by Mary Balogh
Elliott wondered if it had been deliberate. It was just the sort of thing Con /would /do. It was the sort of thing they might have done together once upon a time, during Elliott's irresponsible youth.
Afterward they would have derived enormous amusement from the memory of the discomfiture of their victim. Though he could not remember anytime when they had been deliberately malicious, involving an innocent who might get seriously hurt. /Would /Vanessa be hurt? He suspected that she might.
How could Con have known, though, that they would be at the theater this evening? Elliott had not known himself before making the impulsive suggestion at the end of the morning's outing.
But of course Con had /not /known for sure. He could have made several educated guesses, however, of places Elliott and Vanessa were likely to appear over the next week or so. It certainly would have been no secret that they were in London. If they had not been at the theater this evening, then they would surely be at this function or that soon.
Yes, it had been deliberate. Of course it had. Had there really been any doubt?
Had it been deliberate on Anna Bromley-Hayes's part too, though? That was the more pertinent question.
But if it had not been, why had she come during the interval to meet his party and be introduced to his wife? If it had not been deliberate, would she not have avoided such a painful encounter?
Yes. It had been deliberate. He would have expected better of her but had no right to demand it. He had undoubtedly hurt her. He had disregarded her feelings and presented her with a fait accompli quite without prior warning.
And good Lord, was this Vanessa's influence, this new tendency of his to analyze everything, to wonder about people's /feelings/?
However it was, his wife and his ex-mistress had not only come face-to-face but had also been introduced. It had been an excruciatingly embarrassing moment for him and doubtless equally intriguing to a number of the onlookers.
All of which Con would have known in advance. And Anna too.
Revenge had been of more importance to Anna, it seemed, than good taste or personal dignity.
She had been looking her loveliest and most ravishing. Con had been at his most charming and his most mocking - both very familiar facets of his character to Elliott. He had never expected during his youth, though, that one day he would be one of Con's victims.
Vanessa would surely be waiting for him, he thought suddenly, bringing his mind back to the present. He was probably keeping her awake. If he was not going to go to her tonight, he ought to have told her so.
Was he really not going to her then?
He had actually enjoyed the day - morning and evening - right until the moment when young Merton had called their attention to the presence of Con in the box opposite and Elliott had looked and seen not just Con, but Anna too beside him. His eyes had met hers, and he had read a challenge there despite the distance between them.
He had been enjoying himself until then. For some odd reason he had been enjoying his wife's company. There was something inexplicably fascinating about her.
His fingers drummed harder against the windowsill for a moment.
He moved away from the window and wandered through to his dressing room, leaving the door open so that the light from the candle would shine in.
What he ought to do was walk firmly into Vanessa's room and tell her what she wanted to know. She wanted him to give her a good reason for his quarrel with Con, a good reason for her to avoid him. He should simply give it to her. Con was a thief and a lecher. He had robbed his own brother, who had trusted him totally but had not been mentally capable of knowing that his trust was being abused. And he had debauched servants of the house and other women of the neighborhood, something no decent gentleman would ever do.
But how could he tell Vanessa, any more than he had ever been able to tell his mother or his sisters - even though he had sometimes reasoned that they /ought /to know for their own good? How could he betray his /own /honor as guardian to Jonathan? How could he breach the confidentiality of such a trust? Besides, he had no incontrovertible proof. Con had not denied the charges, but he had not admitted to them either. He had merely lofted one eyebrow and grinned when Elliott confronted him, and had invited him to go to the devil.
How could one blacken someone's name to another person when one only had suspicions, no matter how certain one was that those suspicions were well founded?
Dash it all, it was /still /hard to accept that Con was capable of such villainy. He had always been up for any mischief and tomfoolery and devilry - but so had Elliott until fairly recently. He had never been a rogue, though.
And it was hard to accept that Con could hate him so much - and that he could be willing to risk hurting Vanessa in order to demonstrate that hatred.
