by Mary Balogh
Constantine took his plate and his cup of tea and mingled, as he had been instructed to do. He was good at mingling. But what lady or gentleman was not? The ability to engage in social chitchat was an essential attribute of gentility.
One thing about chitchat, though, was that it left the mind largely free to wander and engage in any thoughts or observations it pleased.
Vanessa was aging well. She must be in her thirties now. She had never been as beautiful as her sisters, but she had always been warmhearted, vivacious, and fun-loving, and those qualities transcended mere physical good looks. Constantine had liked her from the start. When she had arrived at Warren Hall with Stephen and her sisters not very long after Jon’s death, he had been consumed by hatred and resentment. He had stayed for their arrival only because Elliott had ordered him to leave. But the strange thing about losing Jon was that he had not gone away when his body had been consigned to the ground in the churchyard. He had taken up residence somewhere in Constantine’s being that felt suspiciously close to his heart, and it was impossible to look at certain things and people and not see them as Jon would have done.
Jon would have adored discovering new cousins. New people to love.
And Vanessa, even more than the other three, had been very easy to like, impossible to dislike.
For years now he had tried not to think about Vanessa at all. He had hurt her. He had deliberately introduced her to Elliott’s ex-mistress at the theater one evening soon after her marriage, and then he had escorted the ex-mistress to a ball hosted by Elliott and Vanessa. The whole of the ton had seen her there. He had done it to embarrass Elliott, of course. But he had ended up causing Vanessa humiliation and untold suffering. Elliott had told her other unsavory things about him, and in the very direct way with which she seemed to confront all the problems in her life, she had taken him aside at Vauxhall one night and told him exactly what she thought of him and added that she wished she might never see him again and that she would never willingly speak with him in the future. It was a promise she had kept.
The memory of it all still needled at his conscience. And there was no mortal thing he could do about it. He had apologized at the time for deliberately exposing her to such humiliation. She had refused to forgive him. There was nothing else to be said.
Why had the duchess invited both him and them here this afternoon when she knew they were estranged? What game was she playing? And for how long would he allow it to go on?
Not long, he decided. He would make that clear to her when he drove her in the park later. Not that there would be much chance for private conversation there. He would just have to make some.
The duchess did not spend all her time with Elliott and Vanessa. She circulated among her guests and proved herself to be a warm and welcoming hostess. Constantine had attended a few of her balls in the past, but he had never before been at any of her more intimate gatherings.
Lord Enderby asked her if she would do him the honor of driving in the park with him later.
“But I must decline,” she said, “with regret, Lord Enderby. I have already accepted an invitation from Mr. Huxtable.”
All eyes turned his way, Constantine realized. If anyone had discounted the gossip that must have been circulating for the past week or so, then they probably doubted no longer. For he certainly had not invited her here during her tea, had he? It must have been prearranged, then.
“Perhaps some other time,” she told Enderby.
Her words acted like a signal to everyone to take their leave. Constantine stood at one of the windows, looking out, his hands clasped at his back while the duchess bade her guests farewell.
“I shall fetch my bonnet and meet you on the pavement,” she told him when the two of them were alone.
And she had gone before Constantine turned around.
Was it his imagination that there had been a slight chill in her voice when she addressed him?
What was this all about?
But suddenly he knew. Or was pretty sure he knew. It was dense of him not to have realized it sooner, in fact—as soon as her terse little note arrived this morning. Or when she had disappeared without a word last night.
He had asked some intrusive questions of her friend last evening, and she had somehow found out.
Where was Miss Leavensworth this afternoon, anyway?
He made his way downstairs. His curricle had already been brought up to the door, he could see.
“WHERE WAS MISS LEAVENSWORTH this afternoon?” Constantine asked as soon as he had handed Hannah up to the high seat of his curricle and come around to the other side to take his seat beside her. He gathered the ribbons in his hands.
Hannah loved riding in curricles. But this afternoon’s drive was not for enjoyment. She was feeling out of sorts. She opened her parasol and raised it above her head.
“She had a letter at breakfast time from relatives of the Reverend Newcombe, her betrothed,” she said. “They are in town for a few days and invited her to visit Kew Gardens with them and their children today.”
“That will be pleasant for them all,” he said. “And they have the ideal weather for such an excursion. Not too hot and not too windy.”
“One might, I suppose,” she said as he turned the curricle out of the square, “converse comfortably about the weather until we reach the park, Mr. Huxtable. I would prefer to inform you that I am extremely displeased with you.”
“Yes,” he said, turning his head to look at her. “I rather guessed you were.”
“I discovered Barbara close to tears in the ladies’ withdrawing room partway through last evening,” she said.
“Ah,” he said and faced front again.
“She believed she had betrayed my trust in her,” she said. “She feared I would put an end to our friendship. But, being the incurably moral and upright lady she is, she felt compelled to confess rather than hide what she had done.”
He did not ask her what she was talking about. Instead, he skillfully guided his horses around a slow-moving cart.
