A Secret Affair

Chapter 9

THEY WERE LATE ARRIVING at the Kitteridge ball, though not by any means the last of the guests. They were there before the Duchess of Dunbarton, though that was no surprise.

Constantine was talking with a group of acquaintances when he was made aware of her arrival by a slight change in the quality of the sound around him. It was certainly true what Margaret had said earlier. The duchess really did draw eyes wherever she went, and this occasion was no exception. All she was doing was passing along the receiving line with her friend, but almost everyone had turned a head to watch.

She was all in gleaming white again—silver-threaded white lace over white silk. Her hair was piled high in intricate curls, though wavy tendrils had been allowed to trail over her temples and along her neck in order to tease the eyes and the imagination. A small diamond tiara glistened in her hair. Diamonds at her ears and bosom and on her wrists and gloved fingers sparkled and winked in the candlelight. There were even rosettes of diamonds sewn to the outsides of her white dancing slippers.

Or not diamonds.

Another petal had been peeled away from the rose last night, leaving Constantine to wonder if there were perhaps more within after all. She had sold two-thirds of her diamonds, doubtless for a colossal sum, because there were certain causes in which she was interested.

Charitable causes, he had understood. The lady had a heart, then, and a social conscience.

In its own way it had been as startling a revelation as the fact that she had come to him as a virgin.

He had the rather unsettling suspicion that he had misjudged the duchess, that perhaps she was not shallow after all. But he was certainly not alone in his former opinion of her, as Margaret’s words had proved. He had no cause to be indignant with her.

Constantine strode across the ballroom in the duchess’s direction, aware that he was being watched with interest. There would not be many people in this room who did not know that she was his new mistress or that he was her new lover—depending upon the perspective of the beholder. There was no such thing as a secret affair between two members of the ton.

He bowed to them both, secured a waltz with the duchess for later in the evening, and asked Miss Leavensworth for the opening set. By that time the duchess’s usual court was gathering about her.

He led Miss Leavensworth onto the floor, where the lines were already forming. He had asked her to dance because she was the duchess’s friend and house guest and because she had been a member of the theater party the evening before and he had conversed with her there for several minutes and liked her. She seemed an intelligent, sensible lady.

He certainly had no ulterior motive in dancing with her—not at first, anyway. He asked about her home only because he guessed that she was probably homesick, especially as her fiancé was back in the village she had left behind.

“The trouble with being in London for the Season,” he said to her as they waited for the dancing to begin, “is that no matter how much one enjoys oneself, one invariably misses one’s home in the country. I always do. Do you find the same thing?”

“I do indeed, Mr. Huxtable, though it seems quite ungrateful to admit it,” she said gravely. “It is wonderful to be here, and I will never forget that I have attended ton balls and gone to the theater and opera and visited some of the most famous of the museums and galleries here. And the best thing of all is being with Hannah, whom I see all too rarely. Even the shopping is more exciting than I expected. But you are right, and I must confess to a longing to see my family and my betrothed again.”

“And your village?” he said.

“And that too,” she said. “London is so … vast.”

And he saw a way of satisfying some idle curiosity. Or perhaps not so idle. Everyone knew how the duchess had used her beauty to rise out of obscurity and become the bride of a duke who had resisted matrimony until well into his seventies. It would have been the stuff of legend if the huge age gap had deprived the story of all romance and made it merely rather sordid instead. No one seemed to know anything about the obscurity from which the duchess had risen, however. When he had asked her about her family, she had shrugged and said she had none.

But she must have had family at some time.

“What is your village?” he asked.

“Markle,” she said, “in Lincolnshire. No one except those who live within ten miles of it has even heard of it. But it is quiet and pretty, and it is home.”

“Your parents are both still living?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I am well blessed. My father was the vicar, but he has retired now, and we live together in a cottage at the edge of the village. It is smaller than the vicarage but very cozy. My mother and father are very happy there. So am I, but of course I will be moving back to the vicarage when I marry in August.”

“And you will be the lady of the house this time,” he said, “instead of the daughter.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “It will seem strange. I am looking forward to it immensely, though.”

“Markle,” he said, frowning. “Something sounds familiar about the name. What is the main family living there?”

“Sir Colin Young?” she said, posing the answer as a question. “He lives at Elm Court just beyond the village with Lady Young and their three children. Lady Young, in fact, is—”

She stopped abruptly. She flushed.

He waited for a moment, eyebrows raised, but she did not continue.

“I do believe the dancing is about to begin,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” she said with bright enthusiasm. “You are right. Oh, just look at all the flowers. And all the candles in the chandeliers. There must be dozens of them. And so many guests. I shall be dreaming of this when I leave here.”