He opened the door into his wife's dressing room. The door into her bedchamber had been left partly open, something she had done each night since demanding that he knock upon closed doors. There was the glow of candlelight beyond it.
He went to stand in the doorway, remembering another occasion when he had done so without an invitation. This time, though, she was asleep in bed.
He crossed the room and stood looking down at her. Her short hair was untidy and spread about her on the pillow. Her lips were slightly parted. In the light from the single candle her cheeks looked flushed.
She looked slight, girlish. Her breasts scarcely lifted the sheet that had been pulled up over them. Her arms and hands were slender.
For an unguarded moment he thought of Anna and made the contrasts. But strangely they were not thoughts he had to make any great effort to suppress.
There was something about Vanessa. She was not beautiful. She was not even pretty. She was plain. But there was something… She was not voluptuous. If there was an antonym for that word - he could not think of any at the moment - then she was that. There was nothing about her that should be sexually appealing.
And yet somehow there was.
He had desired her almost constantly during what she called their honeymoon - ghastly word! He had desired her every night since even though he had made their encounters brief and businesslike because…
Well, /why /exactly? Because she still loved her dead husband and he felt slighted? Hurt? No, certainly not that. Because he had wanted to punish her, to make her feel that she had only one function in his life?
Was he really so petty? It was an uncomfortable thought.
He desired her now. He had done all day, in fact - right from the moment she had appeared unexpectedly in George's office doorway before breakfast.
What /was /it about her?
He set two knuckles against her cheek and drew them lightly across it.
She opened her eyes and looked sleepily up at him - and smiled.
That was definitely a part of her appeal, he decided. He had never known anyone else whose eyes smiled almost constantly with genuine… what?
Warmth? Happiness? Both?
Was she happy to see him? When his behavior toward her in the bedchamber for the last several nights had been little short of insulting? "I was not sleeping. I was merely resting my eyes," she said, and laughed.
And there was her laugh too. Genuine. Warm. Al most infectious.
Some people seemed to have been born happy. Vanessa was one of them. And she was his wife.
He undid the sash of his dressing gown and shrugged out of it. He was wearing a nightshirt, something he had done each night since coming upon her in tears that afternoon at Finchley. He pulled it off now and dropped it to the floor while she watched him.
He lay down on his back beside her, one forearm over his eyes. Was there such a thing as a good marriage? he wondered. Was it possible? The thing was that no one in the /ton /ever expected it, not if goodness equated happiness anyway. Marriage was a social bond and often an economic one too. One looked elsewhere for sexual pleasure and emotional satisfaction - if one needed it.
His father obviously had. A
nd his grandfather.
She was lying on her side, he was aware, looking at him. He had left the candle burning tonight. "Elliott," she said softly, "it has been a lovely day. It is one I will long remember. Tell me it has not been an utter bore for you." He removed his arm and turned his head to look at her. "You think me incapable of enjoyment?" he asked her. "No," she said. "But I wonder if you are capable of enjoyment with /me/.
I am not at all lovely or sophisticated or - " "Has no one ever called you lovely?" he asked her before she could think of another derogatory word to apply to herself.
She was silent for a moment. "You," she said, "at the Valentine's ball." She laughed. "And then you added that every /other /lady was lovely too, without exception." "Do you love springtime?" he asked her. "Do you think it loads the world with a beauty not found in any other season?" "Yes," she said. "It is my favorite season." "I called you a piece of springtime this evening," he said. "I meant it." "Oh." She sighed. "How lovely. But you /have /to say such things to me.
You are my husband." "You are determined to see yourself as ugly, then?" he said. "Has anyone ever called you that, Vanessa?" She thought again. "No," she said. "No one in my world would have been so cruel. But my father used to tell me that he ought to have called me Jane since I was his own plain Jane. He said it with affection, though." "With all due respect to the late Reverend Huxtable," he said, "I do believe he ought to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered." "Oh, Elliott." Her eyes widened. "What a dreadful thing to say." "If I were still unmarried," he said, "and had to make a choice among you and your sisters based upon looks alone, I would choose you." Her eyes filled with laughter again, and her lips curved into a smile. "You are my gallant knight," she said. "Thank you, sir." "I am not a simple mix of coldness and irritability, then?" he asked her.
