First Comes Marriage

by Mary Balogh

  “That is kind of you,” the lady said, and looked at her companions. “I am going to walk with Lady Lyngate for a while. Do go on without me. I shall find my own way home.”

  The coachman jumped down from his perch, and soon Mrs. Bromley-Hayes, looking fashionable and startlingly beautiful, was at Vanessa’s side and taking her arm so that they could stroll onward together.

  “Elliott said you were tired after yesterday,” Mrs. Bromley-Hayes said. “But it is good to see you out and enjoying the air this afternoon.”

  Elliott?

  “You have seen him today?” Vanessa asked.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the lady said. “He called on me earlier as he often does.”

  Why?

  “Did he?” Vanessa said.

  “Oh, you need not worry,” the lady said with a light laugh. “The Wallace men are always very discreet, you know, and unscrupulously loyal to their wives in public. Elliott will never embarrass you. And you will have his home and his heirs. You already have his title. Indeed, Lady Lyngate, I am the one who should envy you. You need not envy me.”

  What was she saying? But even an imbecile, or even someone who had lived a sheltered existence in the country, could not possibly mistake her meaning.

  She was Elliott’s mistress!

  Although Anna is a perfectly respectable widow, she also has something of a reputation for being sometimes, ah, over-friendly with certain gentlemen.

  The words Constantine had spoken last evening came back to Vanessa as clearly as if he were walking beside her speaking them now.

  As did Elliott’s anger at seeing the lady in his ballroom when she had not been invited.

  Of course she had not been invited.

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Bromley-Hayes said now, a suggestion of laughter in her voice, “never tell me you did not know.”

  “I believe,” Vanessa said through lips that felt stiff and did not obey her will very easily, “you were depending upon my not knowing, ma’am.”

  “I forgot,” the lady said, “that you have come recently from the country and have never mingled with polite society You cannot be expected to know its secret workings. Poor Lady Lyngate. But even you, surely, cannot believe that Elliott married you for any other reason than convenience.”

  Of course he had not. He had not even dreamed of marrying her until she had asked him.

  “You have only to look at yourself in a glass,” Mrs. Bromley-Hayes continued. “Which is not to say that you are ugly. You are not, and you must be commended for dressing as well as you can given your figure. But Elliott has always been renowned, you know, for his exquisite taste in women.”

  The wife and the mistress were walking side by side and arm in arm, Vanessa thought, in surely the most public afternoon location in London. The picture they presented to everyone else in the park must be ludicrous indeed. And of course, everyone else must know. Only she had not until a few moments ago.

  “Exquisite in what way?” she asked.

  It was the best she could do without any chance to think of any better or more cutting reply. Her head buzzed as if it were inhabited by a hiveful of bees.

  The lady laughed low.

  “Ah,” she said, “the cat does have claws, does it? But come, Lady Lyngate, there is no reason we cannot be friends. Why let a man come between us? Men are such foolish creatures. We may need them for certain things — well, for one thing at least—but we can live far more happily without them most of the time.”

  “You will excuse me now,” Vanessa said, drawing her arm free. “I was on my way home when I met you. I am expected.”

  “By Elliott?” The lady laughed. “Poor Lady Lyngate. I doubt it. I very much doubt it.”

  “Good afternoon to you,” Vanessa said, and hurried off through the throng, looking neither to right nor to left.

  From the jumble of her mind certain thoughts popped out, clear as day, one at a time.

  The fact that she was plain.

  That Elliott had called her beautiful, rather as one would soothe a child with insincere flatteries.

  That until she had confronted him two mornings ago, he had been from home all day every day following their arrival in London.

  That his mother had said at some time during the first few days here that she had hoped he might be different from his father.

  That his frequent lovemaking had nothing to do with love and everything to do with begetting his heirs.

  That he had spent a few minutes last evening talking with Mrs. Bromley-Hayes before she left.

  That seeing her at the theater had discomposed him and set him to drumming his fingers on the armrest of their box.

  That he and Constantine had a quarrel—and it was Constantine who had brought the lady to meet them at the theater and to appear at the ball last evening. To embarrass Elliott.

  That he had seen and talked with Mrs. Bromley-Hayes today and told her that she, Vanessa, was tired. Like a child who had been given too many treats the day before.

  That he was enormously handsome and attractive and could not possibly be satisfied with a wife such as she.

  That she was a fool and an idiot.

  Naive, gullible, stupid.

  Unhappy.

  Wretched.

  Almost unable, long before she reached home, to continue setting one foot in front of the other.

  Fortunately—very fortunately—he was not at home when she arrived there. Her mother-in-law was in the drawing room, the butler informed her, entertaining a few callers.

  Vanessa walked past the drawing room, treading lightly lest she be heard. She continued on up to her room, made quite sure that both her bedchamber and dressing room doors were tightly shut, climbed into bed fully clothed except for her shoes and bonnet, and pulled the covers up over her head.

  She wished she could die then and there.

  She fervently wished it.

  Hedley, she whispered.

