Mary Balogh - A Secret Affair

“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?