First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

  He was going to ruin the assembly for them all. They had been looking forward to it so very much. Yet it meant less than nothing to him. He was looking up and down the lines, not even trying to hide his boredom.

  Oh, dear. She was not usually so harsh in her judgments, especially of strangers—not that she saw many of those. Why were her thoughts about Viscount Lyngate so … well, spiteful? Was it because she felt too embarrassed to admit to herself that she had very nearly tumbled into love with him?

  How very ridiculous that would have been—the classic case of Beauty and the Beast, with no one in any doubt at all about which was which.

  She reminded herself suddenly that she had been all too eager to give in to the urging of her in-laws and Meg and Kate that she come to the assembly tonight. And after she had given in, she had hoped with bated breath and crossed fingers that someone would ask her to dance.

  Well, someone had asked her even if he had been more or less coerced. And he could not possibly be more handsome or more distinguished in every way. One could say that her wildest dream for the evening had come true.

  She would enjoy herself then, regardless.

  Suddenly she was aware of her family and friends and neighbors about her, all dressed in their best finery, all in a festive mood. She was aware of the fires crackling in the two hearths and the candles guttering in the draft from the door. She was aware of the smells of perfumes and food.

  And she was aware of the gentleman standing opposite her waiting for the music to begin. And looking at her from beneath those drooped eyelids.

  She was not going to allow him to believe that she was in awe of him. She was not going to allow him to render her speechless and incoherent.

  The music began, and Vanessa smiled with deliberate brilliance and prepared for as much conversation as the measures of the dance would allow.

  But most of all she gave herself up to the sheer joy of dancing again.

  Of all the partners with whom he might have chosen to dance, Elliott reflected as the music struck up and the line of gentlemen bowed while the line of ladies curtsied, Mrs. Vanessa Dew—Nessie, for the love of God!— would surely not have been one of them.

  She was Sir Humphrey’s daughter-in-law. That was bad enough. She was also an insignificant dab of a woman of medium height, who was altogether too slender and too small-breasted for his taste, her hair too mousy, her features too plain. Her eyes were a nondescript gray And lavender as a color definitely did not suit her. Even if it had, the dress itself was hideous. She was not in the first blush of youth either.

  She was the very antithesis of Anna and indeed of any lady with whom he usually chose to dance at ton balls.

  But here he was dancing with her anyway. George would have spoken up if he had not, he supposed, but it had been obvious whom Dew had expected to speak up. And so he had been the performing monkey after all.

  That fact did not make him feel any more cheerful about the evening’s revelries.

  And then, just as they began to dance, Mrs. Dew smiled dazzlingly at him, and he was forced to admit that perhaps she was not quite the antidote he had taken her for. It was not a flirtatious smile, he was relieved to notice when after the first moment she looked away from him and smiled in the same way at everything and everyone, as if she had never enjoyed herself more in her life. She fairly sparkled.

  How anyone could find even a small measure of delight in such an insipid rural entertainment escaped his understanding, but perhaps she had little with which to compare it.

  The rooms were small and cramped, the walls and ceilings bare of ornament—except for one large and hideous sketch over the fireplace of an obese Cupid shooting his arrows. The air was slightly musty as if the rooms were shut up for most of the year—as they doubtless were. The music was enthusiastic but inferior—the violin was half a tone out of tune and the pianist had a tendency to gallop along as if she were anxious to finish the piece before she could hit any wrong notes. Several candles came close to dying every time a door was opened and a draft attacked them. Everyone talked at once—and at ear-shattering volume. And it seemed that everyone was very much aware of his presence and was at great pains not to show it.

  Mrs. Dew danced well at least. She was light on her feet and there was rhythm and grace in her movements.

  He wondered idly if her husband had been the eldest son. How had she attracted him? Did her father have money? Had she married him, perhaps, because she had expected to be Lady Dew one day?

  George, he could see, was dancing with the lady who had been standing with Mrs. Dew—the eldest daughter of a family whose name Elliott could not recall. And if she was the beauty of the family, heaven help the rest of them.

  The younger of the two Huxtable sisters—Miss Katherine Huxtable—was also dancing. The elder was not but stood watching with Lady Dew He had not been introduced to the third sister. She must have remained at home.

  The elder Miss Huxtable was extremely handsome but was certainly no young girl—just as one might expect, of course, of the senior sibling of a family in which the parents were both deceased. She had probably been responsible for the care of the others for a number of years. He could feel some sympathy for her. Miss Katherine Huxtable looked somewhat like her though she was considerably younger and more animated. She also was ravishingly beautiful despite a faded, shabby gown that someone had tried to disguise with new ribbon.

  Stephen Huxtable was indeed a young cub. Tall and slender and coltish, he was seventeen years old and looked it. He was also very attractive to the young ladies despite his youth. They had clustered about him before the dancing began, and though he had chosen a partner, there were two other young ladies on either side of her in the line who were giving him at least as much attention as they were giving their own more plodding partners.

  His laughter wafted down the line toward Elliott, causing him to purse his lips. He hoped the laughter did not denote a careless mind and a shallow character. He had already lived through a difficult year. Let there not be something equally trying in store for him for the next four.

