She felt all of those things.
You must go on with your life, Nessie, he had told her during the final few days of his life while she held his hand and dabbed at his feverish face with a cool cloth. You must love again and be happy again. You must marry and have children. You must. Promise me?
She had called him a goose and an idiot and flatly refused to make any promises.
Oh, not a goose, please, Nessie, he had said. A gander if anything, but not a goose.
They had both laughed.
Keep on laughing at the very least, he had said. Promise me you will always laugh.
Always when something is funny, she had promised and had held his hand against her lips while he fell into an exhausted half-sleep.
She had laughed a few more times in the next few days but not for a long time after that.
“Hedley,” she whispered again now and realized she could no longer see the portrait clearly. She blinked the tears from her eyes. “Forgive me.”
For doing what he had begged her to do—for living again and being happy. For marrying again. For laughing again.
And for forgetting him for almost four whole days.
She thought of the vigor of Elliott’s lovemaking and circled her palm over the miniature. Somewhere she had crossed over a border between depression and something more painful, something that tightened her chest and made breathing difficult.
If Hedley had just once been able . . .
She closed her eyes and rocked backward and forward.
“Hedley,” she said again.
She sniffed as the tears flowed, tried to dry them with the heels of her hands, and then felt around for a handkerchief. She had none yet was feeling too inert to get up to fetch one.
She gave in to a terrible self-pitying despair.
Finally she sniffed again, swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, and decided that she must get up, find a handkerchief, give her nose a good blow, and then wash her face in cold water to obliterate the signs that she had been weeping.
How awful if Elliott were to see them! Whatever would he think?
But just after she had set the miniature down on the cushion beside her a large handkerchief appeared over the back of the seat, held in a large masculine hand.
Elliott’s.
He must have come through his dressing room and hers—the door was behind her back.
For a moment she froze. But there was nothing else to do for now than take the handkerchief, dry her eyes with it, blow her nose, and then think of some plausible explanation.
But even as she took the handkerchief from his hand she was very aware of the miniature lying faceup on the seat beside her.
There was really very little that needed doing. Elliott had worked hard to get everything done before his wedding, knowing that soon after he would be leaving for London and staying there for a few months.
He was finished in less than an hour, and the courtesy call he then decided to make on a tenant who was also something of a friend of his had to be cut very short when he discovered the man and his wife were not at home.
He was quite contented to return to the house much sooner than expected. Thus far he was pleased with his marriage. Indeed, he had been surprisingly reluctant to leave the dower house this morning. He had felt absurdly as if some spell were about to be broken.
There was no spell to break, of course, and no magic involved in anything that had happened. He had had a regular bed partner for three days and four nights and the sex had been surprisingly good. A woman’s body did not have to be voluptuous in order to be desirable, he had discovered.
It had not been just the sex, though. His wife had decided not to quarrel with him during those three days, and he had found her company congenial.
Good Lord, he had allowed her to row one of the boats—with him in it—even though it was obvious she had no skill whatsoever at the oars. He had allowed her to murder his ears with shrieks of laughter when by sheer accident she had sent a stone skipping three times across the lake. And he had—heaven help him—gathered more daffodils than he had known were in existence anywhere in the world and had then run and fetched for her as she filled the dower house with them a mere few hours before they were to leave there.
He was ever so slightly charmed by her, he realized.
And there was no reason that things should change drastically for the worse now that they were back at the main house and on their way to town tomorrow.
Perhaps after all they could enjoy a decent marriage.
And so instead of just coming home early, he actually hurried home, ignoring the inner voice that told him there were other tenants upon whom he might have called.
They had had sex yesterday among the daffodils, he and Vanessa. If the weather had just held they might have gone back there today—to gather daffodils for the main house. As it was, there was the bed in her bedchamber to try out for the first time, and what better time to do that than a rainy afternoon when neither of them had anything better to do?
She was not in any of the downstairs rooms. She must be in her bedchamber already. Perhaps she was lying down, catching up on some missed sleep.
Elliott took the stairs two at a time, though he did go into his own dressing room first to dry his hair and haul off his boots without stopping to ring for his valet. Vanessa’s dressing room adjoined his own. He crossed through it, treading quietly in case she was asleep—though it was going to give him great pleasure to wake her in a few minutes.
The door into her bedchamber was slightly ajar. He opened it slowly without knocking.
She was not in bed. She was sitting on the love seat, her back to him, her head bent forward. Reading? He contemplated tiptoeing up to her and setting his lips against the nape of her neck.
How would she react? With a shriek? With laughter? With shrugged shoulders and a sensual sigh?
She sniffed.
A wet sniff.
And then it was perfectly obvious that she was weeping. She did it with deep, grief-stricken sobs.
Elliott froze in place. His first instinct was to stride forward to scoop her up into his arms while demanding to know what had happened to upset her so. But he had never been much good at embroiling himself in female emotions. What he actually did was move forward more slowly and quietly. He was making no attempt to hide his presence, but she was too preoccupied to notice him.
And then, just as he was about to set one hand on her shoulder and squeeze it, she set something down on the cushion beside her, and he found himself looking down at the miniature portrait of a delicate, almost pretty young man.
It took Elliott less than a moment to realize that the young man must be Hedley Dew. His predecessor.
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 can-not 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 heart-broken. 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 di
d 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.
First Came Marriage Page 22
