First Comes Marriage (26 page)

She sat down on a love seat and opened back the velvet cloth that kept the treasure safe from damage. And she gazed down at the framed miniature of Hedley that Lady Dew had given her after his death.

It had been painted when he was twenty, two years before Vanessa married him, and just before it became obvious that he was really very ill indeed.

Though the signs were apparent even then.

She ran one finger about the oval frame.

His eyes were large, his face thin. It would have been pale too if the painter had not added color to his cheeks.

But even then he had been beautiful, as he had to the end. His had been a delicate beauty. He had never been robust. He had never been able to participate in the more boisterous games of the other children in the neighborhood. Though strangely he had never been teased or victimized by them. He had been widely loved.

She
had loved him.

She would have died in his place if it could have been done.

Those large, luminous eyes gazed back at her now from the portrait. So full of intelligence and hope.

Hope
. He had not given it up until close to the end, and when he had finally let it go, it had been with grace and dignity.

“Hedley,” she whispered.

She touched a fingertip to his lips.

And she realized something. Apart from one fleeting memory on her wedding night, she had not thought of him at all during the three days at the lake.

Of course
she had not. It would have been dreadful if she had. She had been there with her new husband, to whom she owed her undivided loyalty.

But even so...

Until very recently it had seemed inconceivable that a single day could ever go by without her thinking of him at least a hundred times.

Now three days had slipped by.

Three days in which she had been blissfully happy with a man who did not even love her. Whom she did not even love.

Not as she had loved Hedley anyway. It was impossible to love any other man as she had loved her first husband.

But she had never been able to know with Hedley the sort of sensual happiness she had just experienced with Elliott. By the time of their marriage his illness had rendered him all but impotent. It had been a terrible frustration for him, though she had learned ways to soothe and satisfy him.

And now she had found sexual satisfaction with another man.

She had not thought of Hedley for three whole days—no, four by now.

Would she eventually forget him altogether?

Would it be to her as if he had never existed?

She felt a deep welling of grief and a sharp pang of guilt, which was all the worse for the fact that it was quite unreasonable. Why should she feel guilty about putting behind her memories of her first husband when she was married to a second? Why should she feel as if she were cheating on a dead man? Why should she feel as if she were hurting him?

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.”