A Secret Affair

Chapter 24

THE WEDDING of Hannah Reid, Duchess of Dunbarton, to Constantine Huxtable, Earl of Ainsley, was a small affair by ton standards. More surprising, to Hannah at least, it was a family affair, overrun by children, all of whom attended both the ceremony in the small chapel in the park of Warren Hall and the wedding breakfast at the house afterward.

Most surprisingly, it was not only Constantine’s family that was in attendance. Her father came. So did Dawn and Colin, her sister and brother-in-law, and their five children—Louisa, aged ten, Mary, eight, Andrew, seven, Frederick, five, and Thomas, three. And Barbara came with her parents—the Reverend Newcombe was unable to get away so soon after the last time and before his own wedding and honeymoon.

Her father had scarcely changed, Hannah discovered when he arrived at Finchley Park the day before her wedding. The same could not be said for either Colin or Dawn. Both had expanded in girth and looked noticeably older. Colin had lost some of his hair and his youthful good looks. Dawn, in contrast, looked rosy-cheeked and placidly contented—though not at the moment of her arrival.

It had taken some courage for them to come, Hannah guessed.

She had decided ahead of time to behave as though there had been no estrangement, and they had made the same decision, it seemed. They hugged one another, greeted one another, and smiled. And they hid the embarrassment they must all be feeling by turning to the children, who were spilling out of another carriage.

She had two nieces and three nephews she knew virtually nothing about, Hannah thought as she gazed at each of them in turn as they made their curtsy or bow. She had never allowed Barbara to speak of her family.

Under slightly altered circumstances, Colin could now have been her husband for ten years or more. He looked like a stranger she had once met long ago.

“Do come inside,” she said. “There are tea and cakes awaiting everyone.”

“Aunt Hannah,” Frederick said, slipping a hand into hers as she turned toward the house, “I have new shoes for the wedding. They are a size bigger than the last ones.”

“And mine,” Thomas said, trotting beside them as they entered the house.

“Then I am very glad I am having a wedding,” Hannah said. “We all need a good reason to have new shoes from time to time.”

Her heart constricted.

It was not until later that she had a chance to talk privately with her father. He was walking alone on the lawn beside the house after tea, when Hannah expected that he would be resting in his room as almost everyone else was.

She hesitated before going out to join him. But she had come this far toward reconciliation. Why stop now?

He looked up as she came to meet him and stopped walking. He clasped his hands behind his back.

“You are looking well, Hannah,” he said.

“I am feeling wonderful,” she said.

“And so you are to marry another aristocrat,” he said. “But a younger man this time. Is this one someone who is likely to bring you at least some happiness?”

Had he misunderstood all these years?

“I love him,” she said, “and he loves me. I expect a great deal of happiness from my marriage to Constantine. You will meet him later. He is coming for dinner. But, Papa, I knew a great deal of happiness in my first marriage. The duke was kind to me—more than kind. And I adored him in return.”

“He was old,” her father said. “He might have been my father. I have never forgiven myself for the part I played in causing you to act so impulsively as to marry him, Hannah. And I did nothing to stop you. I suppose at the time it seemed an easy answer to a nasty problem. Both my daughters loved the same man, and I wanted both to be happy. I thought you would more easily recover and find happiness with someone else since all the young men had an eye for you, and so I sided with Dawn. That was shortsighted of me, was it not? You married an old man you did not even know and went away and never came back and never wrote, and—Well. And I never had the courage to write either, did I?”

“Marrying the duke was the best thing I ever did,” she said. “And if I judged correctly at tea, marrying Colin was the best thing Dawn ever did.”

“They seem happy enough,” he said. “And my grandchildren are the light of my life. Perhaps—”

He stopped.

“Yes, perhaps,” she agreed. “I am only thirty, Papa. And a child is all I need to complete my happiness.”

“Thank you,” he said awkwardly, “for inviting us to your wedding, Hannah.”

