A Secret Affair (29 page)

And then a few of the mothers were offended that
they
were considered incapable of throwing a ball about without making utter cakes of themselves, and Miss Julianna Bentley, Sir Bradley’s sister, pointed out to everyone that
she
had been sitting in a carriage today just as long as any of the men. Astley’s sister, Miss Marianne Astley, murmured an agreement. Miss Leavensworth reminded the duchess of all the games of cricket they had played on the village green when they were growing up and remembered that she had always been put all the way out on the road when it was her team’s turn to field because she could catch a ball and had a good throwing arm. And the duchess remembered that
she
had always had a pretty good arm too because all those odious boys had actually allowed her to bowl the occasional over.

“Yes,” Miss Leavensworth agreed, “you had that wicked wobble ball that no one could ever hit, Hannah. All of us found ourselves sawing at the air with the bat, thinking it a sure six because the ball was moving so slowly, and then it would wobble past and shatter the wickets.”

“Come, then,” the duchess said, getting to her feet, “let us go and play ball.”

The Duchess of Dunbarton?

Playing ball?

Constantine caught Katherine and Sherry both looking at her in some surprise, and then looking at
him
.

They all walked down the sloping lawn beyond the terrace until they were on ground flat enough for a game. Toby and Thomas, who had gone to fetch the ball, came dashing after them, and with the exception of a few people who insisted that no game could have any legitimacy if it did not have
some
spectators, they all formed a large circle about an empty center that Toby soon occupied because it was after all
his
ball. They hurled the ball across the circle to one another, trying to hit Toby’s lower legs in the process. The one to succeed took Toby’s place in the center and the game resumed.

It was probably, Constantine decided, one of the most pointless games ever invented. However, it occasioned a great deal of shouting and jeering and laughing—and a little crying too when Sarah somehow found herself in the middle and was hit with the very first ball. She wailed until Hannah dashed in there with her and scooped her up in her arms.

“That was a
foul,”
she cried in a very unduchesslike voice. “It hit Sarah on the knee instead of
below
the knee.
Now
try.”

And she proved remarkably nimble despite the fact that Sarah was shrieking and had taken a death grip about her neck, and despite the fact that she herself was laughing so hard that it was a wonder she could catch her breath. She jumped and dodged until Lawrence Astley clipped her on the ankle with the ball.

Constantine would have lost his wager. One curl had come free of its pins, and one untidy blond ringlet bounced against the duchess’s shoulder as she set Sarah down on the outer edge of the circle and Astley pranced about in the middle. She pushed the curl up under some of the others, but it was down again within moments.

Her face was flushed.

So were
all
their faces, actually, except for those of the spectators.

The game came to a natural end when Sir Bradley Bentley, who had just been hit, stretched out on the grass in the center of the circle and
declared that if anyone so much as whispered the word
exercise
for the rest of the day, he was going to take to his bed and not leave it until the day after tomorrow.
At the earliest
.

Young Hal, Monty’s son, jumped on him. Five-year-old Valerie Finch followed suit, and soon Bentley was lost beneath a writhing, shrieking mass of children.

“I think,” the duchess said, “more tea in the drawing room is called for. Or something stronger.
Definitely
something stronger, in fact. Babs, will you see to it for me, if you please? I am going to have to make some repairs to my hair.”

They all made their way up the slope to the house—except for the duchess, who stood where she was, fiddling ineffectually with her hair and watching them go.

And except for Constantine, who stood where he was, watching
her
.

She turned her head to look at him.

“I am a mess,” she said.

“You are,” he agreed.

She smiled. “That was not very gallant.”

“It was a
compliment,”
he told her.

“Oh.” She lowered her hands and tipped her head to one side. “That was
very
gallant, then. I do not think I am very much needed in the drawing room. Babs will see to it that everyone has something to drink, and then everyone will want to retire to rest for a while before changing for dinner. Let me show you the lake.”

“I have missed you,” he said softly.

He was alarmed by how much.

“And I you,” she said. “I had no idea that having a lover would be quite so …
lovely
. Is it always so?”

He grinned at her.

“You are either fishing for more compliments, Duchess,” he said, “or you have just asked me an impossible question.”

“Come and see the lake,” she said and took his arm even before he could offer it.

Who in his right mind could have guessed that the Duchess of Dunbarton of all people would turn out to be such an innocent?

I had no idea that having a lover would be quite so lovely. Is it always so?

Was
it?

Was it lovely this time? Was it
always
lovely? He was not in the habit of comparing mistresses. Or of analyzing what were really just physical sensations.

“You see what I mean?” she said as they wound their way about the trunks of ancient trees on their way down to the lake. “I have allowed trees to dictate to me. I should have some of them chopped down so that a proper avenue could be constructed here, leading straight down from the house. Lined with rhododendron bushes. Affording a picturesque vista from the house. With a boating jetty straight ahead. And a boat bobbing on the water, of course. And an artfully pretty island in the middle of the lake. And the lake itself redesigned to be kidney-shaped or oval or
something
describable.”

“With a temple folly or a small cottage folly on the opposite bank,” he said. “Built so that from the house it could be seen perfectly reflected in the water and centered down the avenue.”

“Yes,” she said.

“But you have not done it.”

“I have not,” she agreed mournfully. “Constantine, I
like
being dictated to by nature. Why should I take down an oak tree that has been growing for perhaps three or four hundred years merely because it is in the way of a picturesque
prospect
from the house?”

“Why, indeed?” he agreed. “Especially as the house has not been there as long as the tree, I would estimate.”

