A Secret Affair

It was too late now for such thoughts.

The drawing room had just one occupant, she saw when she was admitted to the room after the butler had a

“Yes, yes, Forbes,” the old gentleman seated in a wing chair close to the fire said impatiently, “I know who she is. Bindle told me. Where is she?”

Ha

“Here I am,” she said. “And there you are. It must be years.”

He had been one of the duke’s friends. Ha

He took his hands off the silver head of his cane and took hers. His fingers were bent and gnarled, she could see. She curled her own warmly about them but was careful not to squeeze them. She was careful not to touch him with any of her rings.

“Ha

“Some things,” she said, “are meant to be.”

“Hmmph,” he said, shaking her hands slightly up and down in his own. “And I suppose you married him for his money. Of which he had more than his fair share.”

“And because he was a duke and was able to make me a duchess,” she said. “You must not forget that.”

“I daresay I would not have stood a chance with you, then,” he said, “even if I had seen you first. I was only a marquess.”

“And probably not as rich as the duke was,” she said.

She smiled at him. His white hair was sparse. His white eyebrows were not. He had a deep vertical temper line between his brows, eyes that tended to glare, and a beak of a nose. He looked like a thoroughly bad-tempered old man.

“I loved him,” she said. “And I still grieve for him. If I had ever had a grandfather that I remembered, I would have wanted him to be just like my duke. But since I did not, and since I did have the good fortune to meet the duke, I married him.”

“Hmmph,” he said again. “And you led him a merry dance, I daresay, Ha

“Oh, very merry indeed,” she agreed, “though he would not dance after his seventy-eighth birthday, which was very poor-spirited of him. We found something to laugh at every day, though. Laughter is better than medicine, you know.”

“Hmmph,” he said. “But he died in the end anyway.”

“I have heard,” she said, “that your medicine came in the form of your granddaughter-in-law. I have heard that she takes no nonsense from you and that she is your favorite adult in the world. And I have heard that you dote upon your great-grandchildren, who actually live here with you during the Season. What sort of a recluse is that? A rather fraudulent one, I would say.”

“You used to be a timid thing when Dunbarton first married you, Ha

“After I married him,” she said. “He taught me that people like you are really just pussycats pretending to be lions.”

He barked with laughter, and Ha

“Dunbarton was a devil of a fellow when he was a young man,” he said. “Did he ever tell you? There was no pussycat there, Ha

“He was too kindhearted to shoot the man,” Ha

“Kindhearted?” The marquess had roused himself into some sort of passion. “He did the most cruel thing any man could have done, Ha

Ha

“Ah, those were the days,” he said with a sigh. “A man’s man was Dunbarton, Ha

“I daresay,” she said, “even my father and mother did not know each other then.”

He barked with laughter again.

“You got him in the end, though,” he said. “You tamed him, Ha

“Yes,” Ha

He half shook her hands again.

“You may have any seat you like,” he said. “But first you must haul on the bell rope if you want tea. If you were to wait until I got to my feet to pull it, you would probably be ready for your luncheon too.”

“I have already given the order for a tray to be brought in, Grandpapa,” a voice said from the doorway, and Lady Sheringford came into the room.

Constantine was standing in the doorway. Ha

“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Your Grace,” Lady Sheringford said, addressing Ha

“It is about the children I came,” Ha