Текст книги "A Secret Affair"

Автор книги: Mary Balogh

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

11

THEY MADE LOVE with fierce energy the first time, with slow languor the second-if it was possible to be languorous while making love. Either way they were both exhausted by the time they were finished.

Hannah curled onto her side, facing away from him, and he curled around her from behind and slid one arm beneath her head while he wrapped the other about her. She snuggled back against him and raised his hand so that she could rest her cheek against the back of it.

And she slept.

Constantine did not. An uneasy conscience was the perfect recipe for insomnia.

Were other people like him, he wondered. Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regular intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone’s life filled with a confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other-good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.

As a boy he had hated Jon, his youngest brother-the very person he loved most in the world. He had hated Jon because he was sunny-natured and warmhearted and guileless despite the difficulties of his life, because he was overweight and ungainly and had facial features that made him look more Asian than English, and because he had a brain that worked slowly-and because he was going to die young. Constantine had hated him because he could not put things right for him-and because Jon had what Con had never wanted anyway. The heirdom.

How could he hate so fiercely and love with such deep agony all at the same time? He had left home as soon as he was old enough and sowed some pretty wild oats, most of them with Elliott. Constantine had not cared about the way life had treated him or about the people he had left behind. Why should he? But he had known that Jon pined for him, and he had hated him more than ever and had gone back home because he loved him more than life itself and knew he would not have him for long.

Was everyone’s life such a mass of contradictions? Surely not. There would be no sanity left in the world.

When their father died and Jon became Earl of Merton at the age of thirteen, Constantine had effectively run the estate and his other affairs for him even though their father, in his questionable wisdom, had appointed his brother-in-law, Elliott’s father, as Jon’s guardian. And then he had died two years later and Elliott had inherited the guardianship. And so Elliott, Constantine’s best friend, had become his prime adversary. For he had chosen to take his position seriously and had muscled in where his father had been content to let Con take charge.

And the great enmity had begun-the bitter estrangement that had lasted ever since. For Elliott had refused simply to trust his cousin to run the estate efficiently and to do what was best for Jon. He had intruded, and it had not taken him long to discover that a fortune in jewels was missing, though none of them was technically part of the entail. And he had jumped to all the obvious conclusions, and the accusations had flown.

Constantine had invited him to go to hell.

He had not simply explained, taken Elliott into his confidence. Oh, no, that would have been far too easy. Besides, Elliott had not simply asked, invited his closest friend to explain. He had known, or thought he knew. And he had called Con a thief, the worst kind of thief, one who would steal from his mentally handicapped brother who loved him dearly and trusted him implicitly and knew no better.

And, truth be told, Constantine had resented Elliott even before the discovery and accusation, for his cousin, newly elevated to the title of Viscount Lyngate by the death of his father, was a cruel reminder that Con had not become Earl of Merton on the death of his father, though they were both eldest sons.

However it was, he had told Elliott to go to hell.

Unlike the other times during their youth when they had quarreled, they had not been able simply to put up their fists and fight it out before grinning at each other and admitting that that had been fun-even as they mopped at bloody noses and pressed fingers gingerly to swelling eyes.

It had not been that sort of quarrel. It had not been fixable.

Instead of turning to fisticuffs, Constantine had set out to make Elliott’s life hell-whenever he came to Warren Hall, anyway. And he came often. Constantine had used Jon to play games with Elliott, games that had annoyed and frustrated and even humiliated him, games Jon had thought enormous fun, games that had widened the rift between the cousins. Sometimes, for example, Constantine would have Jon hide when Elliott came, and precious time would have to be spent hunting for him. Con would usually stand by, watching, one shoulder resting against a doorframe, smiling with contempt.

Quarrels always brought out the worst in people. In him, anyway.

Even now he could not feel as sorry as perhaps he ought for the childishness of his behavior. For Elliott, who had known him all his life, had actually believed-and still did-that he was capable of robbing his own brother because Jon was easily exploited. It had hurt, that sudden loss of trust. It still would if he had not converted pain into hatred.

