Текст книги "A Secret Affair"

Автор книги: Mary Balogh

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

She laughed.

“And have you tamed me too?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, “most provokingly, Constantine, it has turned out that you are not the devil after all. And I cannot tame what does not exist.”

She turned her head to smile at him.

“Disappointed?” he asked.

Was she? Life would be so much easier-so much more as she had planned it to be-if he really were the ruthless, dangerous, sensuous devil she had taken him for. There would have been all the challenge of pitting her wits against his, of conquering him, of enjoying him. And leaving him and forgetting him when summer came would have been the easiest thing in the world.

But was she disappointed? Or was she being challenged in other ways? Challenged to conquer him, after all. And challenged to conquer herself and the person she had thought she had become.

She was no longer sure who she was. She was not the girl she had been, that was for sure. She was long gone. But she was not the person she had thought she had become either-not now that she was alone to live the life of that person.

She was not nearly as hard as that woman was. Or as certain of her destiny or the route she must take to get there. But the duke had never taught her to be either hard or certain. He had taught her to like herself, to take charge of her life, to be immune to the worst of the jealousies and gossip that were certain to follow her about wherever she went, and…

And to wait for that someone who would be the center of her life’s meaning.

Was Constantine that center?

But her mind turned from the thought in some dismay. Heavens, did she have no sense of self-preservation even after eleven years?

But he was not the devil.

She felt as if she had a whole arsenal of windmills in her head.

“Does that mean yes?” he prompted.

He had asked if she was disappointed.

“Not at all,” she said. “I promised myself the best lover in all England, and I have no reason to suppose I have not found him. For this year, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit, Duchess,” he said. And his eyes laughed into hers again from a face that remained in repose. Not in mockery, she thought, but more in…

Affection?

Well.

But… affection?

The windmills turned in her mind again.

“Now what,” he asked her, “is this about a children’s party at Copeland?”

Ah, yes, and there was that. A purely spur-of-the-moment plan that she must now make a reality.

She never spoke impulsively. Nothing with her was spur of the moment.

Except this visit to the Countess of Sheringford.

And the children’s party at Copeland.

Constantine laughed softly.

“Duchess,” he said, “if you could just see your face now.”

“It will be the best party ever,” she said haughtily.

He laughed again.

14

HANNAH LEFT FOR COPELAND with Barbara three days before any of the house guests were expected to arrive. Not that their presence there was needed. The housekeeper was an exceptionally competent lady who had complete control over her staff and the running of the household. She also had the advantage of being a likable person, to whom all the servants were devoted.

Hannah was well aware that for those three days, as she prowled restlessly about the house, she was in danger of getting under everyone’s feet and possibly on their nerves too. It was somewhat provoking to discover that her household did, in fact, run so smoothly, even under the stress of an imminent house party, that her presence was not needed. She sometimes felt she would be happy if there was a floor somewhere she could get down on her knees to scrub.

How startled and amused the ton would be if they could know that the Duchess of Dunbarton was nervous.

And excited.

The duke had bought Copeland for her when he was a very elderly gentleman indeed. They had come here occasionally and spent a few days at a time. They had even entertained some of their neighbors to tea. Hannah had done some entertaining during her year of mourning here too, but not often and never on any lavish scale. She had been melancholy and quite content to be alone most of the time.

This was to be her first house party here. She wanted everything to be perfect.

She envied-and was somewhat irritated by-Barbara’s cheerfully calm demeanor. She strolled outside with Hannah, even inside on the wet third day, the one before the guests were expected. And she sat for hours on end embroidering or reading or writing letters.

“What if it rains tomorrow?” Hannah asked as they strolled in the gallery on the last day. Rain pattered against the windows at either end.

“Then everyone will hurry inside from their carriages,” Barbara said with great good sense. “It is unlikely to rain hard enough to make the roads impassable.”

“But I do want everyone to see Copeland at its best,” Hannah said.

“Then they will be pleasantly surprised when the sun shines the day after they come,” Barbara said. “Or the day after that.”

“What if it rains every day?” Hannah asked.

Barbara turned her head to look closely at her and linked an arm through hers.