He guessed that she was not the sort of lady who gushed with enthusiasm a great deal. Something had flustered her. His questions, probably, especially the last. And the answers she had given—and almost given. Did she realize now, he wondered, that he had been deliberately probing for information?

That had not been well done of him.

But who was Lady Young? He had never heard of either Markle or Sir Colin Young. The man might be a baronet, but he had never mingled in London society to Constantine’s knowledge.

They danced an elegant country dance with intricate, almost stately figures. She was a good dancer.

The duchess must have grown up in Markle too. Was that where she had met Dunbarton at a wedding? Whose wedding? Young’s?

He had already made Miss Leavensworth uncomfortable. He had already chastised himself for prying. There was no excuse, then, for continuing to do so. But he did.

“Sir Colin Young,” he said when the figures brought them together for perhaps a whole minute. “Was he not somehow connected with the Duke of Dunbarton?”

“A very distant cousin, I believe,” she said.

Fourteenth or so in line to the dukedom, if Constantine was not very much mistaken.

There was no casual way of asking for the duchess’s maiden name. But her family must be lower on the social scale than Young, or Miss Leavensworth would have named them as the most prominent family. Unless the duchess was a sister or daughter of Young, that was. It was a distinct possibility. Either way she had done extremely well for herself in snaring a duke for a husband even if he was an old man. Or perhaps especially because he was an old man. Marrying him had been a brilliant way of gaining instant status and wealth and the prospect of freedom not far distant.

It was the conventional way of seeing the Duchess of Dunbarton, of course.

But …

But she had converted the large bulk of the jewels Dunbarton had given her into cash, which she had given to “causes” in which she was interested. She kept the other jewels because of their sentimental value.

If she was to be believed, that was. But he believed her.

Was the duchess a bit of a mystery after all?

And why was he doing this? Of what possible interest could it be to him to discover just who she was? Or who she had been? He had never felt this compulsion with any of his other mistresses.

And then another thought struck him. Would he like her probing into the secret places of his life?

He must ask no more questions.

They had worked their way to the head of the lines, and it was their turn to twirl down between them to land at the foot and begin the upward climb all over again. Miss Leavensworth laughed as they twirled, and Constantine smiled at her.

He could not stop his thoughts, though.

They had been friends since childhood, she and the duchess. It had not struck him as strange until now. Miss Leavensworth was a woman of modest birth and aspirations, daughter of a retired vicar and betrothed of a working one. Yet the duchess had remained close to her in the eleven years or so since her marriage had elevated her in status far above the vicar’s daughter.

One more question.

“Do you and the Duchess of Dunbarton write to each other when you are not visiting her?” he asked when there was a chance for some verbal exchange again.

“Oh, at least once a week,” she said. “Sometimes more often if there is something more than usually interesting to report upon. We are inveterate letter writers, Hannah and I.”

“She never comes to visit you?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

No explanation.

“Though I am trying to persuade her to come for my wedding in August,” she said a few moments later. “It would mean so much to me to have my dearest friend there. She says no, but I have not given up hope yet.”

So she would not go back to Markle even for Miss Leavensworth’s wedding? The Duchess of Dunbarton he had thought he knew—the one the ton thought it knew—would surely have loved nothing better than to return home with a large entourage of servants to flaunt her title and wealth before the rural yokels among whom she had grown up.

Was it true that she had no family?

“She has no family with whom to stay?” he asked.

“She could stay with my parents,” she said. “They would be delighted to have her.”

Which could mean yes or no. But he must leave this. He felt vaguely guilty. Perhaps even a little more than vaguely. He was prying.

“Have you visited the Tower of London yet?” he asked.

“I have not,” she said. “But I am very much hoping to do so before I return home.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “you and the duchess will allow me to escort you there one afternoon.”

“Oh,” she said, “that is very obliging of you, Mr. Huxtable. I am not sure how interested Hannah is, though, in—”

“I shall remind her,” he said, “that she will be able to stand on the very spot on which Queen Anne Boleyn, among others over the years, had her head chopped off. I daresay that will draw her interest.”

She laughed.

“You are quite possibly right,” she said. “It is one spot I will quite studiously avoid, however.”

“I shall make arrangements with the duchess,” he said.

And he concentrated upon the dancing. It was an activity he had always enjoyed. He looked along the line of ladies opposite and could see his cousins—all of them, including Vanessa, and including Averil and Jessica, Elliott’s sisters. Only Cecily was absent, at home in the country awaiting her third confinement. The duchess was there too, looking stunningly beautiful. Next to her was the Countess of Lanting, Monty’s younger sister. And of course there were all the young misses who had recently been launched upon society and the marriage mart, some of them bright and eager, some affecting a fashionable ennui, as though this was something they were so accustomed to doing that it really was a quite colossal bore.

And on his side of the line, all the gentlemen.

