Mary Balogh - A Secret Affair

“Yes, I know,” he said, rolling onto his back and setting the back of one hand over his eyes. “Duchess.”

He was not going to get too close to her. Which was a somewhat absurd thought under the circumstances.

He was not going to get emotionally close.

She was not going to control him.

That was something that was not going to happen.

He really was exhausted. Pleasantly so. He stretched luxuriously beneath the covers. He could feel her body heat along his right side. He could smell her—a mingling of expensive perfume and sweat. An erotically pleasant smell.

He drifted off to sleep.

And woke up an indeterminate amount of time later to find the bed empty beside him, the curtains drawn back from the window, and the Duchess of Dunbarton, clothed only in his white shirt and her white-blond hair, sitting on the wide window ledge, her legs drawn up before her, her arms wrapped about herself, gazing out through the window.

Fortunately—very fortunately—the candles had all burned themselves out. She would have made a very interesting window ornament to anyone glancing up from the street below, even clad in his shirt.

The fact that the candles had burned out, of course, meant that he must have slept most of the night. Though he could see when he gazed into the corner that the tapers were still fairly long.

She had had the good sense to snuff them, then, before taking up her place in the window.

“Anything interesting going on out there?” he asked, linking his hands behind his head.

She turned her head to look at him.

“No, nothing at all,” she said. “Just as there is not in here.”

Well. He had walked straight into that one.

THERE WAS JUST empty night out there, Hannah saw when she parted the curtains and gazed out. There were no carriages, no pedestrians, no light in the windows of the houses opposite, except perhaps one flickering in a downstairs window about six houses down. She had blown out the candles in this room before looking out.

She closed the curtains and stood for a few moments at the foot of the bed. Constantine was fast asleep, one arm draped over his eyes. He was breathing deeply and evenly. One of his knees was raised and making a small tent of the bedcovers. She could see him quite clearly even in the darkness.

She wondered if he would sleep all night and smiled slightly. He had said she had exhausted him, and she was not surprised. He had run his marathon after all.

She was really very sore indeed. It was not an altogether unpleasant sensation.

She shivered in the night air and looked around for her gown. She could see it in a dark heap on the floor under her stays, no doubt horribly creased. And she could see the lighter outline of his shirt. She bent and picked it up and held it to her face for a moment. It smelled of his cologne and of him.

She pulled it on over her head, pushed her arms through the sleeves, and hugged it about herself. Goodness, but he was large. She approved of his largeness.

She considered climbing back into bed beneath the covers and curling up beside him, warming herself with his body heat. But she did not want to sleep with him. There was a certain loss of control in slumber. One never knew what one might say when asleep or when one first awoke, before one was fully conscious and aware. Or what one might feel in those unguarded hours.

She went back to the window, parted the curtains again with the backs of her hands, and looked at the sill. It was not exactly a window seat, but it was wide enough nevertheless. She pulled the curtains right back and sat on the sill, pulling her feet up onto it, wrapping her arms about herself for warmth. She rested the side of her head against the glass.

All was quiet. And dark. And peaceful.

She could still hear his deep breathing. It was a strangely comforting sound. Another human being was close.

She was not sorry. She was never sorry for anything she did, especially as she rarely acted out of impulse. All was planned and controlled in her life—as she liked it.

The only thing you can neither plan nor control, my dearest love, the duke had once told her, is love itself. When you find it, you must yield to it. But only if it is the one and only true passion of your life. Never if it is anything less than that, or life will consume you.

But how am I to know? she had asked him.

You will know. It was the only answer he had been willing to give.

She was a little afraid that she would never know love. Not that kind of love, anyway. Not the all-consuming, once-in-a-lifetime kind of which the duke had spoken—from personal experience. It surely did not happen to everyone. Maybe not to many people at all. Maybe not to her.

She had loved him. She shivered and hugged herself more tightly. Sometimes she thought she had never loved anyone else in her life but him. But that was surely not true, and there were degrees of love. She loved Barbara.

No, she was not sorry for tonight.

And she was not feeling guilty. There was no reason in the world why she should not be here with her lover, in his bedchamber, having just had marital relations with him. Except that they had not been marital, had they? Her vocabulary was really quite puritanical at times. She must do something about that. She was free and unattached, and so was he. They might have relations as often as they chose without feeling guilt.

She ought to have noticed that she could no longer hear his breathing. His voice took her by surprise.

“Anything interesting going on out there?” he asked.

She turned her head to look at him, but her eyes had adjusted to the slightly lighter darkness of the outdoors and all she could see for the moment was a dark silhouette.

“No, nothing at all,” she said. “Just as there is not in here.”

“Are you complaining, Duchess,” he asked, “because I used up so much energy that I had to sleep?”

“And are you looking for another compliment, Constantine?” she asked in return. “I believe I have already told you that you far exceeded my expectations.”

He had thrown back the covers and was getting out of bed. He bent down to rummage among the heap of their clothing, and pulled on first his drawers, and then his pantaloons. He turned his back to her, and she heard the clink of glass against glass. He came toward her carrying two glasses of wine. He handed her one and stood with one bare shoulder propped against the window frame. He looked long and lean and virile.

All of which attributes Hannah viewed with open approval as she sipped from her glass. She could not possibly have chosen a more perfect male specimen if she had tried. He was even more splendid without his clothes—and even half clothed—than with. With many people clothes disguised a multitude of imperfections.

And he had exceeded her expectations.

Foolishly, given the fact of her soreness, she started to throb down there even thinking about how large and hard and very satisfactory he had been.

He crossed one leg carelessly over the other and drained his glass before setting it down on the end of the windowsill and crossing his arms over his chest.

“You are terribly beautiful,” she said.

“Terribly?” She could see him raise his eyebrows. “I inspire terror in you?”

She drank some more.

“You are often referred to as the devil,” she said. “You must know that. It is a little terrifying to have run a half marathon with the devil himself.”

“And survived,” he said.

“Oh, I will always survive,” she said. “And I thrive on terror—for I am never terrified, you know.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you are.”

They gazed silently out at the street for a few moments while she finished her wine. He took the empty glass from her and set it down beside his.

“Your brother, the earl,” she said. “Was he your only sibling?”

“The only surviving one,” he said. “The eldest and the youngest—the only ones tough enough to live through childhood. And then Jon died when he was sixteen.”

“Why?” she asked. “What was the cause of his death?”

“He should have died four or five years sooner than he did,” he said, “according to the physicians. He always looked different from other people—in facial features and physique, I mean. My father always called him an imbecile. So did most other people. But he was not. His mind moved slowly, it is true, but he was by no means stupid. Quite the opposite. And he was love.”

Hannah sat very still, hugging the shirt to herself. He was gazing out the window as if he had forgotten her for the moment.

“Not loving,” he said, “though he was that too. He was love itself—a love that was free and unconditional and total. And he died. I had him four years longer than I was supposed to have him.”

It was the nighttime and the darkness that made him talk so openly, Hannah suspected, and the fact that he had just been sleeping and had not yet fully armored himself with his usual defenses. She had been right not to sleep herself.

“You loved him dearly,” she said softly.

His eyes rested on her. They looked very black.

“I also hated him,” he said. “He had everything that ought to have been mine.”

“Except health,” she said.

“Except health,” he agreed. “And wisdom. He loved even me. Especially me.”