A Secret Affair

Epilogue

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 least 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.