by Mary Balogh
He had tried a number of times over the years to resent, even to hate, Stephen, who had inherited Jon’s title and had turned up at Warren Hall at the age of seventeen as the new owner, bringing his sisters with him. They had all been strangers to Constantine, who had not even known of their existence until Elliott and his solicitors had searched the family tree and found a distant heir. Even then it had not been easy to track him down to some remote village in Shropshire.
Constantine had been sick with hatred before he met them. They were coming to invade his home, to trample upon his memories, to take over what ought by rights to have been his. More important than all that, Jon was buried on land that now belonged to a stranger.
Even afterward he had hated them for a while.
But how could one hate Stephen once one got to know him? It would be like hating angels. And his sisters were equally hard to dislike. They had been so very pleased, all of them, to discover him. They had embraced him as a long-lost member of their family. They had been sensitive to how he must feel about the whole succession.
Margaret and Duncan, Earl of Sheringford, had also been invited to dinner, Constantine discovered when he arrived at Merton House. Margaret was the eldest of the three sisters, the one who had held the family together after the early death of their parents. She had remained stubbornly single until they were all grown up. Only then had she herself married. Her choice of husband had seemed disastrous at the time. But the marriage had survived and apparently flourished.
Constantine relaxed and enjoyed dinner. The food was good, the company and conversation congenial. Until they retired to the drawing room afterward with an hour or so to kill before they must leave for the ball, he did not even suspect that there had perhaps been an ulterior motive in inviting him.
“Cassandra and I went to call on Kate this morning,” Margaret remarked as Cassandra poured the tea. “Nessie came with us too. Kate is in a delicate way again after all this time. Did you know, Constantine? She is both delighted and queasy in the mornings. She told us about the pleasant evening she and Jasper spent at the theater yesterday.”
Ah, Constantine thought.
“I did not know about her condition,” he said. “I daresay they are both pleased.”
They had got to talking about him during the morning visit, he would wager. He waited for them to say it.
“We got to talking about you,” Margaret said.
“Me?” he said, all amazement. “Am I to feel flattered?”
“You are in your thirties,” Margaret said.
Hmm. What angle were they going to take with this? They could hardly come right out and scold him for taking the Duchess of Dunbarton as a mistress, could they? As genteel ladies, they could not admit to knowing any such thing, or even suspecting it.
Margaret was doing the talking, of course. Cassandra was busier than she need have been with the teapot. Stephen and Sherry were trying to look as though they thought this was just another harmless topic of conversation.
“Yes, well,” Constantine said with a sigh, “the powers that be will not allow one to remain in one’s twenties for longer than ten years, Margaret. It is really quite unobliging of them.”
They all laughed, even Margaret, but she was undeterred from her purpose, whatever it might be.
“We all agreed, Constantine,” she said, “that you ought to be considering marriage. You are our cousin, and—”
“Second cousin,” he said. “Second cousin-in-law to Cassandra.”
“He is in his charming mood, Meg,” Cassandra said. “As opposed to his brooding mood. He is determined to take nothing seriously.”
Stephen sipped his tea. Constantine exchanged a blank-eyed stare with Sherry.
“I take the idea of marriage very seriously indeed,” he assured them. “Especially my own. And more especially when it is being suggested to me by a deputation of my female relatives. This is a deputation, I gather? Is there any lady you particularly wish me to consider?”
Margaret opened her mouth and shut it again. Cassandra merely smiled. The gentlemen both sipped their tea.
“Or anyone you particularly wish me not to consider?” he suggested.
Cassandra laughed outright.
“I told you he would instantly know what this was all about, Meg,” she said. “But really, Con, all we want is your happiness. I have been a member of this family for only a year—less, actually—but I too want to see you happy.”
“Beware a happily married woman,” he said. “She will scheme and plot to force everyone else to be happy too.”
Stephen grinned and Sherry chuckled.
“And there is something wrong with that?” Margaret asked, visibly bristling. She was looking at Sherry.
“Katherine saw the way the wind blew at the theater last evening, did she?” Constantine asked. “And did not approve of what she saw? And you all concurred with her opinion this morning? It would be interesting to know if Vanessa did too.”
“You have a favorite almost every year, Constantine,” Margaret said as she sat back in her chair, her cup and saucer in hand. “They have all been pleasant ladies. I particularly liked Mrs. Hunter the year Duncan and I met and married.”
Her cheeks would probably bloom with a thousand roses if he asked her to explain exactly what she meant by favorite, Constantine thought.
“I liked her too, Margaret,” he said. “That was why she was my favorite that year. But I hope you are not about to ask me to consider her as a bride. She married Lord Lund two summers ago.”
“And presented him with an heir last year, I believe,” Sherry said. “You are wise not to go pining after her, Con.”
Margaret gave him an indignant look.
“The Duchess of Dunbarton is beautiful,” she said. “No one can dispute that. She draws all eyes wherever she goes, and it is more than just her beauty that does it. She is really quite fascinating.”
“I hear a but in your voice,” Constantine said.
Cassandra took over.