“Constantine has no brothers or sisters,” she said, “but he has cousins on both sides of his family. And they are all very close. More than that, they are affectionate and welcoming. They have opened their hearts and their lives to include me. You could see that at tea, could you not, with Elliott and Vanessa, the Duke and Duchess of Moreland, and his mother and sisters? They have made me understand the importance of family. And Constantine persuaded me to reach out to my own again at last. I did not know if you would come. I believe I expected that you would not.”

He sighed deeply and audibly.

“I wept when your letter came,” he said. “There. I did not expect ever to admit that to a living soul. I felt—forgiven.”

She stepped forward and set her forehead on his shoulder. His hands came to her waist and held her.

HER CHANCE WITH DAWN did not come until the following morning—her wedding day. She was in her dressing room, holding her head still while Adèle curled a stubborn tendril of hair over her right temple more to her satisfaction.

She was wearing pale pink, a color she would not have expected to choose for her wedding. But when she had been shopping for fabrics, she had fallen in love with this shade. She had a new straw bonnet to wear with it, trimmed with pink rosebuds and greenery and pink silk ribbons a shade darker than the dress.

The sky, she could see through the window, was a clear blue. There was not a cloud in sight.

And then everyone, on their way to church, came to see her first. Vanessa and Averil and Jessica, Elliott’s sisters, exclaimed over her and smiled at her and declared they would not hug her and risk crushing either her dress or her hair. All agreed that Cecily, Elliott’s youngest sister, who was in imminent expectation of a happy event, would be very vexed indeed to be missing all this excitement. Mrs. Leavensworth clasped her hands to her bosom and declared that she had not been happier in her life—though she supposed she would be happier yet in three weeks’ time when it was Barbara’s turn.

Barbara did not care whether she crushed anything or not. She hugged Hannah tightly and wordlessly for a whole minute. Then she stood back and looked her over.

“This is what I have hoped and hoped would happen, Hannah,” she said. “I have even prayed about it. Laugh if you will. You have far too much love to give to squander it on mere flirtation. And Mr. Huxtable, or, rather, the Earl of Ainsley, is the right man. I thought so when we were at Copeland. I was almost sure when he scooped you up onto his horse in the park. And when I saw the two of you together at dinner last evening, well, there was no doubt left in my mind. And now that I have delivered that little sermon, I had better get off to church with Mama and Papa before the bride races us there.” She laughed.

“Babs.” Hannah hugged her again. “How would I have done without you all these years?”

“No better than I would have done without you, I suppose,” Barbara said. “Oh, there you are, Dawn. Mama and I are on our way out and will leave you with more room.”

And they were gone and only Dawn remained, standing uncertainly just inside the door.

“I am ready, Adèle,” Hannah said. “I can put on my own bonnet before I leave.”

Her maid slipped from the room.

“I don’t know how you do it, Hannah,” Dawn said, sounding almost aggrieved, “but you are more beautiful now than you were eleven years ago.”

“I am in love,” Hannah said, smiling, “and this is my wedding day. It is easy to be beautiful under such circumstances.”

“It is not just that,” Dawn said. “I used to think it was just your looks. But it was always what was inside you too. And now there is even more of that. The Earl of Ainsley is very handsome, is he not, though it is a pity about his nose. I should call him Constantine, I suppose, as he invited me to do last evening, but it seems presumptuous. You have done well for yourself, though it must have seemed that the old duke was going to live forever. That must have been a severe trial to you.”

“I suppose the whole world believes that,” Hannah said. “It is not the truth, but it does not matter if no one knows that but me—and Constantine. And now I am about to marry a man I love with all my heart. If you ever look back and feel a twinge of guilt, Dawn, let it go. All things happen for a purpose—sometimes a larger purpose than we can possibly see at the time. What happened led me to the duke and ten years of surprising happiness. And marrying the duke led me by slow degrees to today.”

“I don’t feel guilt,” Dawn said. “You could have had anyone if you had set your mind to it. You chose Colin, and he was dazzled for a while as all men are when they see you. But he really loved me, and I loved him. We have a good marriage, and we have good, healthy children—which is more than you have. I do not feel guilt.”

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.