But he was in many ways as bad as Elliott. He did not even try to deny that fact now as he held Hannah’s warm, relaxed body against his and stared at the wall on the far side of his bed. Instead of sitting down with him and discussing the guardianship, as two men-two friends-in their twenties ought to have been able to do, he had been cold and distant and sarcastic, even before the jewels had been missed. And Elliott had been cold and distant and autocratic.

It had been pretty childish, really. On both their parts. Perhaps they would have got over it if it had not been for the infernal jewels. But they were indisputably missing, so he and Elliott never had got over it.

They were equally to blame.

Which fact did not make Constantine hate Elliott the less.

He buried his nose in Hannah’s hair. It was soft and warm and fragrant-just as she was. He thought of kissing her awake to distract his mind, but she was sleeping peacefully.

He had upset her last night. She had still been upset earlier today.

And he had upset the totally innocent Miss Leavensworth.

Just as he had upset Vanessa soon after she married Elliott.

Did other people do such things? Did everyone have these shameful, damnably uncomfortable skeletons in their closets?

He was a monster. He was the devil incarnate. People were quite right to call him that.

Perhaps one of the worst of his sins, a very recent one, had been his denial of all that he knew to be true of human nature. All people-all-were a complex product of their heritage, their environment, their upbringing and education and cumulative experiences of life as well as of a basic character and personality with which they were born. Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.

No one was shallow. Not really.

But he had chosen to believe that the Duchess of Dunbarton was different from every other human being. He had chosen to believe that beneath the surface appearance of beauty and vanity and arrogance there was nothing to know. That she was an empty vessel, not truly human.

It was what people had chosen to believe of her all her life-except, it seemed, the late duke, her husband.

He had been no better than her own family, who perhaps had loved her in their own way, but who also had assumed that her beauty made her less sensitive, less needy than her plainer sister. Her father had sympathized with the sister, assuming that his elder daughter could cope better with the vicissitudes of life. Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty, insensitive shell?

Why had he assumed it?

Had he failed to accord her full personhood because she was beautiful?

He was starting to get a headache. And he was beginning to get pins and needles in the arm beneath her head. He had an itch on his bare shoulder that he needed to scratch. He was not going to sleep at all. That was obvious. Neither was he going to make love again. Not until he had done a good deal more thinking.

He drew his hand carefully from beneath her cheek and slid his arm slowly from under her head. She grumbled sleepily and burrowed her head into the pillow.

“Constantine,” she muttered, but she was not awake.

He got off the bed and went into his dressing room. He got dressed, though he did not pull on a coat over his shirt or tuck the shirt into his pantaloons. He went to stand beside the bed to look down at Hannah. She was half awake and blinking up at him.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

And he bent over her and set his lips to hers. She kissed him back with lazy warmth.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’ll be back,” he told her again and made off to the kitchen down two flights of stairs.

He built up a fire from the embers of last night’s, half filled the heavy built cast-iron kettle, and set it to boil. He raided the pantry for something to eat and set some sweet biscuits on a plate. Awhile later he was climbing the stairs again with a tray, on which were a large pot of tea covered with a thick cozy to keep the brew hot, a milk jug and sugar bowl, cups and saucers and spoons, and the plate of biscuits. He took the tray into the sitting room next to his bedchamber and then went to fetch Hannah.

She was still hovering between sleeping and waking. He went into his dressing room again and came out with a large woolly dressing gown, which he wore on chilly evenings when he was at home alone and merely wanted to lounge inelegantly with a good book.

“Come,” he said.

“Where?”

But she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood as he held out the dressing gown. She pushed her arms into the sleeves, and he wrapped it about her before securing it with the sash. She looked half buried.

“Mmm,” she said, turning her nose into the collar. “It smells of you.”

“Is that good?” he asked.

“Mmm,” she said again, and he was smitten with guilt once more.

