First Comes Marriage

3

"I WISH," Louisa Rotherhyde said as she stood with Vanessa in the assembly rooms watching all the late arrivals and nodding and smiling in greeting at any acquaintance - at /everyone, /in other words - who passed close to them, "Viscount Lyngate would turn out to be tall, blond, and handsome and no more than twenty-five years old and charming and amiable and not at all high in the instep. And I wish he would turn out to like dumpy, mousy-haired females of very modest fortunes - well, no fortune at all, in fact - and marginally agreeable manners and years to match his own. I suppose I need not wish that he were rich. Doubtless he is." Vanessa fanned her face and laughed. "You are not dumpy," she assured her friend. "And your hair is a pretty shade of light brown. Your manners are very agreeable indeed, and your character is your fortune. And you have a lovely smile. Hedley used to say so." "Bless his heart," Louisa said. "But the viscount has a friend with him.

Perhaps /he /will see fit to become passionately attached to me - if he should happen to be personable, that is. And it would help if he were in possession of a sizable fortune too. It is all very well, Nessie, to have dances and assemblies and dinners and parties and picnics galore, but one always sees exactly the same faces at every entertainment. Do you never wish for London and a Season and beaux and… Ah, but of course you do not. You had Hedley. He was beautiful." "Yes, he was," Vanessa agreed. "Did Sir Humphrey describe Viscount Lyngate to you?" Louisa asked hopefully. "He described him as an agreeable young gentleman," Vanessa said. "But to Father-in-law anyone below the age of his own sixty-four years is young, and almost everyone is agreeable. He sees his own good nature in everyone. And no, Louisa, he did /not /describe the viscount's looks.

Gentlemen do not, you know. I do believe we are about to find out for ourselves, however." Her father-in-law had entered the assembly rooms, looking important in his genial way, his chest thrust out with pride, his palms rubbing together, his complexion ruddy with pleasure. Behind him were two gentlemen, and there was no doubting who they were. There were very rarely any strangers in Throckbridge. Of the few there had been in living memory, none - not a single one - had ever attended a dance at the assembly rooms and precious few had ever been to the annual summer ball at Rundle Park.

These two were strangers - /and /they were at the assembly.

And one of them, of course, was a /viscount/.

The one who stepped into the room first behind Sir Humphrey was of medium height and build, though there was perhaps a suggestion of portliness about his middle. He had brown hair that was short and neatly combed, and a face that was saved from ordinariness by the open, pleasing amiability with which he observed the scene about him. He looked as if he were genuinely glad to be here. He was conservatively dressed in a dark blue coat with gray breeches and white linen. While probably past the age of twenty-five, he certainly still qualified for the epithet /young/.

Louisa plied her fan and sighed audibly. So did a number of the other ladies present.

But Vanessa's eyes had moved to the other gentleman, and she knew immediately that it was he who had provoked the sigh. She did not participate in it. Her mouth had turned suddenly dry, and for a few timeless moments she lost all awareness of her surroundings.

He was about the same age as the other gentleman, but there all similarities ended. He was tall and slim without being in any way thin.

Indeed, his shoulders and chest were solidly built while his waist and hips were slender. His legs were long and muscled in all the right places. He had very dark hair, almost black, in fact, and it was thick and shining and cut expertly to look both tidy and disheveled at the same time. His face was bronzed and classically handsome with an aquiline nose, well-defined cheekbones, and the hint of a cleft in his chin. He had a firmly set mouth. He looked slightly foreign, as if perhaps he had some Italian or Spanish blood.

He looked gorgeous.

He looked perfect.

She might have fallen headlong in love with him, along with at least half the other ladies present, if she had not noticed something else about him. Two things, in fact.

He looked insufferably arrogant.

And he looked bored.

His eyelids were half drooped over his eyes. He held a quizzing glass in his hand, though he did not raise it to his eye. He looked about the room as if he could not quite believe the shabbiness of his surroundings.

There was not even the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips.

Instead, there was a hint of disdain as if he could not wait to get back downstairs to his room. Or, better yet, far away from Throckbridge.

He looked as if this were the last place on earth he wanted to be.

And so she did /not /fall in love with him, magnificent and godlike as he undoubtedly was to the eyes. He had stepped into /her /world, into the world of her family and friends, uninvited, and found it inferior and undesirable. How dared he! Instead of brightening her evening, as the presence of any stranger ought to have done - especially a handsome gentleman - he was actually threatening to spoil it.