The orchestra was lively. Feet thumped rhythmically on the wooden floor, a sound that always set his toes to tapping even if he was standing on the sidelines merely looking on. The air had become heavy with the scent of flowers and perfume and human exertion.

The Kitteridges must be breathing a sigh of relief. Their young daughter was dancing with Viscount Doran, an eligible young gentleman who had doubtless been hand-picked for the occasion, and they might deem their ball a grand success.

Constantine and Miss Leavensworth were approaching the head of the line again.

HANNAH DANCED the opening set with Lord Netherby, the second with Lord Hardingraye, a particular friend of hers with whom she could relax and converse at her ease. She was feeling the pleasure of anticipation. She would waltz later with Constantine. She would dance only that once with him, but it would be enough. There was no dance more splendid than the waltz when one was with an attractive partner, and none was more attractive than Constantine Huxtable.

She would waltz with him and then, after the ball was over, he would follow her carriage home, as he had done last evening, and she would go with him to spend the night—or what remained of it.

And this would be the pattern of her days—and her nights—for the rest of the spring. Oh, she wished it would go on forever. For once she was not at all eager for the summer to come. Let it linger. She did not feel guilty about Barbara. She was not going to neglect her friend, after all. They would spend all day every day together.

Oh, this all felt very, very pleasant indeed after the dreariness of the past year. And it had been dreary. The duke would not have expected her to pretend that it was not. She had grieved for him—she still did—but grieving in virtual solitude and in black for a whole year had been tedious in the extreme. He would have told her to go out and enjoy herself—she knew he would. But she had not done that except to ride and ride about the countryside near Copeland and visit her friends at Land’s End every few days. She had been a faithful wife while the duke lived. She had been a faithful widow for the full year of her mourning.

And now—well, now she was enjoying herself enormously. She was not even going to pretend that she was not. She had dreamed of this, planned for it, and it was happening. And the best of it was that the duke would not resent it. She knew he would not.

“One would have to say, Your Grace,” Lord Hardingraye said, “that you have been positively glowing since your return to town. Indeed, if you were to glow any brighter I should have to don an eye shade, and I would be accused of all sorts of eccentricity.”

“You already are eccentric,” she said, smiling at him. “Everyone says so.”

His eyes twinkled back at her.

Constantine was dancing with Lady Fornwald.

Barbara was … not in the ballroom. Hannah looked all about the room, but her friend was nowhere to be seen. She was not even lurking in the quietest corner. She had excused herself after the opening set to go to the ladies’ withdrawing room. But that had been ages ago.

She still had not reappeared when the set was finished. Hannah looked around again at the milling crowd to be sure and then went to check the withdrawing room. But Barbara could not still be in there, surely.

She was, though.

She was sitting in a corner, facing away from the door, ignoring and ignored by a small knot of twittering young ladies who were giggling over something and talking in high squeals. In another corner a maid sat silently waiting to help anyone who needed a torn hem mended or an errant curl returned to its coiffure.

“Babs?” Hannah went to sit beside her. “Are you unwell?”

Barbara would not look at her. She was twisting a handkerchief in her lap. There was no sign of tears on her cheeks, but she looked on the verge of weeping.

“You are going to hate me,” she said. “You will not trust me ever again.”

“Babs?” Hannah said again.

“I betrayed you,” Barbara said. “I know how much you value your privacy, and I betrayed you.”

Extravagant words. Hannah waited for an explanation.

“I told Mr. Huxtable the name of our village,” Barbara said. “I told him about S-Sir Colin Young. I almost told him about … about Dawn. I stopped myself just in time. And I told him Sir Colin was a distant relation of the Duke of Dunbarton.”

“And this is betrayal?” Hannah said after a brief silence. “Did you pour out all this information uninvited, Babs?”

“No,” she said. “He asked me. And I told him. I am so sorry, Hannah. I do not know how you will ever forgive me. You will not even allow me to mention those names to you. And yet I blurted them out blithely to your—To Mr. Huxtable.”

“Were they idle questions?” Hannah asked. “The ones he asked, I mean?”

“I don’t believe so,” Barbara said, and tears welled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. “No, I don’t believe so. He wanted to know, and so he asked a country bumpkin unwise in the ways of the ton. I am so sorry.”

“Silly goose,” Hannah said, setting one hand against the back of Barbara’s bowed neck. “You told him nothing but facts he could have discovered some other way with the greatest ease. You did not exactly inform him that I was a murderess or a bigamist or a … What else might I have been that would have made for a ghastly revelation indeed?”

“A highwayman?” Barbara suggested through her tears.

“Or a highwaywoman,” Hannah said. “You told him almost nothing at all. And really, there is not a great deal to tell anyway, is there? Only a lot of sordid nonsense. There is no grand secret. If I have guarded the details of my past, it is only because I have chosen to do so. I have nothing to hide. Or to hide from.”

