First Comes Marriage (39 page)

She tried to imagine how his whole world must have shattered just over a year ago.

“Everything,” he said as if he had read her thoughts. “Everything I knew, everything I had lived and believed—
everything
was an illusion, a lie. I thought we had our father’s undivided love. I thought perhaps I was extra-special because I was the son, the heir, the one who would take his place eventually. But he had a son older than I and one almost exactly the same age and three other children. It was hard to grasp that fact. It is
still
hard. All those years my mother was nothing to him except the legal wife who had provided him with the legal heir. And I was nothing to him except that legal heir.”

“Oh, Elliott.” She unfolded her legs from the chair, got to her feet, not even noticing her book thudding to the floor, and hurried across to him. She sat on his lap, burrowed her arms about his waist, and nestled her head against his shoulder. “You do not know that. You were his
son
. Your sisters were his
daughters
. He did not necessarily love you the less because he had other children elsewhere. Love is not a finite commodity that will stretch only so far. It is infinite. Don’t doubt that he loved you. Please don’t.”

“All those lies,” he said, setting his head back against the chair. “About how busy he had to be in London, about how much he hated leaving, and then about how much he had missed us, how lonely he had been without us, how very glad he was to be back home. All lies, doubtless repeated to his other family when he returned to them.”

She lifted her head to look into his face and drew her hands free so that she could smooth her fingers through his hair.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t doubt everything, Elliott. If he said he loved you, if you
felt
he loved you, then no doubt he did.”

“The point is,” he said, “that none of this is rare. I could name a dozen other such instances without even having to think too hard. It comes of living in a society in which birth and position and fortune are everything and strategic marriages are the norm. It is common to seek sensual delights and emotional comfort elsewhere. It is just that I did not know it of my father, did not even suspect it. Suddenly I was Viscount Lyngate with precious little preparation for all the duties and responsibilities that were now mine—my fault, of course. I had been a careless young blade for far too long. And suddenly I was Jonathan’s guardian. All of which I would have handled, suddenly and unexpectedly as they had come to me. I was my father’s son, after all. But just as suddenly and unexpectedly I was—”

“Robbed of your memories?” she suggested when he stopped talking abruptly.

“Yes. Made to realize they were all false, all a mirage,” he said. “I was cut adrift in a world I did not know.”

“And,” she said, “all the joy and love and hope fled from your life.”

“All the stupid, naive idealism,” he said. “I became a realist very fast, almost overnight. I learned my lesson quickly and well.”

“Oh, you poor, foolish man,” she said. “Realism does not exclude love or joy. It is made up of those elements.”

“Vanessa,” he said, lifting a hand and setting the backs of his fingers against her cheek for a moment, “we should all be as innocent and optimistic as you. I was until a year and a half ago.”

“We should all be as
realistic
as I,” she said. “Why is realism always seen as such a negative thing? Why do we find it so difficult to trust anything but disaster and violence and betrayal? Life is
good
. Even when good people die far too young and older people betray us, life is good. Life is what we make of it. We get to choose how we see it.”

She kissed him softly on the lips. But she would not belittle a pain he had still not come to terms with even after well over a year.

“And then you lost your closest friend too?” she said softly. “You lost Constantine?”

“The final straw, yes,” he admitted. “I suppose I was partly to blame. I marched over there, to Warren Hall, with crusading zeal to do my duty by Jonathan, quite prepared to ride roughshod over everyone involved with him if necessary. Perhaps I would soon have learned to be less obnoxiously zealous if all had been as it ought. But it was not. It quickly became apparent to me that my father had trusted everything to Con and that Con had taken advantage of that trust.”

“In what way?” she asked him, her hands framing his face.

He sighed.

“He stole from Jonathan,” he said. “There were jewels. Heirlooms. Almost priceless ones, though I daresay they did bring a handsome price. Most of them had disappeared. Jonathan knew nothing of them when asked, though he remembered his father showing them to him at one time. Con would not admit to taking them, but he would not deny it either. He had a look on his face when I spoke to him about them, a look with which I was long familiar—half mockery, half contempt. It was a look that told me as clearly as words that he had indeed taken them. But I had no proof. I did not tell anyone. It was a family shame that I felt obliged to hide from the world. You are the first one to know. He was
not
a worthy friend. I had been as deceived by him all my life as I had been by my father. He is not a pleasant character, Vanessa.”

“No,” she agreed sadly.

He closed his eyes. His hand fell to his side again.

“Lord,” he said, “why have I burdened you with all this sordid family history?”

“Because I am your wife,” she said. “Elliott, you must not give up on love even though it seems as if everyone you loved betrayed you. Actually it was only
two
people out of everyone you have known, precious as those two were to you. And you must not give up on happiness even if all your happy memories seem to be hollow ones. Love and joy are waiting for you.”

“Are they?” He looked wearily into her eyes.

“And hope,” she said. “There must always be hope, Elliott.”

“Must there? Why?”

And then, as she watched, her palms still cupping the sides of his face, she saw tears well into his eyes and spill over onto his cheeks.

He jerked his head away from her hands and uttered an oath that ought to have brought color to her cheeks.

“Damn it,” he said, following up the first oath with a milder one. He was feeling around for a handkerchief and found one. “Dash it all, Vanessa. You must excuse me.”

He was trying to lift her off his lap, push her away, exclude her. But she would have none of it. She wrapped both arms about his neck, drawing his face down to her bosom.

“Don’t shut me out,” she said against his hair. “Don’t keep on shutting me out, Elliott. I am not your father or Constantine. I am your wife. And I will never betray you.”

She turned her face to rest one cheek against the top of his head as he wept with deep, obviously painful sobs and gasps.