“Hannah,” she said. “Copeland is beautiful under any conditions. And you are beautiful under any conditions-lovely and charming and witty. You must have hosted house parties numerous times before now.”

“But never here,” Hannah said. “And what will it be like having children here, Babs? I have never entertained children.”

“They will be delightful,” Barbara said. “And they will ultimately be their parents’ responsibility, not yours.”

“But the party,” Hannah said, her voice almost a wail. “I have never in my life given a children’s party.”

“But you attended any number of them when we were children,” Barbara reminded her, not for the first time. “And I was in charge of more than a few when Papa was still vicar and Mama was not up to organizing them herself. You have made more than enough preparations to keep them all busy and entertained for every moment of the party.”

“I must have windmills in my head,” Hannah said.

Barbara led her to a bench close to one of the windows, sat them both down, and took Hannah’s hands in her own.

“I am sorry to see your anxiety, Hannah,” she said. “But strangely, you know, I am cheered by it. I do believe that right before my eyes you are becoming the person you were always meant to be. Since I arrived in London, your complexion has started to glow with color and your eyes to sparkle, and your face has become vibrant with life. You are entertaining families, not just a select few high-born aristocrats, and you are busy devising ways of amusing them all and keeping them happy. And I think-”

Hannah raised her eyebrows.

Barbara sighed.

“I ought not to say it,” she said. “You will be annoyed. I am not even sure I want to say it. I think you are falling in love. Or have fallen.”

Hannah snatched her hands away.

“Nonsense!” she said briskly. “And see, Babs? While we have been sitting here, the rain has stopped. And look, you can see the sun as a bright circle behind the clouds. It is going to be shining by tomorrow, and the grass and trees and flowers will look all the brighter and fresher for having been rained upon.”

She got to her feet and approached the window.

She was very inclined to dismiss what Barbara had said about the changes in her until the thought struck her that the duke had intended from the start that she reach this moment when she could finally unveil her real self. And be her real self.

She was finally daring to be the person he had wanted her to be, still a little anxious and uncertain of herself, but ready and eager to meet life and enjoy it instead of protecting herself from it behind the mask of the duchess. She was finally becoming the person she chose to be.

“Babs,” she said, “what shall I wear tomorrow? What color, I mean? White? Or something… brighter?”

And why was she asking? It was something she must decide for herself. It was something she had been debating in her mind for three days, perhaps longer. As if the turning of the world depended upon her making the right decision.

She laughed.

“No answer required,” she said. “I shall decide for myself. What are you going to wear? One of your new dresses?”

“I want Simon to be the first to see me in those,” Barbara said wistfully. “Though I am sure I ought to wear them here, Hannah, where there will be so many illustrious guests.”

“Your vicar must be the first to see them,” Hannah said, turning to look affectionately at her friend. “You have pretty clothes apart from them.”

She was not going to think about what Barbara had just said, Hannah decided. She was simply not.

But it had been three days, and three nights, since she had seen him last. And she knew that though she wanted everything to be perfect for all her guests and that she wanted them all to see Copeland at its best when they arrived tomorrow, she wanted it all to be a little more perfect for Constantine.

Something could not be more perfect than perfect.

But it was what she wanted. For him.

She did not care to pursue her reasons.

“I am starved,” she said. “Let’s go have tea.”

***

COPELAND WAS several miles north of Tunbridge Wells in Kent. The carriage passed through pretty countryside, past orchards and hop fields and grazing cattle. Constantine kept more than half an eye on the scenery as he traveled with Stephen and Cassandra. They might have left the baby with his nurse, who was coming in another carriage, but he was too new and too precious to be let out of their sight except when strictly necessary, it seemed.

Stephen held him most of the way and spoke to him as if he were a little adult. The baby stared solemnly back, except when his eyelids fluttered and he slept. Cassandra straightened his blanket and rearranged his bonnet and smiled at Stephen.

It was all a trifle disconcerting. Not because there were any open and embarrassing displays of affection between husband and wife, but perhaps because there were not. They were so thoroughly comfortable with each other, Stephen and Cassandra, and it was very obvious that young Jonathan was their world. It was all so damnably domestic. And Stephen, by Constantine’s estimation, was twenty-six years old. Nine years younger than he was.

He felt a vague sort of restlessness. And envy.

