A Secret Affair

Chapter 19

ELLIOTT AND STEPHEN went off to call on the judge the following morning, both dressed with immaculate elegance. Elliott would not allow Constantine to accompany them. Not that either he or Stephen could have stopped him if he had chosen to go anyway, but he reluctantly conceded that it was probably for the best that he remain behind.

Elliott sought him out alone before they left.

“I have been having a look around, Con,” he said, “and talking with some of your people. You are doing well here. You have been doing well for some time.”

Constantine looked at him, tight-lipped.

“Did that sound condescending?” Elliott asked with a sigh. “It was not meant to be. I am brimful of admiration. And contrition. And shame. It was not you with all those women, was it? It was—my uncle? Your father?”

Constantine said nothing.

“Mine was no better,” Elliott said. “I grew up believing him to be a paragon and devoted to my mother and my sisters and me. It was only after his death that I learned about his long-term mistress and the rather large family he had had with her. Did you know about them? The whole of the rest of the world seemed to, including my mother.”

“No,” Constantine said.

“I had been living a pretty wild existence for the previous few years,” Elliott continued. “I was suddenly terrified that I would turn out like him, that I would be a wastrel, that I would let down my mother and sisters as he had done. And so I lost all my humor, Con, all my sense of proportion. And when you resented my interference, as you saw it, in Jon’s affairs and did all in your power to annoy me, I only grew more irritable. Especially when I realized that things were not as they ought to be at Warren Hall, that my father had neglected his duty in yet another area of his life.”

It was, Constantine supposed, some attempt at an apology.

“Jonathan discovered the truth about your father?” Elliott asked.

“Yes. Two of the women—two sisters—came to talk to him when I was away one day,” Constantine said. “I had never seen him so upset, so disillusioned. Or so excited as on the day he concocted his grand scheme. I doubt I could have denied him my help in bringing that to pass even if I had disagreed with him. Which I did not. I had known for years. It had sickened me for years. But the little help I had been able to provide had been akin to wrapping a small bandage about a belly rip.”

“Con,” Elliott said after a short silence. “You were not innocent in what happened between us. I am almost certain that I asked. But even if I did not, you could have denied the charges, forced me to listen to the truth. I would have believed you. Good God, you were my friend. We were almost like brothers. But you did not want me to know. You did not want me to believe. You admitted it yesterday. For of course, as Jonathan’s new guardian, I would not have permitted him to continue to denude his own estate for the sake of what would at the time have seemed a mad project. And I would have been right. He ought not to have been allowed to be so reckless. I would also have been wrong. Colossally wrong. But none of us could have predicted that at the time. It would not have been easy for me, Con. By withholding the truth, you enabled both Jonathan and yourself to do what was right. But you forfeited our friendship in the process and made me into the sole villain. The pompous ass.”

“You were,” Constantine said.

“And you were the stubborn mule.”

They stared at each other. The stare threatened to become a glare until Elliott spoiled it all by allowing his lips to twitch.

“Someone should paint us,” he said. “We would make a marvelous caricature.”

“You are doing all this just for Jess?” Constantine asked.

“And for the Duchess of Dunbarton,” Elliott said. “And for Vanessa. She longs to forgive and be forgiven, Con.”

“To be forgiven?” Constantine said with a frown. “I am the one who wronged her. Horribly.”

“But you apologized,” Elliott said, “and she would not forgive you. I know she has felt bad about that ever since. When the duchess called on us with Stephen, Vanessa saw a chance for some redemption. Perhaps for all of us. If I came for any one person, I came for her. I love her.”

“I know,” Constantine said.

“And I came for you too,” Elliott said, looking sharply away. “You are, despite everything, someone I once loved. Perhaps someone I still love. Good God, Con, I have missed you. Can you fathom that? I believed all those things about you, and I missed you?”

“This is getting almost embarrassing,” Constantine said.

“It is,” Elliott agreed. “And Stephen is probably waiting for me. Before I join him, Con, will you shake my hand?”

“Kiss and forgive?” Constantine said.

“I will forego the kissing if it is all the same to you,” Elliott said, holding out his right hand.

Constantine looked at it and set his own in it.

“As I remember it,” he said, “you did not ask, Elliott. You assumed. But as you remember it, you asked, and I told you to go to hell. We can never know who is right. Maybe it is just as well. But you had just lost your trust in your own father, and I was desperate to preserve Jon’s dream. We never were good at talking to each other about pain, were we?”