“Kate was of the opinion that the duchess has decided to make you her favorite, Con,” she said. “And what the duchess wants, apparently, she usually gets. But she is said to be fickle in her preferences. Next week or the week after it is likely to be someone else.”
She was looking decidedly uncomfortable and turned her head to frown at Stephen, who was grinning at her.
“She does indeed have a reputation for being somewhat fast, Constantine,” Margaret said. “And I believe it is well deserved.”
What would they say, he wondered, if he told them that the duchess had been a virgin until a little more than a week ago, and that she had lost that virginity courtesy of himself?
“And you are afraid I will end up hurt and brokenhearted if I succumb to her wiles this week and perhaps next?” he asked. “I will be no match at all for someone of the duchess’s, ah, experience? Even though I am frequently said to be the devil himself? I am touched at your concern.”
He was feeling vastly amused.
“Oh, dear,” Cassandra said, setting down her cup and saucer with a clatter. “This was not how we planned to approach the subject, was it, Meg? Kate will be quite vexed with us. Of course you can cope with her grace if she should become your, er, favorite, Con. Indeed, I daresay there are people warning her against becoming involved with you. What we intended to say, or to hint or suggest, purely out of filial fondness for you, you must understand, is that perhaps it is time you turned your attention away from mere flirtation and toward matrimony. You are extremely eligible. And really very handsome indeed, though I am not sure that is quite the correct word to describe you. You draw admiring eyes wherever you go—just as the duchess does.”
“We have rather made a mess of things, Constantine,” Margaret admitted. “We meant to oh-so-subtly nudge your thoughts in the direction of marriage rather than … Well.”
“Perhaps,” Sherry suggested, “we ought to talk about tomorrow’s weather, my love. Or last we
ek’s. Or next month’s.”
She smiled and then laughed aloud with what sounded like genuine amusement.
“May we forget about the last five minutes and start again?” she asked.
“Heaven forbid,” Sherry and Stephen said in unison.
“What I want to know,” Constantine said, “is what Vanessa had to say about all this.”
Vanessa, the middle sister, had been a warm friend of his until she married Elliott, now Duke of Moreland. Then, in trying to get at Elliott in the asinine, somewhat childish way in which he had tended to conduct their long-standing quarrel in those days, he had inadvertently—but quite predictably—hurt and humiliated her, and she had been barely civil to him since.
It had not been his finest moment. In fact, it had easily been one of his worst. He was dogged by guilt and shame every time he saw or even thought about Vanessa, in fact.
“To be honest, Con,” Cassandra said, “we had the discussion while she was up in the nursery taking a gift to Hal and paying homage to Jonathan. Cassandra had brought him with her.”
Hal was Katherine and Monty’s four-year-old son.
Stephen had actually written to Constantine after the birth of his son to ask if he would mind terribly much if they called the baby Jonathan. Constantine had minded very much indeed and had almost written back to say so in no uncertain terms. But he had stopped to think of how delighted his brother Jon would have been. He had been almost able to hear the boy’s excited, ungainly laughter. So the new heir to the title was Jonathan.
It had even felt strangely comforting to know that when he had made his duty call here to see the baby after his arrival in town.
“We ought not to have said anything,” Margaret said. “Duncan and Stephen have been odious enough to laugh behind their hands ever since we came from the dining room, and you are no better, Constantine. You have chosen to be amused.”
“Better that than his choosing to be wrathful, Maggie,” Sherry said.
“You see, the trouble is, Con,” Stephen added, “that my sisters expected to be matchmakers to their hearts’ content for years yet with me. But I was disobliging enough to fall in love with Cass last year when I was only twenty-five, a mere babe in arms. You are the only one left, even if you are a mere cousin, so you must be prepared to be cared about until you marry a worthy woman and settle down to live happily ever after. If you were really wise, you would do it this year and live in peace forever after.”
“Except,” Constantine said, “that I would be married.”
“Enough!” Margaret got firmly to her feet. “There is a ball to attend, and I would hate to arrive so late that the receiving line had even been abandoned.”
And that, Constantine thought, was the end of that. For the time being, anyway.
And his family did not approve of this spring’s mistress. Or favorite, to use the euphemism with which the ladies could be reasonably comfortable.
THEY WERE LATE ARRIVING at the Kitteridge ball, though not by any means the last of the guests. They were there before the Duchess of Dunbarton, though that was no surprise.
Constantine was talking with a group of acquaintances when he was made aware of her arrival by a slight change in the quality of the sound around him. It was certainly true what Margaret had said earlier. The duchess really did draw eyes wherever she went, and this occasion was no exception. All she was doing was passing along the receiving line with her friend, but almost everyone had turned a head to watch.
She was all in gleaming white again—silver-threaded white lace over white silk. Her hair was piled high in intricate curls, though wavy tendrils had been allowed to trail over her temples and along her neck in order to tease the eyes and the imagination. A small diamond tiara glistened in her hair. Diamonds at her ears and bosom and on her wrists and gloved fingers sparkled and winked in the candlelight. There were even rosettes of diamonds sewn to the outsides of her white dancing slippers.
Or not diamonds.