For everyone, of course, would fawn over him. No one would behave naturally. No one would relax and enjoy the dancing. And no one would talk of anyone else but him for days - or more likely weeks - to come.

As if some god had favored them by dropping into their midst.

And yet it seemed clear to her that he despised them all - or that at the very least he found them all a colossal bore.

She wished he had come tomorrow - or not at all.

He was dressed all in black and white, a fashion she had heard was all the crack in London. When she had heard it, she had thought /how very dull, how very unattractive./ She had been wrong, of course.

He looked sleek, elegant, and perfect.

He looked like every woman's ideal of a romantic hero. Like that Adonis they all dreamed of, especially on St. Valentine's Day, come to sweep them off their feet and onto his prancing white courser and away to a happily-forever-after in his castle in the clouds - white, fluffy ones, not damp, gray, English ones.

But Vanessa deeply resented him. If he despised them and their offered entertainment so much, he could at least have had the decency to look like a gargoyle.

She heard the echo of the sigh that had wafted about the assembly rooms like a breeze and fervently hoped she had not shared in it. "Which one do you suppose is Viscount Lyngate?" Louisa asked in a whisper - necessary in the hush that had fallen over the room - as she leaned closer to Vanessa's right ear. "The handsome one, without a doubt," Vanessa said. "I would wager on it." "Ah," Louisa said, regret in her voice. "I think so too. He is impossibly gorgeous even if he is /not /blond, but he does not look as if he would be bowled over by my charms, does he?" No, he certainly did not. Or by anyone else's from this humble, obscure corner of the world. His whole bearing suggested a man with an enormous sense of his own consequence. He was probably only ever bowled over by his own charms. /What on earth /was he doing in Throckbridge? Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere?

The gentlemen did not remain long in the doorway. Sir Humphrey led them about, a broad smile of satisfaction on his face as if he were solely responsible for bringing them to the village on this of all days. He presented them to almost everyone present, beginning with Mrs. Hardy at the pianoforte, Jamie Latimer on the flute, and Mr. Rigg on the violin.

Soon after, the gentlemen were bowing to Margaret and Katherine. And a few moments after that, they were nodding to Stephen and Melinda and Henrietta Dew, Vanessa's sister-in-law, and the group of other very young people gathered with them. "I do think everyone ought to start talking again in more than whispers," Vanessa whispered.

The shorter gentleman exchanged a few words with everyone, she noticed.

And he smiled and looked interested. The other gentleman - undoubtedly Viscount Lyngate - remained virtually silent and totally intimidated everyone. Vanessa suspected that it was quite deliberate. His eyebrows rose when he was introduced to Stephen, giving him a look of great aristocratic hauteur.

And of course Melinda was giggling. "Why is he here?" Louisa asked, still in a whisper. "In Throckbridge, that is. Did Sir Humphrey say?" "They told him they were here on business," Vanessa said. "They must not have explained what it was or Father-in-law would not have been able to resist telling us." "Business?" Louisa sounded both puzzled and amazed. "In /Throckbridge/?

Whatever can it be?" Vanessa had, of course, been wondering the same thing ever since Katherine had brought word of his arrival this afternoon. How could she not? How could /anyone /not? Whatever business could anyone have in a sleepy backwater like Throckbridge, picturesque as it was, especially in the summer, and dear as it was to her?

What business could a /viscount /have here?

And what business did he have looking down upon them all as if they were mere worms beneath his expensive dancing shoes?

She did not know the answers and perhaps never would. But there was no time for further speculation - not now anyway. Her father-in-law was bringing the two gentlemen their way. Vanessa wished he would not, but she realized that it was inevitable.

Sir Humphrey smiled jovially from Vanessa to Louisa. "And this is the eldest Miss Rotherhyde," he announced, and added, with a lamentable lack of tact and questionable truth, "and the beauty of the family." Louisa hung her head in obvious mortification and curtsied low. "And Mrs. Hedley Dew, my dear daughter-in-law," Sir Humphrey added, beaming at Vanessa. "She was married to my son until his unfortunate demise over a year ago. Viscount Lyngate, ladies, and Mr. Bowen." Vanessa had made the right identification, then. But she had never doubted it. She curtsied. "Ma'am," Mr. Bowen said, bowing and addressing her with a charming but sympathetic smile, "my deepest commiserations." "Thank you," she said while she was aware of Viscount Lyngate's eyes fixed on her. She had worn her lavender gown after all as a slight salve to her conscience for deciding to come to enjoy herself - though she /knew /Hedley would have urged her to wear the green. It was not a vibrant lavender, and it had never fit quite right. She knew it was a dreary garment that did not become her at all.

