by Mary Balogh
Constantine was standing in the doorway. Hannah had no idea how long either of them had been there. She seated herself on a sofa.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Your Grace,” Lady Sheringford said, addressing Hannah. “I was busy in the nursery with the children.”
“It is about the children I came,” Hannah said. “I suspect that I did not make it clear in the invitation I sent you a few days ago that your children were included too. That applies to all the guests I have invited. I would not wish to be responsible for separating any parents from their children for even as long as four days. And Copeland has a long gallery on an upper floor that was surely made for the use of children on a wet day. And rolling parkland and woods and water outside to make for a child’s paradise when it is not raining. And several of my neighbors have children of their own who would doubtless go into transports of delight if there were others to play with at Copeland. Indeed, I have been quite busily planning a children’s party while I am there. It will be vastly amusing. I am not begging you to reconsider. I daresay you have other engagements on those days that you cannot in all conscience neglect. However, if it was your children that were your main concern, then please do feel free to reconsider.”
“Copeland,” the marquess said. “I do not remember that property, Hannah.”
“It is in Kent,” she said. “The duke bought it for me so that I would have a home of my own after his passing.”
“You are very kind,” Lady Sheringford said. “May I talk it over with my husband?”
“And perhaps with Katherine and Monty and with Stephen and Cassandra too,” Constantine said as he came farther into the room. He took a chair some distance from Hannah’s. “You were telling me, Margaret, that they too hated to leave the children behind.”
“I will,” she said just as the tea tray was brought in. “You know Constantine, Grandpapa.”
“Huxtable?” he said. “Merton’s grandson? I knew your grandfather. A fine man. Didn’t much care for his son, though. Your father, I suppose that was. You don’t look like him, which is fortunate for you. You must take after your mother. Greek, was she not? Daughter of an ambassador?”
“Yes, sir,” Constantine said.
“I went to Greece in my youth,” the marquess said. “And Italy and everywhere else a young man was supposed to go in those days before the wars spoiled everything. The Grand Tour, you know. I fancied the Parthenon. Can’t remember much else except great expanses of blue sea. And the wine, of course. And the women, though I won’t pursue that topic in the ladies’ hearing.”
They all chatted amicably for half an hour before Hannah rose to take her leave.
“You must come to see me again, Hannah,” the marquess said. “It does my heart good to look at your pretty face. And never let that ancient fool of a butler of mine try to tell you I am from home.”
“If he should ever attempt anything so foolish,” she said, going to take one of his hands in both of hers, “I shall sweep by him and run up the stairs and burst in upon you unannounced. And then when I have left, you may scold him to your heart’s content and threaten him with dismissal.”
“He would not go,” he said. “I have tried retiring him with a hefty pension and a home to go with it. Duncan has tried. Margaret has tried. There would be no point at all in dismissing him. He would refuse to be dismissed.”
“Looking after you and guarding your home from invasion is what keeps him active and alive, Grandpapa,” Lady Sheringford said. “Your Grace, it has been very good of you to come here this morning. I will send you a definite answer by tomorrow morning, if I may. We all will.”
Hannah bent over the old man’s chair and kissed him on the cheek before straightening up and releasing his hand.
“Thank you,” she said to Lady Sheringford.
“I will escort you home, if I may, Duchess,” Constantine said. “Though I am on foot.”
What was he doing here? The countess had been in the nursery with her children. Had he been there too? With the children?
“Thank you, so am I,” she said and swept out of the room ahead of him.
She took his arm when they were out on the pavement, and they walked for a while in silence. What a strange morning, she thought. She was still not quite sure why she had come. But oh, how lovely it had been to see the Marquess of Claverbrook again. One of the duke’s contemporaries.
“The marquess told me about a duel the duke fought years and years ago,” she said, “over the other man’s wife, with whom he had been accused of committing adultery. Funny, is it not? The marquess told me he was the very devil in those days.”
“But you tamed him,” he said. “I heard that much.”
“That is funny,” she said. “When I decided to have you for a lover, Constantine, I told myself then that I would tame the devil. I did not realize that I had already done it—with another man.”
She laughed.
“And have you tamed me too?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, “most provokingly, Constantine, it has turned out that you are not the devil after all. And I cannot tame what does not exist.”
She turned her head to smile at him.
“Disappointed?” he asked.
Was she? Life would be so much easier—so much more as she had planned it to be—if he really were the ruthless, dangerous, sensuous devil she had taken him for. There would have been all the challenge of pitting her wits against his, of conquering him, of enjoying him. And leaving him and forgetting him when summer came would have been the easiest thing in the world.
But was she disappointed? Or was she being challenged in other ways? Challenged to conquer him, after all. And challenged to conquer herself and the person she had thought she had become.
She was no longer sure who she was. She was not the girl she had been, that was for sure. She was long gone. But she was not the person she had thought she had become either—not now that she was alone to live the life of that person.