He picked up the branch of candles and led the way to the sitting room. All the furniture was large in here-deliberately so. Large and soft and comfortable. This was a room in which elegance and posture did not matter. This was a place for slouching and risking irreparable damage to one’s spine. This was where he relaxed.

Strangely enough, no one else was ever invited in here. None of his former mistresses had set foot inside here.

She sat in a deep leather chair, curled her legs up under her, set her head back, and snuggled into the dressing gown. She gazed at him from beneath lowered lids as he poured the tea, though not in the way she usually did. This time it was a genuinely sleepy look. A look of contentment, or so it seemed.

“Milk? Sugar?” he asked.

“Both,” she said.

He set down a cup and saucer on the table beside her and offered her the plate. She took a biscuit and nibbled it.

“You make a lovely hostess, Constantine,” she said. “Virile. And generous. You have filled my cup to the brim. I will need a steady hand not to spill it.”

He never saw the sense in half filling a cup. Cups were usually too small to start with.

He sat facing her, a short distance away, a biscuit in one hand, his cup in the other. He slouched back in his chair and crossed one ankle over the other knee.

A pretense of relaxation.

“Tell me, then, Duchess,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

And suddenly a huge, dark, empty hole seemed to open up deep inside him. An enormous vulnerability.

But it was the only way he could atone.

***

HANNAH WAS IMPRESSED. Most men would surely have avoided the issue for as long as they could. And she had been fast asleep when he got out of bed. She would probably have slept all night. But he had chosen to remind her that she had the right to ask him questions about himself and to expect answers.

He was a man full of secrets, she suspected, and she doubted he ever gave up any of them willingly, even to those nearest and dearest to him. He was a private man.

And who were his nearest and dearest? His cousins? The ones who had usurped what should surely have been rightfully his?

Was he a lonely man? Suddenly she suspected that he was.

He was also, it seemed, a man of honor. He had behaved badly with poor Barbara, and he knew it and was remorseful. Now he would atone in the only way he knew how. He would answer any and all of her questions.

It would be cruel under the circumstances to ask them, to force him to give up the secrets of the life he guarded so carefully.

He was not looking his dark, elegant, dangerous self at the moment. He was sitting quite inelegantly, in fact-as was she. He looked gorgeous.

Something touched her heart-and was denied entrance.

She finished eating her biscuit.

“I might have known,” he said, “that you would respond with unpredictable cleverness to my offer to tell all.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“With silence,” he said.

And she realized that when she had chosen Constantine Huxtable to be her first lover she had done so not just on the basis of his physical attractions, considerable though they were. She had also been drawn to the closed look of him, hinting at depths of character and meaning that might contain nothing but darkness but might just as well hide universes of light. She had been attracted by the mystery of him, though she had had no evidence that there was any mystery at all.

She had known all this from the start, of course. She had told him before they became lovers that she would insist upon knowing everything there was to know about him. But she had not really understood what she was saying. She had still thought that primarily her interest in him was physical.

Was it not, then?

She had no one with whom to compare him as a lover. But surely there could be no one else who could so thoroughly satisfy her-a thought that did not bode well for the coming years. She had started with the best, and what did that leave her?

And was not the physical enough?

This craving to know him-ought she to have paid it more attention before it was too late?

Too late for what?

“Ainsley Park,” he said abruptly, setting down his empty cup in its saucer beside him. “It is the name of my property in Gloucestershire. The house and park are not quite on the scale of Warren Hall, but they are impressive enough. Even the dower house is quite sizable. And the home farm is large. I have enlarged it further by not leasing out two of the tenant farms when they went vacant. It is all very prosperous-a hive of industry.”

“Was it your father’s?” she asked.

“No.” He shook his head. “All my father’s properties were entailed. They are Merton’s.”

“How could you afford to purchase it?” she asked.

He smiled slowly.

“It is the question all my closest acquaintance have wanted answered since it became mine,” he said. “Especially Moreland, who knows-or thinks he does.”

“So?” she asked, setting her own cup down and sliding her hands into the opposite sleeves of the dressing gown she was wearing.

