A Secret Affair

Oh, please let them not all sit down now to breakfast.

“I’ll go home directly,” the earl said, “and pack a bag.”

“I’ll come for you in one hour’s time,” the duke told him.

And they both left the room.

“Food is probably the very last thing in the world you feel like,” the Duchess of Moreland said. “But have some toast anyway. I am going to have some. I had scarcely sat down for breakfast when you arrived.”

She was pouring two cups of coffee as she spoke.

“I am so sorry,” Ha

“I am unaware that you have caused it,” the duchess said, setting a cup and saucer down beside Ha

“I—” Ha

“That was an ill-ma

Ha

“I love him,” she admitted at last. “I am sorry you do not. He said he did something to hurt you soon after he got to know you.”

“He did,” the duchess said. “And it was pretty nasty. It was meant to embarrass Elliott and humiliated me instead. It was really very childish, but men can be childish sometimes. Oh, and women too, I suppose. I refused to accept his apology. I judged him unforgivable, and I have lived with the guilt of that ever since. But by the time he apologized, I believed him guilty of far worse than the mischief in which I had been caught up. Elliott has been wrong about that, has he?”

“Yes,” Ha

“Men rarely take the easy way out,” the duchess said. “Though sometimes they do when they raise their fists and go at each other’s noses and eyes instead of talking like civilized beings. I sometimes think the power of speech was wasted on men. Oh, dear, I do not always have such a low opinion of them, I promise you. May I refill your coffee cup?”

It was empty, Ha

“No,” she said, getting to her feet. “Thank you, but I must go. I have other urgent business this morning, and I must not hold you back from being with your husband for a short while before he leaves. Oh, how I wish I could go with him and the Earl of Merton. But I would merely delay them.”

“Yes.” The duchess smiled. “And it would not be at all the thing, even for the Duchess of Dunbarton. Elliott can be very autocratic when he chooses to be, Duchess. He will not easily take no for an answer in Gloucestershire. Neither will Stephen. He is sometimes mistaken for a meek, even perhaps a weak man because he is so amiable and looks so much like an angel, but he can be an avenging angel when he chooses to be. He will do it for Constantine’s sake.”

“Thank you,” Ha

The duchess walked to the door with her and then realized that her brother had taken the carriage. But Ha

“I will walk,” she said. “The fresh air will do me good, and there is a pleasant breeze.”

The duchess surprised her by hugging her tightly before she left.

“You must come and have tea with me one afternoon,” she said. “I will send an invitation. Will you come? I have always wished I knew you better.”

“Thank you,” Ha

Where was he now, she wondered as she hurried away toward home. She did not doubt he had traveled through the night, stopping only for toll gates and a change of horses. She had warned her coachman to expect a nonstop journey. Would they be there by now? Or was he still on the road, wondering if he would be there in time, wondering if he could save his protégé?

And how soon could she decently present herself at St. James’s Palace, requesting an audience with the king himself?

Would he see her?

Would he even be allowed to know she was there?

But of course he would grant her an audience. She was the Duchess of Dunbarton, widow of the Duke of Dunbarton.

Expect something, he had taught her, and it is yours.

She expected to see the king within the next few hours. But she needed to hurry home first in order to garb herself in all her finest armor.

Not a fake diamond was to be in sight this morning. And not the merest hint of any color except white.

CONSTANTINE ARRIVED at Ainsley Park in the middle of a wet afternoon, weary to the bone and unshaven. He found everyone there pale and disconsolate, from Harvey Wexford on down to Millie Carver, the twelve-year-old kitchen maid whom he had rescued from a London brothel almost two years ago just before she was to be offered to the highest bidder for deflowering.

Jess Barnes had one week of life left.

Constantine bathed and shaved and changed his clothes—he did not sleep—before riding to the jail in a town four miles away. Jess looked unwashed but otherwise well cared for. He dissolved in tears when he saw Constantine, not because he was going to die, but because he had let his benefactor down and expected to be scolded.

Constantine took him in his arms, dirt and lice and all, and told him that he loved him no matter what, no matter where or when.

And then Jess smiled su

“Everyone sends their love,” Constantine told him. “And cook has sent so much of your favorite foods that you will be fat if you eat them all. I am going to get you out of here, Jess, and take you back home. But not today. You will have to be patient. Can you do that?”

Jess could, it seemed, if Mr. Huxtable said he ought.

Not that he had any choice.

Constantine spent the following day in a futile attempt to get the charges against Jess dropped, to get the judge’s decision reversed, to get the sentence commuted, to get the defense of insanity admitted, to do anything to save Jess’s life and preferably to bring him back home to Ainsley.

Kincaid, his aggrieved neighbor, who had ended up with his chickens and their value in cash, would not look Constantine in the eye but was quite firm in his opinion that the harshness of the penalty was necessary both to remove a vicious evil from the neighborhood and to deter all the other potential threats to their peace and safety that were residing at Ainsley Park. If there was some way he could sue Huxtable himself for reckless endangerment to his neighbors or something else similar, then he would do it. He was still consulting lawyers on the matter.

Most of the other neighbors received Constantine with courtesy, even with sympathy, but none of them was willing to stand up against Kincaid. A few of them, Constantine suspected, were secretly cheering the man on.

A lawyer gave as his professional opinion that the plea of insanity would not accomplish anything since Jess Barnes showed no signs of madness, only of feeblemindedness. He had never denied stealing. He had never denied knowing that it was wrong to steal. There really was no defense, only a plea for mercy.

The judge himself received Constantine politely, even with some hearty good humor. But he would not budge on the Jess Barnes case. The man was a menace to society. The county—indeed the whole country—would be well rid of him when he hanged. The judge might have sentenced him to a few years of hard labor if he had been of sound mind, but under the circumstances …

Well, Mr. Huxtable had been clever in choosing to man his farms and his house with cheap labor and loose women to keep the men and himself happy, but he had to expect that things like this would happen from time to time. They were both men of the world and understood these things, after all.