First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh Page B

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.”

    And yet Margaret herself had danced all but two sets.

    “I did not sit down all evening either,” Katherine said. “Was it not a delightful evening? Of course, you made the greatest conquest, Nessie. You danced the opening set, no less, with Viscount Lyngate, who is really so handsome that I daresay there was not a steady female heartbeat in the rooms all evening. If you had not come here this morning, I would have had to walk over to Rundle. Tell all! ”

    “There is not much to tell. He danced with me because Papa-in-law gave him little choice,” Vanessa said. “He was not, alas, smitten by my charms, and if he came to the Valentine’s assembly to find a bride, he gave up the search after one dance with me. How very lowering, to be sure.”

    They all chuckled.

    “You belittle yourself, Nessie,” Margaret said. “He did not ignore you. He conversed with you while you danced.”

    “Because I forced him into it,” Vanessa said. “He told me that I was quite ravishingly beautiful.”

    “Nessie!” Katherine exclaimed.

    “And then he went on to say that so was every other lady in the room without exception,” Vanessa told them. “Which effectively negated the compliment, would you not say?”

    “Was that when you threw back your head and laughed?” Margaret asked. “You had everyone in the room smiling, Nessie, and wishing they could eaves-drop. You forced him into speaking such nonsense? How do you do it? You have always had a gift for making people laugh. Even Hedley when he was . . . very ill.”

    Vanessa had used the last reserves of her energy during those final few weeks, making him laugh, keeping him smiling. She had collapsed afterward. She had scarcely been able to drag herself out of bed for two whole weeks after the funeral.

    “Oh,” she said, blinking away tears, “but it was Viscount Lyngate who made me laugh.”

    “Did he explain,” Katherine asked, “why he is in Throckbridge?”

    “He did not,” Vanessa said. “But he did say something very peculiar. He asked me about the third Huxtable sister, having been presented only to the two of you. Did Papa-in-law mention my existence when he presented Viscount Lyngate to you last evening?”

    “Not that I recall,” Margaret said, looking up from the pillowcase she was mending.

    “He did not,” Katherine said decisively. “Perhaps he said