A Secret Affair

“The truly fu

“You say we,” she said. “But was it Jonathan’s idea or yours to sell his valuables?”

He turned his head to look steadily at her.

“The Huxtable jewels were not mine to sell, Duchess, or even to suggest selling,” he said. “They were Jon’s, and though I was not his official guardian, I felt a great responsibility toward him. He was not by any means stupid, but sometimes he saw things differently from the way other people did. Once he discovered the truth about our fa—Ah, dash it all! But I suppose you had guessed. Once he discovered the truth about someone he had loved during life and mourned after death, he lost all his joy and all his interest in food and sleep for days on end. I had never seen him like it before. And he would not speak to me about his pain. He would only swear me over and over again to secrecy. No one must know about our father. And yet the suffering he had caused must not be ignored either. And Jon was very aware that he was now Earl of Merton, that putting everything to rights was his duty. I could not persuade him otherwise, though I had felt the same way for years, quite impotently, I might add.”

“I wish I had known him,” Ha

“And then one morning,” Constantine said, “he came bounding into my bedchamber and shook me awake—literally. He was bursting with excitement, bubbling over with it, giggling with it. He had concocted his grand idea. And nothing would satisfy him until he had found a way of making his dream a reality. I was the one chosen to do it all for him. There was no point in arguing with Jon when he made up his mind about something important to him, Duchess—and this was more important to him than anything else in his life. He was as stubborn as a—”

“Mule?” she said. “Could he have been like his elder brother by any chance?”

“Ten times worse,” he said. “The only way I could have stopped him was to run off and tell tales to my uncle behind his back. But I wanted what Jon wanted too, you see, and I was too weak to do what was undoubtedly the right thing. For years I had been sickened by what Jon had just discovered. I knew about it all my life, it seems. I watched my mother dwindle with unhappiness and the repeated loss of children, and my father debauch everything in skirts. He was not a pleasant man, Duchess. And he hated Jon, whom he called an imbecile, sometimes to his face. I beg your pardon. One ought not to say anything aloud against one’s parents. Anyway, none of the jewels I sold for Jon was part of the entailed property. But several of them had been in the family for a few generations, and all were costly and fully documented. A good case could have been made to say that Jon had no right to dispose of those pieces without the express permission of his legal guardian. And even if he had lived to his majority I daresay the powers that be would have declared him incompetent to make his own decisions unaided.”

“He was stealing from himself, then?” she said.

“He knew what he was doing,” he said. “Jon was no fool. Sometimes I believe he was the only truly wise one among us. What is more important? Those ancient jewels locked up in a safe at Warren Hall, or those people at Ainsley?”

She laughed. “You would never be able to guess my answer, would you?”

They were getting close to Land’s End. There was just a meadow to cross and then the wide lawn to one side of the house.

“You have told no one all this?” she asked. “No one but me?”

“No,” he said. “Not even the king.”

“And so everyone thinks you are a villain,” she said, “who stole from his helpless brother in order to purchase a home for himself in Gloucestershire, where he lives in the lap of luxury.”

He shrugged.

“I believe,” he said, “Elliott must have been as closemouthed as I have, except perhaps with Vanessa. If he had not, I do not suppose Stephen or his sisters would still be on speaking terms with me, would they?”

“Or trying to protect you from me,” she agreed.

He looked at her and smiled before stooping to open the gate leading from the meadow into the park. They walked their horses through, and he shut the gate behind them.

“Perhaps,” she said, “you ought to tell the Earl of Merton what you have told me. He seems to me to be a gentle, honorable soul.”

He raised one mocking eyebrow and shot her a glance.

“You believe he would forgive me?” he asked.

“I believe,” he said, “he might assure you that forgiveness is not necessary. It is Jonathan he needs to forgive rather than you, anyway, is it not?”

He nudged his horse to a slightly faster pace and moved ahead of her until she made the effort to catch up.

“That is what you fear most?” she asked. “That no one will be able to forgive your brother? Perhaps you need to give them more credit.”

He turned to look fully at her again, and his features looked very taut, his eyes very black.

“Have you told anyone about this?” he asked her, nodding toward the house. “Anyone except me?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked. “Why did you not invite all your guests to come here this afternoon?”

“I have a reputation to protect, Constantine,” she said.

“Precisely,” he told her. “I do too. Devil and duchess. We deserve each other.”

In the eyes of the world? Or … in truth?

She did not ask the questions.

“If we were not so close to the house,” he said, “I might begin on all the reasons you ought to go back home, Duchess. To Markle, that is.”

She leaned forward to pat Clover’s neck as they stopped outside the stables and a groom hurried out to assist them.

“Point taken,” she said.

Chapter 16

WATCHING HANNAH over the next hour and a half, Constantine tried to make the co

It was not just that she wore a faded blue, almost shabby, riding habit. Or that her hair was dressed simply and was even slightly untidy after she removed her hat inside the house. It was not even that she do

It had everything to do with the woman inside the outer shell, the woman he had not seen at all until after they became lovers and had seen only in snatched glimpses since then. At Land’s End that woman stood fully revealed, a butterfly free of its cocoon and fluttering about, beautiful, energetic, sparkling with joy and bringing that joy to all around her.

He was, quite simply, dazzled.

He was also quite alarmingly in love.

It was not upon him that her beauty and energy and joy were focused, though she did smile at him every time she looked his way and included him in the aura of her magnetic charm.

She presented him to Mrs. Broome, the manager, a lady of middle years and pleasant appearance and soft-spoken ma