He really must give serious consideration to finding a suitable wife. perhaps next year. This year he was too tied up with the duchess. But if he was going to have children-and this year, for perhaps the first time, he felt the stirring of a desire to have sons and daughters of his own-he would rather start his family before he reached the age of forty. Even now he was older than he ought to be.

He distracted his mind with conversation and a more careful perusal of the latest report from Harvey Wexford at Ainsley than he had been able to give it at breakfast.

One of the lambs had died-but it had been sickly from birth. The others were all flourishing. So were the calves, except for the two that had been stillborn. The crops were coming through nicely, the weather having been warm for a whole month and the rains having come when they were needed-though they could do with another right about now. Roseann Thirgood, the teacher who had once worked at a London brothel, had purchased a dozen new books for the schoolroom since several of her pupils, both children and adults, could read through the primers that had been bought last year with their eyes shut. Kevin Hurdle had had a rotten tooth pulled and had been walking about house and farm ever since with a large, progressively graying handkerchief tied over his head and beneath his jaw. Dotty, Winifred Baker’s young daughter, who was well suited to her name, had skipped all the way back to the kitchen from the henhouse one morning, swinging her basket of three eggs in wide arcs, with the result that egg yolk and egg white had dribbled all over the kitchen floor that Betty Ulmer had just scrubbed, and the basket was smeared almost beyond redemption. There was a fox paying the farmyard nocturnal visits, though so far it had gone away hungry each time. One of the plow horses was lame, but the offending thorn beneath its shoe had been found and disposed of, and the horse was on the mend. Winford Jones and his new wife sent their heartfelt thanks for the wedding gift Mr. Huxtable had sent them in a separate package last time he wrote.

He closed his eyes and, like the baby, slept for a while.

And then they were there. The carriage turned sharply between stone gateposts, waking them all, Constantine suspected, except Stephen, who had been holding the baby with steady concentration and keeping his shoulder firm for Cassandra’s right cheek to rest against.

The carriage bowled along a very straight driveway, lined with elm trees like soldiers on parade. It ran flat for a while and then sloped upward toward the gray stone house at the crest of the hill. Manor, mansion-it could qualify as either. It was about the same size as Ainsley and square, with a pillared, pedimented portico centered at the front and a flat roof bordered with an ornately carved stone balustrade. Long, narrow windows decreased in size from the first floor to the second to the third. It was a curious and pleasing mix of Jacobean and Georgian in design. The walls were liberally covered with ivy.

The park, Constantine could see, fell away from the house in every direction over lawns, through copses, to denser woods. There was a glimpse of water in the distance. It seemed to him that the elm-lined driveway was the only formal feature in the park.

He liked what he could see of it.

“How perfectly delightful it all is,” Cassandra was saying. “It seems very peaceful here.”

“A child’s paradise,” Stephen said. “I can see what the duchess meant when she told Meg that. An adult’s paradise too. Much as I love London, it always feels good to escape to the countryside once in a while. This house party was an inspired idea of the duchess’s. Would you not agree, Con?”

“Certainly. The air smells clean,” Constantine agreed, “even with the carriage windows shut.”

The driveway ended at a square, graveled courtyard below the wide steps and the imposing pillars. Miss Leavensworth was standing on the lawn to one side of the courtyard with Mr. and Mrs. Park and Mr. and Mrs. Newcombe, whom Constantine had met at the Tower of London.

Katherine and Monty were standing on the lawn at the other side, young Hal astride Monty’s shoulders. Sherry was a short distance away, holding Alex’s hands above his head while the child toddled across the grass to destinations unknown. Margaret and a few other unidentified persons-no, one of them was her daughter, Sarah-were strolling up from the direction of the water. Toby, Margaret and Sherry’s elder son, was up a tree with a larger boy-one of the Newcombe twins.

His own group was, Constantine guessed, the last to arrive.

Hannah was partway up the steps. She was wearing sunshine yellow. And piled curls that looked as though they might tumble down at any moment-though Constantine would wager they would not. And a wide smile and flushed cheeks and sparkling blue eyes.

He sucked in a breath and then hoped it had been inaudible.