“I did not purchase it,” he said. “I won it.”

“Won?”

“I gambled as much as most idle young men do when I first left home,” he said. “I always ended up losing everything except the shirt on my back, though I was always wise enough to wager only what I had, which was not a great deal. I had a monthly allowance, but my father kept me on a tight enough rein. But this was after his death, when Jon was earl, and this time I deliberately sought out a game where I knew the stakes were high and no prisoners were taken, so to speak. And I wagered with money that was not strictly mine but was what I had received for the sale of a certain jewel-we have both been up to that game, Duchess. The money was not mine to lose, and I do not believe I have ever felt a terror to match what I felt when I sat down to play and made a bet of the type of magnitude my fellow players expected.”

Hannah closed her eyes.

“Within ten minutes,” he said, “I had won Ainsley Park. It was not the principal seat of the man who lost it, and he did not seem unduly disturbed at losing it with one turn of the card. He and his fellows did seem annoyed, however, when I took my winnings and left. They threatened never to allow me into their hallowed midst again. I do not know if they would have carried through on the threat. I believe they probably would have. I have never gambled since-except in a very small way at balls and private parties, I suppose.”

“And the money from the sale of the jewel?” she said.

“That went where it was intended to go,” he told her.

“And no one knows how you acquired Ainsley Park?” she asked.

“Let them guess,” he said.

“And what is the usual guess?” she asked.

“That I bought it with ill-gotten gains, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “They are not far wrong.”

“You live there alone?” she asked. How sad that he should have cut himself off in such a way from his relatives and friends.

He laughed softly.

“Not quite,” he said. “In fact, the house-the mansion-is so crowded with people that there is no room left for me. I live in the dower house. And even that haven of peace is being slowly but very surely invaded.”

Hannah moved her legs until her feet were flat on the chair. She hugged her updrawn knees and rested her chin on them.

“You are going to have to tell me now, Constantine,” she said, “or I will not sleep for a week wondering. And you do owe me. Who are all these people?”

“I started with women,” he said. “Women whose character and reputation were in tatters because their employers or social superiors had assumed their God-given rights extended to the very persons of the females they fancied. Women and their bastard children. They were given a home at Ainsley and honest work to do in the house and on the farm. And training as seamstresses or milliners or cooks or whatever else took their interest, if I could find someone willing to teach them in exchange for a home and food and a modest salary. And eventually they were found work with people who were willing to take them, reputation and bastard children and all.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why them in particular?”

He looked darkly brooding.

“Let us just say,” he said, “that I knew some of those women and the man who took everything from them except life itself. I knew what they lost-employment, family, the respect of all who knew them. I knew what they suffered-ostracism. And I knew that the meager handouts of money I occasionally made to them solved nothing substantial. I knew that I dared not befriend them openly or assumptions would have been made and matters would have been worse for them. If that were possible. I knew the man who caused it all and felt not a qualm of guilt as one by one they were cast from his employment and forgotten about while others took their place and as like as not suffered their fate.”

Hannah hugged her legs more tightly.

Oh, dear God. His father? She opened her mouth to ask, but the question was unaskable.

“Elliott-the Duke of Moreland-would tell you that I was that man,” he said.

“Did he actually accuse you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you did not deny it?” she asked.

“No.”

Oh, dear, getting information from him was sometimes like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

“Why not?” she asked.

He looked very directly at her. “He had been my friend,” he said. “He was my cousin, almost my brother. Our mothers were sisters. He ought not to have needed to ask. I would never have asked it of him. I would have known the answer to be no. We had been pretty wild together when we were younger, but we never ever took any woman against her will.”

“But you did not deny it when he did ask,” she said.

“He did not ask,” he said. “He told me. He had found out somehow about those wronged women and their children. And so he confronted me. Accusations are not always or even usually polite questions, Duchess.”

“You foolish man,” she said. “And so this is what your quarrel is all about?”

“Among other things,” he said.

She chose not to ask.

