A Secret Affair

guilty about Barbara. She was not going to neglect her friend, after all. They would spend all day every day together.

Oh, this all felt very, very pleasant indeed after the dreariness of the past year. And it had been dreary. The duke would not have expected her to pretend that it was not. She had grieved for him—she still did—but grieving in virtual solitude and in black for a whole year had been tedious in the extreme. He would have told her to go out and enjoy herself—she knew he would. But she had not done that except to ride and ride about the countryside near Copeland and visit her friends at Land’s End every few days. She had been a faithful wife while the duke lived. She had been a faithful widow for the full year of her mourning.

And now—well, now she was enjoying herself enormously. She was not even going to pretend that she was not. She had dreamed of this, planned for it, and it was happening. And the best of it was that the duke would not resent it. She knew he would not.

“One would have to say, Your Grace,” Lord Hardingraye said, “that you have been positively glowing since your return to town. Indeed, if you were to glow any brighter I should have to don an eye shade, and I would be accused of all sorts of eccentricity.”

“You already are eccentric,” she said, smiling at him. “Everyone says so.”

His eyes twinkled back at her.

Constantine was dancing with Lady Fornwald.

Barbara was … not in the ballroom. Hannah looked all about the room, but her friend was nowhere to be seen. She was not even lurking in the quietest corner. She had excused herself after the opening set to go to the ladies’ withdrawing room. But that had been ages ago.

She still had not reappeared when the set was finished. Hannah looked around again at the milling crowd to be sure and then went to check the withdrawing room. But Barbara could not still be in there, surely.

She was, though.

She was sitting in a corner, facing away from the door, ignoring and ignored by a small knot of twittering young ladies who were giggling over something and talking in high squeals. In another corner a maid sat silently waiting to help anyone who needed a torn hem mended or an errant curl returned to its coiffure.

“Babs?” Hannah went to sit beside her. “Are you unwell?”

Barbara would not look at her. She was twisting a handkerchief in her lap. There was no sign of tears on her cheeks, but she looked on the verge of weeping.

“You are going to hate me,” she said. “You will not trust me ever again.”

“Babs?” Hannah said again.

“I betrayed you,” Barbara said. “I know how much you value your privacy, and I betrayed you.”

Extravagant words. Hannah waited for an explanation.

“I told Mr. Huxtable the name of our village,” Barbara said. “I told him about S-Sir Colin Young. I almost told him about … about Dawn. I stopped myself just in time. And I told him Sir Colin was a distant relation of the Duke of Dunbarton.”

“And this is betrayal?” Hannah said after a brief silence. “Did you pour out all this information uninvited, Babs?”

“No,” she said. “He asked me. And I told him. I am so sorry, Hannah. I do not know how you will ever forgive me. You will not even allow me to mention those names to you. And yet I blurted them out blithely to your—To Mr. Huxtable.”

“Were they idle questions?” Hannah asked. “The ones he asked, I mean?”

“I don’t believe so,” Barbara said, and tears welled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. “No, I don’t believe so. He wanted to know, and so he asked a country bumpkin unwise in the ways of the ton. I am so sorry.”

“Silly goose,” Hannah said, setting one hand against the back of Barbara’s bowed neck. “You told him nothing but facts he could have discovered some other way with the greatest ease. You did not exactly inform him that I was a murderess or a bigamist or a … What else might I have been that would have made for a ghastly revelation indeed?”

“A highwayman?” Barbara suggested through her tears.

“Or a highwaywoman,” Hannah said. “You told him almost nothing at all. And really, there is not a great deal to tell anyway, is there? Only a lot of sordid nonsense. There is no grand secret. If I have guarded the details of my past, it is only because I have chosen to do so. I have nothing to hide. Or to hide from.”

“Then why—” Barbara began to ask.

“I am not in hiding, Babs,” Hannah said. “It is just that I am living a new life now and like it infinitely better than I liked the old. I choose not to look back, not to listen to any reminders, not to do anything to revive that life.”

“You are angry,” Barbara said, and her tears flowed faster.

“I am,” Hannah admitted. “But not with you, Babs.” She rubbed her hand harder across her friend’s neck. “I am angry on your behalf. I am angry with a certain gentleman who is going to have to find another waltz partner this evening. He certainly will not be waltzing with me.”

Barbara dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

“I should have left here sooner,” she said, “and gone back to the ballroom and smiled. You know I do not approve of your liaison with Mr. Huxtable, Hannah, but I would not be the cause of any dissension between you.”

“If there is dissension,” Hannah said, “you are not the one who has caused it, Babs. Oh, goodness, your eyes are red. Even your nose is.”

“I do try never to weep,” Barbara said. “This is what always happens when I do, especially the red nose.”

Hannah laughed suddenly.

“Do you remember,” she said, “how we used that fact to our advantage on more than one occasion when we were children? When we broke a window of the greenhouse by playing ball too close to it, for example, and the gardener was stalking toward us breathing fire and brimstone?”

“You told me to cry,” Barbara said, smiling through her tears.

“Your face turned almost instantly red,” Hannah said. “Everyone immediately took pity on you. And how could they punish me if they were petting you and assuring you that it was an accident and you must not upset yourself.”

“Oh, dear,” Barbara said, “we were quite shameless.”

They both laughed. Indeed, for a few moments they sounded remarkably like those very young ladies who had already returned to the ballroom. Music was playing there. The third set was in progress.

Hannah stood up. She had distracted Barbara’s mind slightly, but she was still angry. Furiously so, in fact.

“We will go home,” she said. “I am tired, and you have a red nose. Those are reasons enough.”

“But Hannah—” Barbara looked instantly dismayed.

Hannah was speaking to the maid, though, and the maid was scurrying away to have the duchess’s carriage brought up to the doors.

“Let’s go home,” Hannah said, turning to Barbara with a smile, “and have a cup of tea and a comfortable coze before we go to bed. I will not have you with me for very much longer—unless you want to write to tell your vicar that you have changed your mind about being a vicar’s wife and have decided to remain with me forever and ever, that is.”

“Oh, Hannah—” Barbara said.

“No,” Hannah said with a mock sigh. “I thought you would not. And so I must make the most of your company while I have it.”

“Are you going to … to end your connection with Mr. Huxtable?” Barbara asked.

“I shall deal with that connection and with Constantine Huxtable tomorrow,” Hannah said as she swept from the room.