First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh

Warren Hall in Hampshire was his principal seat.

    “Oh, this must be it,” Katherine said suddenly, leaning forward in her seat and pressing her nose against the glass of the window, the better to see what was behind her.

    The carriage was making a sharp left turn to pass between high stone gateposts, and Stephen appeared beside the carriage. He had ridden forward and was bending an eager face, reddened from the cold, to look in at them.

    “This is it,” he mouthed, pointing ahead.

    Margaret smiled and nodded. Vanessa raised a hand in acknowledgment that they understood. Katherine was craning her neck to catch a glimpse of the house, though it was still out of sight beyond the dense grove of trees through which the driveway was winding.

    But a few minutes later they could all see it as the carriage drew away from the trees and, as if on cue, the sun struggled free of the clouds that had covered it most of the day.

    Warren Hall.

    Vanessa had expected a medieval heap, perhaps because it was called a hall. It was actually a neat and solidly square Palladian mansion of pale gray stone. There was a dome and a pillared portico at the front with what looked like marble steps leading up to the doors. There was a stable block off to one side—the driveway led toward it. Before the house there was a wide, flat terrace surrounded by a stone balustrade, with steps leading down to flower gardens beneath it, still bare now in February.

    “Oh, goodness,” Vanessa said, “this is all very real, is it not?”

    Which was a foolish thing to say, though her sisters must have known what she meant since they did not question her words.

    They all gawked in amazement.

    “It is beautiful !” Katherine exclaimed.

    “I will still have a garden to tend, then,” Margaret said.

    At any other time they might all have laughed with considerable merriment over the gross understatement. Even apart from the terrace and flower garden, they were surrounded by cultivated parkland for as far as the eye could see.

    None of them laughed.

    It was indeed suddenly all very real. None of them could ever have imagined such grandeur and such a total change in their lives. But here they were.

    The driveway ascended a slope as it approached the stables and then turned unexpectedly to take them across the terrace to the foot of the house steps. There was a stone fountain in the middle of the cobbled terrace, though there was no water in it this early in the year. There were also many stone urns, which were probably filled with flowers during the summer.

    The carriage drew to a halt, the coachman opened the door and set down the steps, and Stephen himself reached inside to hand Margaret down and then to swing Katherine out without benefit of the steps. He was looking very exuberant indeed. Another hand appeared in the doorway before he could turn back for Vanessa—Viscount Lyngate’s.

    Vanessa had been in virtual hiding from him since the day on which she had lashed out at him and told him exactly what she thought of him. Afterward, part of her had been appalled at her temerity while another part had been proud that she had found the courage. And all of her had been horribly embarrassed at the thought of coming face-to-face with him again.

    The moment had come.

    Not that she had not looked at him in private a great deal more than she ought during their journey. He was undeniably good-looking—gross understatement—and virile and... well, and masculine . And she admired his effortless horsemanship—she had watched him often while trying to convince herself that it was Stephen she watched. It was all really not fair at all. Hedley had deserved everything good and wonderful this world had to offer and yet he had been thin and weak and very ill during the last couple of years of his life.

    Indeed, she felt guilty about admiring someone who was his antithesis—as if she still owed her husband her

    undivided loyalty.

    Hedley was long