“And it all might have been cleared up,” she said, “with a simple denial, which your pride would not allow you to make.”

“A denial ought not to have been necessary,” he said. “Moreland was, and is, a pompous ass.”

“And you are a stubborn mule,” she said. “You described yourselves thus on another occasion, and I see that you were quite right.”

He got to his feet, took the cozy off the teapot, and refilled both their cups. He sat down again, remembered that she took milk and sugar, and got up to add them to her cup. It was full to the brim again. Fuller than last time. He offered her a biscuit, but she shook her head.

“You said you started with women at Ainsley,” she reminded him.

“I saw a boy in a butcher shop here in London,” he said. “I stopped on the pavement outside and took a closer look because he reminded me remarkably of Jon. He had the same sort of facial features and physique, and I guessed that his parents too had been told when he was born that he would not live much beyond the age of twelve. I would have moved on, but even in the minute or so I stood there I could see two things-that he was eager to please and that he did not please at all. Even in that minute he was cuffed twice, once by a customer and once by the butcher for displeasing the customer. I went in and paid the butcher the price of an apprentice-he had taken the boy from an orphanage for next to nothing, I would imagine. I took the boy-Francis-down to Ainsley when I went a few days later. I put him to work in the kitchen and farmyard and he became the adored pet of all the women living there, especially the cook. He died a little more than a year later at the age of thirteen or so-he did not know his exact age. I believe it was a happy year for him.”

He stopped speaking in order to drink his tea. He directed his gaze into his cup as he did so. Hannah busied herself with her own cup in order to give him a few moments to collect himself. She knew she had not imagined the brightening of his eyes and the unsteadiness of his voice.

He had grieved for that butcher’s boy. Francis. The boy who had reminded him of his brother.

“It was meeting him that made me realize,” he said, “that if I wanted the Ainsley project to pay its own way and not be a constant drain on my finite resources, I was going to have to get the farm working at full capacity again. It had been sadly neglected for years. And in order to get it working and earning, I needed workers, many of them men to do the heavy work. And if I was going to hire men anyway, I might as well hire men who were unemployable elsewhere. You would be amazed, Duchess, to discover how many men fit that category-those with physical or mental disabilities, retired or discharged soldiers who have lost limbs or eyes or minds in war and are useless to anyone but themselves in peace, vagabonds, even thieves who steal only because they cannot find employment but do find that they need to eat. I could fill twenty Ainsleys any time I chose.”

No, she would not be amazed.

“Some men,” he said, “are capable of doing more than laboring in the fields, and want more. Some are given training as blacksmiths and carpenters and bricklayers, even bookkeepers and secretaries. And then they are found work elsewhere so that there is room at Ainsley for more. And some of the men and women marry and go off to a new life together.”

“And you have told no one about this?” she said. “No one but me?”

He shook his head and then grinned.

“Yes, actually,” he said. “I told the king.”

“The king?”

“It was before he was king actually,” he said. “He was still the Prince of Wales. Prinny. We were sitting together in that bizarre palace of his in Brighton late one night after everyone else had gone to bed. How it all came about I cannot recall. But we were both deep in our cups and one thing led to another and I told him about Ainsley. I do believe-no, I know-that he hugged me almost hard enough and close enough to break bones and smother me against his enormous bulk. He almost drowned me in sentimental tears. He declared me to be saint and martyr-why martyr, he did not explain-and a host of other extravagantly complimentary things. And he promised to aid me and reward me and bring me to the attention of the whole kingdom and other shudderingly awful things. Fortunately, he forgot all about the whole thing and probably me too as soon as he was sober.”

“I know him quite well,” she said. “The duke was his friend even though the prince-now the king-constantly exasperated him. One cannot help liking the man, ridiculous as he often makes himself. More than anything else in life, he wants to be loved. If the old king and queen had only loved him from the start, he might be a different person today. A far more secure one.”

“And a thinner one?” he said. “He would have had less need for food?”

She looked at him and smiled. And then laughed.

