First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

  He found himself suddenly angry.

  Furiously angry.

  Coldly angry.

  He drew a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out without a word.

  She dried her eyes and blew her nose while he walked farther into the room. He took up a stand before the window, his back to her, his hands clasped behind him. He gazed out through the rain at the park. Off to one side was the lake with the dower house on its near bank.

  He did not turn his head to look in that direction. Indeed, he did not really see anything at all beyond the window.

  Why he was quite so angry he did not know. They had entered this marriage without illusions. It had been basically a marriage of convenience for both of them.

  “I suppose,” he said when the blowings and snifflings had stopped, “you loved him more than life.”

  He did not even try to hide the sarcasm from his voice.

  “I loved him,” she said after a lengthy pause. “Elliott—”

  “Please,” he said, “do not feel that you must now launch into an explanation. It is quite unnecessary, and would almost certainly involve nothing but lies.”

  “There is nothing about which I need to lie,” she said. “I loved him and I lost him and now I am married to you. That says it all. You will not find me—”

  “And you saw fit to bring his portrait into my home,” he said, “and to weep over it in private.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I brought it with me. He was a large part of my past. He was —and is—a part of me. I had no idea you would be home so soon. Or that you would come to my room and enter without even knocking.”

  He swiveled right about and stared stonily at her. She was still sitting on the love seat, his handkerchief balled in her hands. Her face was red and blotchy. It was not a pretty sight.

  “I need to knock,” he asked her, “before entering my wife’s rooms?”

  As she was in the habit of doing, she answered his question with one of her own.

  “If I entered your rooms without knocking,” she said, “would you be annoyed? Especially if you were engaged in something you would prefer I did not see?”

  “That,” he said, “is a different matter altogether. Of course I would be annoyed.”

  “But I am not allowed to be?” she asked him. “Because I am merely a woman? Merely a wife? Merely a sort of superior servant? Even servants need some privacy”

  Somehow she was turning the tables on him. She was scolding him. She was putting him on the defensive.

  The last few days, he realized suddenly, had been about nothing but sex. As he had intended. There was no point in being indignant at the discovery of what he had already known—and wanted.

  He certainly did not want her in love with him.

  But even so…

  “Your wish will be granted from now on, ma’am,” he said, making her a formal bow “This room will be your private domain except when I enter it to exercise my conjugal rights. And even then I will knock first and you may send me to the devil if you do not wish to admit me.”

  She tipped her head to one side and regarded him for a few silent moments.

  “The trouble with men,” she said, “is that they will never discuss a matter calmly and rationally. They will never listen. They always bluster and take offense and make pronouncements. They are the most unreasonable of creatures. It is no wonder there are always the most atrocious wars being fought.”

  “Men fight wars,” he said between clenched teeth, “in order to make the world safe for their women.”

  “Oh, poppycock!” she said.

  She ought, of course, to have kept her head down from the beginning and remained mute while he had his say, except to answer his questions with appropriate monosyllables. Then he might have stalked from the room with some dignity without going off on a dozen verbal tangents.

  But she was Vanessa, and he was beginning to understand that he must not expect her to behave as other ladies behaved.

  And heaven help him, he had married her. He had no one but himself to blame.

  “If you men really wanted to please your women,” she said, “you would sit down and talk with them.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, “perhaps you think to distract me. But you will not do so. I do not demand what you cannot give me and what I do not even want—I do not demand your love. But I do demand your undivided loyalty. It is my right as your husband.”

  “You have it,” she told him. “And you do not need to frown so ferociously or call me ma’am, as if we had just met, in order to get it.”

  “I cannot and will not compete with a dead man,” he said. “I do not doubt that you loved him dearly, Vanessa, and that his passing at such a young age was a cruel blow to you. But now you have married me, and I expect you to appear in public at least to be devoted to me.”

  “In public,” she said. “But in private I need not show devotion? In private I can be honest and show indifference or dislike or hatred or whatever else I may be feeling?”

  He gazed at her, exasperated.

  “I wish,” she said, “you would let me explain.”

  “About what I encountered when I invaded your privacy and came in here?” he asked. “I would really rather you did not, ma’am.”

  “Crispin Dew is married,” she told him.

  He could only gaze mutely at her. Was this a massive non sequitur, or was there some sort of logical connection in his wife’s convoluted mind?

  “Kate told me this morning,” she said. “Lady Dew had a letter from him while she was still at Warren Hall. He married someone in Spain, where his regiment is stationed.”

  “And I suppose,” he said, “your elder sister is heartbroken. Though why she should be I do not know If he has been gone for four years without a word to her, she ought to have expected something like this.”

  “I am sure she did,” she said. “But thinking you expect something and having it actually happen are two different things.”

  A thought struck him suddenly.

  “She might have married me after all, then,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  He saw the connection at last.