“A gentleman never admits to feeling any,” Elliott said as they clasped each other’s hand tightly. “I have to put on all the full force of my pomposity now. I’ll try not to be an ass, though, Con. I’ll try my best to get Barnes reprieved. I hope my best is good enough.”

“So do I,” Constantine said fervently.

He still felt sore that he was going to have to remain behind at Ainsley, idle and helpless. But for the moment the best he could do was let his cousins go and do what he could not. Or at least try.

And if they failed?

He would grapple with that when the time came.

When? Not if?

He headed off for the farm, hoping there was some hard manual labor in which he could immerse himself.

FOR THE NEXT three and a half hours he was, Constantine soon became aware, the focus of attention at Ainsley. He was chopping wood beside the stable block. He had stripped to the waist and was giving the task his full attention and every ounce of strength and energy he could muster. Nothing in the world mattered except piling up enough wood to last through next winter—and perhaps even the winter beyond that.

The grooms and stable hands were all at work in the stables. None of them took a break, even when midday came and went. But every single one of them found some plausible reason for appearing at the stable yard gate with strange regularity. No fewer than three of the women were weeding the kitchen garden even though Constantine had observed just two days ago that there was not a weed in sight. Perhaps it was the hunt for new ones that was taking them so long. Two of the boys were handing him logs to chop when one would have been quite sufficient. Millie carried out a tray of drinks and oatmeal biscuits twice and stayed to help one of the boys stack the wood against the outer wall of the stables the second time. The cook came to the side door, presumably to see what had happened to Millie. But instead of calling her to come back or returning to the kitchen after seeing that she was busy, she stayed where she was for some time, drying her hands on her apron. They must have ended up being the driest hands in England. Roseann Thirgood was giving her group of reading pupils a lesson outdoors, perhaps because the weather was warm and the wind gentle enough that it took only two hands to hold open the pages of each book. Another of the women felt it necessary to shake her duster out of a side window of the house every few minutes and to lean out to see where the dust landed.

They all knew, of course, that Elliott and Stephen had gone to talk to the judge, though Constantine had not told anyone. And they all knew why he was chopping wood so ferociously. None of them spoke to him. Or to one another, for that matter. Except Roseann to her pupils, he assumed, though he did not hear any of them.

And then everyone who had disappeared for a few moments reappeared, and everyone who was busy—or pretending to be—stopped work, and the weeders straightened up, and Millie dropped the two pieces of wood she was carrying. The cook dropped her apron. Constantine paused, the axe poised above his shoulder.

Horses.

And carriage wheels.

He lowered the axe slowly and turned.

The same ducal carriage as yesterday. The same coachman and footman, their livery brushed to a new smartness since yesterday.

Constantine even forgot to breathe for a moment. If he had thought about it, he would have been willing to wager that everyone else forgot too.

The carriage did not proceed all the way to the front doors. It stopped outside the stables. Perhaps the men inside had seen the scattered crowd and Constantine in their midst.

Stephen jumped out first, without waiting for the steps to be put down. He looked about him and then at Constantine, who felt rooted to the spot. He had not moved closer to the carriage.

“It hangs in the balance,” Stephen called for all to hear.

An unfortunate turn of phrase.

Elliott also descended without benefit of steps.

“The judge is to consider the matter,” he said, also loudly enough for everyone to hear. “His final verdict is by no means sure, but if he does reprieve Jess Barnes, it will be into my keeping and on condition that I take him far away from here and never allow him to return to any part of Gloucestershire.”

Constantine was almost convinced he heard a collective exhaling of breath. Or perhaps it was only his own he heard.

He set down the axe against a stack of unchopped wood and walked closer to his cousins, who were walking closer to him.

“Elliott was absolutely magnificent, Con,” Stephen said. “I almost quaked in my boots myself.”

“No, you did not,” Elliott said. “You were too busy oozing your legendary charm, Stephen. I was almost dazzled myself.”

“But the judge was not quite convinced,” Constantine said.

“To give the man his due,” Elliott told him, “he has backbone, Con. I had the impression that as the day draws closer, he is beginning to regret the harshness of the sentence but has been unable to see a dignified way out. You must have softened him up. He wants to give us what we ask, but he does not want to give the impression that he has been overawed by a couple of men with titles but really no authority over him.”

“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 enough 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?