One Night for Love (22 page)

They smiled fleetingly at each other again, and then she resumed her work.

“Perhaps,” he said, “I should suggest that Lauren go to London for at least a part of the Season. Elizabeth will be returning there within a few days. I am sure she would be delighted to have Lauren’s company. Yours too.”

“London?” She looked up, startled, “Oh no, Neville. No, I have no wish to go there. Lauren would not either. To find a husband, do you mean? It is too soon. Besides, she must be—our whole family must be rather notorious just now.”

He winced. Yes, he had not really thought of that. The events of the past week must be very adequately feeding the
ton’s
insatiable hunger for sensation and scandal. Many of its members had been at Newbury for the wedding. And those who had not been would be avid to learn the details. It would be humiliating to Lauren to appear in London this year.

He sighed and got to his feet. “I suppose,” he said, “we all need time. I just wish I could take all the burden of what has happened on my own shoulders and be the only one to suffer. Poor Lily. Poor Lauren. And poor Gwen.”

She set her work aside and accompanied him to the stable,
where he had left his horse. She took his arm as they walked, and he reduced his stride to accommodate her limp.

“And after we have all been given time,” she said, “will you be happy, Nev? Is happiness possible for you now?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then you had better train Lily,” she said. “Or better still, you had better allow Mama to train her.”

“I will not have Lily made unhappy, Gwen,” he said.

“Is she is happy as she is, then?” she cried. “Are
any
of us happy? Oh, what is the use? If we are unhappy, it is not Lily’s fault. Or even yours, I suppose. Why is it that we always seek to blame someone for our misery? It is just that I have been determined to dislike Lily quite intensely.”

“Gwen,” he said, “she is my wife. And it was a love match, you know.”

“Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “Was it? Poor Lauren.”

She said no more, but raised an arm in farewell as he mounted and rode toward the driveway.

Lily had not yet returned to the abbey, he discovered when he arrived there himself, having left his horse to a groom’s care at the stables, though she had left the dower house a good half hour before he had. Where had she gone? It was almost impossible to know, but she had walked into the forest when she left the dower house. Perhaps she was still there. Not that it would be easy to find her. And not that he ought to try.

But perhaps she had lost her way. He strode off past the fountain and across the wide lawn toward the trees.

He might have wandered among them for an hour and not spotted her. It was sheer coincidence that he saw her almost immediately. His eye was caught by the fluttering of the pale blue dress that had been the first of her new clothes. She was standing very still against a tree trunk, her hands flat against it on either side of her body. He did
not want to frighten her. He did not attempt to silence his approach as he went to stand in front of her. Even so, he could see the unmistakable fear in her eyes.

“Oh,” she said, closing them briefly, “it is just you.”

“Who did you think it was?” he asked her curiously. She was not wearing a bonnet—his mother would be scandalized—though her hair was neatly dressed.

She shook her head. “I do not know,” she said. “The Duke of Portfrey, perhaps.”

“Portfrey?” He frowned. But she had been
afraid
.

““What have you done with your cloak?” she asked.

“I did not wear one today,” he replied, looking down at his riding clothes. “It is too warm.”

“Oh,” she said. “I was mistaken, then.”

He would not touch her, but he leaned his head a little closer to hers. “Why were you frightened?”

Her smile was a little wan. “I was not really. It was nothing. I am just jumping at shadows.”

His eyes roamed over her face. She looked even now as if she were afraid to abandon the safety of the tree against which she leaned. A new and painful thought struck him.

“I have thought about your captivity,” he said, “and I have thought of you in Lisbon, trying to get someone in the army to believe your story. But there is a chunk of missing time I have not considered, is there not? You were somewhere in Spain and walked all the way back to Lisbon in Portugal. Alone, Lily?”

She nodded.

“And every hill and hollow and thicket in both countries might have concealed a band of partisans,” he said, “or French troops caught behind their own lines. Or even our own men. You had no papers. I should have given thought to that journey of yours before now, should I
not?” What sort of terrors must she have lived through in addition to the physical hardships of such a journey?

“Everyone’s life contains suffering,” she said. “We each have enough of our own. We do not need to shoulder the burden of other people’s too.”

“Even when the other person is one’s wife?” he asked. She should have been able to look on the partisans as friends, of course—they were all Britain’s allies. But her experience with the one group must have given her a healthy fear of meeting another band. And he had not even
thought
of that journey. “Forgive me, Lily.”

“For what?” She smiled at him and looked her old sweet beguiling self again. “These woods are beautiful. Old. Secluded. Filled with birds and birdsong.”

“Give it time,” he told her. “Eventually you will come to believe in the peace and safety of England. And of your home in particular. You are safe here, Lily.”

