A Secret Affair

Constantine wandered alone after that, keeping mainly to the lower floor, where it seemed that most of the rooms were open for the communal use of the residents, though Mrs. Broome had explained that all had rooms of their own, where they could be private and no one could enter without first knocking and being given permission to enter. It was one of the few rules of the house.

“It is a home,” she had added. “It is not an institution, Mr. Huxtable. There are very few rules, and all have to be first suggested and then voted upon by the tenants themselves. It may sound like a recipe for chaos, and I was a little dubious when her grace insisted upon it, I must confess, but for some reason it works like a charm. People, I suppose, are less likely to break rules that have been imposed by themselves and not by some autocratic outsider.”

He stopped several times to speak to elderly people as he moved about and to a few of the employees who cared for their needs.

Ha

The older one got, Constantine thought, the easier it was to believe that all lives followed their own very definite pattern, that all things happened for a reason. Not fate exactly. That took away free will and made nonsense of life. But some unseen force that drew each person toward the lesson that needed to be learned, the life that needed to be lived, the fulfillment that needed to be achieved. And perhaps ultimate happiness. The disasters of life in retrospect were often its greatest blessings.

Ha

But in the process of all that, she had not only learned how to guard herself against those who would exploit or resent her beauty without ever seeing her, how to control her life rather than be at the mercy of those who would do it for her and then blame her for being so beautiful and so vulnerable. She had also discovered what was perhaps the true purpose of her life—a deep love of those weaker than herself, specifically the elderly. And that discovery had released that part of herself that might forever have remained submerged beneath her beauty and its effect upon those around her if Young had married her. It was a self, Constantine was willing to wager, that was far more warm and vibrant than the person she had been when she was betrothed to Sir Colin Young.

The past eleven years of her life had followed a definite pattern, something she could never have predicted or pla

It had been no coincidence that she had discovered the truth about her betrothed and her sister at that particular wedding, or that Dunbarton had attended it and escaped to the very room where she had unburdened herself to her father. It had been cosmic theater in progress. Except that only the scene had been set by the master producer. The script had not been written.

Even now, of course, she was fearful. She hid herself behind the Siren’s mask of the Duchess of Dunbarton. But that too was part of the pattern. She was still fragile. Like a person trapped in a burning building and clinging to the sill of an upper floor, she was afraid to take the final drop to the safety of the blanket being held below. She needed to be given time to do it in her own way, when she was ready.

But who was he to judge?

Besides, it would be a pity if the Duchess of Dunbarton were to disappear entirely. She was a magnificent, fascinating creature.

She was coming inside with the elderly man, Constantine could see, and she smiled warmly at him when she saw him standing there.

“Are you going to sit in the conservatory and enjoy the sunshine, Mr. Ward?” she asked.

“I am going up to my room to rest for a while,” he said. “You have exhausted me, Miss Ha

“Have you met Mr. Huxtable?” she asked. “He came here with me today. He is my friend.”

“Sir.” Constantine inclined his head. “May I help you to your room?”

“I can get there on my own, young man,” Ward said, “if you will hand me the cane propped against that chair. I thank you for your kindness, but I like to do things for myself while I can. I could have walked outside with my cane, but I was not going to refuse an offer to walk arm in arm with a lady instead, now, was I? And me a mere dock worker all my life.”

He chuckled and Constantine smiled.

“We will leave now,” the duchess said as the old man walked slowly away. “I hope the time has not been tedious for you.”

“It has not,” Constantine assured her.

Ten minutes later they were on horseback again and on their way back to Copeland. They did not speak until he had let them into the meadow beyond the lawn and shut the gate behind them and ridden half across the meadow.

“I think, Duchess,” he said, “that house is filled with happy people.”

She turned her head to smile at him.

“Mrs. Broome is a perfect manager,” she said. “And she has a wonderful staff.”

And she was happy when she was at that house, he thought. It was her marriage to the elderly duke that had brought her there.

The pattern of life.

And the pattern of Jon’s life had led to Ainsley, though he had not lived to see it.

And his own? Had he been born two days early—two days before his parents married—so that he would be illegitimate and unable to inherit the title himself? Had he found a better, more meaningful purpose for his life than he would have found as Earl of Merton? Was he better off, happier, than he would otherwise have been?

It was a dizzying thought.

Perhaps the circumstances of his birth had not blighted the whole of his life after all. Perhaps his secret affair with Jon’s dream was what his life was meant to bring him.

Perhaps he had benefited as much from Ainsley as the people who had passed through it.

“You are brooding,” she said.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “It is just my Mediterranean looks.”

“Which of course are quite splendid,” she said, sounding more like the old duchess. “No man without them could brood half as well.”

He laughed.

They rode onward in companionable silence until they came close to Copeland.

“I’ll take you back a different way,” she said. “There is something I want you to see.”

“Another cause?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she said. “Quite the opposite. A pure self-indulgence.”

And instead of riding into the park and across it on the shortest route to the house, she skirted about its outer wooded edge until by Constantine’s estimation they must be quite far behind the house. She drew her horse to a halt.

“It is best to go by foot from here,” she said, “and lead the horses.”