Mary Balogh: First Comes Marriage

The inn would be pretty noisy for anyone trying to get some rest." "There you are, Kate," Stephen said. "If he has come looking for a bride, this is your chance." "Or Miss Margaret's," Mrs. Thrush said. "She is as pretty as a picture.

It is time her prince came riding by." Margaret laughed. "But this man is only a /viscount,/" she said, "and I absolutely insist upon waiting for a prince to ride by. Now move, everyone, or we are going to be late." She hugged Vanessa as her sister prepared to leave the room. "Don't change your mind about this evening," she said. "Come, Nessie.

Indeed, if you do not, I may well have to leave the inn and come to get you. It is time for you to enjoy life again." Vanessa walked alone back to Rundle Park, having refused Stephen's offer to escort her. She was definitely going to the assembly, she thought, though she had not been /quite /sure about it even when she had arrived at the cottage. She was going. And despite herself - despite lingering grief for Hedley and a certain guilt over even /thinking /of enjoying herself again - she was looking forward to the evening with some eagerness. Dancing had always been one of her favorite activities, yet she had not danced for more than two years.

Was it selfish, heartless, to want to live again?

Her mother-in-law wanted her to go. So did her sisters-in-law. And Sir Humphrey - Hedley's /father/ - had even told her she must dance.

Would anyone offer to partner her, though?

Surely /someone /would.

She would dance if someone asked her.

Perhaps the viscount…

She chuckled aloud at the absurd thought as she turned onto the footpath that was a shortcut to the house.

Perhaps the viscount was ninety years old and bald and toothless. /And /married.

"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.