He had not seen her for three days. She had come out here early to make sure everything was ready for her guests. It seemed to Constantine more like three weeks.

She looked like a girl. No, like a very young lady new to the world and full of optimism and hope and joy.

She stepped down into the courtyard when the coachman had opened the carriage door and set down the steps and handed Cassandra down.

“Lady Merton,” she said, “welcome to Copeland. I positively refused to worry about you after Lady Montford explained to me that you had to stop on the road more often than the rest of my guests because you are nursing the baby. Even so, it is so good to see the last of my guests safely arrived.”

She offered her right hand, and Cassandra took it.

“I am very happy to be here,” she said. “How inspired someone was to build the house just here. One cannot imagine a lovelier spot.”

“One cannot,” the duchess agreed and turned to Stephen. “And Lord Merton. Welcome. Oh, and the baby.”

She took a step closer and peered gingerly at him.

“Oh, he is beautiful,” she said, and she was more than just a woman enthusing over another woman’s child because it was expected of her.

“He is lovelier to hold,” Stephen said, smiling, and he laid the blanket-bound bundle of his son in her arms.

She looked startled, alarmed, and…

And suddenly there was a raw, naked look on her face for which Constantine could find no words. She was no longer smiling. She did not need to.

And then she did smile again… slowly.

“He is adorable,” she said. “I believe I am in love. What is his name?”

“Jonathan,” Stephen said.

“Oh.” She looked up at him and then at Constantine.

“With Con’s permission,” he added and took the baby back from her. “My predecessor, Con’s brother, was Jonathan too. Has he told you?”

“Yes,” she said. And she turned to him at last and held out both her hands. “Constantine. Welcome.”

“Duchess,” he said. “Thank you.”

He grasped her hands and kissed one of her cheeks. And smiled.

She was smiling back.

And Lord. Oh, good Lord.

He withdrew his hands and turned to look about. He drew air slowly into his lungs.

“I can see why you love Copeland and want to show it off,” he said. “It is a fine place.”

“Yes,” she said softly. Wistfully?

Sarah came whizzing up ahead of Margaret and her group, clutching a bunch of daisies in one hand.

“Uncle Con,” she yelled. “For you, Your Grace.” She thrust the daisies into Hannah’s hand. “Uncle Steve. Let me see the baby.”

Constantine looked at Hannah again. She was smiling down at her daisies. Which became her more than the diamonds she usually wore. Her eyes came up to meet his once more, and they both smiled.

This, he thought, was perhaps not a good idea after all.

He did not ask himself what this was.

***

IT SEEMED AN AGE TO HANNAH, an eternity since she had seen Constantine.

And then, when she did see him, she realized how much her perception of him had changed over time. He was no longer the dark, mysterious, possibly dangerous, and very attractive near-stranger she had been half aware of for a number of years, the man she had decided over the winter would be her first lover, the aloof, somewhat mocking man she had seen in Hyde Park earlier this spring, riding with Lord Montford and the Earl of Merton. He was no longer the exciting, difficult challenge he had been when she had toyed with him during a couple of meetings until he took charge of the situation on the third and rushed her into beginning their affair that very night, long before she had expected the consummation.

Seeing him day by day in London, she had not realized how very much he had changed in her perception since that night. Today, she watched the approach of the Earl of Merton’s carriage, knowing that he was within, and she could feel her heartbeat quicken. And as she greeted first the countess and then the earl, even as she saw and then held the great wonder of their newborn baby, she could feel Constantine’s presence like a warm glow inside.

And then, at last, she had been free to turn to him, to look at him, to reach out both hands to him.

And he was simply Constantine.

She was not at liberty to probe that very unprofound thought. She did not want to probe it. But there was a soreness in her chest and throat, as though she held back tears.

She welcomed him and smiled at him and was glad she had not probed her feelings or-horror of horrors-shed a few tears when he turned coolly away from her and made some polite remark about Copeland.

Briefly she wished that after all she had worn a white dress and decked herself out with diamonds and been the person who lived safely behind the facade of the Duchess of Dunbarton. But no, she did not really wish it. For these four days she had chosen to be herself without the safety of any cocoon. It had become strangely important to her to impress Constantine’s relatives. Not as the Duchess of Dunbarton, but as Hannah. As herself.