  But even that was unfair. She had been unfaithful to the man who had loved her with his whole being—with a heartless man who did not even know the meaning of love.

  And who happened also to be her husband.

  Incredibly, she fell asleep.

  Elliott had spent an hour at Jackson’s boxing saloon, drawing more than one protest from his sparring partner for treating the bout as if it were a real fight.

  He had spent fifteen minutes at White’s Club and then left despite the fact that a group of acquaintances whose company he usually enjoyed had called him over to join them.

  He had ridden aimlessly about the streets of London, avoiding the park or any areas where he was likely to run into someone he knew and be forced to stop to make polite conversation.

  But finally he returned home. George Bowen was still in his office. He pushed a dauntingly thick pile of mail his employer’s way when he went in there. Elliott picked it up and leafed through the letters, all of which needed his personal attention. If they had not, of course, George would have dealt with them and not bothered him.

  “Her ladyship is at home?” he asked.

  “Both their ladyships are,” George said. “Unless they have crept out down the servants’ stairs without my seeing them.”

  “Right.” Elliott set down the pile and made his way upstairs.

  He could not rid himself of the notion that he had hurt Anna. She had been very quiet during his visit. She had listened to him with a half-smile on her lips. And then she had told him that his visit had been quite unnecessary, that she had realized last evening how fortunate she was to be free again to pursue a friendship with someone else. Two years was quite long enough for any relationship, was it not? Freedom was what she valued most about her widowhood. And their liaison had grown somewhat tedious, would he not agree?

  He had not agreed—it would have been tactless. Besides, their affair had not grown tedious to him, only… irrelevant. But that was not something he could say to her either.

  He had Vanessa to thank for th
e fact that he had been bothered all day by the possibility that he had hurt Anna. Vanessa and feelings! He had never particularly bothered himself with people’s feelings before meeting her—including his own.

  She was not in the drawing room. Neither were his mother or Cecily.

  She must be in her bedchamber, he decided after going upstairs and ascertaining that she was not in her dressing room. But the door into the bedchamber was shut. He tapped lightly on it, but there was no answer. That was where she was, though, he would wager. She was probably fast asleep.

  He smiled to himself and decided not to knock more loudly He had kept her up for much of last night after a busy day. Or she had kept him up. They had kept each other up.

  It still surprised him that he could find her so appealing sexually. She was not at all his usual type of woman. Perhaps that was, the appeal.

  He wandered downstairs again and looked through some of his letters, though he was unable to dictate replies to any of them. George had finished work for the day and had disappeared.

  He went back upstairs and shaved and changed. It was almost time for dinner by that point, but still there was no sound from Vanessa’s room. Perhaps she was not even there. Perhaps George had been wrong and she was still out, though where she was likely to be at this hour he did not know.

  He tapped on her door again and, when there was no reply, he opened it cautiously and looked in.

  The bed was rumpled. There was a lump in the middle of it, which he guessed to be his wife though no part of her was visible.

  He stepped into the room and moved around the bed closer to the lump. He lifted a corner of the covers. She was curled up into a ball, fully clothed, her hair rumpled, the one cheek that was visible flushed.

  She must have been tired. He smiled.

  “Sleepyhead,” he said softly, “you are in danger of missing dinner.”

  She opened her eyes and turned her head to look up at him. She began to smile. And then she turned sharply away and curled into a tighter ball.

  “I am not hungry,” she said.

  Did her flush denote a fever? He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek, but she batted at his hand and turned her face even farther into the mattress.

  He raised his hand, leaving it suspended above her.

  “What is the matter?” he asked her. “Are you unwell?”

  “No.”

  “Something has happened?” he asked her.

  “Nothing.” Her voice was muffled by the mattress. “Go away.”

  He raised his eyebrows and set both hands behind his back. He stood looking down at her.

  “Go away?” he said. “You are lying here when it is almost dinnertime? Yet nothing has happened?”

  A thought struck him suddenly.

  “Your courses?” he asked her. “Have they begun?”

  “No.”

  Was that the trouble, then? But it was supposed to be morning sickness, was it not?

  “Vanessa,” he said, “will you look at me?”

  “Is that a command?” she asked him, turning over almost violently onto her back and glaring up at him through untidy hair. Her clothes were twisted about her. “Yes, my lord. Whatever you say, my lord.”

  He frowned.

  “I think,” he said, “you had better tell me what has happened.”

  And he felt a sudden sense of foreboding. Con.

  “I will not share you,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face with one forearm. “You may say I have no choice since I have married you. And you may say that I am obliged to obey you and grant you your conjugal rights whenever it pleases you to exercise them. But if one person can break vows, then so can the other even if she is merely a woman and therefore a nonperson. I shall scream very, very loudly if you ever try touching me again. It is no idle threat.”

  Ah, yes. Con.

  “I can see it is not,” he said. “Of what do I stand accused?”