She hated herself at that moment for minding, for wishing she had chosen the green after all. "I insisted that she come to the assembly tonight," Sir Humphrey explained. "She is far too young and pretty to mourn forever, as I am sure you would agree, gentlemen. She was good to my boy while he lived, and that is what counts. I have insisted that she must dance too. Has anyone solicited your hand for the first set, Nessie?" She had grimaced inwardly at his opening words. She could have sunk through the floor at his last. She /knew /what he was going to say next. "No, Papa," she said hastily before it occurred to her that she might have lied. "But - " "Then I do not doubt one of these gentlemen would be delighted to lead you into the opening set," he said, rubbing his hands together and beaming at her.

There was a tiny silence while Vanessa fervently wished she could join poor Hedley in the grave. "Perhaps, Mrs. Dew," the viscount said - his voice was deep and velvet-toned, to add to his other physical perfections, "you would do me the honor?" She was being asked to dance with a /viscount/. With /this /viscount, this most glorious of male creatures. This arrogant… popinjay. But sometimes her sense of the ridiculous came close to being her undoing.

Whatever must the viscount be thinking? She almost laughed aloud and dared not glance Margaret's way. But mortification quickly outpaced any amusement she was feeling. How absolutely /awful /that the assembly should begin this way.

Was it her imagination that the whole room hung upon her response?

Of course it was not.

Oh, goodness gracious. She really ought to have insisted upon remaining at home with a book and her memories. "Thank you." She curtsied again and regarded the hand stretched out for hers with some fascination. It was as fine and as well manicured as any lady's. And yet there was nothing remotely effeminate about it.

Or about him, of course. Close up, he looked even taller and more solid and powerful than he had from across the room. She could smell a subtle masculine cologne. She could feel the heat of his aura.

And there was one other thing about his face, she noticed as she set her hand on his and looked up at him. His eyes were not dark, as his hair and complexion had led her to expect, but were of the deepest, clearest blue. They looked back at her keenly from beneath those still-drooped lids.

His hand was solid and warm.

Well, she thought as he led her toward the lines that were forming and Mr. Rigg played a nervous little trill on his fiddle, this was an evening she was not going to forget in a hurry. She was to dance with a handsome, proud viscount - and the opening set, no less. She wished she could go home afterward and share the fun with Hedley. /"Nessie?" /Viscount Lyngate said as he settled her in the line of ladies and prepared to depart for the gentlemen's line opposite. His eyebrows were raised again. He was not addressing her. He was asking a question. "Vanessa," she explained, and then wished she had not said it in such an apologetic way.

She did not hear clearly what he said in response as he stepped into the line opposite her own, but she thought it was "Thank God!" Had he really said it?

She looked keenly at him, but he did not repeat the words, whatever they had been.

She had never liked the shortened form of her name. Nessie Dew sounded like such a… plain woman. But even so, it was none of his business what her family and friends chose to call her.

The men on either side of Viscount Lyngate looked awed and slightly uncomfortable. So would the ladies on either side of her if she turned her head to look, Vanessa guessed.

He was going to ruin the assembly for them all. They had been looking forward to it so very much. Yet it meant less than nothing to him. He was looking up and down the lines, not even trying to hide his boredom.

Oh, dear. She was not usually so harsh in her judgments, especially of strangers - not that she saw many of those. Why were her thoughts about Viscount Lyngate so… well, spiteful? Was it because she felt too embarrassed to admit to herself that she had very nearly tumbled into love with him?

How very ridiculous /that /would have been - the classic case of Beauty and the Beast, with no one in any doubt at all about which was which.

She reminded herself suddenly that she had been all too eager to give in to the urging of her in-laws and Meg and Kate that she come to the assembly tonight. And after she /had /given in, she had hoped with bated breath and crossed fingers that someone would ask her to dance.

Well, someone had asked her even if he /had /been more or less coerced.

And he could not possibly be more handsome or more distinguished in every way. One could say that her wildest dream for the evening had come true.

She would enjoy herself then, regardless.

Suddenly she was aware of her family and friends and neighbors about her, all dressed in their best finery, all in a festive mood. She was aware of the fires crackling in the two hearths and the candles guttering in the draft from the door. She was aware of the smells of perfumes and food.

