First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

  “Never?” he said. “Not for any reason?”

  She sighed sleepily.

  “I will have to think about that one,” she said. “Perhaps we could arrange our lives so that we never do anything that calls for an apology.”

  He found himself half smiling again in the darkness — the candle appeared to have burned itself out.

  “A happily-ever-after?” he said. “Do you really believe in such a thing?”

  “No,” she said after giving the question some thought. “And I am not sure I would want it even if it were possible. What else would there be to hope for in life? What else would there be to work toward? I would prefer happiness to a happily-ever-after.”

  “What is happiness?” he asked her.

  “A moment of joy,” she said without hesitation.

  “Only a moment? It sounds not worth working for, then,” he said.

  “Oh, there you are wrong,” she told him. “The whole of life is a single moment. There is nothing else but this moment, is there? Always this moment.”

  In his experience moments passed and were gone forever.

  “The whole of life is joy, then?” he said. “It is all happiness?”

  She could not possibly be that naive.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “But one moment of happiness can make the whole of life worth living—like leavening in bread. It can show what life can be and is meant to be. It can give one hope in the dark times. It can give one faith in life and the future. Have you never been happy, Elliott?”

  He felt a huge nostalgia suddenly for the way life had used to be—a long, long time ago. A lifetime ago.

  “I was happy enough a few minutes ago,” he said.

  “You think you are being flippant,” she said. “You expect me to scold you for thinking that s —” She drew a breath and rushed onward. “For thinking that sex can bring happiness. But it can. Sex celebrates life and togetherness and love.”

  “I thought,” he said, “you did not love me.”

  That silenced her for a while.

  “But I was not the one who said I was happy a few minutes ago,” she said.

  “ I was celebrating love, then?” he asked her.

  “Oh, you foolish man,” she said. “Of course you were. There are many kinds of love. You are not in love with me. You do not even love me. But you love … this night.”

  “Our wedding night,” he said. “Sex.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sex is love?”

  “You want to provoke a quarrel with me,” she said, and she lifted herself onto her elbow so that she could prop her head on her hand and look down at him. “Admit it.”

  Did he? Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he was trying to set this night into perspective. He had married a woman today whom he barely knew, who frequently irritated him, who was not even attractive. He had bedded her tonight because it was their wedding night, and he had enjoyed the sex because he had been without a woman since before Christmas.

  And even tonight, even now she annoyed him. She was a romantic with her belief in happiness and love. For her even sex was love. She believed there was joy to be found in most of the situations of life.

  And yet she had lost a young husband to consumption— a slow and cruel death. Presumably she had loved him.

  “You ought to be sleeping, not talking philosophy,” he said more harshly than he intended. “I may want you again before the night is out.”

  “You ought to be sleeping too,” she said. “Perhaps I will want you.”

  He almost laughed aloud. They were back where they had started this night.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “we ought to do our wanting now while we are both wide awake and our sleeping afterward.”

  He spread a hand over the back of her head and drew it downward so that he could kiss her.

  She stretched one leg across him until she was straddling him, and then she lowered her head so that he could continue to kiss her.

  The novelty had certainly not worn thin yet.

  And the night was not half over.

  14

  HAPPINESS did not always come just in fleeting moments. Sometimes it lingered for a while.

  Vanessa had no real illusions, of course. This was not a love match and had never been intended as one. He did not love her and she did not love him—not really anyway.

  But she was infatuated with him, and surely—and strangely—he was with her.

  For now anyway For a short while even if it did not last.

  They were to enjoy that most romantic of all interludes in life—a honeymoon.

  They made love more times during those three days and four nights than Vanessa could count. Well, not quite. It was thirteen times in all. Afterward, she thought that if she had been superstitious, that number might have struck her as ominous. She ought not to have counted.

  She had never enjoyed anything more in her life than those thirteen lovemakings. He was beautiful and virile and skilled and thorough.

  But it was not just the lovemaking.

  They took their meals together and talked while they ate. They talked of books they had read and discovered that they had read very few of the same ones. But that could be rectified.

  “I will read all the books you have read,” she said recklessly, “so that we can discuss them.”

  “I will not read everything you have read,” he told her. “History was never my favorite subject at school. Instead, you may tell me everything that happened in the past that I need to know”

  “Oh, goodness,” she said, “wherever would I begin?”

  “At the beginning?” he suggested. “With Adam and Eve?”

  “I’ll start with the Romans in Britain,” she said, “since very little is known about the tribes who were here before them. The Romans are fascinating, Elliott. They lived lives that were in many ways more sophisticated and luxurious than ours. And yet we think we live in such an advanced civilization. Did you know, for example, that they knew a way of heating their houses that did not necessitate wood or coal fires in each room?”

  “I did not,” he said.

  He listened with apparent interest while she spoke of Roman Britain and how it had influenced the lives of the British even to the present day.

