One Night for Love (10 page)

No one, it seemed to Neville, had moved a muscle since he had begun to speak. He wondered if any of those gathered here had seen Lily last night or knew that she had been turned away from the abbey with the offer of sixpence because she had been mistaken for a beggar. He wondered how many were telling themselves that she was in reality the Countess of Kilbourne. It needed to be said.

“I will be honored to present my wife,
my countess
, to you all later,” he: said. “But understandably this would be somewhat overwhelming to her at present. Many of you know … Lauren as a friend and relative. Most of you—
all
of you—will be imagining her pain today. It is my hope that you will lay none of the blame for her suffering at—at my wife’s door. She is innocent of any intention to cause either disruption or pain. I—Well.” There was really no more to say.

“Of course she is, Nev,” the Marquess of Attingsborough said briskly, but he was the only one to break the silence.

“I beg that you will excuse me now,” Neville said. “Enjoy the meal, please. Does anyone know where Lauren is?” He closed his eyes briefly.

“She is at the dower house with Gwendoline, Neville,” Lady Elizabeth told him. The dower house was where they had lived with the countess ever since the betrothal last Christmas. “Neither of them would admit me when I stopped there on my way back from church. Perhaps—”

But Neville merely bowed to her and left the room. This was not the time for thought or consultation or common sense. He had to go with the momentum of the moment or collapse altogether.

Neville was on his way downstairs when his uncle’s voice called to him from the landing above. He looked up to see not only the duke, but his mother too, and Elizabeth.

“A private word with you, Kilbourne,” his uncle said with stiff formality. “You owe it to your mother.”

Yes, he did, Neville thought wearily. Perhaps he ought to have spoken with her first, before making a public appearance and a public statement in the ballroom. He just did not know the proper etiquette for a situation like this. He was not amused by the grim humor of the thought. He turned with a curt nod and led the way down to the library. He crossed the room and stood looking down at the unlit coals in the fireplace until he heard the door close and turned to face them.

“I suppose it did not occur to you, Neville,” his mother said, some of the usual gracious dignity gone from her manner to be replaced by bitterness, “to inform your own mother of a previous marriage? Or to inform Lauren? This morning’s intense humiliation might have been avoided.”

“Calm yourself, Clara,” the Duke of Anburey said, patting her shoulder. “I doubt it could have been, though the whole thing might have been somewhat less of a shock to you if Neville had been more honest about the past.”

“The marriage was very sudden and very brief,” Neville said. “I thought her dead and … well, I decided to keep that brief interlude in my life to myself.”

Because he had been ashamed to admit that he had married the unlettered daughter of a sergeant even if she
was
already dead? It was a nasty possibility and one he hoped was not true. But how could he have explained the impulse that had made him do it? How could he have described Lily to them? How could he have explained that sometimes a woman could be so very special that it simply did not matter who she was or—more important—who she was not? He would have given the bare facts and they would have been secretly glad,
relieved
,
that she had died before she could become an embarrassment to them.

“I have been able to think only of somehow handling the dreadful disaster of this morning,” the countess said, sinking down into the nearest chair and raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips, “and of what is to become of poor Lauren. I have not been able to think beyond. Neville, tell me she is not as dreadful a creature as she appeared to be this morning. Tell me it is only the clothes …”

“You heard the boy say she is a sergeant’s daughter, Clara,” the duke reminded her, taking up his stand at the window, his back to the room. “I daresay that fact speaks for itself. Who was her mother, Neville?”

“I did not know Mrs. Doyle,” Neville replied. “She died in India when Lily was very young. There is no blue blood there, though, Uncle, if that is what you are asking. Lily is a commoner. But she is also my wife. She has my name and my protection.”

“Yes, yes, that is all very well, Neville.” His mother spoke impatiently. “But … Oh dear, I cannot think straight. How
could
you do this to us? How could you do it to
yourself
? Surely your upbringing and education meant more to you than to—to marry a woman who looks for all the world like a vulgar beggar and is indeed a product of the lower classes.” She stood up abruptly and swayed noticeably on her feet. “I have guests I am neglecting.”

“Poor Lily,” Elizabeth said, speaking for the first time. She was Neville’s aunt, his father’s sister, but she was only nine years his senior and he had never called her aunt. She was unmarried, not because she had never had offers, but because she had declared long ago that she would never marry unless she could find the gentleman who could convince her that the loss of her independence was preferable to keeping it—and she did not expect that ever to happen. She was beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished—and no
one quite knew whether the Duke of Portfrey was more friend or beau to her. “We are forgetting
her
distress in a selfish concern for our own. Where is she, Neville?”

“Yes, where
is
she?” his mother repeated, her voice unusually petulant. “Not
here
, I suppose. There is not a single spare room at the abbey.”

“There
is
one unoccupied room, Mama,” Neville said stiffly. “She is in the countess’s room—where she belongs. I left her there to have a meal and a bath and a sleep. I have given instructions that she is to be left undisturbed until I go up for her.”

His mother closed her eyes and pressed the handkerchief to her lips again. The countess’s room, formerly hers, was part of the suite of rooms that included the earl’s bedchamber—Neville’s own. He could almost see her coming to grips with the reality of the fact that Lily belonged there.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I am sure it is best for her to rest for a while. I look forward to making her acquaintance, Neville.”