  “You came to Throckbridge at an auspicious time, my lord,” Mrs. Dew said when the figures of the dance brought them together for a few moments.

  Because it was St. Valentine’s Day, he supposed, and there was a dance at the assembly rooms of the inn where he had the great good fortune to be staying.

  “Indeed, ma’am.” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Auspicious for us, perhaps.” She laughed as they parted company, and he understood that his tone, if not his words, had been less than gracious.

  “I have not danced in more than two years,” she told him when they came together again and joined hands in order to turn once about, “and am quite, quite determined to enjoy it no matter what. You are a good dancer.”

  He raised his eyebrows again but made no reply. What did one say to such an unexpected compliment? But then what had she meant by that no matter what?

  She laughed once more as they returned to their places.

  “You are not, I perceive,” she said the next time, “a conversationalist, my lord.”

  “I find it impossible to converse meaningfully in thirty-second bursts, ma’am,” he told her, an edge to his voice. Particularly when every villager appeared to be shrieking at every other villager with no one left to listen—and the orchestra played louder to drown them out. He had never heard such a hideous din in his whole life.

  Predictably, she laughed.

  “But if you wish,” he said, “I will pay you a compliment each time we meet. Thirty seconds will suffice for that.”

  They parted before she could reply, but instead of being quelled by his words, as he had intended, she laughed across at him with her eyes while Huxtable twirled his partner down the set and they all prepared to dance the figures over again.

  “Most ladies,” he said the next time he met his partner and turned back-to-back with her, “have to wear jewels in their hair to m
ake it sparkle. The natural gold in yours does it for you.” It was a rather outrageous claim since her hair was distinctly mousy, though the candlelight did flatter it, it was true.

  “Oh, well done,” she said.

  “You outshine every other lady present in every imaginable way,” he told her the time after that.

  “Ah, not so well done,” she protested. “No lady of sense likes to be so atrociously flattered. Only those who are conceited.”

  “You are not conceited, then?” he asked her. She had precious little to be conceited about, it was true.

  “You may certainly tell me, if you wish, that I am ravishingly beautiful,” she said, turning her laughing face up to his, “but not that I am more ravishingly beautiful than anyone else. That would be too obvious a lie and I might disbelieve you and fall into a decline.”

  He looked at her with unwilling appreciation as she danced away. She had a certain wit, it would appear. He almost laughed aloud, in fact.

  “You are quite ravishingly beautiful, ma’am,” he told her as they clasped hands at the top of the set.

  “Thank you, sir.” She smiled at him. “You are kind.”

  “But then,” he said as he began to twirl her down between the lines, “so is every other lady present tonight—without exception.”

  She threw back her head and laughed with glee, and for a brief moment he smiled back.

  Good Lord, was he flirting with her?

  With a dab of a plain woman who was not dazzled by his rank or greedy for his compliments? But who danced for all the world as if life held no greater joy?

  He was surprised when the set ended. What, already?

  “Is there not a third Miss Huxtable?” he asked her as he was leading her back to the spot at which he had met her.

  “A third?” She looked inquiringly at him.

  “I was presented to Miss Huxtable, the dark-haired lady standing over there,” he said, nodding in her direction, “and to Miss Katherine Huxtable, her younger sister. But I thought there was a third.”

  She looked keenly at him, saying nothing for a moment.

  “There is not a third Miss Huxtable,” she said, “though there is a third sister. I am she.”

  “Ah,” he said, his hand going to the handle of his quizzing glass. “I was not informed that one of the sisters had been married.”

  And poor woman, she had certainly been passed by in the looks department in that family, had she not?

  “Oughtyou to have?” Her eyebrows arched upward in evident surprise.

  “Not at all,” he said briskly. “It was merely idle curiosity on my part. Was your husband Sir Humphrey’s eldest son?”

  “No,” she said. “He was the younger of two. Crispin is the elder.”

  “I am sorry about your husband’s demise,” he said. A foolish thing to say really since he had not known the man and it had happened quite a while ago. “It must have been a nasty shock.”

  “I knew when I married him,” she said, “that he was dying. He had consumption.”

  “I am sorry,” he said again.

  How the devil had he got himself into this?

  “So am I,” she said, unfurling her fan and plying it before her face. “But Hedley is gone and I am still alive and you did not know him and do not know me and so there is no point in either of us becoming maudlin, is there? Thank you for the set. I will be the envy of all the other ladies, having been the first to dance with you.”

  She smiled dazzlingly at him as he bowed to her.

  “You will not boast of it, though,” he said. “You are not conceited.”

  She laughed.

  “Good evening to you, Mrs. Dew,” he said, and turned away.

  Before Sir Humphrey could bear down upon him again and take it upon himself to force another dancing partner upon him, he strolled off in the direction of what he thought must be the card room.

  Fortunately, he was right. And the din in there was marginally muted.

  He had made himself visible in the ballroom and reasonably agreeable for quite long enough.

  So Mrs. Vanessa Dew was the third sister, was she? Strange irony that one so plain had been the first to marry. Though there was admittedly a sparkle to her that sometimes belied her looks.

