First Comes Marriage (6 page)

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.

4

THERE was still no one up at Rundle Park when Vanessa had finished her breakfast the following morning except for Sir Humphrey, who was preparing to ride into the village to call upon Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen at the inn. He was, he told Vanessa as he rubbed his hands together and looked thoroughly pleased with life, going to invite them to dinner.

“Perhaps,” he said, “if I were to call out the carriage, you would care to ride with me, Nessie, to visit your sister.
She
is an early riser like you, I daresay.”

Vanessa was happy to accept. She was eager to discuss the assembly with Margaret. It had been
such
a wonderful evening. She had, of course, lain awake half the night thinking about the opening set. It was hardly surprising. No one else at the assembly had been willing to allow her to forget it. The viscount had danced with her and
only
with her.

She had made up her mind even before the dancing began that she would not maintain an awed silence with him. After a few minutes it had become obvious, though, that
he
had no intention of conversing with
her,
though surely any really polite gentleman would have made the effort. Obviously he was not a very polite gentleman—yet another fault she had found in him without really knowing him at all. And so
she
had started talking to
him
.

They had ended up almost joking with each other. Almost
flirting
. Perhaps, she had conceded, there was more to the man than she had thought. Goodness, she had never flirted with any other man. And no other man had ever flirted with her.

One dance with her, though, had obviously frightened him off from dancing with anyone else. He had spent the rest of the evening in the card room. It would all have been very lowering if she had felt that his good opinion was worth having. As it was, it had merely been disappointing for a dozen other women who had hoped to catch his eye and dance with him.

But it was what he had said to her after the set was over that had kept her awake more than anything else. It had puzzled her at the time and had continued to puzzle her ever since. She wondered what Margaret would make of it.

“Viscount Lyngate and Mr. Bowen are remarkably amiable young gentlemen, would you not agree, Nessie?” Sir Humphrey asked her when they were in the carriage.

“Indeed, Papa.”

Mr. Bowen had been very amiable. He had danced with as many different partners as there had been sets, and he had conversed with them and with almost everyone else too between sets and during supper. Viscount Lyngate, Vanessa strongly suspected, had not really enjoyed the evening at all. And it was entirely his own fault if he had not, for he had arrived expecting to be bored.
That
had been perfectly obvious to her. Sometimes one got exactly what one wished for.

“I think, Nessie,” Sir Humphrey said, chuckling merrily, “the viscount fancied you. He danced with no one else but you.”

“I think, Papa,” she said, smiling back at him, “he fancied a game of cards far more than he did me or anyone else. It was in the card room he spent most of the evening.”

“That was dashed sporting of him,” her father-in-law said. “The older people appreciated his condescension in playing with them. Rotherhyde relieved him of twenty guineas and will not talk of anything else for the next month, I daresay.”

It was not raining, though it looked as if it might at any moment. It was also chilly. Vanessa was grateful for the ride, as she informed Sir Humphrey while his coachman handed her down from the carriage outside the cottage gates.

She found Katherine at home as well as Margaret, this being one of the days when the infants did not attend school. Stephen was there too, but he was upstairs in his room, toiling over a Latin translation since Margaret had told him at breakfast that he ought not to go out until it was done.

Vanessa hugged both sisters and took her usual chair close to the fire in the parlor. They talked, of course, about the assembly while Margaret stitched away at some mending.

“I was
so
relieved when I saw you come into the rooms with Lady Dew and Henrietta and Eva, Nessie,” she said. “I thought you might talk yourself out of coming at the last moment. And I was more than delighted to see you dance every single set. It quite exhausted me just to watch you.”