A Secret Affair

Perhaps they were afraid she would corrupt Constantine. Or hurt him. Or make a fool of him.

Probably that last point.

Hannah had been taught—and had taught herself—not to care what anyone thought of her. Except the duke, of course. He had frowned at her perhaps two or three times in all the ten years of their marriage, though he had never raised his voice against her, and each time she had felt that the world had surely come to an end. And except the servants at Dunbarton House and their other establishments in the country. Servants always knew one for who or what one really was, and it mattered to Hannah that they like her. She believed they did.

And now—annoyingly—she discovered that she did not like being shunned by three families that had meant nothing whatsoever to her until she had taken their second cousin as her lover.

Why she did not like it she did not know, except that they had inconvenienced her and she was going to have to invite other people to take their place.

“The third refusal,” she said, holding aloft the note from the Countess of Sheringford at the breakfast table. “And now none of them is coming to Copeland, Babs. It makes me feel a little as though I must have leprosy. Is it because I always wear white, do you suppose? Do I look sickly?”

Barbara looked up with blank eyes from her own letter. It was a long one—it must be from the Reverend Newcombe.

“No one is coming?” she said. “But I thought you had already had several acceptances, Hannah.”

“No one from Constantine’s family,” Hannah explained. “His father’s side of the family, anyway. They are the ones to whom he appears to be closest. But they have all refused.”

“That is a pity,” Barbara said. “Will you invite other people instead? There is still time, is there not?”

“Do they believe it would be distasteful to come to Copeland because Constantine and I are lovers?” Hannah asked, frowning at the offending piece of paper in her hand. “I was always rumored to have lovers, even when it was not true, but no one ever shunned me. Even when I was still married.”

Barbara set her letter down, resigned to the interruption.

“You are upset?” she asked.

“I am never upset,” Hannah said. Then she set down her own letter and smiled ruefully at her friend. “Well, a little, I suppose. I had looked forward to having them there.”

“Why?” Barbara asked. “When one is to have one’s lover at a house party, Hannah, why would one want his family there too?”

It was a good question and one she had been asking herself just a few moments ago.

“Is it a little like inviting one’s family to join one on honeymoon?” Hannah asked.

They both laughed.

“But we will, of course, behave with the utmost discretion,” Hannah said. “Good heavens, the very idea that we might not. You will be there and all sorts of other respectable guests.”

“Then the cousins will be missing a pleasant few days in the country,” Barbara said, laying a hand on her letter again. “It will be their loss.”

“But I wanted them there,” Hannah said, hearing too late the slight petulance of her tone. And there was that word again that she had been warned against—wanted, but could not have.

Well, you cannot always have what you want, she expected Barbara to say before returning her attention to her vicar’s love letter. But she said something else instead.

“Hannah,” she said, “you are not behaving at all like the jaded aristocrat with a new lover you like to see yourself as. You are behaving like a woman in love.”

“What?” Hannah half screeched.

“Is it not a little peculiar,” Barbara asked—and she looked suddenly every inch a vicar’s daughter, “that you should care for the good opinion of your lover’s relatives?”

“I do not care—” Hannah began, and stopped. “I am not in love, Babs. How ridiculous. Just because you are, you think I must be too?”

“You said just now,” Barbara said, “that you were always rumored to have lovers even when it was not true. Was it ever true, Hannah? I never have believed it of you. The Hannah I used to know could never dishonor her marriage vows even if the circumstances of her marriage were … unusual.”

Hannah sighed. “No, of course there was never any truth in the rumors,” she said.

“Then Mr. Huxtable is your first lover,” Barbara said. It was a statement, not a question. “I do not believe the Hannah I once knew or the Hannah I know now can be simply blasé about that fact. And I saw you together at the Tower and at Gunter’s. You are fond of him.”

“Well, of course I am fond of him,” Hannah said crossly—goodness, when had she last allowed herself to be cross? “I could not dislike or despise or even be entirely indifferent to any man who was my lover, could I?”

But why not be indifferent, at least? It was what she had expected to be, was it not?

“I know very little of gentlemen of the ton and really nothing whatsoever of Mr. Huxtable,” Barbara said, “except that I liked him far more than I expected to do when he took us to the Tower. I thought he seemed fond of you too, Hannah. But I do not know. And I am afraid for you. I am afraid you will end up hurt. Heartbroken.”

“I am never hurt, Babs,” Hannah said. “And never, ever heartbroken.”

“I would hate to see you either,” Barbara said. “But I would hate even more to believe that neither was possible. It would mean that you had not got the point at all of why the Duke of Dunbarton married you and loved you.”

Hannah fixed her eyes upon her friend. She felt suddenly cold. And afraid to move so much as a muscle.

“The point?” The words came out in a whisper.

“So that you could be made whole again,” Barbara said. “And ready for love—real love—when it came along. The duke did not see just your beauty, Hannah. He called you an angel, did he not? He saw all your essential sweetness and your shattered joy on that day when you discovered the truth about Dawn and Colin. Even now you have not seen how very special you are, have you? The duke saw it.”

Barbara went suddenly out of focus, and Hannah realized that her eyes were swimming in tears. She got abruptly to her feet, almost tipping her chair in her haste to push it back.

“I am going out,” she said. “I am going to call upon the Countess of Sheringford. I would rather go alone. Will you mind?”

“I did not have time yesterday to write more than a few lines to either Mama and Papa or Simon,” Barbara said. “I need to write longer letters this morning. I am starting to feel selfish and neglectful.”

Hannah hurried from the room.

To call upon the Countess of Sheringford? Whatever for?

***

TOBIAS—TOBY—PENNETHORNE, Sheringford’s eight-year-old son and Margaret’s too by adoption, had developed an insatiable interest in the geography of the world, and Constantine had spied the perfect gift for him in a shop window on Oxford Street, though his birthday was nowhere on the horizon. No matter. He bought the large globe anyway.

And because he could not show favoritism to one child when there were three, he bought a gaudily painted spinning top for three-year-old Sarah and an impressively loud wooden rattle for one-year-old Alexander.

He bore his offerings off to the home of the Marquess of Claverbrook on Grosvenor Square, where Margaret and Sheringford lived when they were in town—Sherry was the marquess’s grandson and heir. And he spent a pleasant hour in the nursery with Margaret and the children, Sherry being from home. He began to have doubts about the rattle, though, when Sarah appropriated it and decided that shattering everyone else’s eardrums as well as her own was to be the game of the morning. The baby meanwhile was fascinated by the top, though he spoiled the lovely spinning and humming each time someone set it in motion by grabbing the toy before it stopped. He howled in cross protest every time.