Mary Balogh - A Secret Affair

She did not want a relationship. Not this time.

Except that she did. She just wanted it to be one-sided or on her terms. She realized that fact with some surprise. Right from the start she had wanted to know more about him—everything about him, in fact. She had told him so. He was such a dark, mysterious man. Certain things were known about him. But she did not know anyone who knew him. Her duke had not, though he had spoken of him from time to time. He had suspected that Constantine’s brooding darkness held hatred, that his often charming social manner held love, and that therefore he was a complex, dangerous, impossibly attractive man. He had actually said that.

It was probably in those words that she had found the seed of her decision to take Mr. Constantine Huxtable for a lover.

Tonight he had told her he had hated his young, mentally handicapped brother. And yet she could tell him with the greatest confidence that he had loved his brother too. Probably to the point of great pain.

What she had not realized until tonight, fool that she was, was that a relationship could not be an entirely one-sided thing. He had found out more about her tonight than she had about him.

Good heavens!

Her reputation would be in tatters if he told the ton what he had discovered tonight. Not that he would tell, of course.

But he knew.

How provoking!

She did not want a relationship. She wanted only … well, she must learn to use the word. The duke had always used it in her hearing, and she was not missish. She wanted only sex with Constantine Huxtable.

And it really had been glorious tonight, the sex. It had not even been painful until afterward. While it had been happening, it could have gone on all night as far as she was concerned. Poor Constantine. He would be dead.

Hannah snorted inelegantly as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and found her stockings.

SHE DID NOT WANT HIM to go with her, but Constantine gave her no choice. He handed her into the carriage and climbed in beside her. He took her hand in his and rested it on his thigh.

She looked more her usual self in her white cloak, the wide hood pulled up over her head.

He would never see her the same way again, though. Which was understandable, of course. He had seen her without the clothes and the careful coiffure. He had possessed her body.

But it was not just that.

At least in one respect she was not the woman everyone thought her to be, that everyone assumed her to be. The sort of woman she had surely gone out of her way to pretend to be.

Her marriage to the duke had never been consummated. That was not particularly surprising in itself. There had been endless speculation about it, in fact. But all those lovers she had flaunted before society—Zimmer, Bentley, Hardingraye, to name just a few.

Not lovers.

He had been her first.

It was a dizzying thought. He had never before been anyone’s first. He had never wanted to be.

Good Lord!

“You will need a few days to recover, Duchess,” he said as the carriage neared Hanover Square. “Shall we say next Tuesday, after the Kitteridge ball?”

She would never allow him the last word, of course—though she had at the garden party yesterday afternoon, had she not? It was her turn, then.

“Next Monday night,” she said. “The duke keeps a box at the theater, but there is no one to use it except me. I have promised Barbara that we will go. I shall invite Mr. and Mrs. Park too, and perhaps their son, the clergyman, if he is in town. You will escort me.”

“The perfect group,” he said. “A clergyman, a clergyman’s betrothed—though not to the aforementioned clergyman, the first clergyman’s parents, and the Duchess of Dunbarton with her new paramour, sometimes known as the devil.”

“One always likes to provide interesting topics for drawing room conversations,” she said.

Yes, he could imagine one did if one happened to be the Duchess of Dunbarton.

He lifted her hand to his lips as he felt the carriage turning into the square and then slowing and stopping. He lowered his head and kissed her mouth.

“I shall look forward to Monday night with the greatest impatience,” he said.

“But not Monday evening?” she asked.

“I will tolerate it,” he said. “Dessert is always more appetizing at the end of a meal, after all, as we discovered this evening.”

And he rapped on the inside of the carriage door to indicate to his coachman that they were ready to descend.

Someone had already been roused inside the house. The doors opened even as Constantine stepped down to the pavement and turned to hand the duchess down.

A moment later he watched her ascend the steps unhurriedly, her back straight, her head high. The doors closed quietly behind her.

This felt a little different from his usual springtime affair, Constantine thought.

A little less comfortable.

A little more erotic.

What the devil had he meant—I also hated him.

He had never hated Jon. Not even for the merest moment. He had loved him. He still mourned him. Sometimes he thought he would never stop grieving. There was a huge, empty black hole where Jon had been.

I also hated him.

He had spoken those words to the Duchess of Dunbarton, of all people.

What the devil had he meant?

And what else was she hiding apart from the minor, now-revealed fact that she had come to him tonight as a virgin?

The answer was absolutely nothing, of course. She had readily admitted that she married Dunbarton for the title and the money. And now she was using her freedom and power to take a little sensual pleasure for herself.

He could hardly blame her.

He turned and frowned at his coachman, who was waiting for him to climb back inside the carriage.

“Take it home,” he said. “I’ll walk.”

His coachman shook his head slightly and shut the door.

“Right you are, sir,” he said.

THE CLERGYMAN SON of Mr. and Mrs. Park was not in town. Mrs. Park’s younger brother was staying with them for a while, however, and was more than gratified to be invited to join a party in the theater box of the Duchess of Dunbarton on Monday evening with his sister and brother-in-law. Hannah also invited Lord and Lady Montford after she and Barbara met the latter at Hookham’s Library on Monday morning and stopped for a brief chat.

Lady Montford was Mr. Huxtable’s cousin.

“The opera and the theater both in one week,” Barbara said as she and Hannah sat side by side in the carriage on Monday evening. “Not to mention the galleries and museums and the library and the shopping. I find myself writing half a book each day to Mama and Papa and to Simon instead of just a letter. I will be running you dry of ink, Hannah.”

“You must come to town more often,” Hannah said. “Though I do not suppose your vicar will be willing to spare you once you are married, odious man.”

“I probably will not want to spare myself once we are wed,” Barbara said. “I so look forward to being the vicar’s wife, Hannah, and to living at the vicarage again. I shall persuade Simon to bring me here once in a while, though, and we will see you then. And perhaps you will come—”

But she stopped abruptly and turned her head to look at Hannah in the semidarkness of the carriage interior. She smiled apologetically.

“But no, of course you will not,” she said. “Though I do wish you would. And it is perhaps time—”

“It is time,” Hannah said, “to go to the theater, Babs.”

The carriage was drawing to a halt outside the Drury Lane, and they could see crowds of people milling about, many of them no doubt waiting for other arrivals so that they could go inside. Constantine Huxtable was among them, looking both elegant and satanic in his long black evening cloak and hat.

“Oh, there he is,” Barbara said. “Hannah, are you perfectly sure—”

“I am, silly goose,” Hannah said. “We are lovers, Babs, and I am not nearly finished with him yet. I would wager that detail has not slipped into your letters to the vicar.”

“Nor to Mama and Papa,” her friend said. “They would be very distressed. They may not have seen you for eleven years or so, Hannah, but they are still enormously fond of you.”

Hannah patted her knee.

“He has seen us,” she said.

And indeed it was Constantine who opened the carriage door and set down the steps rather than Hannah’s coachman.

“Ladies, good evening,” he said. “We are fortunate that this afternoon’s rain has stopped, at least for a while. Miss Leavensworth?”

He offered his hand to Barbara, who took it and bade him a civil good evening. Barbara’s manners were always impeccable, of course.

Hannah drew a slow breath. It was the first time she had seen him since last week. That night at his house seemed almost like a dream except for the physical aftereffects she had felt for a few days. And except for the alarming rush of sheer physical awareness that assailed her as soon as she set eyes on him again. And the longing for tonight.

Oh, goodness me, he really was quite, quite gorgeous.

Within minutes, of course, everyone who was at the theater this evening would know, or think they knew, that he was her newest lover. One in a long line of lovers. By this time tomorrow everyone who was not here tonight would know too.