A Secret Affair (11 page)

“You listen to too much gossip,” she said. “Or, rather, since we all
listen
, you believe too much. Do you really believe I would break
marriage
vows?”

“Even when you were getting no satisfaction from your husband?” he asked.

“I may be a merry widow now, Constantine,” she said. “Indeed, I intend to make very merry with you for the rest of the spring, though not again tonight. I may be a merry widow, but I was a faithful wife. And not because I was coerced into fidelity, though you may jump to that odious conclusion. It would be odious, you know. My duke was anything but a tyrant—to me, anyway. I
chose
to be faithful, just as I now
choose
to take a lover. I am always in control of my own life.”

He stared down at her in silence for a few moments, and for the first time it struck her that it must have taken enormous control on his part to withdraw from her when he was fully aroused, and then lie still and talk with her.

If she had said no in time, he would have stopped sooner, and they would not have had this conversation. That would teach her a lesson about hesitation.

It did not matter, though. Nothing was changed. Not for her. For him, perhaps. He had thought he was getting an experienced mistress.

“Well,” he said softly, “an outer petal falls away from the rose. Are there any more within, I wonder?”

He was not expecting an answer. He got none. Whatever was he talking about, anyway?

“I might have run the race with you with somewhat less, ah,
vigor
if I had known,” he said. “I might—”

“Constantine,” she said, interrupting him, “if you
ever
try to patronize me or be gentle with me or humor me as a delicate
lady
, I shall—”

“Yes?” he said.

“I shall drop you,” she said, “as I would a live coal. And by the next day I shall have another lover, twice as handsome and three times as virile as you. I shall not spare you another thought.”

“And that is a threat?” he asked, sounding anything but threatened.

“Of course not,” she said scornfully. “I never make
threats
. Why ever would I need to? It is
information
. It is what will happen if you should ever try to treat me as anything less than I am.”

“I was merely telling you,” he said, “that the way a man makes love to a virgin is different from the way he does it with an experienced woman. I would have given you no less pleasure, Duchess. Perhaps I would have given you more.”

His free hand, she realized, was stroking lightly over her abdomen. It was warmer than her own flesh.

“I suppose,” she said, “you make love to a virgin at least once a fortnight.”

She could see his teeth very white in contrast to the rest of his face. He was smiling. That was a rare enough event—and there was no daylight with which to see it properly.

“One hates to boast,” he said, “or exaggerate. Once a
month.”

He bent his head and kissed her softly on the mouth.

“I am sorry,” he murmured.

She tapped him sharply on one cheek.

“You must never
ever
say you are sorry,” she said. “You must never even
feel
sorry. If you always act with deliberate intent, there is nothing to be sorry about. And if you act in ignorance, there is nothing to apologize for. I do not apologize for having been a virgin until an hour or two ago. It was what I chose to be. And I do not apologize for withholding the information from you. It is something you did not need to know. It was, as you said on the night of the concert when I asked about your quarrel with the Duke of Moreland, none of your business. And while we are on this topic, I will tell you now that for the rest of this spring, while we are having our affair, I will be faithful to you. And I expect that you will be faithful to me. I will go home now.”

“There may be no more petals on the bloom,” he said, “but there are certainly thorns enough on the stem. I do believe, Duchess, you may be quite confident of my fidelity for the next few months. I would not have the physical stamina to take on another one like
you—or even unlike you, for that matter. Lie there for a while, and I will go and rouse my coachman. He will not be delighted. He expects to be called out early in the morning, but I believe this hour qualifies more as middle of the night than morning.”

He got out of bed as he spoke and pulled on his clothes.

Hannah lay where she was until he had left the room.

Well, this had been an interesting night. And not an altogether comfortable one. It had not turned out anything like what she had expected.

For one thing, the actual …
experience
had been far more carnal than anything she had imagined. Oh, and probably at least twice as pleasurable too, even if it
had
left her annoyingly sore.

But it had also left her with the uneasy suspicion that having a lover was going to involve a little more than just sprightly innuendo and vigorous bed sport. And she really had not expected or wanted more.

She suspected that this liaison with Constantine Huxtable was going to involve some sort of
relationship
, just as her marriage had.

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.

S
HE 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.

T
HE 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.”