“And why build a folly?” she asked. “What is the point of it? I have never quite understood. It is all so …”

“Foolish?” he suggested when her free hand described circles in the air but did not seem able to supply her with the word she wanted.

“Precisely,” she said. “Follies are foolish. You are laughing at me, Constantine.”

“I am,” he agreed as they arrived at the bank of the lake and stopped walking.

She laughed.

“But am I right or am I wrong?” she asked.

“You like Copeland as it is?” he asked.

“I do,” she said. “Wild and undisciplined as it is, I
like
it. And though the terrain and scenery are just
perfect
for a wilderness walk, I have stubbornly resisted having one designed and constructed. How can something be both man-made and a wilderness? It is a contradiction in terms.”

“And given the choice between wilderness and art,” he said, “you choose wilderness.”

“I do,” she said. “Am I wrong?”

“I am confused,” he said. “Is this the
Duchess of Dunbarton
asking someone else—
me
, to be precise—if she is right or wrong?”

She sighed.

“But you see, Constantine,” she said, “there is need for
something
wild in my life. Let it be my garden, then. There, I have decided. I am
not
going to have avenues and follies and vistas and wilderness walks at Copeland. Thank you for your opinion and advice.”

He turned her to him, wrapped his arms about her, and kissed her hard and openmouthed. She twined her arms about his neck and kissed him back.

It felt amazingly good to hold her again. To taste her. To smell her.

“You see,” he said when he lifted his head, “if there were an avenue from the house, we would be perfectly framed in it, Duchess, and all your guests would be lined up at the drawing room windows to admire the prospect.”

“And so they would,” she said, and favored him with one of her wide, full-face smiles. “But since there is not …”

He kissed her again, pressing his tongue into her mouth, feeling her fingers twine in his hair, her body arch inward to fit itself to his as his arms tightened about her waist.

He wondered what would happen if he fell in love with Hannah, Duchess of Dunbarton.

He really had no idea. He might introduce chaos into his life.

Or paradise.

Not to mention what it might do to his
heart
.

He would undoubtedly be wise not to put the matter to the test.

H
ANNAH’S GUESTS
were to be with her for three full days. She had deliberately not overorganized the activities for those days. Everyone, after all, had come from London, where the Season was in full swing and entertainments abounded. Everyone, she felt, would enjoy simply relaxing for a few days in quiet rural surroundings.

Nevertheless, some activities had been arranged for the first day—a morning walk into the village for those who wanted to see the church and get some exercise, a leisurely afternoon picnic down at the lake, an evening of cards with a few neighbors and music provided by various members of their own group. They were fortunate that the weather remained fine and warm.

It had been a successful day, Hannah felt when it was over and the last neighbors had been waved on their way. Sir Bradley Bentley, her friend and frequent escort during her marriage—
his grandfather had been the duke’s friend—had flirted all day with Marianne Astley, and Julianna Bentley had spent much of her time in company with Lawrence Astley. Just as Hannah had hoped. Not that she had tried to play matchmaker, but she had wanted to invite Sir Bradley after she and Barbara had had tea with him one morning on Bond Street, and he had a sister who had made her come-out last year but still had no steady beau. And her close friend was Marianne Astley, who had a brother in his middle twenties.

Her house party needed some young people, Hannah had decided. Young, unattached adults, that was. And so she had invited all four of them.

All her other guests seemed comfortable with one another, though some of them had been strangers to one another at the start. There were the Parks, the Newcombes, Mr. and Mrs. Finch, who had been the duke’s neighbors all their lives and all their parents’ lives before them, and the aforementioned young people. And Barbara, of course. And Constantine himself and his cousins and their spouses. And ten children and babies.

The third day was designated for the children’s party in the afternoon and would be fairly busy as a consequence, but the second day was left free for whatever the guests wished to do. During the morning Hannah strolled through the flower beds to the east and north of the house with Mrs. Finch, the Countess of Merton, and a rather pale-looking Lady Montford. When Hannah, rather alarmed, inquired into her health, she laughed rather ruefully.

“It is nothing to concern you, Your Grace,” she said. “It is not
poor
health that is causing me to feel a little bilious, but
good
health. I am to have another baby.”

“Oh,” Hannah said, and was assaulted by a great wave of envy.

“We intended to have another within two years of Hal,” Lady Montford said. “But the powers that be had other ideas. I am glad they have relented at last.”

“You must be my age or even younger,” Hannah said. “Yet you lament having to wait so long for your
second
child?”

And she had, she realized in some dismay, spoken aloud.

Mrs. Finch was bent over a rosebud, holding it cupped gently in both hands. Lady Merton and Lady Montford turned to look at Hannah, both with the same expression of … compassion?

“I am thirty,” Hannah added, and then felt even more foolish.

“I was twenty-eight when I married Stephen last year,” the countess said as Lady Montford linked an arm through Hannah’s—startling her considerably. “I was a widow too, Your Grace. And I was childless, with four dead babies to mourn. I will forever mourn them, but I have Jonathan now, and we hope to fill our nursery to overflowing before I am forty. There is always hope even in the darkest moments of despair when we can come dangerously close to losing it.”

Mrs. Finch straightened up.

“I was seventeen when I married,” she said, “and eighteen when I had Michael. Thomas came two years later, Valerie two years after that. I am only twenty-seven now. I love my children dearly, and my husband too, but sometimes I have wicked thoughts about having lost my youth too soon. Perhaps there is no easy road through life. We must each walk our own and make the best of it.”