First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

He lay down on his back beside her, one forearm over his eyes. Was there such a thing as a good marriage? he wondered. Was it possible? The thing was that no one in the ton ever expected it, not if goodness equated happiness anyway Marriage was a social bond and often an economic one too. One looked elsewhere for sexual pleasure and emotional satisfaction—if one needed it.

  His father obviously had. And his grandfather.

  She was lying on her side, he was aware, looking at him. He had left the candle burning tonight.

  “Elliott,” she said softly, “it has been a lovely day. It is one I will long remember. Tell me it has not been an utter bore for you.”

  He removed his arm and turned his head to look at her.

  “You think me incapable of enjoyment?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “But I wonder if you are capable of enjoyment with me. I am not at all lovely or sophisticated or—”

  “Has no one ever called you lovely?” he asked her before she could think of another derogatory word to apply to herself.

  She was silent for a moment.

  “You,” she said, “at the Valentine’s ball.” She laughed. “And then you added that every other lady was lovely too, without exception.”

  “Do you love springtime?” he asked her. “Do you think it loads the world with a beauty not found in any other season?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is my favorite season.”

  “I called you a piece of springtime this evening,” he said. “I meant it.”

  “Oh.” She sighed. “How lovely. But you have to say such things to me. You are my husband.”

  “You are determined to see yourself as ugly, then?” he said. “Has anyone ever called you that, Vanessa?”

  She thought again.

  “No,” she said. “No one in my world would have been so cruel. But my father used to tell me that he ought to have called me Jane since I was his own plain Jane. He said it with affection, though.”

  “With all due respect to the late Reverend Huxtable,” he said, “I do believe he ought to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered.”

  “Oh, Elliott.” Her eyes widened. “What a dreadful thing to say.”

  “If I were still unmarried,” he said, “and had to make a choice among you and your sisters based upon looks alone, I would choose you.”

  Her eyes filled with laughter again, and her lips curved into a smile.

  “You are my gallant knight,” she said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I am not a simple mix of coldness and irritability, then?” he asked her.

  The laughter held.

  “Like all humans,” she said, “you are a dizzying mix of things and you ought to take no notice of me when I say you are all one thing or even all of two or three things. I daresay you are thousands of things and I will discover hundreds of them during our marriage. But not all. We can never know another person completely.”

  “Can we know even ourselves?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “We can always take even ourselves by surprise. But would life not be dull if we were all unfailingly predictable? How would we ever continue to learn and grow and adapt to new conditions of our life?”

  “Are we talking philosophy again?” he asked her.

  “If you ask questions,” she said, “you must expect me to answer them.”

  “You know how to change me for the better,” he said.

  “Do I?” She looked uncomprehendingly at him.

  “I will think of ways. I am endlessly inventive.” He quoted the words to her, just as she had spoken them at the theater earlier.

  “Oh.” She laughed. “I really did say those things, did I not?”

  “While you were lying here just now,” he said, “not sleeping but resting your eyes, were you thinking? Were you being inventive?”

  She laughed softly.

  “If you were not,” he said, “I believe I am doomed to be cold and irritable for the rest of the night. I shall lie here and see if I can sleep.”

  He closed his eyes.

  He heard her laugh softly once more, and then there was silence—until he felt the mattress sway and he heard the unmistakable rustlings of a nightgown being removed. She had worn it for the last several nights, just as he had worn his nightshirt.

  He was instantly aroused. He lay still as if he slept.

  After a while he felt her hand against his chest, her fingers circling and caressing, moving up to his shoulder, down to his navel.

  But the use of one hand did not satisfy her. She lifted herself onto her knees beside him and leaned over him, using both hands to caress him and then her nails and her lips and breath and teeth.

  He kept his eyes closed and concentrated upon keeping his breathing even. She was marvelously skilled after all.

  She blew warm air into his ear before licking behind his earlobe and then drawing it into her mouth and sucking and pulsing her teeth about it.

  Her hands circled his erection and circled until they touched him, featherlight, and stroked him and closed about him. The pad of her thumb rubbed lightly over the tip.

  It took all the power of his will to lie still.

  She was exquisite. She was pure magic.

  And then she was straddling him, her thighs hugging his hips, her small breasts brushing against his chest, her fingers twining in his hair, her mouth kissing his eyes, his temples, his cheeks, until she reached his lips.

  He opened his eyes for the first time.

  Her own were shimmering with tears.

  “Elliott,” she murmured, her tongue licking his lips and then sliding inside. “Elliott.”

  He caught her by the hips then, found her entrance, and pulled her down hard onto him even as she pressed downward.

  She cried out, a high, keening sound, and there followed a hot frenzy of thrusting and riding that took them both over the edge of passion before there was time to settle to any rhythm.

  She was weeping openly, he realized when he had stopped throbbing and his heart had stopped thundering in his ears. She was sobbing against his shoulder, her knees still hugging his waist, her hands still buried in his hair.