He smiled too and waggled his eyebrows.

It was a strange moment.

She had spent eleven years acquiring wisdom and discipline, ten of those years at the hands of a man who had known all about those two attributes from a long life of experience. Wisdom and discipline. Always guarding one’s real, precious self in a cocoon of tranquillity within a thousand masks.

Life itself had become a secret affair. No one knew of the life she lived behind the appearance. The appearance was everything to the people surrounding her. It was all they knew. The reality within was everything to her.

But suddenly that cocoon was threatened. She had selected a man purely for the sensual delights he could offer, and she had… Oh, what was the word for what he had become to her instead? She had not fallen in love with him. But-

Well, she was somehow deeply involved with him. As his lover, yes. But lovers could be cast off, forgotten, exchanged. They could be kept at a safe distance from the heart. They were for pleasure, for fun.

He was more than her lover.

She had told herself from the start that this year she would devote to pleasure instead of the search for love and permanent happiness. She had told herself that she would cast him off, forget him after this Season was over. And, of course, she would do it. Indeed, she would have no choice anyway. She knew very well that he took a different mistress each year.

But-

But her emotions had somehow got caught up in what was supposed to be a purely physical experience.

The tranquil cocoon of her heart had been ruffled.

The duke had been right. He had warned her that it would happen one day, that cocoons were meant only to guard the fragility of a new life until it was ready to burst forth into the glory of full life.

She ought to have known better than to choose a man of mystery who intrigued her.

For of course his character was layers and layers deep. Some of it was not so pleasant-his sly, intrusive questioning of Barbara at the Kitteridge ball, for example, or his ridiculous pride that had perpetuated an unnecessary quarrel with his cousin and closest friend for years. And some of it… Well, she could love the man whose compassion for those less fortunate than himself ran so deep that he had opened up his home, the heart of his privacy and peace, to them. And all for the simple satisfaction of doing the right thing. Far from looking for accolades, he had told no one about his home or what he was doing with it.

Except the king when they were both drunk.

And now her because he owed it to her.

Oh, she was perilously close to doing something foolish that she would regret for the rest of her life. For Constantine Huxtable was not the right man for permanence. Suddenly she felt the emptiness of the duke’s absence as a great void. If only she could go home and tease him and be teased by him and put her hand in his elderly, arthritic one and be safe again. And ask for his advice. Or his interpretation of what was happening to her.

Yet he had taught her self-reliance, and she had thought the lesson thoroughly learned. He would not want her to be dependent upon him indefinitely. She did not want it.

They were gazing at each other, she and Constantine, she realized, the smile dying on both their lips.

“We could probably hang for treason for saying such things,” she said.

“Or have our heads chopped off,” he said. “Speaking of which-I told Miss Leavensworth that I would arrange to take the two of you to the Tower of London since she has not been there yet. Will you come?”

“I have not been there in an age either,” she said. “Will you come to Copeland for a few days if I arrange a brief house party there?”

“Asking, Duchess?” he said. “Not telling?”

“Well,” she said, “you asked about the Tower, and I could hardly allow myself to be outdone in civility.”

“You are not planning to invite Moreland and his wife too, are you?” he asked her.

“No.” She shook her head. “But ought you not to speak with him sometime soon anyway?”

“Kiss and make up?” he said. “I think not.”

“And so you will go through life unhappy,” she said, “merely because of a little pride.”

“Am I unhappy?” he asked.

She opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again.

“And are you,” he asked, “going to go back to Markle, Duchess, perhaps for Miss Leavensworth’s wedding, and speak with your father and sister and brother-in-law? Is pride going to keep you away?”

“That is a different matter altogether,” she said.

“Is it?”

They stared-or perhaps glared-at each other in a silence neither seemed willing to break. He was the one to do it eventually.

“And so you will go through life unhappy,” he said softly, “merely because of a little pride.”

Touche.

But he had no idea-no idea what he was suggesting.

“I want to go home to Dunbarton House,” she said. “It is late.”