And then, just as he was about to set one hand on her shoulder and squeeze it, she set something down on the cushion beside her, and he found himself looking down at the miniature portrait of a delicate, almost pretty young man.

It took Elliott less than a moment to realize that the young man must be Hedley Dew. His predecessor.

He found himself suddenly angry.

Furiously angry. /Coldly /angry.

He drew a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out without a word.

She dried her eyes and blew her nose while he walked farther into the room. He took up a stand before the window, his back to her, his hands clasped behind him. He gazed out through the rain at the park. Off to one side was the lake with the dower house on its near bank.

He did not turn his head to look in that direction. Indeed, he did not really see anything at all beyond the window.

Why he was quite so angry he did not know. They had entered this marriage without illusions. It had been basically a marriage of convenience for both of them. "I suppose," he said when the blowings and snifflings had stopped, "you loved him more than life." He did not even try to hide the sarcasm from his voice. "I loved him," she said after a lengthy pause. "Elliott - " "Please," he said, "do not feel that you must now launch into an explanation. It is quite unnecessary, and would almost certainly involve nothing but lies." "There is nothing about which I /need /to lie," she said. "I loved him and I lost him and now I am married to you. That says it all. You will not find me - " "And you saw fit to bring his portrait into my home," he said, "and to weep over it in private." "Yes," she said. "I brought it with me. He was a large part of my past.

He was - and is - a part of /me/. I had no idea you would be home so soon.

Or that you would come to my room and enter without even knocking." He swiveled right about and stared stonily at her. She was still sitting on the love seat, his handkerchief balled in her hands. Her face was red and blotchy. It was not a pretty sight. "I need to /knock,/" he asked her, "before entering my wife's rooms?" As she was in the habit of doing, she answered his question with one of her own. "If I entered /your /rooms without knocking," she said, "would you be annoyed? Especially if you were engaged in something you would prefer I did not see?" "That," he said, "is a different matter altogether. Of course I would be annoyed." "But I am not allowed to be?" she asked him. "Because I am merely a woman? Merely a wife? Merely a sort of superior servant? Even servants need some privacy." Somehow she was turning the tables on him. /She /was scolding /him/. She was putting him on the defensive.

The last few days, he realized suddenly, had been about nothing but sex.

As he had intended. There was no point in being indignant at the discovery of what he had already known - and wanted.

He certainly did not want her in love with him.

But even so… "Your wish will be granted from now on, ma'am," he said, making her a formal bow. "This room will be your private domain except when I enter it to exercise my conjugal rights. And even then I will knock first and you may send me to the devil if you do not wish to admit me." She tipped her head to one side and regarded him for a few silent moments. "The trouble with men," she said, "is that they will never discuss a matter calmly and rationally. They will never listen. They always bluster and take offense and make pronouncements. They are the most unreasonable of creatures. It is no wonder there are always the most atrocious wars being fought." "Men fight wars," he said between clenched teeth, "in order to make the world safe for their women." "Oh, poppycock!" she said.

She ought, of course, to have kept her head down from the beginning and remained mute while he had his say, except to answer his questions with appropriate monosyllables. Then he might have stalked from the room with some dignity without going off on a dozen verbal tangents.

But she was Vanessa, and he was beginning to understand that he must not expect her to behave as other ladies behaved.

And heaven help him, he had married her. He had no one but himself to blame. "If you men really wanted to please your women," she said, "you would sit down and talk with them." "Ma'am," he said, "perhaps you think to distract me. But you will not do so. I do not demand what you can-not give me and what I do not even want - I do not demand your love. But I do demand your undivided loyalty.

