A Secret Affair

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.”

“With a temple folly or a small cottage folly on the opposite bank,” he said. “Built so that from the house it could be seen perfectly reflected in the water and centered down the avenue.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But you have not done it.”

“I have not,” she agreed mournfully. “Constantine, I like being dictated to by nature. Why should I take down an oak tree that has been growing for perhaps three or four hundred years merely because it is in the way of a picturesque prospect from the house?”

“Why, indeed?” he agreed. “Especially as the house has not been there as long as the tree, I would estimate.”

“And why build a folly?” she asked. “What is the point of it? I have never quite understood. It is all so …”

“Foolish?” he suggested when her free hand described circles in the air but did not seem able to supply her with the word she wanted.

“Precisely,” she said. “Follies are foolish. You are laughing at me, Constantine.”

“I am,” he agreed as they arrived at the bank of the lake and stopped walking.

She laughed.

“But am I right or am I wrong?” she asked.

“You like Copeland as it is?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “Wild and undisciplined as it is, I like it. And though the terrain and scenery are just perfect for a wilderness walk, I have stubbornly resisted having one designed and constructed. How can something be both man-made and a wilderness? It is a contradiction in terms.”

“And given the choice between wilderness and art,” he said, “you choose wilderness.”

“I do,” she said. “Am I wrong?”

“I am confused,” he said. “Is this the Duchess of Dunbarton asking someone else—me, to be precise—if she is right or wrong?”

She sighed.

“But you see, Constantine,” she said, “there is need for something wild in my life. Let it be my garden, then. There, I have decided. I am not going to have avenues and follies and vistas and wilderness walks at Copeland. Thank you for your opinion and advice.”

He turned her to him, wrapped his arms about her, and kissed her hard and openmouthed. She twined her arms about his neck and kissed him back.

It felt amazingly good to hold her again. To taste her. To smell her.

“You see,” he said when he lifted his head, “if there were an avenue from the house, we would be perfectly framed in it, Duchess, and all your guests would be lined up at the drawing room windows to admire the prospect.”

“And so they would,” she said, and favored him with one of her wide, full-face smiles. “But since there is not …”

He kissed her again, pressing his tongue into her mouth, feeling her fingers twine in his hair, her body arch inward to fit itself to his as his arms tightened about her waist.

He wondered what would happen if he fell in love with Hannah, Duchess of Dunbarton.

He really had no idea. He might introduce chaos into his life.

Or paradise.

Not to mention what it might do to his heart.