“I am not afraid now,” she assured him, and her serene smile seemed to bear out the words. “It was just a—a feeling. It was foolish. Am I late? Is that why you came for me? Are there visitors? I forget that there are always visitors.”

“You are not late,” he said, “and there are no visitors—though there will be this evening. But even if you
were
late and even if there
were
visitors, it would not matter. You must feel free here, Lily. This is your home.”

She nodded, though she did not reply. He held out a hand for hers without thinking. But before he could return his arm to his side, she took his hand and curled her fingers about it as if touching him were the most natural thing in the world to do. It was a warm, smooth hand, which he clasped firmly as they began to walk in the direction of home.

It was the first time he had touched her since that afternoon at the cottage. He looked down at her blond head
with its coiled braid at the back and felt curiously like crying.

She was changed. She was no longer Lily Doyle, the carefree young woman who had gladdened the hearts of a hardened, jaded regiment in Portugal. She had lost her innocence. And yet it clung about her still like an almost visible aura.

  
12
  

T
he afternoon had turned unseasonably hot. The evening had remained warm and was still comfortably cool at a little before midnight, when Neville saw his guests on their way home from the terrace. His Aunt and Uncle Wollston, with their sons, Hal and Richard; Lauren and Gwen; Charles Cannadine with his mother and sister; Paul Longford; Lord and Lady Leigh with their eldest daughter—all had come to dinner and had stayed for an evening of music and cards.

Lily had found it a difficult evening, Neville knew. She did not play cards—poor Lily, it was yet another absent accomplishment that his friends and neighbors had discovered in her. And while she might have found congenial company with Hal and Richard or even perhaps with Charles or Paul—he had noticed without surprise that she was always more comfortable with men than with women—she had been taken under the wing of Lady Leigh and Mrs. Cannadine, who had proceeded to discover all the other attributes of a lady she simply did not possess. Then she had been borne off by Lauren to the music room, where all the young ladies except Lily had proceeded to display their accomplishments at the pianoforte.

They had been absolutely
fascinated
, Lady Leigh had assured Neville later in the evening, to learn that Lady Kilbourne had often been forced to sleep on the hard ground under the stars in the Peninsula, surrounded by
a thousand men
. His lordship’s dear wife simply must be prevailed upon to tell them more about her shocking experiences.

It had often been considerably more than a thousand, Neville thought with inner amusement, and wondered if the ladies, clearly titillated by such scandalous information concerning his countess, realized that sometimes there was safety in numbers.

He was restless after everyone had retired to bed. Being alone again with Lily during the morning, talking and strolling with her, holding her hand, had reawakened the hunger he had been trying to deny for her companionship, for the intimacy of marriage with her. Not just sexual intimacy—though there was that too, he admitted—but emotional closeness, the cleaving of mind to mind and heart to heart. It was something, he realized, that he had never particularly craved with Lauren. With her he would have been content with the comfortable friendship and affection they had always shared. But not with Lily.

He fought the temptation to go into her room to check on her, something he had not done since that day at the cottage. He was afraid he might try to find an excuse to stay.

But suddenly he leaned closer to the window of his bedchamber, through which he had been idly gazing. He braced his hands on the windowsill. Yes, it was Lily down there. Did he even need to doubt the evidence of his own eyes? Who else would be leaving the house at this time of night? Her cloak was billowing out behind her as she hurried in the direction of the valley path—and her hair too. It was loose down her back.

It seemed strange to him at first that she had chosen to go out alone in the middle of the night when she had been frightened in the forest in the middle of the day. But only at first. He understood soon enough that if Lily had demons to fight, she would not cower away from them but would face them head-on. Besides, her peace and serenity had always been drawn from the outdoors and from the solitude she had seemed able to find even in the midst of a teeming army.

He should leave her alone.

He should leave her to find whatever comfort for her unhappiness she was capable of finding on the beach beneath the stars.

Yet he ached for her. He ached to be a part of her life, of her world. He longed to share himself with her as he had never done with any other woman. And he longed for her trust, for her willingness to share herself with him.

He longed for her forgiveness, though he knew that to her there seemed nothing to forgive. He longed to be able to atone.

He should leave her be.

But sometimes selfishness was hard to fight. And perhaps it was not entirely selfishness that drew him to go out after her. Perhaps away from the house, in the beauty of a moonlit night, he could meet her on a different level from any they had yet discovered here at Newbury. Perhaps some of the restraints that had kept them very much apart since her arrival—and especially since that one afternoon—could be brushed aside. Their morning encounter had held out a certain promise. Perhaps …

Perhaps he was merely looking for some excuse—any excuse—for doing what he knew he was going to do anyway. He was already in his dressing room, pulling on the riding clothes his valet had set out for the morning.

He was going out after her.

If nothing else, he could watch out for her safety, make sure that she came to no harm.