  At first he was alarmed, even angry. For of course she had made love to him—up to a point—as she must have made love to her first husband, whose desperate weakness had rendered him virtually unable to perform. She had taught herself all those marvelous skills for the benefit of a dying man whom she had loved.

  Except that she had not been in love with him. She had not desired him. She had pleasured him because she loved him.

  He was beginning to understand something of the fine distinctions of meaning.

  How blessed it must be to be loved by Vanessa Wallace, Viscountess Lyngate.

  His wife.

  He did not grow angry. For he recognized the tears for what they surely were—happiness that all the work she had put into foreplay was rewarded by the pleasures of full intercourse both given and received. And if there was some grief mingled in for the husband who had not been able to enjoy the completion of what she had done for him, well it would be petty to take offense.

  Hedley Dew, poor devil, was dead.

  Elliott Wallace was not.

  He hooked the sheet with one foot and pulled it up over them both. He dried her eyes with one corner of it.

  “Elliott,” she said, “forgive me. Please forgive me. It is not what you think.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You are … oh, you are so very gorgeous.”

  Gorgeous? Well.

  He lifted her head from his shoulder and held her face framed in both hands. She sniffed and laughed.

  “I look a dreadful fright,” she said.

  “Vanessa,” he said, “I want you to listen to me. And I insist that you believe me. I will make it a command, in fact, one you must obey. You are beautiful. You are never to doubt it ever again.”

  “Oh, Elliott,” she said, sniffing once more, “how very splendid of you. But you real
ly do not need to—”

  He set the pad of one thumb over her lips.

  “Someone needs to tell you the truth,” he said, “and it might as well be your husband. You have been coy with your beauty. You have hidden it from all except those who take the time to bask in your smiles and look deeply into your eyes. Anyone who does take the time will soon uncover your secret. You are beautiful.”

  Good Lord, where was all this coming from? He could not possibly believe it, could he?

  Her eyes had filled with tears again.

  “You are a kind man,” she said. “I would never have suspected it until this moment. You can be cold and you can be irritable and you can be kind. You are a complex man. I am so glad.”

  “And gorgeous?” he said.

  She laughed and hiccuped.

  “Yes, and that too.”

  He drew her head down onto his shoulder again and then straightened her legs on either side of his. He caught at the blankets and covered them more warmly.

  She heaved a sigh of apparent contentment.

  “I thought you were not coming tonight,” she said. “I fell asleep worrying about tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? Ah, yes, her presentation to the queen. One of the most important days of her life. And then that infernal ball in the evening.

  “All will be well,” he assured her. “And I thought you were just resting your eyes.”

  “Mmm,” she said. “I am so tired.”

  She yawned out loud and was almost instantly asleep.

  They were still joined.

  She weighed almost nothing at all. But she was warm and smelled enticingly of soap and sex.

  Beautiful?

  Was she beautiful?

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture her as he had first seen her, standing with her friend at the Valentine’s ball, dressed in a shapeless lavender gown.

  Beautiful?

  But then he remembered that as soon as he had led her into the dance and the music began, she had smiled and glowed with happiness. And when he had made that sorry joke about all the ladies, as well as her, being dazzlingly lovely, she had thrown back her head and laughed, not at all chagrined that the compliment did not apply to her alone.

  And now she lay naked and relaxed and asleep in his arms.

  Beautiful?

  Certainly there was something about her.

  He followed her down into sleep.

  Because she was a married lady and not simply a young girl making her debut into society, Vanessa was not compelled to wear white. It was a good thing too. She looked a positive fright unless there was some color in her clothing.

  Her satin skirt, falling from her natural waistline and arranged over huge hoops, was a pale ice blue. So was her stomacher, though it shimmered with reflected light as it was heavily embroidered with silver thread. The lace petticoat worn over the bodice and skirt and pulled open to the sides to reveal the latter, was of a slightly darker blue, as were her long train and the lappets that fell behind her from the silver-embroidered band she wore about her head. Pale blue and silver plumes waved above her head. Her long silver gloves reached above her elbows.

  “Oh my,” she said, looking at herself in the pier glass in her dressing room when her maid was finished with her, “I really am beautiful. Elliott was quite right.”

  She laughed with delight because she really did think she looked her very best. She ought to be able to dress thus always. She ought to have been born fifty years sooner than she had been. Except that then she could have been Elliott’s grandmother, and she would have hated that.

  “Of course you are beautiful,” Katherine cried, stepping forward to hug her sister, though she did so very gingerly lest she crush something. “I do not care how many people scoff at the necessity of wearing such old-fashioned styles for the benefit of the queen. I think they are glorious. I wish we still wore them every day.”

  “Which is just what I was thinking,” Vanessa said.

  But Margaret had heard something else in her sister’s earlier words.

  “Viscount Lyngate said you are beautiful?” she asked.

  “Last night,” Vanessa admitted as she straightened the seam of her left glove. “He was being foolish.”

  “He was being very perceptive,” Margaret said with feeling. “All is going well, then, Nessie?”

