A Secret Affair

“I really must be an open book,” she said. “You read me so well. And you must not tell me, Mr. Huxtable, that you are the sort of man who prefers a cool spring in the hope that it will build to a moderate degree of heat during the summer. You are Greek.”

“Half Greek,” he said, “and half not. I will leave you to work out which half is which.”

The chairs in front of them and behind and beside them filled up, and conversation became general among the audience until Lord Heaton stepped up onto the dais and a hush fell in anticipation of the concert.

Ha

That had all been very intriguing. Having made her point on Bond Street and at the Merriwether ball, she had intended to take one step forward this evening before taking it back the next time she saw him. She had been in no real hurry. The preliminaries could surely be as exciting as the game itself.

But he had refused to allow her to play the game her way. And instead of one small step, she felt as if they had dashed forward at least a mile tonight. She felt almost breathless.

And quite humming with anticipation.

She could not allow him the last word, though. Not this early in their co

“I see that Mr. Minter arrived late,” she said when the intermission began an hour later and the audience rose to go in search of wine and conversation. “I must go along and scold him. He begged to sit by me this evening, and I took pity on him and agreed. I suppose I had better sit beside him for the rest of the concert. He is quite alone, poor man.”

“Yes,” Mr. Huxtable said, speaking low against her ear. “I suppose you had better go, Duchess. I might conclude that you were being too forward if you remained.”

She tapped his arm one more time with her fan and bore down upon the unsuspecting Mr. Minter, who probably had not even known she was coming here this evening.

Chapter 4

CONSTANTINE’S SPRING MISTRESSES—Monty had once dubbed them that—were selected almost exclusively from the ranks of society’s widows. It was a personal rule of his never to visit a brothel and never to employ either a courtesan or an actress. Or, of course, to choose a married lady, though there was a surprising number of them who indicated their availability. Or an unmarried lady—he was after a mistress, not a wife.

Many widows, he had always found, were in no great hurry to marry again. Though most of them did remarry eventually, they were eager enough to spend a few years enjoying their freedom and the sensual pleasure of a casual amour.

He almost always took a lover for the Season. Rarely more than one, and never more than one at a time. His lovers were usually lovely women and younger than he, though he never thought of beauty or age as a necessary qualification. He favored women who were discreet and poised and elegant and intelligent enough to converse on a wide variety of interesting topics. He looked for a certain degree of companionship as well as sexual satisfaction in a lover.

And this year?

He was standing on the wide cobbled terrace behind the Fonteyn mansion in Richmond—though behind and before were relative terms in this case. The front of the house faced toward the road and any approaching carriages and was really quite unremarkable. The back of the house, on the other hand, overlooked the River Thames, and between it and the river there were the terrace, the wide, flower-bedecked steps, the sloping lawn below them, bordered on one side by a rose arbor and a small orchard and on the other by a row of greenhouses, and another terrace, this one paved, alongside the river. A small jetty stretched into the water for the convenience of anyone desirous of taking out one of the boats that bobbed on either side of it.

And at the moment the back of the house, which might easily claim to be the real front, was bathed in sunshine and a heat that was tempered by an underlying coolness, as one might expect this early in the year. It was all very picturesque and very pleasant indeed.

It had been a bold move on the part of the Fonteyns to host a garden party this early in the Season, long before anyone else was prepared to take such a chance with the weather. Of course, there was a spacious ballroom inside the house as well as a large drawing room and doubtless other rooms large enough to accommodate all the guests in the event of chill weather or rain.

This year there was a new widow in town, and she was quite blatantly and aggressively offering herself to him as this Season’s mistress. If one discounted her very obvious ruse of appearing hard to get, that was. He really had been amused by her behavior on Bond Street and at the Merriwether ball.

At the moment she was doing it again. She was standing on the lawn not far from the orchard, her hand on the arm of Lord Hardingraye, one of her old lovers with whom she had arrived half an hour ago. They were surrounded by other guests, both male and female, and she was giving the group her full attention as she twirled a confection of a parasol above her head. Inevitably it was white, as was everything else she wore. She almost always wore white, though she never looked the same on any two occasions. Amazing, that.

She had not once looked Constantine’s way. Which might mean one of two things—she had not seen him yet, or she was no longer interested in pursuing any sort of co

He knew very well that neither possible explanation was the real one.

She was determined to have him. And she had certainly seen him. She would not have so studiously not looked at him if she had not.

He was amused again.

He sipped his drink and carried on a conversation with a group of his friends. He was in no hurry to approach her. Indeed, he had no intention of making the first move. If she wished to ignore him all afternoon, he would not leave brokenhearted.

But as he talked and laughed and looked about at all the new arrivals, smiling at some of them, raising a hand in greeting to others, he mulled over the question that had been bothering him for the past three days.

Did he really want the Duchess of Dunbarton as a lover?

He had said a very firm no to that question in Hyde Park, and he had meant it.

Most men would have thought the question a ludicrous one, of course. She was, after all, one of the most perfectly beautiful women anyone had ever set eyes upon, and, if it was possible, she had improved with age. She was still relatively young, and she was as sexually desirable as she was lovely. She was much sought after—an understatement. She could have almost any man she chose to take as a lover, and that did not exclude many of the married ones.

But …

Something made him hesitate, and he was not quite sure what it was.

Was it that she had chosen him? But there was no reason why a woman might not go after what she wanted just as boldly as a man could. When he decided upon a woman, after all, he always pursued her with determined persistence until she capitulated—or did not. Besides, was it not flattering to be singled out by a beautiful, desirable woman who could have almost anyone?

Was it that she was too available, then? Had her lovers not been legion while the old duke lived? Were they not likely to continue to be numerous now that she was finally free, not only of the duke but also of her obligatory year of mourning? But he had never balked at the prospect of competition. Besides, if it turned out that she expected to keep other lovers as well as him, he could simply walk away. He was not looking for love, after all, or anything like a marital commitment. Only for a lover. His heart was not going to be involved.