  “Especially in language,” she said. “Do you have any idea how many of our words originated from the Latin?”

  “Would we be compelled to live in silence if the Romans had not come here, then?” he asked her. “Or, heaven help us, would we all be speaking Welsh or Gaelic?”

  She laughed. “Language is an ever-growing thing,” she said. “English would just have been different without the Romans.”

  She suspected—indeed she knew—that his knowledge of the past was far more extensive than he admitted to. No educated gentleman could possibly know absolutely nothing about the history of his own country and civilization, after all. But she did not care if he was teasing her with his apparent ignorance. History was something of a passion with her, but she could not always find people who were willing to listen.

  Besides, it was interesting to know that he could tease.

  They spent hours of each day out of doors. The weather was not to be resisted. Although it was still only spring, the sun shone, the sky was cloudless, and there was warmth in the air. They could not have asked for better.

  They strolled about the lake and never once spotted another soul. Everyone was indeed respecting their privacy.

  They went to the boathouse one day and looked at the boats inside and then took one out onto the water even though it was a little chilly out there. Vanessa insisted upon rowing and even got them safely back to shore. But because she had not rowed for years, since she was a girl, in fact, she spent far more time fighting the water and the oars and moving in circles than in skimming gracefully across the lake admiring the view.

  “A n impressive display,” her husband commented after their return. “Perhaps next time you will allow me to
take the oars to see if I can impress you equally.”

  She laughed.

  “But it was such fun, Elliott, you must confess,” she said. “Did you fear for your life?”

  “I can swim,” he told her. “Can you?”

  “About as well as I can row,” she said, and laughed again. “I have always been afraid to put my face under the water.”

  They walked out to the end of the wooden jetty close to the boathouse on another occasion and gazed down into the water at the fish swimming there. He used to dive in as a boy, he told her, and try to catch the fish with his bare hands.

  “Did you ever succeed?” she asked him.

  “Never,” he admitted. “But I did learn something about expending energy on an impossibility”

  “That stopped you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She remembered the stone he had sent skipping across the lake at Warren Hall the day she proposed marriage to him. She had him demonstrate again now and then tried it herself—without any success at all. He tried to teach her, but she could not perfect the sideways flick of the wrist that was apparently the secret to success. When she tried it, she only succeeded in sending her stone straight up in the air so that they both had to duck in order not to be hit on the head when it descended.

  She did a great deal of laughing and then watched him show off with a second demonstration.

  “Twelve bounces,” she said admiringly. “That is a new record.”

  “Think how much easier your task is now than mine,” he said. “I have to reach thirteen to beat my record. You have to reach only one to set yours.”

  “I think,” she said, “that all I have learned is not to expend energy on an impossibility.”

  She threw one last stone—and it bounced an unmistakable three times. She shrieked with laughter and turned to him in triumph.

  “Well,” he said, his eyebrows raised. “Maybe I should dive in and see if I can catch a fish.”

  One of these days, she decided, she was going to make him smile. She was even going to make him laugh. But it did not matter that he did neither. He was enjoying himself as much as she was. She was sure of it.

  This may not be a match made in heaven, and they may never really love each other. But there was no reason at all why they should not be happy together. She had promised him happiness and pleasure and comfort, had she not?

  On the third day they walked around to the far side of the lake and came upon a sloping bank that was simply covered with daffodils. It had been hidden from sight from the other bank by a band of willow trees that overhung the water. The yellow trumpets nodded and waved in the sunlight and the light breeze.

  “Oh, look, Elliott!” she cried, as if he could possibly not have noticed. “Just look!”

  And she went dashing off to run through the daffodils, her arms spread to the sides. She twirled about in the middle of them and lifted her face to the sun.

  “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she asked, coming to a halt but keeping her arms raised.

  He was standing at the edge of the bank, watching her.

  “Probably,” he said. “But I cannot for the moment think what it might have been. I believe you must have had secret knowledge of this place, though, Vanessa, and dressed accordingly. It was very cunning and clever of you.”

  She looked down at herself. She was wearing her lemon-colored dress and pelisse and her straw bonnet.

  “I thought you would be impressed,” she said, smiling brightly at him.

  “I am.”

  He had come closer while she was looking down. And he kept coming as her smile faded. When he was close enough, he leaned forward and set his lips to hers, and she twined her arms about his neck and kissed him back.

  She loved his heavy-lidded look. It made her feel desirable. That he actually found her desirable still seemed incredible to her. But he must. He surely could not be thinking just of those heirs for which he had married her. She gazed into his eyes after he had finished kissing her, and smiled again.

  It was one of the happiest moments of a happy three days. She almost felt that she was in love with him after all. And he with her.

  “Even if family and gardeners had not been given strict orders to stay away from the lake,” he said, “this would be a deserted spot. I cannot remember seeing it before at this particular time of the year.”