She was not nearly as hard as that woman was. Or as certain of her destiny or the route she must take to get there. But the duke had never taught her to be either hard or certain. He had taught her to like herself, to take charge of her life, to be immune to the worst of the jealousies and gossip that were certain to follow her about wherever she went, and …
And to wait for that someone who would be the center of her life’s meaning.
Was Constantine that center?
But her mind turned from the thought in some dismay. Heavens, did she have no sense of self-preservation even after eleven years?
But he was not the devil.
She felt as if she had a whole arsenal of windmills in her head.
“Does that mean yes?” he prompted.
He had asked if she was disappointed.
“Not at all,” she said. “I promised myself the best lover in all England, and I have no reason to suppose I have not found him. For this year, anyway.”
“That’s the spirit, Duchess,” he said. And his eyes laughed into hers again from a face that remained in repose. Not in mockery, she thought, but more in …
Affection?
Well.
But … affection?
The windmills turned in her mind again.
“Now what,” he asked her, “is this about a children’s party at Copeland?”
Ah, yes, and there was that. A purely spur-of-the-moment plan that she must now make a reality.
She never spoke impulsively. Nothing with her was spur of the moment.
Except this visit to the Countess of Sheringford.
And the children’s party at Copeland.
Constantine laughed softly.
“Duchess,” he said, “if you could just see your face now.”
“It will be the best party ever,” she said haughtily.
He laughed again.
HANNAH LEFT FOR COPELAND with Barbara three days before any of the house guests were expected to arrive. Not that th
eir presence there was needed. The housekeeper was an exceptionally competent lady who had complete control over her staff and the running of the household. She also had the advantage of being a likable person, to whom all the servants were devoted.
Hannah was well aware that for those three days, as she prowled restlessly about the house, she was in danger of getting under everyone’s feet and possibly on their nerves too. It was somewhat provoking to discover that her household did, in fact, run so smoothly, even under the stress of an imminent house party, that her presence was not needed. She sometimes felt she would be happy if there was a floor somewhere she could get down on her knees to scrub.
How startled and amused the ton would be if they could know that the Duchess of Dunbarton was nervous.
And excited.
The duke had bought Copeland for her when he was a very elderly gentleman indeed. They had come here occasionally and spent a few days at a time. They had even entertained some of their neighbors to tea. Hannah had done some entertaining during her year of mourning here too, but not often and never on any lavish scale. She had been melancholy and quite content to be alone most of the time.
This was to be her first house party here. She wanted everything to be perfect.
She envied—and was somewhat irritated by—Barbara’s cheerfully calm demeanor. She strolled outside with Hannah, even inside on the wet third day, the one before the guests were expected. And she sat for hours on end embroidering or reading or writing letters.
“What if it rains tomorrow?” Hannah asked as they strolled in the gallery on the last day. Rain pattered against the windows at either end.
“Then everyone will hurry inside from their carriages,” Barbara said with great good sense. “It is unlikely to rain hard enough to make the roads impassable.”
“But I do want everyone to see Copeland at its best,” Hannah said.
“Then they will be pleasantly surprised when the sun shines the day after they come,” Barbara said. “Or the day after that.”
“What if it rains every day?” Hannah asked.
Barbara turned her head to look closely at her and linked an arm through hers.
“Hannah,” she said. “Copeland is beautiful under any conditions. And you are beautiful under any conditions—lovely and charming and witty. You must have hosted house parties numerous times before now.”
“But never here,” Hannah said. “And what will it be like having children here, Babs? I have never entertained children.”
“They will be delightful,” Barbara said. “And they will ultimately be their parents’ responsibility, not yours.”
“But the party,” Hannah said, her voice almost a wail. “I have never in my life given a children’s party.”
“But you attended any number of them when we were children,” Barbara reminded her, not for the first time. “And I was in charge of more than a few when Papa was still vicar and Mama was not up to organizing them herself. You have made more than enough preparations to keep them all busy and entertained for every moment of the party.”
“I must have windmills in my head,” Hannah said.
Barbara led her to a bench close to one of the windows, sat them both down, and took Hannah’s hands in her own.
“I am sorry to see your anxiety, Hannah,” she said. “But strangely, you know, I am cheered by it. I do believe that right before my eyes you are becoming the person you were always meant to be. Since I arrived in London, your complexion has started to glow with color and your eyes to sparkle, and your face has become vibrant with life. You are entertaining families, not just a select few high-born aristocrats, and you are busy devising ways of amusing them all and keeping them happy. And I think—”
Hannah raised her eyebrows.
Barbara sighed.
“I ought not to say it,” she said. “You will be annoyed. I am not even sure I want to say it. I think you are falling in love. Or have fallen.”
Hannah snatched her hands away.
“Nonsense!” she said briskly. “And see, Babs? While we have been sitting here, the rain has stopped. And look, you can see the sun as a bright circle behind the clouds. It is going to be shining by tomorrow, and the grass and trees and flowers will look all the brighter and fresher for having been rained upon.”
She got to her feet and approached the window.
