There was nothing to talk about. Elliott believed the very worst of him, and Constantine did not care.

Ass and mule.

Two sides of the same coin.

It really was as simple as that.

Hannah was not at the soiree.

Constantine left early, considered going to White’s for a while, and went home to bed instead. Having a mistress could do that to a man—it could make him choose sleep over his friends at night when the opportunity presented itself.

He called at Dunbarton House the following morning. He half expected that the ladies would be either still in bed or else out shopping. But they were at home. The duchess’s butler, who had gone to see if indeed they were, showed him into the library, which was an unexpected setting in which to find the duchess, though she had a book open on her lap, he noticed, while her friend was seated at the desk, probably writing a letter to her vicar.

The duchess closed her book, set it aside, and got to her feet.

“Constantine,” she said, coming toward him, one hand extended.

“Duchess.” He bowed over her hand, and for once she allowed him to raise the back of it to his lips. “Miss Leavensworth.”

That lady set down her pen and turned toward him, her cheeks unnaturally pink.

“Mr. Huxtable,” she said gravely.

“Miss Leavensworth,” he said, “I wish you to know that I asked you to dance with me at the Kitteridge ball because I wished to dance with you. My ill-mannered probing for information about the duchess’s roots was an afterthought and an ignominious one. I do beg your pardon for upsetting you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Huxtable,” she said. “It was a pleasure to dance with you.”

“And I have not forgotten,” he said, “that you hope to see the Tower of London before you return home to Markle, and that the duchess has not been there for ages. The weather is much improved today. Indeed, I do believe the sun is about to force its way through the clouds. Would you care to come there with me this afternoon? And perhaps to Gunter’s afterward for ices?”

“Ices?” Miss Leavensworth’s eyes widened. “Oh, I have never had one, but I have heard that they are simply heavenly.”

“Then definitely to Gunter’s afterward,” he said. He looked at Hannah.

She would say, of course, that they had another engagement this afternoon.

“We will be ready at half past twelve,” she said instead.

By which she probably meant a quarter to one.

“I will not keep you any longer, then,” he said, “from your reading and your letter writing.”

And he inclined his head to both and took his leave without further ado.

She had been wearing a plain dress of pale blue cotton, one shade lighter than her eyes, he remembered as he strode out of the square. No jewelry. And her hair had been caught back in a simple knot at the nape of her neck.

Plain and unadorned.

She had looked achingly lovely.

The duchess, that was.

She looked more her usual self when he arrived outside her door again promptly at half past twelve. He had his carriage with him this time as it would accommodate the three of them in more comfort than his curricle would have done, and it really was quite a distance to the Tower.

Both ladies were ready. Perhaps as a matter of sheer principle the duchess would have kept him waiting if the outing had involved her alone, but it did not, and Miss Leavensworth’s face was alive with eager anticipation. And the Duchess of Dunbarton, Constantine thought, loved her friend.

There was much to see at the Tower. Neither lady wished to see the old dungeons or the torture chambers, though, or the place and instruments of execution. The duchess, in fact, shuddered with what looked like very genuine horror when a yeoman of the guard suggested that they might enjoy the displays.

They went to view the menagerie instead and spent a considerable amount of time there gazing at the unfamiliar wild animals, especially the lions.

“How splendid they are,” Miss Leavensworth said. “I can see why they are known as the kings of the jungle. Can’t you, Hannah?”

But the duchess was not so easily pleased.

“But where is the jungle?” she asked. “Poor things. How can they be kings in a cage? It would be better to be a humble rabbit or tortoise or mole and be free.”

“But I daresay they are well fed,” Miss Leavensworth said. “And they are sheltered from the worst of the elements here. And they are much admired.”

“And of course,” the duchess said, “the admiration of others makes up for a multitude of sins.”

“I am glad I have seen them,” Miss Leavensworth said firmly, refusing to be deterred by the misgivings of her friend. “I have only been able to read about them in books until now and see drawings of them. And books never take account of smell, do they? Whew!”