“I grew up in the village of Markle in Lincolnshire,” she said, “the daughter of Mr. Joseph Delmont, a gentleman of no particular social significance or fortune. I had one sister, Dawn. She is now Lady Young, wife of Sir Colin Young, baronet. It was at the wedding of his cousin, now deceased, that I met the Duke of Dunbarton, whom I married five days later. I have not been back to Markle or had any communication with any member of my family since then. Is there anything else you wish to know, Mr. Huxtable?”
He gazed steadily ahead. A large and ancient town carriage was lumbering toward them down the very center of the road, despite some rather blistering remarks that were being hurled at its oblivious coachman by other occupiers of the road. Constantine was compelled to move the curricle over to avoid a collision. His lips were pursed.
“About why I have never been back home, perhaps?” she suggested.
She could actually feel her heart thumping in her bosom. She could hear it hammering in her ears. And then she realized that the carriage belonged to the Dowager Countess of Blackwell and that lady was nodding regally in her direction from one of the windows. Hannah smiled and raised a hand.
“I will tell you why,” she said, answering her own question when he did not. “During that wedding I discovered Colin Young, my fiancé, behind the rose arbor with my sister, in a situation that could be described as compromising only if one were trying very hard not to shock one’s listener by being more graphic. And after they had … parted and set themselves to rights, they were both defiantly defensive rather than ashamed or apologetic or horrified to be discovered. She was sick to death of always being in my shadow, Dawn told me, of never being noticed because everyone wanted to look only at me, of forever feeling ugly. She loved Colin, and he loved her, and what was I going to do about it? And she was perfectly right, Colin said. He was relatively new to the neighborhood and had been dazzled by my beauty at first until he got to know Dawn and realized that char
acter was of more importance than anything else. And that love was. He was very sorry, but he had decided that he wanted a real woman instead of just a beauty. Not that he meant any offense, of course. I really was lovely. He hoped I would understand and free him from an obligation that had become irksome to him.
“As if I were unreal. As if I were incapable of love or companionship. As if I were incapable of being hurt just because I was lovely.
“And when I drew my father into the library and threw myself into his arms for comfort and support, he sighed and told me how my beauty had been nothing but a trial to him all my life—or ever since my mother died when I was thirteen, anyway. I had always been her favorite, but he was mindful of the fact that he had two daughters. All the girls had always admired me and wanted to be my friend and virtually ignored Dawn, and all the young men had always buzzed around me and vied for my attention and taken no notice whatsoever of my sister. Must I begrudge her happiness now when she had found love despite everything? If I had had one ounce of sisterly affection in my body, I would have seen how the wind was blowing weeks earlier. Was I going to be selfish, as usual, and refuse to release Colin Young from a promise he had made hastily and regretted almost immediately? Could I not think of someone else for once in my life? It was not as though I could not find someone else anytime I wished.
“But all my life—or so it seemed to me—I had tried to be like everyone else. And I had loved Dawn and tried to make other people like her. I never understood why she was not generally liked. It was not that I pushed her back into my shadow. It was not. And she had a way sometimes of taking my friends or my admirers away from me and gloating afterward. We were not always friends. Sometimes we fought quite viciously, and I daresay I was as guilty of nastiness as often as she was. But she was my sister. I loved her. It had never occurred to me that she would try to take my betrothed. I was engaged. The time for games was over.
“Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it was all my fault. Perhaps …”
She paused for breath. Actually she gasped for breath. The gate into the park was just ahead.
“Duchess,” Constantine said.
But she held up a staying hand. She had not finished yet.
“I loved him,” she said. “It had not occurred to me to withhold any part of my heart from him. I had eyes for no man but him. I knew that my beauty was often a liability. I knew that sometimes other girls resented me when there were young men around. I tried not to be beautiful. Even as a child I tried because it embarrassed me always to have my mother complimented on my looks in the hearing of Dawn and other girls, and to have her look at me with pleasure and rearrange my ringlets to look just so. I tried wearing plain clothes when I was old enough to choose for myself and a plain hairstyle. I tried hanging my head and staying quiet in company. I tried to show that I was not conceited. But finally, with Colin, I felt free to love and to be myself at last.
“I cannot possibly describe how I felt when my father left me after telling me to buck up and look cheerful—the emptiness, the loneliness, the terror. And that was when I discovered that we had not been alone in the library. The Duke of Dunbarton had been there all the time. He had withdrawn there out of boredom with the festivities and was sitting in a wing chair that he had pulled up to a window, his back to the room. I did not know it until I was crying so hard that I thought I would die. Literally die.”
Constantine turned the curricle between the park gates, but he had slowed its pace.