It was like Elizabeth, he thought, to be gracious, to take a situation as it was and somehow make something bearable of it.

“Thank you,” he said.

His mother had pulled herself together again. “You will bring her down to tea later this afternoon, Neville,” she told him. “There is no point in keeping her hidden, is there? I will meet her at the same time as the rest of the family. We will all behave as we ought toward your—your wife, you may rest assured.”

Neville bowed to his mother. “I would expect no less of you, Mama,” he said. “But excuse me now. I must go and see Lauren.”

“You will be fortunate if she does not throw things at your head, Neville,” Elizabeth warned him.

He nodded. “Nevertheless,” he told her.

He left the house a couple of minutes later and set out on foot in the direction of the dower house, which was close to the gates into the park, set back from the driveway in the seclusion of the trees and its own private garden. He was well on his way before he realized that he was
still
wearing his wedding finery. But he would not go back to change. Perhaps he would never regain his courage if he did that.

He was about to face, he realized, one of the most difficult encounters of his life.

Lauren was not inside the dower house. She was out behind it, sitting on the tree swing, idly propelling herself back and forth with one foot. She was staring unseeingly at the ground ahead of her. Gwendoline was seated on the grass to one side of the swing. Both of them were still dressed for the wedding.

He would rather be anywhere else on earth, Neville thought just before his sister spotted him. They were two of the dearest people on earth to him, and he had done this to them. And there was no comfort to bring. Only a totally inadequate explanation.

Gwendoline jumped to her feet at sight of him and glared. “I hate you, Neville,” she cried. “If you have come here to make her unhappier still, you may go away again—
now
! What do you mean by it? That is what you can explain to me. What did you
mean
by saying that dreadful woman is your wife?” She burst into noisy, undignified tears and turned her face sharply away.

Lauren had stopped swinging, but she did not turn around.

“Lauren?” Neville said. “Lauren, my dear?” He still did not know what he could say to her.

Her voice was steady when she spoke, but it was without
tone too. “It is quite all right,” she said. “It is perfectly all right. It was just a convenient arrangement after all, was it not, our marrying? Because we grew up together and were fond of each other and it was what Uncle and Grandpapa had always wanted. And you
did
tell me not to wait when you went away. You were quite fair and honest with me. You were not betrothed to me or even promised to me. You were quite free to marry her. I do not blame you at all.”

He was appalled. He would have far preferred to have her rush at him, teeth bared, fingers curled into claws.

“Lauren,” he said, “let me explain, if I may.”

“There is nothing
to
explain,” Gwendoline said angrily, having mastered her tears. “Is she or is she not your wife, Neville? That is all that matters. But you would not have lied in church for all to hear. She is your wife.”

“Yes,” Neville said.

“I hate her!” Gwendoline cried. “Shabby, ugly,
low
creature.”

But Lauren would not participate. “We do not know her, Gwen,” she said. “Yes, Neville. Tell me. Tell us. There must be a perfectly good explanation, I am sure. Once I understand, I will be able to accept it. Everything will be perfectly all right.”

She was in shock, of course. In denial. Trying to convince herself that what had happened was not so disastrous after all but merely something bewildering that would be perfectly acceptable once she understood. The exquisitely scalloped and embroidered train of her wedding gown, Neville noticed, was trailing in the dust.

It was so typical of Lauren to react rationally rather than emotionally, even when there
was
no rational way to act. She had always been thus, always the good one among the three of them, the one to think of consequences, the one to be concerned about upsetting the adults. Her story partly explained her, of course. She had come to Newbury Abbey at the age of
three when her mother, the widowed Viscountess Whitleaf, married the late earl’s younger brother. She had stayed at the abbey when the newlyweds left on a wedding trip—from which they had never returned. There had been letters and a few parcels from various parts of the world for a number of years and then nothing. Not even word of their deaths.

Lauren’s paternal relatives had made no move to take her back. Indeed, when she had written to them on her eighteenth birthday, she had had a curt response from the viscount’s secretary to the effect that her acquaintance was not something his lordship sought. Lauren, Neville suspected, had never quite trusted her lovableness. And now there ware these circumstances to confirm her in her low opinion of herself.

“I do not want to understand,” Gwendoline said crossly. “And how can you
sit
there, Lauren, sounding so calm and forbearing and forgiving? You should be scratching Neville’s eyes out.” She began to sob again.

“Neville?” Lauren said, motionless once more. “I need to understand. Tell me about—about L-Lily.”

“Lily!” Gwendoline said scornfully. “I
hate
that name. It is despicable.”

“She was a sergeant’s daughter,” Neville explained. “She grew up with the regiment, living with it, moving about with it. She always did her share of the work and she was everyone’s friend. The toughest of the men and the roughest of title women loved her. But she was her own person. There was something dreamlike, fairylike about her—I do not: know quite how to describe that quality in her. She had been untouched by the ugliness of the life by which she was surrounded. She was eighteen when I—when I married her.” He went on to give brief details of the circumstances of their marriage.