He was going to be terribly embarrassed when he stopped, she thought. He had probably not shed a tear for years. Men were foolish about such things. It was a slur on their manhood to weep.

She kissed his head and one temple. She smoothed her hands through his hair.

“My love,” she murmured to him. “Ah, my love.”

22

ELLIOTT had reserved a box at Vauxhall Gardens. An evening at the famous pleasure gardens just south of the River Thames was something not to be missed when one was in town during the Season, and Vanessa’s face had lit up with anticipated pleasure as soon as he asked her if she would like to go there.

Pleasing his wife had become of great importance to him. So had the certain kind of love he felt for her. He could not—or would not—put a name to it. He was surely not
in
love with her—it was too trivial a term. And as for simply loving—well, he had come to distrust love and did not want to put his feelings for Vanessa into that fragile category.

He trusted her. It seemed to him that her life must always have been characterized by the unconditional love she gave freely to all who were close to her, whether they deserved it or not.

He did not deserve her love, heaven knew.

And yet he knew that in her own way she loved him.

She had left him on that evening in the library as soon as he had finally got himself under control, and she had never alluded to the horribly embarrassing incident since. She had given him time and space in which to recover himself and heal.

And heal he did. He came to understand that love—if he dared use that word—did not reside in any one person. His father had let him down. So had Con. But
love
had not.

Love remained to him both as something other people gave him and, more important, as something he was capable of giving.

He was going to love his own children with a steadiness upon which they could rely for as long as he lived. And their mother would teach them, by example if not in words—though there doubtless
would
be words in plenty—that love was something that lived deep inside everyone, a bottomless well, something that could give a happy bent to their lives even during dark and difficult days.

And those children—or the first, at least—would not be too far in the future. Vanessa, he realized, must be with child even though she had not chosen to tell him yet. She had not had her courses since their marriage.

He was beginning to feel a cautious contentment with his marriage.

The visit to Vauxhall had not been arranged purely for Vanessa’s benefit, however. It was mainly for Miss Huxtable and young Merton, who were going to go back to Warren Hall within a few days. Vanessa and Elliott were going with them, but as soon as Elliott had seen the boy properly settled with his tutors again, they would return to London for the rest of the Season.

Elliott had been feeling a little concerned by the ease with which the boy had taken to London. He was still years too young to enter fully into the life that would eventually be his, but he had made a number of older friends, both male and female, and was out and about most days—riding in the park, or going to the races, or examining the horses at Tattersall’s, or attending the surprisingly large number of social events to which he was invited.

He was too young, and he was perhaps an easy prey to men like Con, who often accompanied him. It was time for him to be reined in and returned home, where his education would resume until he went up to Oxford.

Surprisingly, Merton had been quite willing to go. He put up no fight whatsoever when Elliott took him aside to broach the subject with him.

“I cannot join any of the gentlemen’s clubs yet,” he said, counting the points off on his fingers, “and I cannot buy horses or a curricle or a dozen and one other things without your permission, and I cannot take my seat in the House of Lords or attend any of the most interesting of the balls and soirees. And it has become very clear to me that there are a million things I need to learn before I am allowed to do all these things. Besides, I miss Warren Hall. I scarcely had time to start to feel at home there before coming here. I will be glad to go back.”

The boy was going to go through a wild period before too many more years had passed, Elliott was sure. But he would come through it all relatively unscathed, it was to be hoped. He had a good character beneath all his restless energy, the result of a good upbringing.

His eldest sister insisted upon going back to the country with him. She had made her debut in society, she told Elliott firmly when he suggested that she did not need to go with Merton since he would have his tutors to keep a firm eye upon him. She could now mingle with the
ton
whenever she was so inclined—
if
she ever felt so inclined. She was very glad she had come to London for a part of the Season, but her place was with Stephen, and for the next several years, anyway, until he married, her place was at Warren Hall as its mistress. And she was not needed in London with her younger sister, as Kate was to move to Moreland House, where she would be well chaperoned by the dowager Lady Lyngate until Vanessa returned from the country.

She was not to be shaken from that resolve.

It was Vanessa who told Elliott about Allingham’s offer and her refusal of it. It would have been a brilliant match for her, but according to Vanessa, her sister still carried a torch for her faithless military officer and perhaps always would.

Katherine Huxtable had wanted to return to Warren Hall too when she first knew of her brother and sister’s plan to go there. She missed the quiet of the country-side, she explained. But Cecily and Vanessa between them persuaded her to stay. She had a host of admirers and would-be suitors—as many as Cecily, in fact. Perhaps, Elliott thought, she did not realize quite how fortunate she was. Many young ladies who were making their debut would have given a great deal to have just half as many.

But one thing was growingly apparent to Elliott. Life might have changed almost beyond recognition for the Huxtables, but it had not changed them. They would adjust—they were already doing so. But they would not be spoiled.

At least, he
hoped
that applied to Merton as well as to his sisters.

The evening at Vauxhall was planned, then, as a farewell party for Merton and Miss Huxtable. Elliott’s mother, Cecily, Averil and her husband, and of course Katherine Huxtable were of the party too.

Elliott had chosen an evening when there was to be dancing and fireworks. And as good fortune would have it, it was an evening on which the sky remained cloudless after dark and the air remained almost warm and the breeze was only strong enough to cause the lanterns in the trees to sway slightly and send their colored lights and shadows dancing through the branches and across the numerous paths along which the revelers strolled.

They approached the gardens by river and stepped inside just as darkness was falling. The orchestra was already playing in the central rotunda, where they had their box.

“Oh, Elliott,” Vanessa said, holding tightly to his arm, “have you ever seen anything lovelier?”

Vanessa and her superlatives! Nothing was ever just simply lovely or delicious or enjoyable.