“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 honey-moon. 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 spok
e 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 held 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.
She laughed.
“Of course I am not,” she said. “Besides, I am a married lady and of no interest to anyone.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Not even to your husband?” he asked her.
She laughed again.
“I was not fishing for a compliment,” she said. “Of course, if you wish to pay me one anyway...”
“With a smile on your lips and in your eyes,” he said, “and clothed in that particular shade of green, you look like a piece of the springtime, Vanessa.”
“Oh, well done,” she said. “Are you about to add that so does every other lady present?”
“Not at all,” he said. “No one else does. Only you. And springtime is everyone’s favorite season, you know.”
Her smile faded slightly and for a moment she felt a desperate yearning for she knew not what.
“Is it?” she said softly. “Why?”
“The renewal of life and energy, I suppose,” he said. “The renewal of hope. The promise of a bright future.”
“Oh.”
She was not sure she made any sound. Was it a compliment? But of course it was. Had he meant by it all she dreamed he meant? Or had he merely found a deft way of avoiding telling her quite bluntly that no, indeed, she was not as lovely as her three companions?
Their eyes locked and he opened his mouth to speak again.
“Oh, I say,” Stephen said suddenly, sounding as exuberant as he had looked since the moment of their arrival at the theater, “there is Cousin Constantine.”
“Where?” Katherine and Cecily asked together.
Stephen indicated a box almost directly across from theirs, and Vanessa looked and saw that sure enough, there was Constantine Huxtable with a party of ladies and gentlemen. He had seen them too and was smiling and raising a hand in greeting as he tipped his head side-ways to listen to something the lady next to him was saying. She too was looking across to their box.
Vanessa waved back with her fan hand, smiling brightly.
“It is to London he came, then,” she said to Elliott. “He is accepted here?”
“Although he is illegitimate?” he said. “But of course. He is the son of a former Earl and Countess of Merton and was raised as such. There is no real stigma on his name. It was just that legally he could not enjoy the privileges of the eldest son.”
“Does he have any money?” she asked. “I mean did he inherit anything?”
“His father provided for him,” he said. “Not lavishly, but adequately.”
“That is a relief to know,” she said. “I did wonder, especially after we arrived at Warren Hall and effectively turned him out of his home.”
“Con will always find a way of looking after himself,” he said, both his eyes and his voice hardening. “You must not worry about him, Vanessa. Or pay him too much attention.”
“He is our cousin,” she said.
“A relationship that is best forgotten,” he assured her. “And he is best ignored.”
She frowned at him.
“But unless you give me a good reason,” she said, “you cannot expect me to ignore him just because you hate him. I do not believe there is a good reason.”
He raised his eyebrows, his eyes still cold. But at that very moment a sudden hush descended on the theater. The play was about to begin.
Vanessa’s mood had taken a downward turn. She was very much afraid that the evening had been at least partially ruined. Her hand was still on Elliott’s arm, and his hand still covered it, but there was no real warmth in either and she wondered if it had been a move designed for the benefit of the audience rather than a spontaneous gesture of affection.
She glanced at Margaret, who was smiling, her attention already fixed upon the stage. She had scarcely stopped smiling since her arrival in London. The expression was like a mask. Vanessa could only imagine what lay behind it. Meg was
studiously avoiding all personal conversation.
And then the play began.
And all else was forgotten.
There were only the actors and the action and the play.
Vanessa leaned forward in her seat, unaware of either her surroundings or her companions, unaware of the arm she gripped a little more tightly, unaware that her husband beside her watched her almost as much as he did the performance.
It was only later, when the interval began, that she leaned back in her chair and sighed.
First Came Marriage Page 25