Well, /why /exactly? Because she still loved her dead husband and he felt slighted? Hurt? No, certainly not that. Because he had wanted to punish her, to make her feel that she had only one function in his life?

Was he really so petty? It was an uncomfortable thought.

He desired her now. He had done all day, in fact - right from the moment she had appeared unexpectedly in George's office doorway before breakfast.

What /was /it about her?

He set two knuckles against her cheek and drew them lightly across it.

She opened her eyes and looked sleepily up at him - and smiled.

That was definitely a part of her appeal, he decided. He had never known anyone else whose eyes smiled almost constantly with genuine… what?

Warmth? Happiness? Both?

Was she happy to see him? When his behavior toward her in the bedchamber for the last several nights had been little short of insulting? "I was not sleeping. I was merely resting my eyes," she said, and laughed.

And there was her laugh too. Genuine. Warm. Al most infectious.

Some people seemed to have been born happy. Vanessa was one of them. And she was his wife.

He undid the sash of his dressing gown and shrugged out of it. He was wearing a nightshirt, something he had done each night since coming upon her in tears that afternoon at Finchley. He pulled it off now and dropped it to the floor while she watched him.

He lay down on his back beside her, one forearm over his eyes. Was there such a thing as a good marriage? he wondered. Was it possible? The thing was that no one in the /ton /ever expected it, not if goodness equated happiness anyway. Marriage was a social bond and often an economic one too. One looked elsewhere for sexual pleasure and emotional satisfaction - if one needed it.

His father obviously had. And his grandfather.

She was lying on her side, he was aware, looking at him. He had left the candle burning tonight. "Elliott," she said softly, "it has been a lovely day. It is one I will long remember. Tell me it has not been an utter bore for you." He removed his arm and turned his head to look at her. "You think me incapable of enjoyment?" he asked her. "No," she said. "But I wonder if you are capable of enjoyment with /me/.

I am not at all lovely or sophisticated or - " "Has no one ever called you lovely?" he asked her before she could think of another derogatory word to apply to herself.

She was silent for a moment. "You," she said, "at the Valentine's ball." She laughed. "And then you added that every /other /lady was lovely too, without exception." "Do you love springtime?" he asked her. "Do you think it loads the world with a beauty not found in any other season?" "Yes," she said. "It is my favorite season." "I called you a piece of springtime this evening," he said. "I meant it." "Oh." She sighed. "How lovely. But you /have /to say such things to me.

You are my husband." "You are determined to see yourself as ugly, then?" he said. "Has anyone ever called you that, Vanessa?" She thought again. "No," she said. "No one in my world would have been so cruel. But my father used to tell me that he ought to have called me Jane since I was his own plain Jane. He said it with affection, though." "With all due respect to the late Reverend Huxtable," he said, "I do believe he ought to have been hanged, drawn, and quartered." "Oh, Elliott." Her eyes widened. "What a dreadful thing to say." "If I were still unmarried," he said, "and had to make a choice among you and your sisters based upon looks alone, I would choose you." Her eyes filled with laughter again, and her lips curved into a smile. "You are my gallant knight," she said. "Thank you, sir." "I am not a simple mix of coldness and irritability, then?" he asked her.

The laughter held. "Like all humans," she said, "you are a dizzying mix of things and you ought to take no notice of me when I say you are all one thing or even all of two or three things. I daresay you are thousands of things and I will discover hundreds of them during our marriage. But not all. We can never know another person completely." "Can we know even ourselves?" he asked. "No," she said. "We can always take even ourselves by surprise. But would life not be dull if we were all unfailingly predictable? How would we ever continue to learn and grow and adapt to new conditions of our life?" "Are we talking philosophy again?" he asked her. "If you ask questions," she said, "you must expect me to answer them." "You know how to change me for the better," he said. "Do I?" She looked uncomprehendingly at him. /"I will think of ways. I am endlessly inventive." /He quoted the words to her, just as she had spoken them at the theater earlier. "Oh." She laughed. "I really did say those things, did I not?" "While you were lying here just now," he said, "not sleeping but resting your eyes, were you /thinking/? Were you being /inventive/?" She laughed softly. "If you were not," he said, "I believe I am doomed to be cold and irritable for the rest of the night. I shall lie here and see if I can sleep." He closed his eyes.

He heard her laugh softly once more, and then there was silence - until he felt the mattress sway and he heard the unmistakable rustlings of a nightgown being removed. She had worn it for the last several nights, just as he had worn his nightshirt.

He was instantly aroused. He lay still as if he slept.

After a while he felt her hand against his chest, her fingers circling and caressing, moving up to his shoulder, down to his navel.

But the use of one hand did not satisfy her. She lifted herself onto her knees beside him and leaned over him, using both hands to caress him and then her nails and her lips and breath and teeth.

He kept his eyes closed and concentrated upon keeping his breathing even. She was marvelously skilled after all.

She blew warm air into his ear before licking behind his earlobe and then drawing it into her mouth and sucking and pulsing her teeth about it.

Her hands circled his erection and circled until they touched him, featherlight, and stroked him and closed about him. The pad of her thumb rubbed lightly over the tip.

It took all the power of his will to lie still.

She was exquisite. She was pure magic.

And then she was straddling him, her thighs hugging his hips, her small breasts brushing against his chest, her fingers twining in his hair, her mouth kissing his eyes, his temples, his cheeks, until she reached his lips.

He opened his eyes for the first time.

Her own were shimmering with tears. "Elliott," she murmured, her tongue licking his lips and then sliding inside. "Elliott." He caught her by the hips then, found her entrance, and pulled her down hard onto him even as she pressed downward.

She cried out, a high, keening sound, and there followed a hot frenzy of thrusting and riding that took them both over the edge of passion before there was time to settle to any rhythm.

She was weeping openly, he realized when he had stopped throbbing and his heart had stopped thundering in his ears. She was sobbing against his shoulder, her knees still hugging his waist, her hands still buried in his hair.

At first he was alarmed, even angry. For of course she had made love to him - up to a point - as she must have made love to her first husband, whose desperate weakness had rendered him virtually unable to perform. She had taught herself all those marvelous skills for the benefit of a dying man whom she had loved.

Except that she had not been /in /love with him. She had not /desired /him. She had pleasured him because she loved him.

He was beginning to understand something of the fine distinctions of meaning.

How blessed it must be to be loved by Vanessa Wallace, Viscountess Lyngate.

His wife.

He did not grow angry. For he recognized the tears for what they surely were - happiness that all the work she had put into foreplay was rewarded by the pleasures of full intercourse both given and received. And if there was some grief mingled in for the husband who had not been able to enjoy the completion of what she had done for him, well it would be petty to take offense.