A Secret Affair

“She could not keep her mouth shut, then?” he asked bitterly.

“She being the Duchess of Dunbarton?” Stephen said. “She was beside herself with anxiety, Con, not just for you but also for that poor condemned man. She begged me to escort her to London so that she could appeal to Elliott. She believed he could help. Are we still needed? Have you been able to clear up the madness without us?”

“I have not,” Constantine said. “But I do not need help, Stephen. Neither yours nor Moreland’s. The house is full. There are no rooms to spare. May I suggest not staying at the village inn but driving on to a more respectable coaching inn?”

He was behaving badly. He knew it and was powerless to stop it. He was so dashed tired. And angry. And terrified.

“A stubborn mule,” Elliott said. “He named himself well, Stephen, would you not agree? But this pompous ass has not come all the way from London only to be sent on to the nearest coaching inn. He is going to throw his weight around—for what it may be worth.”

Stubborn mule. Pompous ass. She really had been talking.

“I don’t need you, Moreland,” Constantine said. “And this is my property. Get off it.”

“I know you don’t need me, Con,” Elliott said. “But perhaps Jess Barnes does. Not that I can promise to be any help. But I have come to try, and I am staying until I have done so even if I have to sleep in the carriage just beyond the gates of your property.”

“Con,” Stephen said, “we care. A whole lot of people care. And why the devil did you not tell us about this place when I first came to Warren Hall? Why make such a secret affair of it?”

“It was upon your jewels, or what were potentially yours,” Constantine said, “that this place came into existence, Stephen. If you are as rich as a monarch now, you would have been as rich as Croesus if those jewels had not been put to another use.”

“Do you think I would have cared?” Stephen asked. “Do you honestly think it, Con? Or that Meg would have cared? Or Nessie or Kate? Did you not owe it to your brother’s memory to tell us?”

“No,” Constantine said. “Jon did not do this to impress anyone. He did it because he wanted to, because it was right. And if I had told you, then Elliott would have known, and he would have done all in his power to reverse what had been done. This project was in its fragile early stages at the time.”

“Surely he would not if you had explained,” Stephen said. “Would you, Elliott?”

They both looked at him. He was staring at the ground, his features hard. There was a lengthy silence.

His cousin, Constantine thought. His best friend most of his life. His partner in crime when they had both gone to London as very young men to sow some wild oats.

And then Elliott’s father had died suddenly, not long after Jon had made his ghastly discovery about their own late father’s activities and dreamed his dream of Ainsley and made Constantine promise to tell no one about it. Jewels had been sold, Elliott had noticed they were missing and almost at the same time had found out about all those women and their children in the neighborhood. And the whole mess had blown up in the faces of Elliott and Con.

Ass and mule.

There was a soreness in Constantine’s chest as he waited for Elliott to answer Stephen’s question.

“I loved Jonathan,” he said at last, without lifting his eyes. “It was a painful thing, that love. And then my father died, and I was responsible for him. I knew you were quite capable of looking after both him and his affairs, Con. But I was young and almost overwhelmed by all my new duties, and I felt obliged to do all that was proper and fully understand his business before bowing out and leaving all to you as my father did before me. But then I found that a large number of the jewels were missing, and you refused to explain but merely told me to go to hell when I asked, and—”

“You did not ask,” Constantine said, his voice flat.

His cousin looked up with an impatient frown.

“Of course I asked,” he said. “I could not simply let something like that go, Con.”

“You did not ask,” Constantine said again. “You told me I was a thief.”

“I did not,” Elliott said.

“Did.” Constantine grinned without humor. “Did, didn’t, did, didn’t. Sound familiar, Elliott? We must have spent half our boyhood saying one or other of those words to each other. Often it ended in fisticuffs and then laughter. But not this time. It does not matter anyway. Even if you had asked and I had answered and you had believed me, you would not have allowed it to go on. You would have stopped Jon and ruined what turned out to be his life’s work. His legacy.”

“Surely not—” Stephen began.

But Elliott was staring at Constantine with unfathomable eyes.

“I probably would have,” he admitted. “My instinct was to protect Jonathan, even from himself. I always marveled at the way you treated him like a regular person, Con, but one who needed to be met at his own level. I always marveled that you could play with him for hours on end even when he had passed childhood. I thought my duty to him needed to be taken seriously. But you used to make a game even out of that and infuriate me. And you did it deliberately. You can have no idea how—”

He stopped abruptly and shook his head, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“You are quite right,” he said. “I would have stopped him. I would have assumed that he could not possibly know just what he was doing. But he did know, didn’t he? You always used to say, Con, that Jonathan was love. Not just loving, but love. You were right about that too. And you were right not to answer my questions—if indeed I asked them as I am convinced I must have. You were right to keep your secrets. You were right to be a stubborn mule.”

“Don’t send us away, Con,” Stephen said. “Perhaps Elliott can help. Perhaps I can. Perhaps not. But don’t send us away. We are your relatives, and you need us even if you do not realize it. Besides, the Duchess of Dunbarton sent us, and I believe she may well be brokenhearted if you turn us away without allowing us even to try.”

Constantine stared broodingly at him.

Hannah had sent them.

Hannah.

The soreness in his chest deepened.

“There are spare rooms at the dower house,” he said, pointing off to the east to where the house could just be seen nestled among the trees not far from the artificial lake that a previous owner had had constructed. “It is where I live. If it is not too humble for your tastes, you may stay there.”

It was a grudging enough invitation. He was not sure if he was glad to see them or not. Perhaps it did not matter how he felt, though. He was not the issue here. Jess was. Could Elliott help? Elliott with his damned dukedom and his aristocratic air of consequence?

And his honesty?

“Please come to stay with me,” he said before either man could answer. “You need baths and rest and a good meal before anything else. Come.”

“When—” Elliott began.

“Four days,” Constantine said abruptly. “There is all the time in the world.”

And he went striding off ahead of them down the gravel path that led to the dower house.

Four days.

He could hear them coming behind him.

Chapter 19

ELLIOTT AND STEPHEN went off to call on the judge the following morning, both dressed