“As if I were unreal. As if I were incapable of love or companionship. As if I were incapable of being hurt just because I was lovely.

“And when I drew my father into the library and threw myself into his arms for comfort and support, he sighed and told me how my beauty had been nothing but a trial to him all my life—or ever since my mother died when I was thirteen, anyway. I had always been her favorite, but he was mindful of the fact that he had two daughters. All the girls had always admired me and wanted to be my friend and virtually ignored Dawn, and all the young men had always buzzed around me and vied for my attention and taken no notice whatsoever of my sister. Must I begrudge her happiness now when she had found love despite everything? If I had had one ounce of sisterly affection in my body, I would have seen how the wind was blowing weeks earlier. Was I going to be selfish, as usual, and refuse to release Colin Young from a promise he had made hastily and regretted almost immediately? Could I not think of someone else for once in my life? It was not as though I could not find someone else anytime I wished.

“But all my life—or so it seemed to me—I had tried to be like everyone else. And I had loved Dawn and tried to make other people like her. I never understood why she was not generally liked. It was not that I pushed her back into my shadow. It was not. And she had a way sometimes of taking my friends or my admirers away from me and gloating afterward. We were not always friends. Sometimes we fought quite viciously, and I daresay I was as guilty of nastiness as often as she was. But she was my sister. I loved her. It had never occurred to me that she would try to take my betrothed. I was engaged. The time for games was over.

“Perhaps they were right. Perhaps it was all my fault. Perhaps …”

She paused for breath. Actually she gasped for breath. The gate into the park was just ahead.

“Duchess,” Constantine said.

But she held up a staying hand. She had not finished yet.

“I loved him,” she said. “It had not occurred to me to withhold any part of my heart from him. I had eyes for no man but him. I knew that my beauty was often a liability. I knew that sometimes other girls resented me when there were young men around. I tried not to be beautiful. Even as a child I tried because it embarrassed me always to have my mother complimented on my looks in the hearing of Dawn and other girls, and to have her look at me with pleasure and rearrange my ringlets to look just so. I tried wearing plain clothes when I was old enough to choose for myself and a plain hairstyle. I tried hanging my head and staying quiet in company. I tried to show that I was not conceited. But finally, with Colin, I felt free to love and to be myself at last.

“I cannot possibly describe how I felt when my father left me after telling me to buck up and look cheerful—the emptiness, the loneliness, the terror. And that was when I discovered that we had not been alone in the library. The Duke of Dunbarton had been there all the time. He had withdrawn there out of boredom with the festivities and was sitting in a wing chair that he had pulled up to a window, his back to the room. I did not know it until I was crying so hard that I thought I would die. Literally die.”

Constantine turned the curricle between the park gates, but he had slowed its pace.

“I will always remember the first words he spoke to me,” Hannah said, closing her eyes. “‘My dear Miss Delmont,’ he said in that bored, sighing voice that was so characteristic of him, ‘no woman can possibly ever be too beautiful. I see I am going to have to marry you and teach you that lesson until you believe it beyond any doubt. I shall make it the final project of my life.’ And strangely, unbelievably, I was laughing at the same time as I was crying. We had all been terrified all day just knowing he was there at the wedding. We had all avoided him as much as we could for fear, I suppose, that he would strike us down with one glance if we presumed to step across his path or raise our eyes to his illustrious person. Yet there he was telling me that he must marry me, that he must make my education the final project of his life. And handing me his fine linen handkerchief with a rather pained expression on his face.”

Constantine had drawn the horses almost to a halt.

“Now are you satisfied?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I feel quite suitably chastened, Duchess. You could not have found a more effective way of punishing me, in fact, than answering all the questions delicacy and tact would not allow me to ask last night. And you have made me feel all the impertinence of the questions I did ask. I beg your pardon, though I realize that apologies are almost always inadequate. For would I now be begging your pardon if I had not been discovered? I do not know, though I did feel remorseful even at the time when I understood that Miss Leavensworth was uncomfortable with my questions and that I was being less than honorable in asking them of her instead of you.”

It was, she supposed, rather handsome as apologies went.

“I shall call on Miss Leavensworth tomorrow if I may,” he said, “and make my apology in person.”

Even at the snail’s pace at which they were moving they would be among the fashionable afternoon crowd soon.

“What now?” he asked. “Do you wish me to take you back home? Would you prefer that we proceed no further with our liaison?”

The last question jolted her. Would she? She would probably have said yes last night or this morning. Even earlier this afternoon. But all he had done, when all was said and done, was ask a few questions about her. Was he so different from her? She wanted to know about him too. Except that she had always planned to drag it all out of him personally.

“Oh,” she said with a determined twirl of her parasol, “I need an affair. I do not need marriage. Not yet, anyway, and perhaps never. I cannot yet let go of the conviction that I am still married to the duke, even though he has been dead for longer than a year.”

“You loved him,” he said.

She turned her head toward him, looking for irony. But she could see none in his face and had heard none in his voice.

“I did love him,” she said, “with all my heart. He was my rock and my security for ten years. He loved me unconditionally and totally. He adored me, and I adored him. No one will ever believe that, of course, but I really do not care.”

She was rather horrified to note that her voice was shaking slightly.

“I believe you,” he said quietly.

“Thank you,” she said. “I need a lover, Constantine. It is too soon for anything else—love, marriage, whatever. And in one way—and one way only—the years of my marriage left me feeling starved. If I let you go, I will have to start all over again to find another lover, and I would find that tiresome.”

“I am forgiven then?” he asked. “I will not pry again, Duchess. You may keep your remaining secrets, if there are any. I will not try to uncover them.”

“You do not want to know me, then?” she asked him. “You do not want to know everything there is to know about me?”

“Like you, Duchess,” he said, “it is a lover I want, not a wife. Curiosity will not get the better of me again.”

“I, on the other hand,” she said, “still want to know everything there is to know about you. A lover is not an inanimate object, after all. Or even just a body, even if it is a very splendid body and makes love in a very satisfactory way.”

He was smiling, she could see when she looked at him—something he did not often do. It was an expression that did strange things to her breathing.

“Forgiveness comes at a price, Constantine,” she said. “You are in my debt. You will answer some of my questions tonight after we have made love.”