  “You realized it while I was gone this afternoon,” he said. “You realized that that letter had come too late. You might have been saved from making yourself into the sacrificial lamb.”

  “Poor Meg,” she said, neither admitting nor denying the charge. “She loved him so very much, you know But she insisted upon staying with us when he wanted her to marry him and follow the drum with him. She would not let me take her place.”

  “Not on that occasion,” he said. “But this time she was given no choice. You spoke to me before she knew what you intended to do.”

  “Elliott,” she said, “I wish you would not interrupt so much.”

  “Ha!” He sawed the air with one hand. “Now you are the one who wishes to make a pronouncement and does not wish to discuss anything in a rational manner.”

  “I am merely trying to explain,” she told him.

  He clasped his hands behind him again and leaned a little toward her.

  “Explain, then, if you must,” he said. “I will not interrupt again.”

  She stared back at him and then sighed. Her hands had been twisting the handkerchief. She set it firmly aside, caught sight of the miniature, still lying faceup on the cushion beside it, and turned it over.

  “I was afraid I would forget him,” she said. “And I realized that it was desirable I forget him. I am married to you now and owe you what I gave him—my undivided attention and loyalty and devotion. But I was afraid, Elliott. He was my life for the one year of our marriage, just as you will be my life for much longer, I hope. I need to forget him, but it seems wrong. He does not deserve to be forgotten. He loved me more than I thought it possible to be loved. And he was only twenty-three when he died. If I forget him, then love can die too—and I have always believed that love is the one constant in life, the one
thing that can never die, in this life or through eternity. I was weeping because I need to forget him. But I do not want to do it.”

  He had told her he would not compete with a dead man. But he was going to be doing just that anyway, was he not?

  A woman, it seemed, could not be commanded not to love. Just as she could not be commanded to love.

  “I will take the portrait back to Warren Hall,” she said. “Better yet, I will send it to Rundle Park. Lady Dew gave it to me after Hedley died and will be glad to have it back, I daresay I ought to have thought to give it to her before my wedding to you, but it did not occur to me. I will keep my marriage vows to you, Elliott. And I will not weep over Hedley again. I will tuck him away in a secret corner of my heart and hope that I will not entirely forget him.”

  Her marriage vows. To love, honor, and obey him.

  He did not want her love. He did not expect her obedience—he doubted she would be able to give it anyway. That left honor.

  Privately she had promised him more—comfort, pleasure, and happiness. And somehow she had given all three during the three days following their nuptials. And he, like a fool, had taken without question.

  She had merely been fulfilling a promise.

  And though he did not doubt that she had taken sexual pleasure from him, he understood now that she had merely been feasting upon the sensual delights of which her first husband’s illness had deprived her.

  It had all been about sex.

  Nothing else.

  As it had for him. As he had intended and wanted. He had not wanted more than that.

  Why the devil, then, even though his anger had largely dissipated, was there a heavy ball of depression weighting down his stomach?

  She would keep at least some of their marriage vows.

  So too, heaven help him, would he.

  Hedley Dew, he did not doubt, would never be mentioned between them again. She would love him in the secrecy of her heart and give her dutiful loyalty to her second husband.

  He bowed again.

  “I will take my leave of you, ma’am,” he said. “I have some business to attend to. May I suggest that you bathe your face before showing it to any of the servants? I shall see you at dinner. And later tonight I shall visit your room briefly before returning to my own to sleep.”

  “Oh, Elliott,” she said, “I have made a wretched mess of trying to explain to you, have I not? Perhaps because I cannot adequately explain even to myself. All I do know is that it is not quite what you think or quite what I have been able to put into words.”

  “Perhaps at some time in the future,” he said, “you will find yourself able to write a book. A lurid novel would suit you—something filled with baseless passion and emotion and bombast.”

  He was striding across the room as he spoke. He let himself in to her dressing room and shut the door firmly behind him before crossing into his own dressing room and shutting that door too.

  He was angry again. He had the feeling that somehow she had made a fool of him. She had not allowed him to vent his displeasure at finding her thus or to lay down the law to her about what he expected of her and their marriage. Instead she had led him into numerous verbal labyrinths and made him feel like a pompous ass.

  Was that what he was?

  He frowned ferociously.

  Was one supposed to take one’s wife into one’s arms and murmur sweet, soothing nothings into her ear while she wept her heart out over the man she loved— who just happened not to be him?

  And dead.

  Good Lord!

  Devil take it, what was marriage leading him into?

  He glanced through the window of his bedchamber and noticed that the rain, if anything, was coming down harder than it had been half an hour before. And the wind was swaying the treetops.

  It looked like just the weather he needed.

  Ten minutes later, he was riding away from the stables again on a fresh and eager mount.

  His destination?

