A Secret Affair

to choose for myself and a plain hairstyle. I tried hanging my head and staying quiet in company. I tried to show that I was not conceited. But finally, with Colin, I felt free to love and to be myself at last.

“I cannot possibly describe how I felt when my father left me after telling me to buck up and look cheerful— the emptiness, the loneliness, the terror. And that was when I discovered that we had not been alone in the library. The Duke of Dunbarton had been there all the time. He had withdrawn there out of boredom with the festivities and was sitting in a wing chair that he had pulled up to a window, his back to the room. I did not know it until I was crying so hard that I thought I would die. Literally die.”

Constantine turned the curricle between the park gates, but he had slowed its pace.

“I will always remember the first words he spoke to me,” Hannah said, closing her eyes. “‘My dear Miss Delmont,’ he said in that bored, sighing voice that was so characteristic of him, ‘no woman can possibly ever be too beautiful. I see I am going to have to marry you and teach you that lesson until you believe it beyond any doubt. I shall make it the final project of my life.’ And strangely, unbelievably, I was laughing at the same time as I was crying. We had all been terrified all day just knowing he was there at the wedding. We had all avoided him as much as we could for fear, I suppose, that he would strike us down with one glance if we presumed to step across his path or raise our eyes to his illustrious person. Yet there he was telling me that he must marry me, that he must make my education the final project of his life. And handing me his fine linen handkerchief with a rather pained expression on his face.”

Constantine had drawn the horses almost to a halt.

“Now are you satisfied?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I feel quite suitably chastened, Duchess. You could not have found a more effective way of punishing me, in fact, than answering all the questions delicacy and tact would not allow me to ask last night. And you have made me feel all the impertinence of the questions I did ask. I beg your pardon, though I realize that apologies are almost always inadequate. For would I now be begging your pardon if I had not been discovered? I do not know, though I did feel remorseful even at the time when I understood that Miss Leavensworth was uncomfortable with my questions and that I was being less than honorable in asking them of her instead of you.”

It was, she supposed, rather handsome as apologies went.

“I shall call on Miss Leavensworth tomorrow if I may,” he said, “and make my apology in person.”

Even at the snail’s pace at which they were moving they would be among the fashionable afternoon crowd soon.

“What now?” he asked. “Do you wish me to take you back home? Would you prefer that we proceed no further with our liaison?”

The last question jolted her. Would she? She would probably have said yes last night or this morning. Even earlier this afternoon. But all he had done, when all was said and done, was ask a few questions about her. Was he so different from her? She wanted to know about him too. Except that she had always planned to drag it all out of him personally.

“Oh,” she said with a determined twirl of her parasol, “I need an affair. I do not need marriage. Not yet, anyway, and perhaps never. I cannot yet let go of the conviction that I am still married to the duke, even though he has been dead for longer than a year.”

“You loved him,” he said.

She turned her head toward him, looking for irony. But she could see none in his face and had heard none in his voice.

“I did love him,” she said, “with all my heart. He was my rock and my security for ten years. He loved me unconditionally and totally. He adored me, and I adored him. No one will ever believe that, of course, but I really do not care.”

She was rather horrified to note that her voice was shaking slightly.

“I believe you,” he said quietly.

“Thank you,” she said. “I need a lover, Constantine. It is too soon for anything else—love, marriage, whatever. And in one way—and one way only—the years of my marriage left me feeling starved. If I let you go, I will have to start all over again to find another lover, and I would find that tiresome.”

“I am forgiven then?” he asked. “I will not pry again, Duchess. You may keep your remaining secrets, if there are any. I will not try to uncover them.”

“You do not want to know me, then?” she asked him. “You do not want to know everything there is to know about me?”

“Like you, Duchess,” he said, “it is a lover I want, not a wife. Curiosity will not get the better of me again.”

“I, on the other hand,” she said, “still want to know everything there is to know about you. A lover is not an inanimate object, after all. Or even just a body, even if it is a very splendid body and makes love in a very satisfactory way.”

He was smiling, she could see when she looked at him—something he did not often do. It was an expression that did strange things to her breathing.

“Forgiveness comes at a price, Constantine,” she said. “You are in my debt. You will answer some of my questions tonight after we have made love.”

“Come home with me now.” He turned his head to look at her.

“Barbara will be home for dinner,” she said, “and I have accepted no invitations for tonight. We are to enjoy a blessed evening at home just talking to each other and enjoying each other’s company. She is more dear to me than anyone else in the world, you know, now that the duke has gone. You will send a carriage at eleven.”

“Does anyone disobey your commands, Duchess?” he asked.

She half smiled at him. “You do not wish to see me tonight?” she asked him. “Or to make love to me?”

He actually grinned.

“I shall send a carriage at eleven,” he said. “You will be ready. If you are not at my house by a quarter past, I shall personally lock the door.”

She laughed.

And they were swallowed up in the crowd.

She felt suddenly and quite breathtakingly happy.

***

BARBARA WAS TIRED after her day at Kew Gardens, though she had had a wonderful time there and told Hannah all about it, especially about the pagoda, which she thought one of the loveliest structures she had ever seen. And she had been perfectly delighted with Simon’s cousins, whom she had not met before. They had treated her as though she were quite one of the family already, and she had made them laugh by trying to see resemblances between them and Simon. She had played a game of hide-and-seek with the children even though they were twelve years old. They were twins, a boy and a girl.

She was eager to hear all about Hannah’s tea party, which had been planned and arranged in such a hurry after breakfast. And she listened in some dismay as Hannah informed her that Constantine would be calling in the morning to apologize for last night.

“You must tell him that he is forgiven,” she said, “as indeed he is. I daresay he meant no real harm, Hannah. He merely wanted to know more about you, and I must honor him for that as it suggests he values you as a person. Perhaps he is in love with you. Perhaps—”

But Hannah was laughing.

“You may convince yourself that you are a dusty spinster, Babs,” she said, “but you will not convince me. You are a romantic, as you have always been. Who else would have waited until she was perilously close to her thirtieth birthday before choosing her life’s companion? Constantine Huxtable’s feelings for me have nothing to do with romance, I do assure you. Which is just as well, you know, because neither do my feelings for him.”

“Do not let him come here tomorrow to speak with me,” Barbara begged. “I would be so embarrassed.”

“I shall try to deter him,” Hannah promised.

Barbara retired to bed soon after ten.