And she was aware of the gentleman standing opposite her waiting for the music to begin. And looking at her from beneath those drooped eyelids.

She was /not /going to allow him to believe that she was in awe of him.

She was /not /going to allow him to render her speechless and incoherent.

The music began, and Vanessa smiled with deliberate brilliance and prepared for as much conversation as the measures of the dance would allow.

But most of all she gave herself up to the sheer joy of dancing again.

Of all the partners with whom he might have chosen to dance, Elliott reflected as the music struck up and the line of gentlemen bowed while the line of ladies curtsied, Mrs. Vanessa Dew - /Nessie, /for the love of God! - would surely not have been one of them.

She was Sir Humphrey's daughter-in-law. That was bad enough. She was also an insignificant dab of a woman of medium height, who was altogether too slender and too small-breasted for his taste, her hair too mousy, her features too plain. Her eyes were a nondescript gray. And lavender as a color definitely did not suit her. Even if it had, the dress itself was hideous. She was not in the first blush of youth either.

She was the very antithesis of Anna and indeed of any lady with whom he usually chose to dance at /ton /balls.

But here he was dancing with her anyway. George would have spoken up if he had not, he supposed, but it had been obvious whom Dew had expected to speak up. And so he had been the performing monkey after all.

That fact did not make him feel any more cheerful about the evening's revelries.

And then, just as they began to dance, Mrs. Dew smiled dazzlingly at him, and he was forced to admit that perhaps she was not quite the antidote he had taken her for. It was not a flirtatious smile, he was relieved to notice when after the first moment she looked away from him and smiled in the same way at everything and everyone, as if she had never enjoyed herself more in her life. She fairly sparkled.

How anyone could find even a small measure of delight in such an insipid rural entertainment escaped his understanding, but perhaps she had little with which to compare it.

The rooms were small and cramped, the walls and ceilings bare of ornament - except for one large and hideous sketch over the fireplace of an obese Cupid shooting his arrows. The air was slightly musty as if the rooms were shut up for most of the year - as they doubtless were. The music was enthusiastic but inferior - the violin was half a tone out of tune and the pianist had a tendency to gallop along as if she were anxious to finish the piece before she could hit any wrong notes.

Several candles came close to dying every time a door was opened and a draft attacked them. Everyone talked at once - and at ear-shattering volume. And it seemed that everyone was very much aware of his presence and was at great pains not to show it.

Mrs. Dew danced well at least. She was light on her feet and there was rhythm and grace in her movements.

He wondered idly if her husband had been the eldest son. How had she attracted him? Did her father have money? Had she married him, perhaps, because she had expected to be Lady Dew one day?

George, he could see, was dancing with the lady who had been standing with Mrs. Dew - the eldest daughter of a family whose name Elliott could not recall. And if she was the beauty of the family, heaven help the rest of them.

The younger of the two Huxtable sisters - Miss Katherine Huxtable - was also dancing. The elder was not but stood watching with Lady Dew. He had not been introduced to the third sister. She must have remained at home.

The elder Miss Huxtable was extremely handsome but was certainly no young girl - just as one might expect, of course, of the senior sibling of a family in which the parents were both deceased. She had probably been responsible for the care of the others for a number of years. He could feel some sympathy for her. Miss Katherine Huxtable looked somewhat like her though she was considerably younger and more animated. She also was ravishingly beautiful despite a faded, shabby gown that someone had tried to disguise with new ribbon.

Stephen Huxtable was indeed a young cub. Tall and slender and coltish, he was seventeen years old and looked it. He was also very attractive to the young ladies despite his youth. They had clustered about him before the dancing began, and though he had chosen a partner, there were two other young ladies on either side of her in the line who were giving him at least as much attention as they were giving their own more plodding partners.

His laughter wafted down the line toward Elliott, causing him to purse his lips. He hoped the laughter did not denote a careless mind and a shallow character. He had already lived through a difficult year. Let there not be something equally trying in store for him for the next four. "You came to Throckbridge at an auspicious time, my lord," Mrs. Dew said when the figures of the dance brought them together for a few moments.

Because it was St. Valentine's Day, he supposed, and there was a dance at the assembly rooms of the inn where he had the great good fortune to be staying. "Indeed, ma'am." He raised his eyebrows. "Auspicious for /us, /perhaps." She laughed as they parted company, and he understood that his tone, if not his words, had been less than gracious. "I have not danced in more than two years," she told him when they came together again and joined hands in order to turn once about, "and am quite, quite determined to enjoy it no matter what. You are a good dancer." He raised his eyebrows again but made no reply. What did one say to such an unexpected compliment? But then what had she meant by that /no matter what/?