  He had no idea. Just somewhere far away from Vanessa and his marriage. And from that wretched portrait of a delicate and pretty boy, against whom he would not wish to compete even if he could.

  She might love him with his blessing.

  To hell with her.

  And Hedley Dew too.

  When he recognized the essentially childish bent of his thoughts, he urged his mount into a gallop and decided not to go around the hedgerow that was in front of him but to go straight over it.

  If one was going to be childish, one might as well be reckless too.

  It was all absolutely awful.

  For one thing her face would not seem to return to its normal self. The more she dabbed at it with cold water and smoothed it with cream, the more puffy her eyes seemed to look and the more ruddy her cheeks.

  Finally she gave up and sallied forth into the rest of the house with a springy step and a bright smile though there were only the walls and the pictures and marble busts to see her.

  He returned home and arrived in the drawing room with only moments to spare before he had to lead her into the dining room for dinner. They made stilted conversation for a whole hour for the benefit of the butler and attendant footman. During all of which time Vanessa did not believe she once let her smile slip.

  They sat in the drawing room afterward, one on each side of the fire, reading. She counted the number of times he turned a page during the next hour and a half—four times. Each time she remembered to turn a page of her own book too and change position and smile appreciatively at the page in front of her.

  It was only after the first half hour that she realized she had picked up a book of sermons.

  She converted her smile into something more thoughtful.

  It was at about the same moment that she suddenly wondered exactly why he had walked into her bedchamber without knocking this afternoon—and why he had returned home early Had he come to —

  But when she glanced at him, he was frowning at his book and looking anything but loverlike.

  When bedtime finally came, he escorted her to the door of her dressing room, bowed over her hand, and asked—oh, yes, he really did!—if he might be permitted to wait upon her in a short while.

  When he came, she was lying in bed, wondering what she could say or do to improve the situation. But all she did was smile at him until he blew out the candle—the first time he had done that.

  He proceeded to make love to her without kisses or caresses, swiftly and lustily It was all over long before she could even think of preparing herself for the pleasure that had always come during their thirteen previous encounters.

  All she was left with was the ache of an unfulfilled longing.

  He got up from the bed immediately afterward, pulled on his dressing gown, and left via her dressing room.

  And before he closed the door he thanked her.

  He thanked her.

  It felt like the final insult.

  And it was insulting. All of it. It was intended to be, she suspected.

  If she wanted to be his wife merely for convenience and the procreation of children, his behavior this evening and tonight had told her, then he was quite happy to give her what she wanted.

  Men were so foolish.

  Or, if that was too much of a generalization and unjust to countless thousands of innocent male persons, then she would amend her thought.

  Elliott Wallace, Viscount Lyngate, was foolish!

  Except that it was all her fault.

  Though he did not know it and would never ever admit to it, he was hurt.

  But she did not know quite what to do about it. Do something she must, though. She owed him better than to be crying over another man a mere four days after marrying him.

  She owed him what she had promised him. She would owe it even if she had not promised.

  Besides, she was not content to let the memory of her honeymoon fade into the past, something sweet that could never be repeated. She had been happy for thos
e three days, and she was as certain as she could be that he had been happy too—though doubtless he would never admit to that particular sentiment even under torture.

  They had been happy.

  Past tense.

  It was up to her to make it present tense with bright prospects for the future too.

  For both their sakes.

  16

  IT WOULD have been quite easy to settle into what was really only half a marriage. Vanessa soon came to suspect that most marriages, at least those of the ton, were little more than that.

  It was what one might expect, of course, in a segment of society in which most marriages were arranged.

  But she had known a different type of marriage, however briefly, and could not be content now with only half a one.

  After they moved to London she saw very little of Elliott. He went out after breakfast and did not return until late afternoon. And even when he was at home, so were his mother and youngest sister.

  The only time Vanessa was really alone with him was at night, when they went through the brief ritual of lovemaking—if it could be called that. He was trying to beget an heir with her, and she was trying to enjoy the short encounters. She hoped he was having more success than she was. He always returned to his own room as soon as he had finished. Always he thanked her as he left.

  He treated her with civility, but it was cold enough to draw a sigh and a comment from his mother after he had left the breakfast parlor one morning.

  “I so hoped Elliott would be different,” she said.

  “Different?” Vanessa looked at her with raised eyebrows.

  “The Wallace men are always as wild as sin before they marry,” the dowager said, “and meticulously respectable afterward, at least as far as outward appearances go. They always choose their brides with care and treat them with unfailing courtesy ever after. They never marry for love. It would be beneath their dignity and would restrict their freedom too much to allow themselves to feel any such emotion. It is difficult for a man to break with family tradition, especially when the family is as illustrious as this one is. I thought Elliott might do it, though. Perhaps one always believes one’s son will be different from his father. And of course one always wishes desperately for his happiness.”