A Secret Affair

“You are happy about Warren Hall?” he asked.

“I am,” she said. “You will have all your family close by, Constantine. Including Jonathan.”

“Yes,” he said. “And you, Ha

She looked at him and her smile faded.

“Will you have your family close by?” he asked.

“I will invite Barbara and Mr. Newcombe,” she said. “Perhaps they will be willing to travel again for my wedding.”

“When you are not going to theirs?” he said. “Is that real friendship?”

Why was he talking about this now? The ballroom was filling. The air was growing warm. The level of conversation was rising. The orchestra members were tuning their instruments.

“Very well,” she said, lifting both her chin and her fan and becoming for the moment the Duchess of Dunbarton. “I will invite my father and my sister and brother-in-law and my nephews and nieces. I will even invite the Reverend and Mrs. Leavensworth. And I will go to Barbara’s wedding. We will both go. Are you satisfied?”

“I am,” he said. “My love.”

And very briefly and very scandalously, especially in light of an a

“You are going to have to marry me after that, sir,” she said.

“Dash it all,” he said, gri

“None of them will come,” she warned him. “Except perhaps Barbara. Even she will probably not.”

“The reaching out is everything, my love,” he said. “It is all you can do. It is all any of us can ever do. Come and dance with me. And then I will with the greatest reluctance obey all the rules and dance with you only once more—after supper and the a

She laughed.

“And if my card is full?” she asked.

“Then I will wrestle your waltz partner to the floor and hold him there until he remembers that he is wearing new dancing shoes and they are pinching and blistering his toes horribly,” he said.

“Absurd,” she said, still laughing.

SOMETHING ELSE they had discussed both yesterday and today was where they would live after their marriage. It had been an easier matter to settle.

At Ainsley Park, Constantine had already moved out of the house in order to accommodate more residents. The dower house had been perfectly satisfactory for his bachelor needs, but it would be less so for a wife and—it was to be hoped—a family. And if he spent less time there, he explained to Ha

He would go a few times a year, of course. Those people were precious to him, and he dared believe that he was precious to them too.

At Copeland Ha

And London would, of course, be their home during the spring. Next year he would have to take his place in the Upper House of Parliament. They would live at his house there even though it was not in the most fashionable part of town. They did not need anything ostentatious.

Copeland, then, was to be their primary home.

He was happy about that, Constantine thought as he danced and watched Ha

And then it was suppertime and Stephen a

How many weeks was it, Constantine wondered, since he had ridden in Hyde Park with Monty and Stephen and seen Ha

He had been starting to think about marrying even then. Little had he realized, though, as he looked upon her in the park, that she was the one.

The one.

His only love.

The dancing was late resuming. Everyone wanted to congratulate them and wish them well. A large number of men swore they would wear black armbands for a whole year, starting tomorrow. Ha

And then it was time to waltz.

It was a dance Constantine had always enjoyed, provided he was allowed to choose his own partners. Fortunately, men had more control of such matters than women did. But Ha

“Happy?” he asked her as he circled her waist with his right arm and took her right hand in his left.

“Oh, I am,” she said with a sigh. “But I am not at all sure I am going to enjoy all the fuss of these wedding preparations. Perhaps we ought to have eloped.”

“My cousins would never forgive us,” he said, gri

“I know,” she said. “But I just want to be with you.”

He had been trying valiantly to ignore similar feelings.

“You want to come tonight,” he asked her, “after the ball?”

She gazed into his eyes for several moments before sighing again.

“No,” she said at last. “I am no longer your lover, Constantine. I am your betrothed. There is a difference.”

He was disappointed—and relieved. There was a difference.

“We will be good, then,” he said, “and look forward to our wedding night.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But it is not just that. I want … Oh, I do not know what I want. I want to be your wife.”

He smiled at her.

“And I have just remembered something,” she said, brightening visibly. “The duke taught me that I should never say I want, that it implies a lack in myself and leads to abjectness. I do not want to be your wife. I will be your wife, and I shall throw myself into preparations for my wedding with Margaret and the others so that the time may go faster. And oh, Constantine, it is wonderful indeed to have family to fuss over my wedding, even if part of me would prefer to elope.”

The music began.

They waltzed beneath chandeliers bright with candlelight and among banks of flowers and ferns and about other dancers with their swirling satins and silks of many colors and their gleaming jewels, and they had eyes only for each other.

He had always felt that he lived on the edges of life, Constantine realized, watching everyone else living, sometimes helping them do it. He had been hurt so deeply by Jon’s death because he had tried to live his brother’s life and discovered at the end that it could not be done. Jon had had to do his own dying. Which was only right and proper, he knew now. Jon had lived his own life, and he had lived it richly and then died when his time came.

And now it was his, Constantine’s, turn. Suddenly, and for the first time, he was at the center of his own life, living it and loving it.

Loving the woman who was at the center of it with him.

Loving Ha

She was smiling at him.

He twirled them about one corner of the ballroom and smiled back.