It was hard to admit that she had been hurt by their initial refusal of her invitation, because she had decided long ago that she would never again allow herself to be hurt by the behavior and opinions-or rejection-of others. But perhaps she had been a little bit hurt this time. She did not know quite why.

They had changed their minds and come. Had it been because of her visit to Claverbrook House? She supposed it must have been. Had her offer to have the children here as well as the adults made the difference? Had the marquess said something after she left? Had Constantine said something? Surely not, though. The reason they disliked her, Hannah suspected, was that they wanted better for him than someone of her notoriety.

However it was, she had been given her second chance, and she wanted to impress them. To show them that she was… human. To show them that she was not the arrogant, ruthless, heartless upstart she knew she was rumored to be. To show them that she could be a warm and welcoming hostess.

And within moments of his arrival the Earl of Merton had let her hold his baby.

And Lord Sheringford’s little girl had picked her a bunch of daisies from the unscythed grass down by the lake and shoved them into her hand as she dashed past toward the greater allure of her baby cousin as though Hannah was not anyone so very special.

It felt good indeed to be someone who was not so very special.

Someone of whom a child need not stand in awe.

She would put the daisies in a glass and place it on the table beside her bed. They seemed more precious than roses-or diamonds.

“I will have you taken up to your rooms,” she told the earl and countess and Constantine. “And we will all meet on the west terrace for tea. The weather is warm enough, and the children can eat with us and then play on the grass if they wish instead of being cooped up in the nursery.”

She took Constantine’s offered arm, and they led the way up the steps to the house. Why had she never thought of having children at any of her other house parties or country entertainments? Not only had she remained childless to the age of thirty, but she had also remained without any connection to children.

She had not even realized until this very moment how much she must have yearned for children all these years without ever admitting it to herself. What would have been the point of admitting it, though? She had been married to an old man who had had only one lover all his life-and that another man.

“I hope,” she said to Constantine, “you had a pleasant journey down from London.”

“Very pleasant, thank you, Duchess,” he said.

As though they were polite strangers.

What was it going to be like meeting him next year? But she would think of that when next year came. For now it was this year.

“I am glad to hear it,” she said.

***

THE DUCHESS LOOKED, Constantine thought, as if she had shed ten years in the three days since he had last seen her.

And at least ten layers of armor and masks.

There was the sunshine yellow of her dress. And the sunshine of her smiles. And the rural setting, in which she looked, quite unexpectedly, far more at home than she looked in London.

She could not possibly be looking more beautiful. And yet she was.

They had all assembled on the terrace outside the drawing room for tea, where she sparkled as a hostess, and then, when they had eaten and drunk their fill, Margaret’s Toby and Thomas Finch, the middle son of Hugh Finch and his wife, demanded a game of ball. There was a ball apparently-it had come with Margaret and Duncan.

There were several children of the party, ranging in age from Stephen and Cassandra’s newborn to the twelve-year-old twins of the Newcombes. But it was not good enough for the children to play with one another, of course. Not when there was a largish gathering of idle, perfectly able-bodied adults sitting outdoors just yearning for some vigorous amusement. The fathers at least must come and play.

And since the fathers did not see why they should be victimized just because they had sired children a number of years ago when they knew no better, they demanded that the other men too come and enjoy some exercise-Constantine, Sir Bradley Bentley, and Lawrence Astley. After all, they had all been cooped up inside carriages for most of the day, and here they were idling around in chairs again as if there were nothing better to do.

And then a few of the mothers were offended that they were considered incapable of throwing a ball about without making utter cakes of themselves, and Miss Julianna Bentley, Sir Bradley’s sister, pointed out to everyone that she had been sitting in a carriage today just as long as any of the men. Astley’s sister, Miss Marianne Astley, murmured an agreement. Miss Leavensworth reminded the duchess of all the games of cricket they had played on the village green when they were growing up and remembered that she had always been put all the way out on the road when it was her team’s turn to field because she could catch a ball and had a good throwing arm. And the duchess remembered that she had always had a pretty good arm too because all those odious boys had actually allowed her to bowl the occasional over.

