“I have no intention of marrying him,” Hannah said, keeping her eyes on the moon. “Or of breaking his heart. We are engaged in an affair, Cassandra, as I am sure you are all very well aware, but not of the heart.”

She was not at all sure she spoke the truth, but it was probably the truth from his perspective, and that was all that mattered to his family. Though this afternoon …

“But that is the whole point,” Cassandra said with a sigh. “We were concerned, Hannah. Although Constantine is in his thirties and well able to look after his own affairs, nevertheless you are different from other women. We thought it altogether possible that you would toy with his affections, humiliate him, perhaps even hurt him. While we did not believe we needed to protect him from you—that would have been absurd—we did believe we ought to show our disapproval when we could.”

“And so,” Hannah said, “you refused my invitation to come here. It was your right. There is never any compulsion to accept invitations that are not to one’s liking. I never do. The duke taught me to assert myself in such ways. He taught me not to endure unnecessary boredom or to suffer fools gladly all in the name of obligation where there is no obligation. You do not owe me an explanation of why you refused, or why you changed your minds and came.”

“Hannah,” Cassandra said, “I was horribly misjudged when I arrived in London last year, and I was ostracized. There is no worse feeling, much as one may tell oneself that one does not care. You are not ostracized by society. Quite the contrary, in fact. But you are misjudged.”

“Perhaps,” Hannah said, drawing Lady Merton toward a bench beneath an oak tree close by, “I choose to be misjudged. There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is privacy even in the most public situation, in knowing that one can very effectively hide in full sight.”

They seated themselves and Cassandra laughed softly.

“I was destitute as well as everything else when I arrived in London last year,” she said, “and I had other persons dear to me to support as well as myself. I decided that the only way I could do it was to find a wealthy protector. And so I went to a ball to seduce Stephen, who looked to me like an angel. I made the mistake of believing that angels must also necessarily be weak and easily led—but that is another story. I can remember standing in that ballroom, an empty space all about me, everyone shocked that I would have come there uninvited, and wishing that I could curl into a tiny ball and simply disappear. I was sustained by the realization that no one knew me, that my real self was safely hidden deep within the brazen red-haired axe-murderer everyone thought they saw.”

“But the Earl of Merton danced with you,” Hannah said.

“That too is another story,” Cassandra said. “I of all people ought to have realized when I saw you earlier this spring that what I saw was not the real Duchess of Dunbarton.”

“Oh,” Hannah said, “she is very real indeed. I am the Duchess of Dunbarton. I married the duke when I was nineteen, and though the world will always believe that he married me for my youth and beauty and that I married him for his title and wealth, nevertheless I was his wife. And now I am his widow. He taught me how to be a duchess, how to hold my head high, how to control my own life and never let myself be exploited, for my beauty or any other attribute. I like the person he helped me to become, Cassandra. I am comfortable as the Duchess of Dunbarton.”

“I expressed myself poorly,” Cassandra said. “What I meant was that looking at you, I ought not to have believed that I was looking at the complete you. Even yet I do not presume to believe that I know you. But Margaret told us about how kind you were to Duncan’s grandfather when you called on her at Claverbrook House and how you kissed his cheek before you left. And about how you came to invite our children to this house party even though we had all rejected your invitation. And for the last two days I have seen a side of you that no one is allowed even to glimpse when you are in town. You are a warm, hospitable, generous, fun-loving person, Hannah, and I wanted you to know that I misjudged you. We all want you to know that.”

“You were the one chosen to have this word with me, then?” Hannah asked, not knowing whether to be amused or somehow hurt.

“Not at all,” Cassandra said. “But we did talk at length this afternoon while you were gone somewhere with Constantine and the children were either sleeping or playing elsewhere. And we agreed that we really must find a way of telling you how sorry we are that we rejected you on so little evidence.”

“You owe me nothing,” Hannah said.

“Of course we do not,” Cassandra agreed. “But we all want to offer our friendship, if you will accept it after such a shaky start.”

“On condition that I do not hurt Constantine?” Hannah asked.

“He has nothing to do with it,” Cassandra said. “He is well able to take care of himself. And we now know that you are not the sort of person who would willfully lead him a dance and humiliate him. If he ends the affair at the end of the Season, or if you do, or if you part by mutual consent, that is entirely a matter between the two of you. But I think I would like you as a friend, Hannah, and Margaret and Katherine feel the same way. If it means anything to you, Vanessa told us just last week that she has always liked you and admired you, that you were altogether too good for Constantine.”

She laughed softly again.

That was going to have to end, that silly quarrel, Hannah thought. The Duke of Moreland had certainly been at fault in the way he had jumped to conclusions about his cousin and best friend and accused him of really quite heinous crimes. But Constantine had been equally at fault in choosing to take offense to such a degree that he did not even try to explain how much he had been misjudged.

Misjudged. That word again.

She had been offered the friendship of three ladies whom she believed she could like very well if given the chance. Perhaps four. The Duchess of Moreland claimed to like and admire her.

And it was, apparently, an unconditional friendship she was being offered.

“We have been discovered,” Cassandra said, and Hannah looked up to see the Earl of Merton and Constantine crossing the lawn toward them. “Angel and devil. It was how I saw them the very first time I set eyes upon them in Hyde Park one afternoon last year. And Stephen really is an angel.”

Hannah’s heart turned over—even though she had seen Constantine in the drawing room just fifteen minutes or so ago. This celibacy was proving to be very hard on the emotions. Not just because she longed to make love with him—though she did—but because the abstinence made her think about their relationship. And she did not like the direction her thoughts were taking.

At least, she did, but …

But what had he been about to say out in the woods this afternoon when he had chosen to remain silent instead? Words had been fairly bursting from him.

As they had from her.

She was going to get dreadfully hurt after all. She should never have believed she could play with fire and not get burned.

Or perhaps she would not get hurt. Perhaps …

“We have come to be congratulated on our win,” the earl called when the men were within earshot. “Which you did not remain to witness.”

“Of course,” Constantine said, “we have been accused by the other side of winning only because we had Miss Leavensworth on our team. But that sounds like sour grapes to me.”

“The other side was my side,” Cassandra said. “I cannot think of any one of my former teammates who is capable of sour grapes, Constantine. And any team that had Miss Leavensworth on it would have an unfair advantage.”

“Well, there you are, Cass,” the earl said. “You are biased. We might as well change the subject before we come to blows.”

He propped one foot on the bench at his wife’s side and draped an arm over his leg. Constantine leaned one shoulder against the trunk beside Hannah and crossed his arms over his chest.

“It is so beautifully silent out here,” the earl said after a few moments.

“Not so,” Constantine said. “If you really listen, Stephen, you will hear wind in the trees, a nightingale singing, laughter from the drawing room, among other sounds. All contributing to a sense of quiet well-being. Hannah taught me that this afternoon when we were strolling in the woods.”

They all listened.

Except Hannah.

He had just called her by name. For the first time.

And here she was, part of a relaxed group, feeling the warmth and acceptance of it. She was not at the center of it, holding court as she usually was in groups. She was part of it.

If she were to let go of the last vestiges of her defenses, she could believe that she was part of a group of two couples.

She clasped her hands rather tightly in her lap. She would not let go. The looming heartache, not to mention heartbreak, would be just too much to bear. The other couple was married. They had a young baby sleeping up in the nursery. When this house party was at an end, they would return to London together. At the end of the spring, they would go home together. Even tonight they would lie in each other’s arms.

“You are perfectly right, Con,” the earl said after several minutes, sounding surprised.

Constantine’s hand came to rest lightly on Hannah’s shoulder.