Mary Balogh: A Secret Affair

They were soon surrounded by people, most of them male, though not all. Margaret and Katherine were together in an open barouche and stopped to talk for a while. Katherine, upon learning that Barbara was to leave the next day, insisted that Hannah come to dine in the evening. And Margaret invited her to attend the opera with them the evening after.

“We have almost but not quite persuaded Duncan’s grandpapa to come with us,” she said. “If he knows you are to be of our party, Hannah, he will surely come.”

“Then tell him I have accepted only on condition that he does too,” Hannah said. “Tell him that if he fails to come, I shall be at Claverbrook House the following morning to demand an explanation from him.”

Barbara and the Reverend Newcombe were talking with Mr. and Mrs. Park and another couple.

The barouche drove on, and Hannah was swallowed up in a circle of her old male friends, some of whom were also would-be suitors, and a few new admirers. It felt very comfortable, she thought after a few minutes, to be back within the old armor, playing the part of the Duchess of Dunbarton while guarding the more fragile person of Hannah Reid safely within.

And yet it was a part that could not be played indefinitely. She had not realized that until now. She certainly had not realized it at the start of the Season. Playing the part had been easy and even enjoyable while the duke had lived. There had been his company, his companionship, and-yes-his love in which to bask when she was not on public display. But now? There was only loneliness to look forward to after she went home. And Babs was leaving tomorrow.

Would new friends and old be enough in the coming days and months-and years?

Oh, Constantine, where are you? And are you going to avoid me if and when you return?

She was laughing at something Lord Moodie had just said and tapping him sharply on the sleeve of his coat when her court parted down the middle to let a horse through. A queer sort of hush descended too.

It was an all-black horse.

Constantine’s.

Hannah looked up and gave her parasol a violent enough twirl to create a slight breeze about her head.

Constantine. All in black except for his shirt. Narrow-faced. Dark-eyed. Unsmiling. Almost sinister. Almost satanic.

Her dearly beloved.

Goodness, where had those fanciful words sprung from? The marriage service?

“Mr. Huxtable?” Her eyebrows arched upward.

“Duchess.”

Her court hung upon their words as though they had delivered a lengthy monologue apiece.

“You have deigned to favor London with your presence again, then?” she asked.

Her court sighed with almost inaudible approval of her disdain for a man who had come back after she had rejected him. His time was over, that near-silent sigh informed him. The sooner he rode on and bore his heartbreak with some dignity, the better for all concerned.

For answer, he held out one hand, clad in skin-tight black leather. His eyes held Hannah’s with an intensity that made it impossible for her to look away.

“Set your foot on my boot,” he said.

What?

“Oh, I say,” one unidentified gentleman protested. “Can you not see, Huxtable, that her grace…”

Hannah was not listening. Her eyes were fighting a battle of wills with Constantine’s. She was dressed as unsuitably for riding as she could possibly be. If he wanted to speak with her, it would be far easier and infinitely more gallant for him to descend from his horse’s back. But he wanted to see her-and he wanted the ton to see her-make a spectacle of herself. He wanted to provide the ton with talk of scandal to last a month. He wanted to show the world that he was master, that he had merely to snap his fingers for her to come running.

She gave her parasol one more twirl and looked mockingly up at him.

There was another near-inaudible sigh of approval. If Hannah had looked about her, she would have seen that her court had grown in number and that its members were no longer all male. There was already fodder enough here for drawing room conversation to last a fortnight.

Hannah slowly and deliberately lowered and furled her parasol before handing it without a word or a glance to Lord Hardingraye beside her. She took two steps forward, lifted her skirt with one hand to set her very delicate white slipper on the high gloss of Constantine’s hard black riding boot, and reached up her other hand to set in his-white silk on black leather.

The next moment, without any further effort on her part, she was seated sideways on the horse in front of his saddle, and his black-clad arms and hands bracketed her front and back so that even if she had been inclined to fear for her safety she could not possibly have done so.

She was not inclined to fear.

She turned her head and looked into the very dark eyes, now almost on a level with her own.

He was turning the horse, and the crowd was moving back out of his way. The crowd also had a great deal to say and was saying it-to her, to him, to one another. Hannah did not even try to listen. She did not care what they were saying.

He had come.

And he had come to claim her.

Had he?

“That,” she said, “was very dramatic.”

“Yes, wasn’t it?” he said. “I understood upon my return, which was a mere couple of hours ago, by the way, that I was your scorned, rejected swain. For very pride’s sake I had to make some extravagant gesture.”

“It certainly was extravagant,” she said as he weaved his horse skillfully among the horses and carriages that half clogged the path ahead.

“ Am I?” he asked.

“Scorned?” she said.

“Rejected.”

“And a swain,” she said. “I like the image of you as a swain. My dress is going to be ruined, Constantine. It will smell of horse for the rest of its life.”

They were not quite clear of the crowd. They were fully visible to every part of it. And there were probably very few people among it who were not taking full advantage of that fact.

He kissed her anyway-full on the lips, with open mouth. And it was no token peck. It must have lasted a full fifteen or twenty seconds, which under the circumstances was an eternity .

And since she must endure it anyway as she was definitely not in any physical condition to fight him off, Hannah kissed him back, prolonging the embrace by at least another ten seconds.

“There,” he said when he raised his head. His eyes were looking very deeply into hers. There was no escaping them. Her very soul was invaded and captured. She invaded his in return. “You have been thoroughly compromised, Duchess.”

“I have,” she admitted with a sigh. “And what do you intend to do about it, sir?”

She wished she had not spoken those words once they were out of her mouth. They were too much like an ultimatum.

“I am a gentleman, Duchess,” he said. “I intend to marry you.”

She responded with a huge and awkward swallow that almost choked her. She looked away from him, noted that the crowd had been left behind and they were almost alone on the path, rural parkland all about them, and attempted to put back the armor in which she had been so comfortably encased just a few minutes ago.

“Do you?” she said coolly. “And were you planning to consult me, Constantine? Or, since it appears you have literally swept me off my feet, were you assuming that it would be unnecessary to do so?”

“I was hoping it might be,” he said. “I suppose every man dreads the actual proposal scene of his own love story. But I see you are not to be fooled or deprived of it, Duchess. It is going to have to be a down-on-one-knee thing, then, is it, something I can hardly do at this precise moment. I do not doubt that though we have left the crowds behind, they would come running from all corners of the park if I were to get down off my horse and lift you down and proceed to business right here. It is going to have to wait for another occasion, then.”