First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

  Though if it had not been her, it would have been someone else soon. And if he had not married either her or her sister, then the Huxtable ladies would still be like a millstone hanging about his neck.

  She had loved Dew, for the love of God, but had not been in love with him. What the deuce was that supposed to mean? She had not enjoyed her sexual encounters with Dew, though the poor devil had probably been too ill to give her a good time. On the contrary, she had enjoyed her beddings with him—until she had remembered her dead husband and got herself caught up in a web of grief and guilt so tangled that his head spun at the thought of even trying to unravel it—not that he intended to try.

  He wondered if there could be a more muddle-headed female in existence than his wife and seriously doubted it.

  But she had thought the three days and four nights following their wedding the most wonderful of her life.

  That was mildly gratifying, he supposed.

  Good Lord, did she expect him to talk about every small problem that might arise in their marriage for the rest of their lives? Were they going to analyze everything to death?

  Was life going to become hopelessly complicated?

  Of course it was. He was married, was he not? And to Vanessa, of all people.

  And now he was to give up a perfectly decent morning of reading the papers and conversing at White’s Club in order to take her to enjoy a cultural experience. And that was to be followed by ices at Gunter’s.

  Not that he had to take her there. He was not about to allow his secretary to dictate his every move, was he? And scold him for neglecting his wife?

  But it appeared that taking Vanessa to Gunter’s was the romantic thing to do.

  Good Lord!

  Had she not at one time promised to make him comfortable?

  Thus far he was finding marriage the most uncomfortable thing he had ever experienced or dreamed possible.

  Though those first few days had been somewhat enjoyable, he had to admit. More than somewhat, in fact.

  Either way he was in this marriage for life.

  It seemed like a damnably long time.

  He rang the bell for his valet.

  17

  VANESSA enjoyed looking at the sculptures. She spent a great deal of time gazing at them all one at a time, quite unabashed by their nakedness and undeterred by the fact that most of them were mere fragments.

  “I cannot believe,” she said at one point, “that I am actually looking at objects created during such ancient civilizations. It all quite takes one’s breath away, does it not?”

  But she did not fill the time with chatter, Elliott was interested to find. She gave her undivided attention to the collection. Until, that was, he became aware that she looked at him from time to time rather as she was looking at the exhibits—with a steady, critical gaze. He noticed because he was looking at her as much as he was viewing the pieces —he had seen them before, after all.

  She was wearing pink, a color that ought to have looked dreadful on her but did not. It made her look delicate and feminine. It made her complexion look rosy and vibrant. It made her look really quite pretty.

  Of course the clothes were all expertly styled and her absurd little bonnet was in the height of fashion.

  He intercepted one of her looks and raised his eyebrows.

  “They are all very white or gray,” she explained, “as if the ancient Greeks and other Mediterranean races were pale. But they could not have been in real life, could they? I suppose these were all painted once upon a time in vibrant colors. They must have looked like you. They must have been dark-complexioned like you only more so because they lived under the hot sun all the time. They must have been even more beautiful than they look here.”

  Was that a compliment? he wondered. And was she calling him beautiful?

  “All of that is your heritage,” she said later, as they left the museum. “Do you feel a tug at your heartstrings, Elliott?”

  “I believe,” he said, “it is an organ that comes without strings attached.”

  He was rewarded for his sorry attempt at a joke with a wide, delighted smile.

  “But yes,” he said, “I am always aware of my Greek heritage.”

  “Have you ever been to Greece?” she asked.

  “Once as an infant,” he told her. “My mother took Jessica and me to visit our grandfather and numerous other relatives. I remember little except large, noisy family gatherings and bright sunshine and deep blue water and getting lost in the Parthenon because I would not obey instructions to stay at my mother’s side.”

  “Do you never think of going back?” she asked as he helped her into the carriage.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I did not do it when I could. Now, since my father’s death, I am too busy here. Besides, Greece is a very volatile part of the world politically.”

  “You ought to go anyway,” she said. “You still have family members there, do you?”

  “Too numerous to count,” he said.

  “We ought to go,” she said. “It would be like a honeymoon again.”

  “Honeymoon?” It was a word that had always made him cringe. “Again?”

  “Like the three days at the dower house,” she said. “They were good, were they not?”

  That had been a honeymoon?

  “I have estates to run,” he said. “And I have just become guardian to a seventeen-year-old boy who has much to learn before he can assume the full exercise of his duties.”

  “And it is the beginning of the Season,” she said as the carriage moved off down Great Russell Street, “and Meg and Kate need to be introduced to society.”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “And you need to set up your nursery without further delay.”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at her sidelong. She was looking ahead and smiling.

  “They are not good enough excuses,” she said.

  “Excuses?” He raised his eyebrows again.

  “Your family members are growing older over there,” she said. “Is your grandfather still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “And life goes by very fast,” she said. “Just yesterday, it seems, I was a girl, yet now already I am approaching my middle twenties. You are almost thirty.”

  “We are practically in our dotage,” he said.