She laughed once more as they returned to their places. "You are not, I perceive," she said the next time, "a conversationalist, my lord." "I find it impossible to converse meaningfully in thirty-second bursts, ma'am," he told her, an edge to his voice. Particularly when every villager appeared to be shrieking at every other villager with no one left to listen - and the orchestra played louder to drown them out. He had never heard such a hideous din in his whole life.

Predictably, she laughed. "But if you wish," he said, "I will pay you a compliment each time we meet. Thirty seconds will suffice for that." They parted before she could reply, but instead of being quelled by his words, as he had intended, she laughed across at him with her eyes while Huxtable twirled his partner down the set and they all prepared to dance the figures over again. "Most ladies," he said the next time he met his partner and turned back-to-back with her, "have to wear jewels in their hair to make it sparkle. The natural gold in yours does it for you." It was a rather outrageous claim since her hair was distinctly mousy, though the candlelight /did /flatter it, it was true. "Oh, well done," she said. "You outshine every other lady present in every imaginable way," he told her the time after that. "Ah, not so well done," she protested. "No lady of sense likes to be so atrociously flattered. Only those who are conceited." "You are not conceited, then?" he asked her. She had precious little to be conceited about, it was true. "You may certainly tell me, if you wish, that I am ravishingly beautiful," she said, turning her laughing face up to his, "but not that I am more ravishingly beautiful than anyone else. That would be too obvious a lie and I might disbelieve you and fall into a decline." He looked at her with unwilling appreciation as she danced away. She had a certain wit, it would appear. He almost laughed aloud, in fact. "You are quite ravishingly beautiful, ma'am," he told her as they clasped hands at the top of the set. "Thank you, sir." She smiled at him. "You are kind." "But then," he said as he began to twirl her down between the lines, "so is every other lady present tonight - without exception." She threw back her head and laughed with glee, and for a brief moment he smiled back.

Good Lord, was he /flirting /with her?

With a dab of a plain woman who was not dazzled by his rank or greedy for his compliments? But who danced for all the world as if life held no greater joy?

He was surprised when the set ended. What, /already/? "Is there not a /third /Miss Huxtable?" he asked her as he was leading her back to the spot at which he had met her. "A third?" She looked inquiringly at him. "I was presented to Miss Huxtable, the dark-haired lady standing over there," he said, nodding in her direction, "and to Miss Katherine Huxtable, her younger sister. But I thought there was a third." She looked keenly at him, saying nothing for a moment. "There is not a third /Miss Huxtable,/" she said, "though there /is /a third sister. I am she." "Ah," he said, his hand going to the handle of his quizzing glass. "I was not informed that one of the sisters had been married." And poor woman, she had certainly been passed by in the looks department in that family, had she not? "/Ought /you to have?" Her eyebrows arched upward in evident surprise. "Not at all," he said briskly. "It was merely idle curiosity on my part.

Was your husband Sir Humphrey's eldest son?" "No," she said. "He was the younger of two. Crispin is the elder." "I am sorry about your husband's demise," he said. A foolish thing to say really since he had not known the man and it had happened quite a while ago. "It must have been a nasty shock." "I knew when I married him," she said, "that he was dying. He had consumption." "I am sorry," he said again.

How the devil had he got himself into this? "So am I," she said, unfurling her fan and plying it before her face. "But Hedley is gone and I am still alive and you did not know him and do not know me and so there is no point in either of us becoming maudlin, is there? Thank you for the set. I will be the envy of all the other ladies, having been the first to dance with you." She smiled dazzlingly at him as he bowed to her. "You will not boast of it, though," he said. "You are not conceited." She laughed. "Good evening to you, Mrs. Dew," he said, and turned away.

Before Sir Humphrey could bear down upon him again and take it upon himself to force another dancing partner upon him, he strolled off in the direction of what he thought must be the card room.

Fortunately, he was right. And the din in there was marginally muted.

He had made himself visible in the ballroom and reasonably agreeable for quite long enough.

So Mrs. Vanessa Dew was the third sister, was she? Strange irony that one so plain had been the first to marry. Though there was admittedly a sparkle to her that sometimes belied her looks.

She had knowingly married a dying man, for the love of God.