  “Of harboring a mistress when you are a married man,” she said. “It does not matter that she is beautiful while I am not. You knew that before you married me. And it does not matter that it was I who asked you to marry me. You might have said no. But you did not. You married me. You made sacred vows to me. And you have broken them. You will not be my husband ever again, except in name.”

  “Are you quite sure,” he asked, shaken and slightly angry too, “that Con gave you accurate information, Vanessa?”

  “Ha!” she said. “You are going to try to deny it, are you? Were you or were you not at Mrs. Bromley-Hayes’s house today?”

  Ah. Not Con after all.

  “You see?” she said when he did not immediately reply. “You cannot deny it, can you?”

  “Anna called here?” he asked.

  “Anna,” she said scornfully “And she calls you Elliott. How cozy! I met her in the park. Go away. I do not want to see you again today. I wish it might be never.”

  “Will you let me explain?” he asked her.

  “Ha!” she said again. “Go away.”

  “You wished to explain yourself when I discovered you weeping over your dead husband’s portrait,” he reminded her, “and I did eventually listen to you. Things are not always as they seem to be.”

  “She is not your mistress?” Her voice was more scornful than before.

  “No,” he said.

  “Ha! Mrs. Bromley-Hayes is a liar, then?” she asked him.

  “I do not know what she told you,” he said.

  He waited.

  She flung back the bedcovers and swung her legs over the far side of the bed. She got to her feet and smoothed her hands over one of her smart new walking dresses, which was going to need far more than hands to make it look presentable again. She passed her fingers through her hair, keeping her back to him.

  “I am listening,” she said.

  “Anna was my mistress for most of last year and the year before,” he told her. “If that fact offends you, Vanessa, I am sorry about it, but I cannot change what is in the past and would not if I could. I was not married then. I did not even know you then.”

  “I do not suppose I would have provided powerful competition even if you had,” she said.

  “When I brought you and my mother and Cecily to town before our wedding,” he said, “I called on Anna to tell her that I was to be wed. She quarreled violently with me and I left. I thought that was the end of the matter, but it seems it was not. She appeared at the theater two evenings ago and at the ball last evening and I realized that I had not looked her in the eye and told her specifically that our affair was at an end. And so I called upon her today to do just that.”

  “And you also told her I was tired after yesterday,” she said.

  He hesitated.

  “I suppose I did,” he admitted.

  “How dared you even mention my name to her,” she said, turning around and looking him very directly in the eye.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “It was indeed in poor taste. Did she lead you to believe that we are still lovers, Vanessa? On the assumption that you would never confront me but would allow the lie to fester in your mind? She does not know you at all well, does she? We are not lovers and have not been since I affianced myself to you. I would not have expected her to be capable of such spite, but apparently she is. I am sorry from my heart that you have been hurt by all the sordidness of the end of an affair.”

  “Do you possess a heart?” she asked him. “You spent last night in this bed with me. I thought you were coming to care for me. But the first thing you did this morning was go to your mistress.”

  “I called upon my ex-mistress, yes,” he said. “I have explained why I felt it necessary to go there.”

  “But you did not feel it necessary to tell me you were going?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why have you ended the affair?” she asked him.

  “Because I am married.”

  She smiled fleetingly.

  “Not because
you are married to me?” she asked him. “Just because you are married? Well, that is something, I suppose. It is admirable, perhaps. But how soon will it be before this noble sense of morality wears thin and you take another mistress?”

  “Never,” he said. “Not as long as we both live.”

  “I suppose,” she said, looking down at her hands, “you had other mistresses before her.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “All beautiful, I suppose.”

  “Yes.”

  “How can I—” she began.

  He cut her off, speaking rather harshly.

  “Enough of this, Vanessa,” he said. “Enough! I have told you that you are beautiful and I have not lied. Even if you cannot trust my words, surely you cannot disbelieve my actions. Does my lovemaking not tell you that I find you both beautiful and irresistible?”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she turned sharply away again.

  Her insecurities about her looks ran very deep, he realized. Probably she did not even realize it herself. She had cultivated cheerfulness as an antidote. But when she was robbed of good cheer, she was defenseless against hurt.

  “I wish she had not been your mistress,” she said. “I do not like her. I cannot bear the thought of you—”

  “And I cannot bear the thought of you with young Dew,” he said, “different as the circumstances are, Vanessa. I suppose we would all like to believe that our life’s partner comes to us as fresh and new as a babe, that there has been no one else but only us. But that is impossible. You had done almost twenty-four years of living before you met me. I had done almost thirty before I met you. Yet if neither of us had done that living, we would not be as we are now And I like you as you are now I thought you were starting to like me.”

  She sighed and dropped her head.

  “Whose idea was it to approach us at the theater and to come to the ball last night?” she asked him. “Hers? Or Constantine’s?”

  “I do not know,” he said. “Both, probably. I ought to have robbed them of power by immediately telling you all: Oh, by the way, that lady sitting next to Con is my ex-mistress, who perhaps does not even know that she is an ex. I am sorry, but I promise to be a good boy for the rest of my life. It would have solved a lot of headaches, would it not?”