Another petal had been peeled away from the rose last night, leaving Constantine to wonder if there were perhaps more within after all. She had sold two-thirds of her diamonds, doubtless for a colossal sum, because there were certain causes in which she was interested.
Charitable causes, he had understood. The lady had a heart, then, and a social conscience.
In its own way it had been as startling a revelation as the fact that she had come to him as a virgin.
He had the rather unsettling suspicion that he had misjudged the duchess, that perhaps she was not shallow after all. But he was certainly not alone in his former opinion of her, as Margaret’s words had proved. He had no cause to be indignant with her.
Constantine strode across the ballroom in the duchess’s direction, aware that he was being watched with interest. There would not be many people in this room who did not know that she was his new mistress or that he was her new lover—depending upon the perspective of the beholder. There was no such thing as a secret affair between two members of the ton.
He bowed to them both, secured a waltz with the duchess for later in the evening, and asked Miss Leavensworth for the opening set. By that time the duchess’s usual court was gathering about her.
He led Miss Leavensworth onto the floor, where the lines were already forming. He had asked her to dance because she was the duchess’s friend and house guest and because she had been a member of the theater party the evening before and he had conversed with her there for several minutes and liked her. She seemed an intelligent, sensible lady.
He certainly had no ulterior motive in dancing with her—not at first, anyway. He asked about her home only because he guessed that she was probably homesick, especially as her fiancé was back in the village she had left behind.
“The trouble with being in London for the Season,” he said to her as they waited for the dancing to begin, “is that no matter how much one enjoys oneself, one invariably misses one’s home in the country. I always do. Do you find the same thing?”
“I do indeed, Mr. Huxtable, though it seems quite ungrateful to admit it,” she said gravely. “It is wonderful to be here, and I will never forget that I have attended ton balls and gone to the theater and opera and visited some of the most famous of the museums and galleries here. And the best thing of all is being with Hannah, whom I see all too rarely. Even the shopping is more exciting than I expected. But you are right, and I must confess to a longing to see my family and my betrothed again.”
“And your village?” he said.
“And that too,” she said. “London is so … vast.”
And he saw a way of satisfying some idle curiosity. Or perhaps not so idle. Everyone knew how the duchess had used her beauty to rise out of obscurity and become the bride of a duke who had resisted matrimony until well into his seventies. It would have been the stuff of legend if the huge age gap had deprived the story of all romance and made it merely rather sordid instead. No one seemed to know anything about the obscurity from which the duchess had risen, however. When he had asked her about her family, she had shrugged and said she had none.
But she must have had family at some time.
“What is your village?” he asked.
“Markle,” she said, “in Lincolnshire. No one except those who live within ten miles of it has even heard of it. But it is quiet and pretty, and it is home.”
“Your parents are both still living?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I am well blessed. My father was the vicar, but he has retired now, and we live together in a cottage at the edge of the village. It is smaller than the vicarage but very cozy. My mother and father are very happy there. So am I, but of course I will be moving back to the vicarage when I marry in August.”
“And you will be the lady of the house this time,” he said, “instead of the daughter.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “It will seem strange. I am looking forward to it immensely, though.”
“Markle,” he said, frowning. �
��Something sounds familiar about the name. What is the main family living there?”
“Sir Colin Young?” she said, posing the answer as a question. “He lives at Elm Court just beyond the village with Lady Young and their three children. Lady Young, in fact, is—”
She stopped abruptly. She flushed.
He waited for a moment, eyebrows raised, but she did not continue.
“I do believe the dancing is about to begin,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said with bright enthusiasm. “You are right. Oh, just look at all the flowers. And all the candles in the chandeliers. There must be dozens of them. And so many guests. I shall be dreaming of this when I leave here.”
He guessed that she was not the sort of lady who gushed with enthusiasm a great deal. Something had flustered her. His questions, probably, especially the last. And the answers she had given—and almost given. Did she realize now, he wondered, that he had been deliberately probing for information?
That had not been well done of him.
But who was Lady Young? He had never heard of either Markle or Sir Colin Young. The man might be a baronet, but he had never mingled in London society to Constantine’s knowledge.
They danced an elegant country dance with intricate, almost stately figures. She was a good dancer.
The duchess must have grown up in Markle too. Was that where she had met Dunbarton at a wedding? Whose wedding? Young’s?
He had already made Miss Leavensworth uncomfortable. He had already chastised himself for prying. There was no excuse, then, for continuing to do so. But he did.
“Sir Colin Young,” he said when the figures brought them together for perhaps a whole minute. “Was he not somehow connected with the Duke of Dunbarton?”
“A very distant cousin, I believe,” she said.
Fourteenth or so in line to the dukedom, if Constantine was not very much mistaken.
There was no casual way of asking for the duchess’s maiden name. But her family must be lower on the social scale than Young, or Miss Leavensworth would have named them as the most prominent family. Unless the duchess was a sister or daughter of Young, that was. It was a distinct possibility. Either way she had done extremely well for herself in snaring a duke for a husband even if he was an old man. Or perhaps especially because he was an old man. Marrying him had been a brilliant way of gaining instant status and wealth and the prospect of freedom not far distant.