A Secret Affair

He bore his offerings off to the home of the Marquess of Claverbrook on Grosvenor Square, where Margaret and Sheringford lived when they were in town—Sherry was the marquess’s grandson and heir. And he spent a pleasant hour in the nursery with Margaret and the children, Sherry being from home. He began to have doubts about the rattle, though, when Sarah appropriated it and decided that shattering everyone else’s eardrums as well as her own was to be the game of the morning. The baby meanwhile was fascinated by the top, though he spoiled the lovely spi

Toby found every continent and country and river and ocean and town in the known world, not to mention poles and elevations and lines of latitude and longitude, and insisted that his mother and Uncle Con come and see each new discovery. The globe began to look like an instrument of torture.

It all made the tea parties in the conservatory at Ainsley seem very tranquil events indeed, Constantine thought cheerfully. And it struck him as an unexpected revelation under the circumstances that he liked children.

But had he not played endless games of hide-and-seek with Jon, that eternal child?

A knock on the nursery door, which they miraculously heard, preceded the appearance of a footman with the a

The duchess? Here?

“Oh, goodness,” Margaret said, “Grandpapa never admits visitors. Oh, this is very vexing.”

“Vexing?” Constantine raised his eyebrows, and she flushed and did not quite meet his eyes.

“She invited us to spend four days at her home in Kent,” Margaret said, “and we sent back a refusal—with regrets.”

“Because—?” Constantine asked as there was a crescendo from the rattle, accompanied by a beatific look on Sarah’s face, a wail of protest from Alex as the top stopped its spi

“We do not wish to leave the children for so long,” Margaret said, setting the top to spi

And the duchess had responded to the refusal by coming here in person? She really did not take well to rejection, did she? And she did not often have to suffer it. Would she win Margaret over after all? Was that why she had come?

Sarah was spi

“Constantine.” Margaret met his eyes at last. “We ca

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Those are harsh words,” he said.

“Yes,” she admitted, “they are.”

“I can remember a time,” he said, “when words of equal harshness were being bandied about over Sherry. But that did not stop you from taking up with him and betrothing yourself to him and ultimately marrying him.”

“That was different,” she said. “He was not guilty of any of the charges that had been made against him.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “the Duchess of Dunbarton is not either—guilty of the charges against her, I mean.”

“Oh, come, now,” she said.

He was in danger of losing his temper, he realized. He looked away from her. The baby had hold of one of Toby’s books and was about to make a meal of it. Constantine hurried across the room, rescued the book, and prevented the imminent protest by swinging the child up onto one of his shoulders.

“You must be besotted if you believe that,” Margaret said. “And we are all quite right to be concerned for you.”

“We,” he said. “Were any of the others invited to Copeland too?”

“Not Nessie and Elliott,” she said. “But the others, yes.”

“And tell me,” he said, “have they all refused their invitations too?”

She had the grace to look away from him again.

“Yes,” she said.

Alex was pulling Constantine’s hair and shrieking with glee.

“Now let me see,” he said, disentangling his hair from the baby’s fist and setting him down beside a box of wooden bricks. “Monty was England’s most notorious hellion. I could vouch for that—I knew him. Katherine married him. Sherry we have already talked about. You married him. Cassandra was believed to have murdered her first husband—with an axe, even though it was a bullet that was found in Paget, not an axe wound. Stephen married her. And yet you all believe everything you have heard of the Duchess of Dunbarton without any objective proof at all?”

“How do you know we have no proof?” she asked.

“Because there is none,” he said. “She loved Dunbarton, even if not in a romantic way. She was true to her marriage vows until the day of his death, and she was true to her widowhood throughout the year of her mourning. I know, Margaret. I have had proof.”

Anger was making him speak quite rashly.

She was biting her upper lip.

“Oh, Constantine,” she said, “you do care for her. It is what we have most feared. But—are you sure you have not just come under her spell?”

He did not answer her—or look away from her.

“Proof.”

She closed her eyes and then opened them and looked herself again—in charge, as she always had been, the eldest sister who had brought up her siblings almost singlehanded and done a really rather splendid job of it too before going in search of some happiness for herself.

“I had better go down and see her,” she said. “Oh, goodness, Grandpapa will have eaten her whole by now. She is just the sort of frivolous person to set his teeth on edge. And is that too an illusion? Her frivolity?”

“I had better let you make some discoveries for yourself,” he said.

She was pulling on the bell rope, and the children’s nurse came almost immediately. Toby demanded that she come to see India, Sarah raised the rattle toward her and shook it with a flourish, and Alex banged one wooden brick against another and chuckled.

Constantine left the nursery with Margaret. He half thought of taking his leave altogether, but he could not resist getting a glimpse of Ha

He rather hoped she had not been eaten alive. But his wager was on her.

WHY EXACTLY WAS SHE HERE? Ha

Why was she here? To grovel? To demand an explanation? To try to persuade Lady Sheringford to change her mind?

She did not have long to wait. The footman who had narrowly avoided getting elbowed was sent upstairs to see if Lady Sheringford was at home, and he performed his task with nimble speed. He reappeared within moments of disappearing and murmured to the butler that her grace was to be shown up to the drawing room.

Ha

She was glad she had worn the full armor of a white muslin dress with a white spencer and a white bo