A Secret Affair

setting her feet down again and smiling into her eyes.

They were sadly sexless days. Why, then, was he feeling so exuberant? So … happy?

They stared at each other, and suddenly the air about them pulsed with unspoken words. Words he was afraid to speak aloud lest he discover later tonight that he had been overhasty. Words she might have spoken aloud but did not. Did he imagine that she had words to say?

Could it be that this was more than the simple euphoria of being in love?

He did not know. He had never been in love before.

He certainly did not know that other thing, that love that went beyond the euphoria. That forever-after thing.

How did one know?

And so the words remained unspoken. On his side, certainly. And perhaps on hers too.

They retrieved their horses and wound their way through the trees until they came out onto open ground at one end of the lake. They walked side by side, easier though it would have been to walk single file. They were hand in hand. Their fingers were laced.

It felt more intimate than an embrace.

***

HANNAH HAD NOT PLANNED anything specific for the evening. She thought her guests would appreciate a quiet time in which they might do whatever they pleased. Marianne Astley, however, suggested a game of charades soon after the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room following dinner, and everyone seemed happy to join in.

It went on for a couple of hours until some people began to drop out and declared their intention of merely watching.

Hannah found herself drawn to one side by Lady Merton.

“I am going to step outside onto the terrace for some air, if I may,” the latter said, indicating the open French windows. “Will you join me?”

Hannah glanced around. No one would need her for a while. Barbara, flushed and animated, was acting out a phrase for her team, which was yelling out responses that elicited laughter and a few jeers from the opposing team.

“It is warm in here,” Hannah said.

It was cool outside but not unpleasant enough on the bare flesh of their arms to send them scurrying inside for shawls.

Lady Merton linked an arm through hers, and they strolled across the terrace and a little way out onto the lawn, where the light from the drawing room still made it possible for them to see where they were going.

“Miss Leavensworth is a lovely lady,” Lady Merton said. “You and she have been friends all your lives, she was telling us earlier.”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “I have been very fortunate.”

“But she lives far away from you most of the time,” Lady Merton said. “That is unfortunate. I have a dear friend who was once my governess and was then my companion. But always she was my friend, the one in whom I could confide anything and everything. She married last year, just before Stephen and I did. She is happily wed, I am glad to say, and she lives in London most of the year with Mr. Golding, her husband. I miss her even so. Close friends need to be close.”

“I am always thankful,” Hannah said, “that someone invented paper and ink and pens—and writing.”

“Yes,” her companion agreed. “But without Alice by my side almost every moment of the day last spring, I would have been dreadfully lonely. I was a widow, I was widely believed to have killed my husband, and I had been abandoned by my husband’s family and for a while by my own brother too.”

This, Hannah realized, was not just idle chatter.

“Even with Alice I was frequently lonely,” the countess said. “Until I met Stephen, that was, and was adopted by his family. They did not take to me easily, as you may imagine. But they are remarkable ladies, his sisters. They grew up in humble surroundings and in near-poverty, and seem far more able to see to the heart of a matter than many other members of the beau monde. And far more capable of compassion and understanding and true friendship.”

“You were fortunate indeed, Lady Merton,” Hannah said.

“You may call me Cassandra if you wish,” the countess said.

“Cassandra,” Hannah said. “It is a lovely name. I am Hannah.”

They stopped walking and both looked up at the moon, which had just drawn clear of a cloud. It was just off the full and looked lopsided.

“Hannah,” Cassandra said, “we made a mistake.”

“We?” Hannah asked.

“Stephen and his sisters did not even know of Constantine’s existence until they arrived at Warren Hall and met him,” Cassandra said. “They loved him immediately, and of course they felt dreadfully sorry for him because he had recently lost his last surviving brother. They understood how difficult it must have been for him to see them take over his home and to see Stephen take the title that had so recently been his brother’s. And of course there was all that business of his having been born just a couple of days too early to be able to inherit himself. Constantine is a very private and secretive man, and he has a long-standing quarrel with Elliott and now with Vanessa too, but nevertheless the rest of them are desperately fond of him and want above all to see him happy.”

“I have no intention of marrying him,” Hannah said, keeping her eyes on the moon. “Or of breaking his heart. We are engaged in an affair, Cassandra, as I am sure you are all very well aware, but not of the heart.”

She was not at all sure she spoke the truth, but it was probably the truth from his perspective, and that was all that mattered to his family. Though this afternoon …

“But that is the whole point,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “We were concerned, Hannah. Although Constantine is in his thirties and well able to look after his own affairs, nevertheless you are different from other women. We thought it altogether possible that you would toy with his affections, humiliate him, perhaps even hurt him. While we did not believe we needed to protect him from you—that would have been absurd—we did believe we ought to show our disapproval when we could.”

“And so,” Hannah said, “you refused my invitation to come here. It was your right. There is never any compulsion to accept invitations that are not to one’s liking. I never do. The duke taught me to assert myself in such ways. He taught me not to endure unnecessary boredom or to suffer fools gladly all in the name of obligation where there is no obligation. You do not owe me an explanation of why you refused, or why you changed your minds and came.”

“Hannah,” Cassandra said, “I was horribly misjudged when I arrived in London last year, and I was ostracized. There is no worse feeling, much as one may tell oneself that one does not care. You are not ostracized by society. Quite the contrary, in fact. But you are misjudged.”

“Perhaps,” Hannah said, drawing Lady Merton toward a bench beneath an oak tree close by, “I choose to be misjudged. There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is privacy even in the most public situation, in knowing that one can very effectively hide in full sight.”

They seated themselves and Cassandra laughed softly.

“I was destitute as well as everything else when I arrived in London last year,” she said, “and I had other persons dear to me to support as well as myself. I decided that the only way I could do it was to find a wealthy protector. And so I went to a ball to seduce Stephen, who looked to me like an angel. I made the mistake of believing that angels must also necessarily be weak and easily led—but that is another story. I can remember standing in that ballroom, an empty space all about me, everyone shocked that I would have come there uninvited, and wishing that I could curl into a tiny ball and simply disappear. I was sustained by the realization that no one knew me, that my real self was safely hidden deep within the brazen red-haired axe-murderer everyone thought they saw.”