She was very inclined to dismiss what Barbara had said about the changes in her until the thought struck her that the duke had intended from the start that she reach this moment when she could finally unveil her real self. And be her real self.
She was finally daring to be the person he had wanted her to be, still a little anxious and uncertain of herself, but ready and eager to meet life and enjoy it instead of protecting herself from it behind the mask of the duchess. She was finally becoming the person she chose to be.
“Babs,” she said, “what shall I wear tomorrow? What color, I mean? White? Or something … brighter?”
And why was she asking? It was something she must decide for herself. It was something she had been debating in her mind for three days, perhaps longer. As if the turning of the world depended upon her making the right decision.
She laughed.
“No answer required,” she said. “I shall decide for myself. What are you going to wear? One of your new dresses?”
“I want Simon to be the first to see me in those,” Barbara said wistfully. “Though I am sure I ought to wear them here, Hannah, where there will be so many illustrious guests.”
“Your vicar must be the first to see them,” Hannah said, turning to look affectionately at her friend. “You have pretty clothes apart from them.”
She was not going to think about what Barbara had just said, Hannah decided. She was simply not.
But it had been three days, and three nights, since she had seen him last. And she knew that though she wanted everything to be perfect for all her guests and that she wanted them all to see Copeland at its best when they arrived tomorrow, she wanted it all to be a little more perfect for Constantine.
Something could not be more perfect than perfect.
But it was what she wanted. For him.
She did not care to pursue her reasons.
“I am starved,” she said. “Let’s go have tea.”
COPELAND WAS several miles north of Tunbridge Wells in Kent. The carriage passed through pretty countryside, past orchards and hop fields and grazing cattle. Constantine kept more than half an eye on the scenery as he traveled with Stephen and Cassandra. They might have left the baby with his nurse, who was coming in another carriage, but he was too new and too precious to be let out of their sight except when strictly necessary, it seemed.
Stephen held him most of the way and spoke to him as if he were a little adult. The baby stared solemnly back, except when his eyelids fluttered and he slept. Cassandra straightened his blanket and rearranged his bonnet and smiled at Stephen.
It was all a trifle disconcerting. Not because there were any open and embarrassing displays of affection between husband and wife, but perhaps because there were not. They were so thoroughly comfortable with each other, Stephen and Cassandra, and it was very obvious that young Jonathan was their world. It was all so damnably domestic. And Stephen, by Constantine’s estimation, was twenty-six years old. Nine years younger than he was.
He felt a vague sort of restlessness. And envy.
He really must give serious consideration to finding a suitable wife. perhaps next year. This year he was too tied up with the duchess. But if he was going to have children—and this year, for perhaps the first time, he felt the stirring of a desire to have sons and daughters of his own—he would rather start his family before he reached the age of forty. Even now he was older than he ought to be.
He distracted his mind with conversation and a more careful perusal of the latest report from Harvey Wexford at Ainsley than he had been able to give it at breakfast.
One of the lambs had died—
but it had been sickly from birth. The others were all flourishing. So were the calves, except for the two that had been stillborn. The crops were coming through nicely, the weather having been warm for a whole month and the rains having come when they were needed—though they could do with another right about now. Roseann Thirgood, the teacher who had once worked at a London brothel, had purchased a dozen new books for the schoolroom since several of her pupils, both children and adults, could read through the primers that had been bought last year with their eyes shut. Kevin Hurdle had had a rotten tooth pulled and had been walking about house and farm ever since with a large, progressively graying handkerchief tied over his head and beneath his jaw. Dotty, Winifred Baker’s young daughter, who was well suited to her name, had skipped all the way back to the kitchen from the henhouse one morning, swinging her basket of three eggs in wide arcs, with the result that egg yolk and egg white had dribbled all over the kitchen floor that Betty Ulmer had just scrubbed, and the basket was smeared almost beyond redemption. There was a fox paying the farmyard nocturnal visits, though so far it had gone away hungry each time. One of the plow horses was lame, but the offending thorn beneath its shoe had been found and disposed of, and the horse was on the mend. Winford Jones and his new wife sent their heartfelt thanks for the wedding gift Mr. Huxtable had sent them in a separate package last time he wrote.
He closed his eyes and, like the baby, slept for a while.
And then they were there. The carriage turned sharply between stone gateposts, waking them all, Constantine suspected, except Stephen, who had been holding the baby with steady concentration and keeping his shoulder firm for Cassandra’s right cheek to rest against.
The carriage bowled along a very straight driveway, lined with elm trees like soldiers on parade. It ran flat for a while and then sloped upward toward the gray stone house at the crest of the hill. Manor, mansion—it could qualify as either. It was about the same size as Ainsley and square, with a pillared, pedimented portico centered at the front and a flat roof bordered with an ornately carved stone balustrade. Long, narrow windows decreased in size from the first floor to the second to the third. It was a curious and pleasing mix of Jacobean and Georgian in design. The walls were liberally covered with ivy.