“Then why—” Barbara began to ask.

“I am not in hiding, Babs,” Hannah said. “It is just that I am living a new life now and like it infinitely better than I liked the old. I choose not to look back, not to listen to any reminders, not to do anything to revive that life.”

“You are angry,” Barbara said, and her tears flowed faster.

“I am,” Hannah admitted. “But not with you, Babs.” She rubbed her hand harder across her friend’s neck. “I am angry on your behalf. I am angry with a certain gentleman who is going to have to find another waltz partner this evening. He certainly will not be waltzing with me.”

Barbara dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

“I should have left here sooner,” she said, “and gone back to the ballroom and smiled. You know I do not approve of your liaison with Mr. Huxtable, Hannah, but I would not be the cause of any dissension between you.”

“If there is dissension,” Hannah said, “you are not the one who has caused it, Babs. Oh, goodness, your eyes are red. Even your nose is.”

“I do try never to weep,” Barbara said. “This is what always happens when I do, especially the red nose.”

Hannah laughed suddenly.

“Do you remember,” she said, “how we used that fact to our advantage on more than one occasion when we were children? When we broke a window of the greenhouse by playing ball too close to it, for example, and the gardener was stalking toward us breathing fire and brimstone?”

“You told me to cry,” Barbara said, smiling through her tears.

“Your face turned almost instantly red,” Hannah said. “Everyone immediately took pity on you. And how could they punish me if they were petting you and assuring you that it was an accident and you must not upset yourself.”

“Oh, dear,” Barbara said, “we were quite shameless.”

They both laughed. Indeed, for a few moments they sounded remarkably like those very young ladies who had already returned to the ballroom. Music was playing there. The third set was in progress.

Hannah stood up. She had distracted Barbara’s mind slightly, but she was still angry. Furiously so, in fact.

“We will go home,” she said. “I am tired, and you have a red nose. Those are reasons enough.”

“But Hannah—” Barbara looked instantly dismayed.

Hannah was speaking to the maid, though, and the maid was scurrying away to have the duchess’s carriage brought up to the doors.

“Let’s go home,” Hannah said, turning to Barbara with a smile, “and have a cup of tea and a comfortable coze before we go to bed. I will not have you with me for very much longer—unless you want to write to tell your vicar that you have changed your mind about being a vicar’s wife and have decided to remain with me forever and ever, that is.”

“Oh, Hannah—” Barbara said.

“No,” Hannah said with a mock sigh. “I thought you would not. And so I must make the most of your company while I have it.”

“Are you going to … to end your connection with Mr. Huxtable?” Barbara asked.

“I shall deal with that connection and with Constantine Huxtable tomorrow,” Hannah said as she swept from the room.

Barbara went after her.

THE DUCHESS OF DUNBARTON was playing games again, Constantine decided. She disappeared early from the ballroom. When he strolled into the card room after the fourth set—the waltz they had agreed upon was next—she was not in there either.

Miss Leavensworth was missing too.

He stayed until the end of the ball. He danced every set, including the waltz. And he went straight home afterward and slept for what remained of the night.

Let her play her games.

But she would make the next move. He was certainly not going to run after her.

She made the move early. There was a note from her beside his breakfast plate the following morning, along with the lengthy weekly report from Harvey Wexford, his manager at Ainsley.

The duchess had bold, rather large handwriting, he saw. And she wrote very much as she spoke. There was no greeting at the top of the note, only his name on the outside.

“You will join my other guests for tea this afternoon,” she had written, “and then you will drive me in the park. H, Duchess of Dunbarton.”

He pursed his lips. She did not invite. She commanded. Were the notes to her other guests similar to this one? And would all obey?

Would he?

But of course he would. He was not ready to let her go yet. He was enjoying her as a lover despite the shock of that first night’s discovery, and there was a great deal more sensual satisfaction to be had from their liaison before he would be content to see her go. But more than that, he was unexpectedly intrigued by her. He wanted to know more of what lay beyond her apparently shallow exterior.

Why would a woman give up ten years of her life solely for the acquisition of position and wealth, only to give away a large portion of that wealth to unnamed “causes”? And why would she remain faithful to a sham of a marriage? And even give the impression now that she might have been fond of the old duke? Why would a worthy woman like Miss Leavensworth have remained faithful to their friendship all these years? And why would the duchess write to her weekly, keeping up a friendship that could be of no material value to her?

And why was his head so full of such questions?

No, he would not give her up yet. He would answer the summons and go to Dunbarton House for tea this afternoon.

And he would drive her in the park afterward.

And tonight? Well, they would see.

In the meanwhile, he turned his attention to Wexford’s report, which he always devoured whole and then went back over to read more slowly and with greater attention to detail.