Chapter One Hannah Reid, Duchess of Dunbarton, was free at last. Free of the burden of a ten-year marriage, and free of the endlessly tedious year of deep mourning that had succeeded the death of the duke, her husband. It was a freedom that had been a long time coming. It was a freedom well worth celebrating. She had married the duke after a five-day acquaintance--his grace, all impatience to be wed, had procured a special license rather than wait for the banns to be read--when she was nineteen and he was somewhere in his seventies. No one seemed certain ofexactly where in his seventies that had been, though some said it was perilously close to eighty. At the time of her marriage, the duchess was a breathtakingly lovely girl, with a slender, lithe figure, eyes that rivaled a summer sky for blueness, a bright,eager face made for smiling, and long, wavy tresses that were almost white in their blondness--a shimmering white. The duke, on the other hand, had a body and face and head that showed all the ravages of age that time and years of hard living could possiblyhave piled upon them. And he suffered from gout. And from a heart that could no longer be relied upon to continue beating with steady regularity. She married him for his money, of course, expecting to be a very rich widow indeed within a matter of a few short years at most. She was a rich widow now, quite fabulously wealthy, in fact, though she had had to wait longer than expected for the freedomto enjoy her riches to the full. The old duke had worshiped the ground she walked upon, to use the old cliche. He had heaped so many costly clothes upon her person that she would have suffocated beneath their weight if she had ever tried to wear them all at once. A guest room next toher dressing room at Dunbarton House on Hanover Square in London had been converted into a second dressing room merely to accommodate all the silks and satins and furs--among other garments and accessories--that had been worn once, perhaps twice, before beingdiscarded for something newer. And the duke had had not one, not two, not even three, but four safes built into the walls of his own bedchamber to safeguard all the jewels with which he gifted his beloved over the years, though she was perfectly free to comeand fetch whichever of them she chose to wear at any time. He had been a doting, indulgent husband. The duchess was always gorgeously dressed. And she was always bedecked with jewels, ostentatiously large ones, usually diamonds. She wore them in her hair, in the lobes of her ears, at her bosom, on her wrists, on more than one of the fingers of each hand. The duke showed off his prize wherever he went, beaming with pride and adoration as he looked up at her. In his prime he would have been taller than she, but age had bent him and a cane supported him, and for much of his time he sat. His duchess did notstray far from his side when they were together, even when they were at a ball and prospective partners abounded. She tended him with her characteristic half-smile playing always about her lovely lips. She was always the picture of wifely devotion on such occasions.Nobody could deny that. When the duke could not go out himself--and it became increasingly difficult for him to do so as the years went on--then other men escorted his duchess to the social events with which the ton amused itself whenever it was in town in large numbers. Therewere three in particular--Lord Hardingraye, Sir Bradley Bentley, and Viscount Zimmer--all handsome, elegant, charming gentlemen. It was common knowledge that they enjoyed her company and that she enjoyed theirs. And no one was ever in any doubt of what wasincluded in that enjoyment. The only detail people wondered about--and wonder they did, of course, without ever reaching a satisfactory conclus Excerpted from A Secret Affair by Mary Balogh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