  A deserted spot.

  His meaning was abundantly clear. Vanessa felt the growingly familiar ache between her thighs.

  “No one comes here?” she asked him, and licked her suddenly dry lips.

  “No one.”

  And he shrugged out of his coat, spread it on the grass among the daffodils, and gestured toward it.

  And they made love in the outdoors, surrounded by the green and gold of springtime, the sun beaming down on them, its rays almost hot in the shelter provided by trees and flowers and the slope of the bank.

  It was quick and lusty and wonderfully wicked—for of course someone could have come striding into sight at any moment. There was something strangely erotic, she discovered, about making love while almost fully clothed.

  “I am going to pick some daffodils for the house,” she said when they were on their feet again and had adjusted their clothing. “May I?”

  “This is your home,” he said. “You are mistress of Finchley Park, Vanessa. You may do whatever you wish.”

  Her smile broadened.

  “Within reason,” he added hastily.

  “Help me,” she said, bending to the daffodils and plucking them by their long stems.

  “Is this enough?” he asked after he had picked perhaps a dozen and she had picked more than twice that number.

  “Not nearly,” she said. “We will pick until our arms can hold no more. We will fill the dower house to overflowing with sunshine and spring, Elliott. Gather some greenery too.”

  Some time later they staggered back around the lake to the house, their arms laden.

  “I hope,” she said as they approached the door, “there are enough pots and vases. There must be at least one bouquet for each room.”

  “The servants will see to it,” he said, opening the door with difficulty and standing back for her to precede him inside.

  “They will certainly not” she protested. “Arranging flowers is one of the finest pleasures of life, Elliott. I will show you. Come and help me.”

  “I’ll come and watch you,” he said. “You will thank me for not helping, Vanessa. I have no eye for arrangements.”

  But he did help nevertheless. He filled the pots with water and divided the flowers and leaves into groups and cut their stems according to her directions. And he helped carry the pots to the appointed rooms and adjusted their positions while she stood back and looked on with a critical eye.

  “One half an inch to the right,” she said, gesturing. “Now one quarter of an inch back. There! Perfect!”

  He stood back and looked steadily at her.

  She laughed. “Perfection ought always to be aimed for,” she said, “even if it is not always possible to achieve. Anything worth doing ought to be done well.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What happens to the flowers when we return to the main house tomorrow?”

  She did not want to return to the house. She wanted to live here just like this forever and ever. But it had never been possible—or ultimately desirable—to hold back time.

  “Tomorrow does not exist until it comes,” she said. “We need not think about it today. Today we will enjoy the daffodils.”

  “Do you know the poem?” he asked.

  “The one by William Wordsworth?” she said. “His ‘host of golden daffodils’? Oh, yes, indeed. And now we know just how he felt when he came upon them.”

  “We do have some reading in common after all, then,” he said.

  “Yes, so we do.”

  Vanessa gazed about happily at the vases full of flowers. And there was one more evening to loo
k forward to and one more night.

  But tomorrow had been mentioned.

  Tomorrow they would return to the main house and the rest of their lives.

  They would be the same people living the same marriage.

  But Vanessa tried not to think about it, nevertheless. When she did, it was with a vague, unnameable sense of foreboding.

  They walked back up to the main house after breakfast the following morning under gray skies that threatened rain.

  The house was deserted except for the servants and Mr. Bowen. All the wedding guests had been due to leave yesterday, and Lady Lyngate and Cecily had set off for London very early this morning. Vanessa and Elliott were to follow them tomorrow.

  Vanessa explored her new bedchamber and dressing room while Elliott was in the study, consulting with his secretary and looking through the letters that had accumulated in three days.

  But he was not there long. He tapped on Vanessa’s door after less than half an hour and let himself in.

  “It is huge,” she said, spreading her arms to the sides. “At least twice the size of my room at the dower house.”

  “Of course,” he said, shrugging. “It is the viscountess’s room.”

  The fact that she had moved into a totally different world had still not had time to strike her fully, Vanessa realized.

  “I am going to ride over to Warren Hall to see how Merton is getting along with his tutors,” he said. “Would you like to come? If so, we will take the carriage. It would probably be wise anyway It is going to rain.”

  “Of course I want to come,” she said.

  Time had seemed suspended during their brief honeymoon. She had spared hardly a thought for her sisters and brother—or for anyone else. The dower house and the lake had been her world, and she and Elliott had been the only two people who existed in it.

  Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  Now suddenly she realized that three whole days had passed, and she was eager to see her siblings again.

  By the time they arrived at Warren Hall the first few drops of rain were falling, and a gusty wind had cooled the air.

  How fortunate they had been to have those three days of glorious spring weather, Vanessa thought. The change now made them seem somehow unreal and far away—as if they had ended weeks ago instead of just this morning.