It is my right as your husband." "You have it," she told him. "And you do not need to frown so ferociously or call me /ma'am, /as if we had just met, in order to get it." "I cannot and will not compete with a dead man," he said. "I do not doubt that you loved him dearly, Vanessa, and that his passing at such a young age was a cruel blow to you. But now you have married me, and I expect you to appear in public at least to be devoted to me." /"In public," /she said. "But in private I need not show devotion? In private I can be honest and show indifference or dislike or hatred or whatever else I may be feeling?" He gazed at her, exasperated. "I wish," she said, "you would let me explain." "About what I encountered when I /invaded your privacy /and came in here?" he asked. "I would really rather you did not, ma'am." "Crispin Dew is married," she told him.

He could only gaze mutely at her. Was this a massive non sequitur, or was there some sort of logical connection in his wife's convoluted mind? "Kate told me this morning," she said. "Lady Dew had a letter from him while she was still at Warren Hall. He married someone in Spain, where his regiment is stationed." "And I suppose," he said, "your elder sister is heart-broken. Though why she should be I do not know. If he has been gone for four years without a word to her, she ought to have expected something like this." "I am sure she did," she said. "But thinking you expect something and having it actually happen are two different things." A thought struck him suddenly. "She might have married me after all, then," he said. "Yes," she agreed.

He saw the connection at last. "You realized it while I was gone this afternoon," he said. "You realized that that letter had come too late. You might have been saved from making yourself into the sacrificial lamb." "Poor Meg," she said, neither admitting nor denying the charge. "She loved him so very much, you know. But she insisted upon staying with us when he wanted her to marry him and follow the drum with him. She would not let me take her place." "Not on that occasion," he said. "But this time she was given no choice.

You spoke to me before she knew what you intended to do." "Elliott," she said, "I /wish /you would not interrupt so much." "Ha!" He sawed the air with one hand. "Now /you /are the one who wishes to make a pronouncement and does not wish to discuss anything in a rational manner." "I am merely trying to explain," she told him.

He clasped his hands behind him again and leaned a little toward her. "Explain, then, if you must," he said. "I will not interrupt again." She stared back at him and then sighed. Her hands had been twisting the handkerchief. She set it firmly aside, caught sight of the miniature, still lying faceup on the cushion beside it, and turned it over. "I was afraid I would forget him," she said. "And I realized that it was desirable I forget him. I am married to you now and owe you what I gave him - my undivided attention and loyalty and devotion. But I was afraid, Elliott. He was my life for the one year of our marriage, just as you will be my life for much longer, I hope. I need to forget him, but it seems wrong. He does not deserve to be forgotten. He loved me more than I thought it possible to be loved. And he was only twenty-three when he died. If I forget him, then love can die too - and I have always believed that love is the one constant in life, the one thing that can never die, in this life or through eternity. I was weeping because I need to forget him. But I do not want to do it." He had told her he would not compete with a dead man. But he was going to be doing just that anyway, was he not?

A woman, it seemed, could not be commanded not to love. Just as she could not be commanded to love. "I will take the portrait back to Warren Hall," she said. "Better yet, I will send it to Rundle Park. Lady Dew gave it to me after Hedley died and will be glad to have it back, I daresay. I ought to have thought to give it to her before my wedding to you, but it did not occur to me. I will keep my marriage vows to you, Elliott. And I will not weep over Hedley again. I will tuck him away in a secret corner of my heart and hope that I will not entirely forget him." Her marriage vows. To love, honor, and obey him.

He did not want her love. He did not expect her obedience - he doubted she would be able to give it anyway. That left honor.

Privately she had promised him more - comfort, pleasure, and happiness.

And somehow she had given all three during the three days following their nuptials. And he, like a fool, had taken without question.

She had merely been fulfilling a promise.

And though he did not doubt that she had taken sexual pleasure from him, he understood now that she had merely been feasting upon the sensual delights of which her first husband's illness had deprived her.

It had all been about sex.

Nothing else.

As it had for him. As he had intended and wanted. He had not wanted more than that.

Why the devil, then, even though his anger had largely dissipated, was there a heavy ball of depression weighting down his stomach?

She would keep at least some of their marriage vows.