  Vanessa smiled into her sister’s anxious eyes. He really had been very foolish last night. She did not know what had got into him. But whatever it was, it had left a glow of happiness in her this morning. He had commanded her to think of herself as beautiful—and she had promised during their nuptials always to obey him.

  Foolish man!

  She had woken early this morning as she had fallen asleep, warm and comfortable on top of him, his arms about her, her cheek cradled against his shoulder. And he had still been inside her, except that he had grown long and hard again. And, sensing that she had awoken, he had rolled her over onto her back without disengaging from her, and made swift love to her before returning to his own room.

  For once he had not thanked her as he went. She was so glad.

  She had not seen him since. Her maid had brought her breakfast in bed—on his orders apparently—and she had been in her dressing room ever since, her mood oscillating between excitement and a horrible anxiety. Her mother-in-law and Cecily had been in and out, observing the progress her maid had been making. Meg and Kate had arrived to see her on her way to court. Stephen had also come to the house. He was downstairs with Elliott. They were both going to court too. Elliott was going to present Stephen to the Prince of Wales at one of his levees.

  “Kate was right,” Margaret said. “You really are looking lovely, Nessie. And it is not just the clothes. If Lord Lyngate has put that glow in your face, then I will forgive you for proposing marriage to him.”

  “You did what?” Katherine looked at her with startled eyes.

  “We both knew he was coming to make an offer for Meg,” Vanessa explained hastily. “Meg did not want him. I did. And so I offered him my hand before he could offer his to Meg.”

  “Oh, Nessie!” Katherine’s eyes brimmed with laughter. “How could you do anything so bold? But why did you not want to marry Lord Lyngate, Meg? He is gloriously handsome among other assets. I suppose you felt that you must stay with Stephen and me a little longer.”

  “I have no wish to marry,” Margaret said firmly. “Anyone.”

  They were interrupted at that moment by the return of the dowager and Cecily Cecily squealed with delight. The dowager looked upon Vanessa with approval and nodded her head.

  “You will do very well, Vanessa,” she said. “We were quite right about the color. It makes you look youthful and delicate and really quite pretty.”

  “Beautiful,” Katherine said with a fond smile. “We have already agreed, ma’am, that she looks beautiful.”

  “A n opinion with which I fully concur,” Vanessa said with a laugh. “Now if I can just contrive to keep my plumes above my head rather than over my eyes and not to fall all over my train while in Her Majesty’s presence, I shall be entirely pleased with myself.”

  “And you look lovely too, ma’am,” Margaret said politely and quite truthfully.

  Vanessa’s mother-in-law was dressed in wine red, a shade perfectly suited to her dark Mediterranean coloring. She was to be Vanessa’s sponsor this morning.

  “You do indeed, Mother,” Vanessa said with a warm smile.

  It was time to leave. It certainly would not do to arrive late for the most important appointment of her life.

  The others stood back at the head of the stairs so that she could precede them down. She could see why as soon as she began the descent. Elliott and Stephen were standing in the hallway, looking up.

  “Oh, I say, Nessie,” Stephen said, admiration in his eyes. “Is that really you?”

  She might have said the same of him. He was dressed in a dark green well-tailored coat with gold-embroidered waistcoat and dull gold kn
ee breeches. His linen was sparkling white. He looked taller, more slender, than ever. His hair had been tamed but already showed signs of fighting back. His eyes burned with the intensity of suppressed excitement.

  But in truth Vanessa had less than half her attention to spare for her brother. For Elliott too was dressed for a court appearance.

  He had not seen her court finery until now. But she had described the clothes to him. She had told him the colors. He wore a pale blue coat with silver breeches and a darker blue silver-embroidered waistcoat. His linen matched Stephen’s in whiteness.

  The pale colors that he wore looked nothing short of stunning with his dark Greek looks.

  It was a pity, she thought, they would not be appearing together at court. But perhaps it was as well. Who would be able to drag their eyes away from him in order to spare her a glance?

  He stepped forward to the foot of the stairs and held out a hand for hers. She set her own in it and laughed.

  “Look at us,” she said. “Are we not all splendid indeed?”

  He bowed over her hand and raised it to his lips before looking directly into her eyes.

  “I suppose we are,” he said. “But you, my lady, are beautiful.”

  If he kept saying it, foolish man, she was going to start believing it.

  “I think so too,” she said, batting her eyelids at him.

  And then they were on their way, though it took a ridiculously long time to get the ladies and all their finery into the carriage.

  “I think after all,” Vanessa said after waving to Margaret and Katherine and Cecily, “I am glad I was born in this age and not in one when clothes like this were worn every day.”

  “I am glad of it too,” Elliott said from the seat opposite, where he sat with Stephen, his eyelids half drooped over his eyes.

  Was it possible, Vanessa wondered as she smiled back at him, that she was beginning to live a happily-ever-after? Not that she really believed in such a thing. But was it possible that she was to have a happy marriage? Was it possible that she could fall in love with her husband? Well, of course that was possible. It had happened already, in fact. It was impossible to deny it to herself any longer. Could she also love him, though?

  More important, was it possible he could ever love her? Or at least feel something of an affection for her?