The laughter held. "Like all humans," she said, "you are a dizzying mix of things and you ought to take no notice of me when I say you are all one thing or even all of two or three things. I daresay you are thousands of things and I will discover hundreds of them during our marriage. But not all. We can never know another person completely." "Can we know even ourselves?" he asked. "No," she said. "We can always take even ourselves by surprise. But would life not be dull if we were all unfailingly predictable? How would we ever continue to learn and grow and adapt to new conditions of our life?" "Are we talking philosophy again?" he asked her. "If you ask questions," she said, "you must expect me to answer them." "You know how to change me for the better," he said. "Do I?" She looked uncomprehendingly at him. /"I will think of ways. I am endlessly inventive." /He quoted the words to her, just as she had spoken them at the theater earlier. "Oh." She laughed. "I really did say those things, did I not?" "While you were lying here just now," he said, "not sleeping but resting your eyes, were you /thinking/? Were you being /inventive/?" She laughed softly. "If you were not," he said, "I believe I am doomed to be cold and irritable for the rest of the night. I shall lie here and see if I can sleep." He closed his eyes.
He heard her laugh softly once more, and then there was silence - until he felt the mattress sway and he heard the unmistakable rustlings of a nightgown being removed. She had worn it for the last several nights, just as he had worn his nightshirt.
He was instantly aroused. He lay still as if he slept.
After a while he felt her hand against his chest, her fingers circling and caressing, moving up to his shoulder, down to his navel.
But the use of one hand did not satisfy her. She lifted herself onto her knees beside him and leaned over him, using both hands to caress him and then her nails and her lips and breath and teeth.
He kept his eyes closed and concentrated upon keeping his breathing even. She was marvelously skilled after all.
She blew warm air into his ear before licking behind his earlobe and then drawing it into her mouth and sucking and pulsing her teeth about it.
Her hands circled his erection and circled until they touched him, featherlight, and stroked him and closed about him. The pad of her thumb rubbed lightly over the tip.
It took all the power of his will to lie still.
She was exquisite. She was pure magic.
And then she was straddling him, her thighs hugging his hips, her small breasts brushing against his chest, her fingers twining in his hair, her mouth kissing his eyes, his temples, his cheeks, until she reached his lips.
He opened his eyes for the first time.
Her own were shimmering with tears. "Elliott," she murmured, her tongue licking his lips and then sliding inside. "Elliott." He caught her by the hips then, found her entrance, and pulled her down hard onto him even as she pressed downward.
She cried out, a high, keening sound, and there followed a hot frenzy of thrusting and riding that took them both over the edge of passion before there was time to settle to any rhythm.
She was weeping openly, he realized when he had stopped throbbing and his heart had stopped thundering in his ears. She was sobbing against his shoulder, her knees still hugging his waist, her hands still buried in his hair.
At first he was alarmed, even angry. For of course she had made love to him - up to a point - as she must have made love to her first husband, whose desperate weakness had rendered him virtually unable to perform. She had taught herself all those marvelous skills for the benefit of a dying man whom she had loved.
Except that she had not been /in /love with him. She had not /desired /him. She had pleasured him because she loved him.
He was beginning to understand something of the fine distinctions of meaning.
How blessed it must be to be loved by Vanessa Wallace, Viscountess Lyngate.
His wife.
He did not grow angry. For he recognized the tears for what they surely were - happiness that all the work she had put into foreplay was rewarded by the pleasures of full intercourse both given and received. And if there was some grief mingled in for the husband who had not been able to enjoy the completion of what she had done for him, well it would be petty to take offense.
