A Secret Affair

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.