beating Constantine one of these days. Not that she had done much riding for several months, of course, even at a sedate walk. He would not have allowed it even if she had been inclined to take a risk. She had not been so inclined.

  They rode sedately in the carriage—the closed carriage. Nurse might be overridden, but she could not be entirely defied. She had experience and they did not.

  It was a journey they usually made with the dogs. A sizable and cozy corner of the stable block had been given over to dogs not long after their wedding when Constantine had the idea that the elderly at Land’s End needed more stimulus than just their own company and that of a few human visitors. And sure enough, the visits of the dogs were the highlight of their days. Sometimes Hannah and Constantine took them. More often, Cyril Williams did. He was a ten-year-old who had picked Constantine’s pocket in London when they were there briefly after Barbara’s wedding to the Reverend Newcombe, a ragged, shivering bundle of filth and rags who had lost his mother, his last remaining relative, a few months before and had descended from a life of desperation to one of animal survival.

  Cyril and dogs had been made for one another. He fed them and groomed them, exercised and trained them, and loved them—and sometimes sneaked them into his room in the house while all the servants and his master and mistress became inexplicably blind and deaf. They doted upon him and followed him like shadows. They were gentle with him and for him and moped about the stables whenever he was away—under protest—at the village school.

  Today it was not the dogs that were being taken to cheer the elderly.

  Today it was four-month-old Matthew Huxtable, who in his parents’ admittedly biased estimation was the most beautiful child in the world. He had inherited his father’s dark hair and skin tone and his mother’s blue eyes and bright smile.

  And today the elderly residents of Land’s End were indeed marvelously entertained as Matthew was placed in their arms one at a time by his papa and cooed up at them and occasionally, with some coaxing from his father’s finger wiggling over his stomach, favored them with a toothless smile.

  Hannah meanwhile was talking to those few who could not hold the baby or even talk or respond to what went on about them. She talked to them anyway, telling them about the three weeks her two nieces and one of her nephews had spent at Copeland during the summer after their mother returned home to Lincolnshire with the youngest two—she had come to give Hannah some support and help with her confinement—and about Lord and Lady Montford’s daughter, whom they hoped to see no later than Christmas, before her first birthday anyway, and about the new litter of puppies, for whom Cyril was attempting to find homes.

  And then the visit was over, and Hannah settled herself beside Constantine in the carriage and watched him as he held Matthew on his lap facing him, both hands behind the baby’s head, and made faces at him and spoke nonsense to him.

  The baby’s eyelids drooped. He was not in the mood to be amused.

  Whoever would have expected, Hannah thought, that Constantine Huxtable of all men would turn into such a tender, doting father?

  The devil, tamed.

  Except that he had never been a devil. Not even close.

  He had been a man full of secrets. A man full of love.

  She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and he turned his head to look down at her.

  “I have just been trying to picture the Duchess of Dunbarton in my mind,” he said. “But the face of Hannah keeps getting in the way.”

  “The duchess served me well,” she said.

  “I am glad,” he said, “you do not need her any longer.”

  She sighed with contentment.

  “I am glad too,” she said. “Matthew is sleeping. Let me hold him.”

  He turned and set the baby in her arms without waking him, and stayed turned to gaze first at his son, and then at his wife.

  “Have I told you that I love you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He smoothed one gentle hand over the baby’s head and sat back in his seat.

  “You can tell me again, though,” she said. “In fact, I absolutely insist that you do.”

  He laughed softly.

  MARY BALOGH is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Slightly series and Simply quartet of novels set at Miss Martin’s School for Girls, as well as many other beloved novels. She is also the author of First Comes Marriage, Then Comes Seduction, At Last Comes Love, and Seducing an Angel, all featuring the Huxtable family. A former teacher, she grew up in Wales and now lives in Canada. To learn more, visit the author’s website at www.MaryBalogh.com.

  A Secret Affair is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2010 by Mary Balogh

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Balogh, Mary.

  A secret affair / Mary Balogh.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-33956-4

  I. Title.

  PR6052.A465S426 2010

  823′.914—dc22

  2010001647

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.0