Hedley Dew, poor devil, was dead.
Elliott Wallace was not.
He hooked the sheet with one foot and pulled it up over them both. He dried her eyes with one corner of it. "Elliott," she said, "forgive me. Please forgive me. It is not what you think." "I know," he said. "You are… oh, you are so very gorgeous." /Gorgeous? /Well.
He lifted her head from his shoulder and held her face framed in both hands. She sniffed and laughed. "I look a dreadful fright," she said. "Vanessa," he said, "I want you to listen to me. And I insist that you believe me. I will make it a command, in fact, one you must obey. You are beautiful. You are never to doubt it ever again." "Oh, Elliott," she said, sniffing once more, "how very splendid of you.
But you really do not need to - " He set the pad of one thumb over her lips. "/Someone /needs to tell you the truth," he said, "and it might as well be your husband. You have been coy with your beauty. You have hidden it from all except those who take the time to bask in your smiles and look deeply into your eyes. Anyone who /does /take the time will soon uncover your secret. You are /beautiful/." Good Lord, where was all this coming from? He could not possibly /believe /it, could he?
Her eyes had filled with tears again. "You are a kind man," she said. "I would never have suspected it until this moment. You can be cold and you can be irritable and you can be kind. You /are /a complex man. I am so glad." "And gorgeous?" he said.
She laughed and hiccuped. "Yes, and that too." He drew her head down onto his shoulder again and then straightened her legs on either side of his. He caught at the blankets and covered them more warmly.
She heaved a sigh of apparent contentment. "I thought you were not coming tonight," she said. "I fell asleep worrying about tomorrow." Tomorrow? Ah, yes, her presentation to the queen. One of the most important days of her life. And then that infernal ball in the evening. "All will be well," he assured her. "And I thought you were just resting your eyes." "Mmm," she said.
"I am /so /tired." She yawned out loud and was almost instantly asleep.
They were still joined.
She weighed almost nothing at all. But she was warm and smelled enticingly of soap and sex. /Beautiful?/ /Was /she beautiful?
He closed his eyes and tried to picture her as he had first seen her, standing with her friend at the Valentine's ball, dressed in a shapeless lavender gown. /Beautiful?/ But then he remembered that as soon as he had led her into the dance and the music began, she had smiled and glowed with happiness. And when he had made that sorry joke about /all /the ladies, as well as her, being dazzlingly lovely, she had thrown back her head and laughed, not at all chagrined that the compliment did not apply to her alone.
And now she lay naked and relaxed and asleep in his arms.
Beautiful?
Certainly there was /something /about her.
He followed her down into sleep.
Because she was a married lady and not simply a young girl making her debut into society, Vanessa was not compelled to wear white. It was a good thing too. She looked a positive fright unless there was /some /color in her clothing.
Her satin skirt, falling from her natural waistline and arranged over huge hoops, was a pale ice blue. So was her stomacher, though it shimmered with reflected light as it was heavily embroidered with silver thread. The lace petticoat worn over the bodice and skirt and pulled open to the sides to reveal the latter, was of a slightly darker blue, as were her long train and the lappets that fell behind her from the silver-embroidered band she wore about her head. Pale blue and silver plumes waved above her head. Her long silver gloves reached above her elbows. "Oh my," she said, looking at herself in the pier glass in her dressing room when her maid was finished with her, "I really am beautiful.
Elliott was quite right." She laughed with delight because she really did think she looked her very best. She ought to be able to dress thus always. She ought to have been born fifty years sooner than she had been. Except that then she could have been Elliott's grandmother, and she would have hated that. "/Of course /you are beautiful," Katherine cried, stepping forward to hug her sister, though she did so very gingerly lest she crush something. "I do not care how many people scoff at the necessity of wearing such old-fashioned styles for the benefit of the queen. I think they are glorious. I wish we still wore them every day." "Which is just what I was thinking," Vanessa said.