“I will always remember the first words he spoke to me,” Hannah said, closing her eyes. “‘My dear Miss Delmont,’ he said in that bored, sighing voice that was so characteristic of him, ‘no woman can possibly ever be too beautiful. I see I am going to have to marry you and teach you that lesson until you believe it beyond any doubt. I shall make it the final project of my life.’ And strangely, unbelievably, I was laughing at the same time as I was crying. We had all been terrified all day just knowing he was there at the wedding. We had all avoided him as much as we could for fear, I suppose, that he would strike us down with one glance if we presumed to step across his path or raise our eyes to his illustrious person. Yet there he was telling me that he must marry me, that he must make my education the final project of his life. And handing me his fine linen handkerchief with a rather pained expression on his face.”
Constantine had drawn the horses almost to a halt.
“Now are you satisfied?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I feel quite suitably chastened, Duchess. You could not have found a more effective way of punishing me, in fact, than answering all the questions delicacy and tact would not allow me to ask last night. And you have made me feel all the impertinence of the questions I did ask. I beg your pardon, though I realize that apologies are almost always inadequate. For would I now be begging your pardon if I had not been discovered? I do not know, though I did feel remorseful even at the time when I understood that Miss Leavensworth was uncomfortable with my questions and that I was being less than honorable in asking them of her instead of you.”
It was, she supposed, rather handsome as apologies went.
“I shall call on Miss Leavensworth tomorrow if I may,” he said, “and make my apology in person.”
Even at the snail’s pace at which they were moving they would be among the fashionable afternoon crowd soon.
“What now?” he asked. “Do you wish me to take you back home? Would you prefer that we proceed no further with our liaison?”
The last question jolted her. Would she? She would probably have said yes last night or this morning. Even earlier this afternoon. But all he had done, when all was said and done, was ask a few questions about her. Was he so different from her? She wanted to know about him too. Except that she had always planned to drag it all out of him personally.
“Oh,” she said with a determined twirl of her parasol, “I need an affair. I do not need marriage. Not yet, anyway, and perhaps never. I cannot yet let go of the conviction that I am still married to the duke, even though he has been dead for longer than a year.”
“You loved him,” he said.
She turned her head toward him, looking for irony. But she could see none in his face and had heard none in his voice.
“I did love him,” she said, “with all my heart. He was my rock and my security for ten years. He loved me unconditionally and totally. He adored me, and I adored him. No one will ever believe that, of course, but I really do not care.”
She was rather horrified to note that her voice was shaking slightly.
“I believe you,” he said quietly.
“Thank you,” she said. “I need a lover, Constantine. It is too soon for anything else—love, marriage, whatever. And in one way—and one way only—the years of my marriage left me feeling starved. If I let you go, I will have to start all over again to find another lover, and I would find that tiresome.”
“I am forgiven then?” he asked. “I will not pry again, Duchess. You may keep your remaining secrets, if there are any. I will not try to uncover them.”
“You do not want to know me, then?” she asked him. “You do not want to know everything there is to know about me?”
“Like you, Duchess,” he said, “it is a lover I want, not a wife. Curiosity will not get the better of me again.”
“I, on the other hand,” she said, “still want to know everything there is to know about you. A lover is not an inanimate object, after all. Or even just a body, even if it is a very splendid body and makes love in a very satisfactory way.”
He was smiling, she could see when she looked at him—something he did not often do. It was an expression that did strange things to her breathing.
“Forgiveness comes at a price, Constantine,” she said. “You are in my debt. You will answer some of my questions tonight after we have made love.”
“Come home with me now.” He turned his head to look at her.
“Barbara will be home for dinner,” s
he said, “and I have accepted no invitations for tonight. We are to enjoy a blessed evening at home just talking to each other and enjoying each other’s company. She is more dear to me than anyone else in the world, you know, now that the duke has gone. You will send a carriage at eleven.”
“Does anyone disobey your commands, Duchess?” he asked.
She half smiled at him. “You do not wish to see me tonight?” she asked him. “Or to make love to me?”
He actually grinned.
“I shall send a carriage at eleven,” he said. “You will be ready. If you are not at my house by a quarter past, I shall personally lock the door.”
She laughed.
And they were swallowed up in the crowd.
She felt suddenly and quite breathtakingly happy.
BARBARA WAS TIRED after her day at Kew Gardens, though she had had a wonderful time there and told Hannah all about it, especially about the pagoda, which she thought one of the loveliest structures she had ever seen. And she had been perfectly delighted with Simon’s cousins, whom she had not met before. They had treated her as though she were quite one of the family already, and she had made them laugh by trying to see resemblances between them and Simon. She had played a game of hide-and-seek with the children even though they were twelve years old. They were twins, a boy and a girl.
She was eager to hear all about Hannah’s tea party, which had been planned and arranged in such a hurry after breakfast. And she listened in some dismay as Hannah informed her that Constantine would be calling in the morning to apologize for last night.
“You must tell him that he is forgiven,” she said, “as indeed he is. I daresay he meant no real harm, Hannah. He merely wanted to know more about you, and I must honor him for that as it suggests he values you as a person. Perhaps he is in love with you. Perhaps—”