  She had knowingly married a dying man, for the love of God.

  4

  THERE was still no one up at Rundle Park when Vanessa had finished her breakfast the following morning except for Sir Humphrey, who was preparing to ride into the village to call upon Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen at the inn. He was, he told Vanessa as he rubbed his hands together and looked thoroughly pleased with life, going to invite them to dinner.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “if I were to call out the carriage, you would care to ride with me, Nessie, to visit your sister. She is an early riser like you, I daresay”

  Vanessa was happy to accept. She was eager to discuss the assembly with Margaret. It had been such a wonderful evening. She had, of course, lain awake half the night thinking about the opening set. It was hardly surprising. No one else at the assembly had been willing to allow her to forget it. The viscount had danced with her and only with her.

  She had made up her mind even before the dancing began that she would not maintain an awed silence with him. After a few minutes it had become obvious, though, that he had no intention of conversing with her, though surely any really polite gentleman would have made the effort. Obviously he was not a very polite gentleman—yet another fault she had found in him without really knowing him at all. And so she had started talking to him.

  They had ended up almost joking with each other. Almost flirting. Perhaps, she had conceded, there was more to the man than she had thought. Goodness, she had never flirted with any other man. And no other man had ever flirted with her.

  One dance with her, though, had obviously frightened him off from dancing with anyone else. He had spent the rest of the evening in the card room. It would all have been very lowering if she had felt that his good opinion was worth having. As it was, it had merely been disappointing for a dozen other women who had hoped to catch his eye and dance with him.

  But it was what he had said to her after the set was over that had kept her awake more than anything else. It had puzzled her at the time and had continued to puzzle her ever since. She wondered what Margaret would make of it.

  “Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen are remarkably amiable young gentlemen, would you not agree, Nessie?” Sir Humphrey asked her when they were in the carriage.

  “Indeed, Papa.”

  Mr. Bowen had been very amiable. He had danced with as many different partners as there had been sets, and he had conversed with them and with almost everyone else too between sets and during supper. Viscount Lyngate, Vanessa strongly suspected, had not really enjoyed the evening at all. And it was entirely his own fault if he had not, for he had arrived expecting to be bored. That had been perfectly obvious to her. Some times one got exactly what one wished for.

  “I think, Nessie,” Sir Humphrey said, chuckling merrily, “the viscount fancied you. He danced with no one else but you.”

  “I think, Papa,” she said, smiling back at him, “he fancied a game of cards far more than he did me or anyone else. It was in the card room he spent most of the evening.”

  “That was dashed sporting of him,” her father-in-law said. “The older people appreciated his condescension in playing with them. Rotherhyde relieved him of twenty guineas and will not talk of anything else for the next month, I daresay.”

  It was not raining, though it looked as if it might at any moment. It was also chilly Vanessa was grateful for the ride, as she informed Sir Humphrey while his coachman handed her down from the carriage outside the cottage gates.

  She found Katherine at home as well as Margaret, this being one of the days when the infants did not attend school. Stephen was there too, but he was upstairs in his room, toiling over a Latin translation since Margaret had told him at breakfast that
he ought not to go out until it was done.

  Vanessa hugged both sisters and took her usual chair close to the fire in the parlor. They talked, of course, about the assembly while Margaret stitched away at some mending.

  “I was so relieved when I saw you come into the rooms with Lady Dew and Henrietta and Eva, Nessie,” she said. “I thought you might talk yourself out of coming at the last moment. And I was more than delighted to see you dance every single set. It quite exhausted me just to watch you.”

  And yet Margaret herself had danced all but two sets.

  “I did not sit down all evening either,” Katherine said. “Was it not a delightful evening? Of course, you made the greatest conquest, Nessie. You danced the opening set, no less, with Viscount Lyngate, who is really so handsome that I daresay there was not a steady female heartbeat in the rooms all evening. If you had not come here this morning, I would have had to walk over to Rundle. Tell all!”

  “There is not much to tell. He danced with me because Papa-in-law gave him little choice,” Vanessa said. “He was not, alas, smitten by my charms, and if he came to the Valentine’s assembly to find a bride, he gave up the search after one dance with me. How very lowering, to be sure.”

  They all chuckled.

  “You belittle yourself, Nessie,” Margaret said. “He did not ignore you. He conversed with you while you danced.”

  “Because I forced him into it,” Vanessa said. “He told me that I was quite ravishingly beautiful.”

  “Nessie!” Katherine exclaimed.

  “And then he went on to say that so was every other lady in the room without exception,” Vanessa told them. “Which effectively negated the compliment, would you not say?”

  “Was that when you threw back your head and laughed?” Margaret asked. “You had everyone in the room smiling, Nessie, and wishing they could eavesdrop. You forcedhim into speaking such nonsense? How do you do it? You have always had a gift for making people laugh. Even Hedley when he was … very ill.”

  Vanessa had used the last reserves of her energy during those final few weeks, making him laugh, keeping him smiling. She had collapsed afterward. She had scarcely been able to drag herself out of bed for two whole weeks after the funeral.