“Yes,” Miss Leavensworth agreed, “you had that wicked wobble ball that no one could ever hit, Hannah. All of us found ourselves sawing at the air with the bat, thinking it a sure six because the ball was moving so slowly, and then it would wobble past and shatter the wickets.”

“Come, then,” the duchess said, getting to her feet, “let us go and play ball.”

The Duchess of Dunbarton?

Playing ball?

Constantine caught Katherine and Sherry both looking at her in some surprise, and then looking at him.

They all walked down the sloping lawn beyond the terrace until they were on ground flat enough for a game. Toby and Thomas, who had gone to fetch the ball, came dashing after them, and with the exception of a few people who insisted that no game could have any legitimacy if it did not have some spectators, they all formed a large circle about an empty center that Toby soon occupied because it was after all his ball. They hurled the ball across the circle to one another, trying to hit Toby’s lower legs in the process. The one to succeed took Toby’s place in the center and the game resumed.

It was probably, Constantine decided, one of the most pointless games ever invented. However, it occasioned a great deal of shouting and jeering and laughing-and a little crying too when Sarah somehow found herself in the middle and was hit with the very first ball. She wailed until Hannah dashed in there with her and scooped her up in her arms.

“That was a foul,” she cried in a very unduchesslike voice. “It hit Sarah on the knee instead of below the knee. Now try.”

And she proved remarkably nimble despite the fact that Sarah was shrieking and had taken a death grip about her neck, and despite the fact that she herself was laughing so hard that it was a wonder she could catch her breath. She jumped and dodged until Lawrence Astley clipped her on the ankle with the ball.

Constantine would have lost his wager. One curl had come free of its pins, and one untidy blond ringlet bounced against the duchess’s shoulder as she set Sarah down on the outer edge of the circle and Astley pranced about in the middle. She pushed the curl up under some of the others, but it was down again within moments.

Her face was flushed.

So were all their faces, actually, except for those of the spectators.

The game came to a natural end when Sir Bradley Bentley, who had just been hit, stretched out on the grass in the center of the circle and declared that if anyone so much as whispered the word exercise for the rest of the day, he was going to take to his bed and not leave it until the day after tomorrow. At the earliest.

Young Hal, Monty’s son, jumped on him. Five-year-old Valerie Finch followed suit, and soon Bentley was lost beneath a writhing, shrieking mass of children.

“I think,” the duchess said, “more tea in the drawing room is called for. Or something stronger. Definitely something stronger, in fact. Babs, will you see to it for me, if you please? I am going to have to make some repairs to my hair.”

They all made their way up the slope to the house-except for the duchess, who stood where she was, fiddling ineffectually with her hair and watching them go.

And except for Constantine, who stood where he was, watching her.

She turned her head to look at him.

“I am a mess,” she said.

“You are,” he agreed.

She smiled. “That was not very gallant.”

“It was a compliment,” he told her.

“Oh.” She lowered her hands and tipped her head to one side. “That was very gallant, then. I do not think I am very much needed in the drawing room. Babs will see to it that everyone has something to drink, and then everyone will want to retire to rest for a while before changing for dinner. Let me show you the lake.”

“I have missed you,” he said softly.

He was alarmed by how much.

“And I you,” she said. “I had no idea that having a lover would be quite so… lovely. Is it always so?”

He grinned at her.

“You are either fishing for more compliments, Duchess,” he said, “or you have just asked me an impossible question.”

“Come and see the lake,” she said and took his arm even before he could offer it.

Who in his right mind could have guessed that the Duchess of Dunbarton of all people would turn out to be such an innocent?

I had no idea that having a lover would be quite so lovely. Is it always so?

Was it?

Was it lovely this time? Was it always lovely? He was not in the habit of comparing mistresses. Or of analyzing what were really just physical sensations.

“You see what I mean?” she said as they wound their way about the trunks of ancient trees on their way down to the lake. “I have allowed trees to dictate to me. I should have some of them chopped down so that a proper avenue could be constructed here, leading straight down from the house. Lined with rhododendron bushes. Affording a picturesque vista from the house. With a boating jetty straight ahead. And a boat bobbing on the water, of course. And an artfully pretty island in the middle of the lake. And the lake itself redesigned to be kidney-shaped or oval or something describable.”