  “We will be before we know it,” she said. “If we are fortunate enough to grow old, that is. Life should be lived and enjoyed every moment.”

  “And to the devil with duties and responsibilities?”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “But sometimes it is easier to shelter behind those duties than to admit that our presence is not always indispensable and to step out into life and live it for all it is worth.”

  “Forgive me,” he said, frowning, “but have you not lived all your life thus far in Throckbridge and its environs, Vanessa? Are you qualified to advise me to throw duty and caution to the winds and embark on the first ship leaving for Greece?”

  “But I am no longer there,” she said. “I chose to move to Warren Hall with my sisters and brother even though it was all a great unknown. And then I chose to marry you—and heaven knows you are a vast unknown. Tomorrow I am to be presented to the queen. Then I will be attending Cecily’s come-out ball and introducing Meg and Kate to the ton. And then a thousand and one other such events. Am I frightened? Yes, of course I am. But am I going to do it all? Absolutely”

  He pursed his lips.

  “I think,” he said, “we will not be going to Greece anytime soon.”

  “No, of course we will not.” She turned her head to smile dazzlingly at him. “For there is duty, and I know I must learn that this new life does not mean total and endless freedom. But we must not be oppressed by duty, Elliott. I think perhaps that is what you have allowed to happen since your father died. There can be joy even in a dutiful life.”

  He wondered suddenly if that was a description of her first marriage. Had she not really been
happy, but had forced herself to be joyful? And if he was not careful, he was going to become as tortured by words as she was. What was the difference between happiness and joy?

  “And one of these days,” she said, “when there is nothing urgent to keep you at home and Stephen is capable of looking after his own affairs, we will go to Greece and meet your family and have a second honeymoon. And if we have children by then, they will simply come with us.”

  She had her head turned to look at him. She blushed suddenly, realizing perhaps what she had just said. Though why she needed to blush after almost two weeks of regular intimacies with him he did not know.

  “The carriage is stopping,” she observed, looking out through the window beyond his head. “But we are not home yet.”

  “We have arrived at Gunter’s,” he told her. “We are going to have an ice here.”

  “An ice?” Her eyes widened.

  “I thought you might like refreshments after trudging about the museum looking at cold marble and breathing in old dust for a whole hour,” he said. “Though you actually enjoyed it, did you not?”

  “An ice,” she said without answering his question. “I have never tasted one, you know. They are said to be absolutely divine.”

  “Nectar of the gods?” he said as he handed her down to the pavement. “Perhaps. You may judge for yourself.”

  It was easy to become jaded with the luxuries and privileges of one’s life, Elliott thought over the following half hour while he watched his wife taste and then savor her ice. She ate it in small spoonfuls and held the ice in her mouth for several seconds before swallowing. For the first few mouthfuls she even closed her eyes.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Could anything possibly be more delicious?”

  “I could probably think of a dozen things as delicious if I set my mind to it,” he said. “But more delicious? No, I doubt it.”

  “Oh, Elliot,” she said, leaning toward him across the table, “has not this been a lovely morning? Was I not right? Is it not fun to do things together?”

  Fun?

  But as he thought of the morning at White’s as it might have been, he realized that he did not feel unduly deprived. He really had rather enjoyed the morning, in fact.

  As they were leaving Gunter’s, they ran into Lady Haughton and her young niece, who were being escorted inside by Lord Beaton.

  Elliott bowed to the ladies and nodded at Beaton.

  “Oh, Lady Haughton,” his wife said, “and Miss Flaxley Are you coming to have ices too? We have been to the British Museum to look at the ancient sculptures there, and now we have been here. Is it not a beautiful day?”

  “Ah, Lady Lyngate,” Lady Haughton said, smiling— something she did not often do. “It is indeed a lovely day. Have you met my nephew, Lord Beaton? Lady Lyngate, Cyril.”

  Vanessa curtsied, smiling brightly at the young dandy.

  “I am very pleased to meet you,” she said. “Have you met Viscount Lyngate, my husband?” She laughed. “But of course you must have.”

  “The female population of London has just gone into collective mourning, Lyngate,” Lady Haughton told him. “And you must expect many envious glances during the coming Season, my dear. You have stolen one of the most eligible bachelors from the marriage mart.”

  Vanessa laughed.

  “My brother is in town too,” she said, looking at Beaton. “He is the new Earl of Merton and is only seventeen years old. I am sure he would be delighted to make the acquaintance of a somewhat older young man, my lord.”

  “I shall look forward to the pleasure, ma’am,” he said, making her a bow and looking gratified.

  “Will you be attending the ball at Moreland House tomorrow evening?” Vanessa asked. “I will introduce him to you there, if I may. Are you all planning to attend?”

  “We would not miss it for the world,” Lady Haughton said while Beaton bowed again. “Everyone who is anyone will be there, Lady Lyngate.”

  “I can see,” Elliott said a few minutes later, when they were inside the carriage and on the way home, “that you have made several acquaintances already.”