“Shall we go and see the Crown Jewels?” Constantine suggested.

Miss Leavensworth was enthralled by them. And as coincidence would have it, her fiancé’s relatives, with their children, came there to look at them less than five minutes after they had arrived there. There were exclamations of surprise and delight and some hugs, and she had to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Newcombe and Pamela and Peter Newcombe to Constantine—the duchess had met them a few mornings ago when they had fetched Miss Leavensworth for the visit to Kew.

“I need fresh air,” the duchess announced after a few more minutes. “Constantine is going to take me up to the battlements of the White Tower, Babs, and now is the perfect time for us to go since you are terrified of heights. We will come back here in a short while.”

“We will remain with Barbara for as long as you need to see the view, Your Grace,” Mrs. Newcombe assured her. “Do take your time. All we have left to see is the dungeons, at the children’s insistence, and there is no hurry.”

The duchess took Constantine’s arm, and they climbed to the top of the White Tower together—the highest point apart from the four turrets at its corners.

“Tonight?” he asked as they went.

“Yes,” she said. “I will need it. I am to attend a dinner and reception at St. James’s Palace this evening and it is certain to be a dead bore. But when one receives a royal summons, you know, one does not reply that it does not suit one’s purposes to attend, even if one is the Duchess of Dunbarton. Barbara is to dine with the Parks. You may send your carriage at eleven.”

They stepped out onto the battlements of the Tower to find that all the clouds had moved off, leaving blue sky and sunshine in their place.

The duchess opened her parasol and raised it above her head. She was wearing a bonnet today, tied securely beneath her chin. It was just as well. There was a significant breeze up here.

They walked all around the battlements, admiring the various views over the city and the countryside beyond before coming to a stop when they were facing the River Thames.

She tipped back her parasol and lifted her face to the sky. One of the ravens for which the Tower was famous was flapping about up there.

“Do you ever think,” she asked, “that it would be wonderful to fly, Constantine? To be all alone with the vastness and the wind and the sky?”

“The dimension man has not conquered?” he said. “It would be interesting to see the world from a bird’s perspective. There are, of course, hot air balloons.”

“But one would still be constrained,” she said. “I want wings. But never mind. This is quite high enough for now. Is it not lovely up here?”

He turned his head to smile at her. One did not often hear such unguarded enthusiasm on the duchess’s lips—or see her face so bright with animation. She had leaned her arms on the parapet and was gazing out toward the river. Her parasol was propped against the wall.

“Or perhaps I should sail away to some distant, exotic land,” she said. “Egypt, India, China. Have you ever longed to go?”

“To escape from myself?” he said.

“Oh, not from yourself,” she said. “With yourself. You can never leave yourself behind, wherever you go. It was one of the first things the duke taught me after we were married. I could never escape the girl I had been, he told me. I could only make her into a woman in whose body and mind I felt happy to be.”

And yet she acted as though she had escaped that girlhood. She would not even go back to the home and people she had left behind when she married Dunbarton.

“I briefly thought of going to sea as a young man,” he said. “But I would have been gone for months, even years, at a time. I could not be away from Jon so long.”

“The brother you hated?” she said.

“I did not—” he began.

“No,” she said. “I know you did not. You loved him more than you have loved anyone else in your life. And you hated him because you could not keep him alive.”

He leaned his arms on the parapet beside her. Some shallow woman she was turning out to be. What had made her so perceptive?

“Even now,” he said, “I often feel as though I had abandoned him. I will go a whole day—sometimes more—without thinking about him. I go to Warren Hall occasionally just to visit him. He is buried beside the small chapel in the park. It is a peaceful place. I am glad about that. I go to talk to him.”

“And to listen to him?” she said.

“That would be absurd,” he told her.

“No more absurd than to talk to him,” she pointed out. “I think he is alive in your heart, Constantine, even when you are not consciously thinking about him. I think he will always be there. And he is a good part of you.”