Hedley Dew, poor devil, was dead.

Elliott Wallace was not.

He hooked the sheet with one foot and pulled it up over them both. He dried her eyes with one corner of it. "Elliott," she said, "forgive me. Please forgive me. It is not what you think." "I know," he said. "You are… oh, you are so very gorgeous." /Gorgeous? /Well.

He lifted her head from his shoulder and held her face framed in both hands. She sniffed and laughed. "I look a dreadful fright," she said. "Vanessa," he said, "I want you to listen to me. And I insist that you believe me. I will make it a command, in fact, one you must obey. You are beautiful. You are never to doubt it ever again." "Oh, Elliott," she said, sniffing once more, "how very splendid of you.

But you really do not need to - " He set the pad of one thumb over her lips. "/Someone /needs to tell you the truth," he said, "and it might as well be your husband. You have been coy with your beauty. You have hidden it from all except those who take the time to bask in your smiles and look deeply into your eyes. Anyone who /does /take the time will soon uncover your secret. You are /beautiful/." Good Lord, where was all this coming from? He could not possibly /believe /it, could he?

Her eyes had filled with tears again. "You are a kind man," she said. "I would never have suspected it until this moment. You can be cold and you can be irritable and you can be kind. You /are /a complex man. I am so glad." "And gorgeous?" he said.

She laughed and hiccuped. "Yes, and that too." He drew her head down onto his shoulder again and then straightened her legs on either side of his. He caught at the blankets and covered them more warmly.

She heaved a sigh of apparent contentment. "I thought you were not coming tonight," she said. "I fell asleep worrying about tomorrow." Tomorrow? Ah, yes, her presentation to the queen. One of the most important days of her life. And then that infernal ball in the evening. "All will be well," he assured her. "And I thought you were just resting your eyes." "Mmm," she said. "I am /so /tired." She yawned out loud and was almost instantly asleep.

They were still joined.

She weighed almost nothing at all. But she was warm and smelled enticingly of soap and sex. /Beautiful?/ /Was /she beautiful?

He closed his eyes and tried to picture her as he had first seen her, standing with her friend at the Valentine's ball, dressed in a shapeless lavender gown. /Beautiful?/ But then he remembered that as soon as he had led her into the dance and the music began, she had smiled and glowed with happiness. And when he had made that sorry joke about /all /the ladies, as well as her, being dazzlingly lovely, she had thrown back her head and laughed, not at all chagrined that the compliment did not apply to her alone.

And now she lay naked and relaxed and asleep in his arms.

Beautiful?

Certainly there was /something /about her.

He followed her down into sleep.

Because she was a married lady and not simply a young girl making her debut into society, Vanessa was not compelled to wear white. It was a good thing too. She looked a positive fright unless there was /some /color in her clothing.

Her satin skirt, falling from her natural waistline and arranged over huge hoops, was a pale ice blue. So was her stomacher, though it shimmered with reflected light as it was heavily embroidered with silver thread. The lace petticoat worn over the bodice and skirt and pulled open to the sides to reveal the latter, was of a slightly darker blue, as were her long train and the lappets that fell behind her from the silver-embroidered band she wore about her head. Pale blue and silver plumes waved above her head. Her long silver gloves reached above her elbows. "Oh my," she said, looking at herself in the pier glass in her dressing room when her maid was finished with her, "I really am beautiful.

Elliott was quite right." She laughed with delight because she really did think she looked her very best. She ought to be able to dress thus always. She ought to have been born fifty years sooner than she had been. Except that then she could have been Elliott's grandmother, and she would have hated that. "/Of course /you are beautiful," Katherine cried, stepping forward to hug her sister, though she did so very gingerly lest she crush something. "I do not care how many people scoff at the necessity of wearing such old-fashioned styles for the benefit of the queen. I think they are glorious. I wish we still wore them every day." "Which is just what I was thinking," Vanessa said.

But Margaret had heard something else in her sister's earlier words. "Viscount Lyngate said you are beautiful?" she asked. "Last night," Vanessa admitted as she straightened the seam of her left glove. "He was being foolish." "He was being very /perceptive,/" Margaret said with feeling. "All is going well, then, Nessie?" Vanessa smiled into her sister's anxious eyes. He really had been very /foolish /last night. She did not know what had got into him. But whatever it was, it had left a glow of happiness in her this morning. He had commanded her to think of herself as beautiful - and she had promised during their nuptials always to obey him.

Foolish man!

She had woken early this morning as she had fallen asleep, warm and comfortable on top of him, his arms about her, her cheek cradled against his shoulder. And he had still been inside her, except that he had grown long and hard again. And, sensing that she had awoken, he had rolled her over onto her back without disengaging from her, and made swift love to her before returning to his own room.

For once he had not thanked her as he went. She was so glad.

She had not seen him since. Her maid had brought her breakfast in bed - on his orders apparently - and she had been in her dressing room ever since, her mood oscillating between excitement and a horrible anxiety. Her mother-in-law and Cecily had been in and out, observing the progress her maid had been making. Meg and Kate had arrived to see her on her way to court. Stephen had also come to the house. He was downstairs with Elliott. They were both going to court too. Elliott was going to present Stephen to the Prince of Wales at one of his levees. "Kate was right," Margaret said. "You really /are /looking lovely, Nessie. And it is not just the clothes. If Lord Lyngate has put that glow in your face, then I will forgive you for proposing marriage to him." "You did /what/?" Katherine looked at her with startled eyes. "We both knew he was coming to make an offer for Meg," Vanessa explained hastily. "Meg did not want him. I did. And so I offered him my hand before he could offer his to Meg." "Oh, Nessie!" Katherine's eyes brimmed with laughter. "How could you do anything so bold? But why did you not want to marry Lord Lyngate, Meg?

He is gloriously handsome among other assets. I suppose you felt that you must stay with Stephen and me a little longer." "I have no wish to marry," Margaret said firmly. /"Anyone."/ They were interrupted at that moment by the return of the dowager and Cecily. Cecily squealed with delight. The dowager looked upon Vanessa with approval and nodded her head. "You will do very well, Vanessa," she said. "We were quite right about the color. It makes you look youthful and delicate and really quite pretty." /"Beautiful," /Katherine said with a fond smile. "We have already agreed, ma'am, that she looks beautiful." "An opinion with which I fully concur," Vanessa said with a laugh. "Now if I can just contrive to keep my plumes above my head rather than over my eyes and not to fall all over my train while in Her Majesty's presence, I shall be entirely pleased with myself." "And /you /look lovely too, ma'am," Margaret said politely and quite truthfully.

Vanessa's mother-in-law was dressed in wine red, a shade perfectly suited to her dark Mediterranean coloring. She was to be Vanessa's sponsor this morning. "You do indeed, Mother," Vanessa said with a warm smile.