  “Your mother has been taking me about with her,” she said. “I have been trying to memorize names. It is not always easy, but fortunately I remembered Lady Haughton and Miss Flaxley”

  “It would seem,” he said, “that you do not need me for company after all, then.”

  She turned her head to look steadily at him.

  “Oh, but, Elliott,” she said, “they are all just acquaintances. Even your mother and Cecily and Meg and Kate and Stephen are just family. You are my husband. There is a difference. An enormous difference.”

  “Because we go to bed together?” he asked her.

  “Oh, you foolish man,” she said. “Yes, because of that. Because it is a symbol of the intimacy of our relationship. The total intimacy.”

  “And yet,” he reminded her, “you do not like me walking into your private apartments without knocking. You have insisted that you need some privacy, even from me.”

  She sighed.

  “Yes, it is a seeming contradiction, is it not?” she said. “But the thing is, you see, that two people can never actually become one no matter how close they are. And it would not be desirable even if it were possible. What would happen when one of them died? It would leave the other as half a person, and that would be a dreadful thing. We must each be a whole person, and therefore we each need some privacy to be alone with ourselves and our own feelings. But a marriage relationship is an intimate thing for all that, and the intimacy ought to be cultivated. For the relationship ought to be the best of all relationships. What a waste to live two almost totally separate lives when the chance is there for one of the greatest joys of life together.”

  “You have obviously given a great deal of thought to this subject,” he said.

  “I had much time for thought when—” She did not complete the sentence. “I have had much time for thought. I know what a happy marriage is.” She turned her face away from him and gazed out the window She spoke so softly that he could barely decipher the words. “And I know what a happier marriage could be.”

  How had they got onto this subject? How did he get onto any subject with his wife?

  One thing was becoming very clear to him. She was not going to allow him to settle into any comfortable sort of married life that might somehow resemble his bachelor existence.

  She was going to force him to be happy, damn it all.

  And joyful.

  Whatever the devil difference there might be between the two.

  Heaven help him.

  “Elliott,” she said as the carriage drew up before the house. She set one gloved hand on his sleeve. “Thank you so very much for this morning—for the museum, for the ice. I have enjoyed myself more than I can say.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for coming.”

  Her eyes twinkled with merriment.

  “This afternoon you may be free to do whatever you wish,” she said. “I am going shopping with Meg and Kate. Cecily is coming too. I will not suggest that you accompany us. I will see you at dinner?”

  “You will,” he said. He spoke impulsively. “Perhaps you would arrange to have it served early You may like to go to the theater this evening. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is being performed at the Drury Lane. Perhaps Merton and your sisters would care to join us in my private box there.”

  “Oh, Elliott!” Her face lit up with such pleasure that he was dazzled for a moment. “I really cannot think of anything I would like more. And how good of you to invite my brother and sisters too.”

  He was still holding her hand, he realized. And his coachman was standing beside the carriage door, holding it open. He had already put down the steps. He was staring straight ahead down the street, the suggestion of a smirk on his lips.

  “I shall be home in time for an early dinner, then,” Elliott said after he had climbed down and hel
d out a hand to help Vanessa descend.

  Her smile was warm and happy.

  And she did indeed look rather pretty in pink.

  Just a couple of months ago an assembly at Throckbridge had seemed the pinnacle of excitement. Yet now, Vanessa thought as they all took their seats in Elliott’s box, here they were, she and her brother and sisters, attending the performance of a Shakespeare play in the Theater Royal, Drury Lane, in London. And tomorrow there was to be her presentation to the queen and then a grand ton ball in the evening.

  And this was all just the beginning.

  Sometimes she still expected to wake up in her bed at Rundle Park.

  The theater was filling with ladies and gentlemen who were dazzling in the splendor of their muslins and silks and satins and jewels. And she and her siblings actually belonged in such company. Vanessa was even sparkling along with everyone else. She was wearing the white gold chain with a multifaceted and indecently large diamond pendant that Elliott had brought home with him during the afternoon and clasped about her neck just before they left the house. The diamond was catching the light whichever way she turned.

  “Even without the play” Katherine said to Cecily, though her voice carried to all of them, “this would be a memorable evening of entertainment.”

  “It would indeed,” Cecily agreed fervently, fanning her face and gazing down into the pit.

  The pit was where unattached single gentlemen usually sat to ogle the ladies — the dowager had told Vanessa that. She had been perfectly right. And they — or Meg, Kate, and Cecily anyway—were the subject of much of that attention. Some of the gentlemen were even using opera glasses to magnify the view Meg and Kate were wearing new gowns, both blue, Kate’s pale, Meg’s darker. Both looked outstandingly lovely. So did Cecily in white.

  Vanessa turned her head to smile happily at Elliott, who was seated beside her.

  “I knew they would all attract attention,” she said. “Kate and Meg and Cecily, I mean. They are so lovely”

  She was holding a fan in one hand. He took her free hand and set it on his sleeve. He kept one hand over it.

  “And you are not?” he asked her.