One Night for Love (23 page)

Lily had been to the beach since the afternoon of the picnic once in the pouring rain of early morning. She had been scolded roundly on her return by Dolly, who had predicted darkly that her ladyship would catch her death of
cold even if she
had
worn a borrowed cloak with the hood up. Lily had been to the beach, but she had never again turned up the valley to the pool and the cottage.

It was definitely one of the beautiful places of this earth, and she had spoiled it by panicking when she had been kissed. She had refused to trust beauty and peace and kindness, and she had been punished as a result. She had found herself unable since that afternoon to forge any of the contentment for herself that she had almost always been able to find in the changing surroundings and conditions in which she had lived her life. She had become fearful. She had started to imagine men—or perhaps women—in dark cloaks stalking her. She did not like such weakness in herself.

The evening had been a great trial to her. It was not that the number of guests had overwhelmed her. Nor was it that anyone had been unkind or even openly disapproving. It was not even that she had felt out of place. It was just that finally, after a week at Newbury Abbey, Lily had come to a terrible realization: that this evening was the pattern of many evenings to come. And the days she had lived through would be repeated over and over down the years.

Perhaps she would adjust. Perhaps no future week would be quite as difficult as this one had been. But something had gone permanently from her life—some hope, some dream.

Fear had taken their place.

Fear of an unknown man. Or perhaps not unknown. The Duke of Portfrey was always watching her indoors. Why not outdoors too when she wished to be alone? Or perhaps it was not the duke. Perhaps it was—Lauren. She came every day to the abbey and invariably attached herself to Lily, being attentive to her, solicitous of her well-being, eager to teach her what she did not know and do for her
what she could not do. She was all graciousness and kindness. She was quite the opposite of what she should be, surely. There was something not quite right in her cheerful acceptance of her situation. Just thinking of her gave Lily the shudders. Perhaps it was Lauren who felt it necessary to keep an eye on her even when she was alone. Perhaps in some fiendish way Lauren was trying to make her so uncomfortable in company and so terrified when alone that she would simply go away.

And perhaps, Lily thought, giving herself a mental shake, it was no one at all, male or female, known or unknown.

Fear, she had realized while she stood at the window of her bedchamber gazing longingly out, was the one thing she could not allow to rule her. It would be the ultimate destroyer. She had given in to it once, choosing life and prostitution over torture and death. In many ways she had forgiven herself for that choice. As Neville had said to her—and as her father had taught her—it was a soldier’s duty to remain alive in captivity and to escape as soon as he was able. It had been war in which she had been caught up. But the war was over for her now. She was in England. She was at home. She would not allow nameless terrors to consume her.

And so she had come outside—and she was going to face the worst of her fears. The cloaked person whom she had spotted from the rhododendron walk and in the woods this morning was not the worst fear. The cottage was.

The night was still and bright with moonlight and starlight. It was also almost warm. The cloak she had worn seemed unnecessary, though perhaps she would be glad of it in the valley, Lily thought as she hurried down the lawn and found the path through the trees. Especially if she stayed all night. She thought she might do so as she had on that first night, when she had been turned away from the abbey. She thought she might sleep on the beach after she
had forced herself to go to the cottage—though not necessarily inside it. Now that she had left the house, some of her fears had already dissipated, and she did not think she would be able to bring herself to go back there. She wished she never had to go back.

She paused when she reached the valley. The beach looked inviting with the moonlit sea at half tide. The sand formed a bright band in the moonlight. It would be soothing to the soul to walk barefoot along it—perhaps to climb the rock again. But it was not what she had come to do. She turned her head reluctantly to look up the valley.

It was an enchanted world, the fern-covered cliff dark green and mysterious, the waterfall a silver ribbon, the cottage so much a part of its surroundings that it seemed a piece of nature more than a structure built by man. It was a place to which she must return if she was somehow to piece together the fractured shards of her life.

She turned slowly in its direction and approached the pool with lagging footsteps. But she knew as she drew close that she was doing the right thing. There was something about this little part of the valley that was very different from the beach or any other area of the park—or from any other spot on earth. Neville was right and she had been right—it was one of the special places of this world, one of the places in which something broke through. She hesitated to think of that something as God. The God of churches and established religion was such a limiting Being. This was one of the places in which
meaning
broke through and in which she could feel that she might understand everything if she could only find the thoughts or the words with which to grasp it.

But then meaning was not to be grasped. It was a mystery to be trusted.

One needed courage to trust places like this. She had lost her courage the afternoon of the picnic. She needed to restore it.

She went to stand among the thick ferns that overhung the pool. She undid the strings at the neck of her cloak after a couple of minutes and tossed it aside. After a brief hesitation she pulled off her old dress too and kicked off her shoes until she stood there in just her shift. The air was cool, but to someone who had spent most of her life outdoors it was not uncomfortably cold. And she needed to
feel
. She stood very still. After a few minutes she tipped back her head and closed her eyes. The beauty of the moonlit scene threatened to steal everything for the eyes. She wanted to hear the sounds of water and insects and gulls. And she wanted to smell the ferns and the fresh water of the waterfall, the salt of the sea. And to feel the cool night air against her flesh and the ferns and soil beneath her bare feet.

She opened her eyes again once all her senses had become attuned to her surroundings. She looked into the dark, fathomless waters of the pool. The darkness with its suggestion of something to be feared was an illusion. The pool was fed by that bright fall of sparkling waterdrops, and it in its turn fed the shimmering sea. Darkness and light—they were a part of each other, complementary opposites.

“What are you thinking?”

The voice—
his
voice—came from behind her, not very far distant. The words had been softly spoken. She had neither seen nor heard his approach, but she was curiously unstartled, unsurprised. There was none of that terror, that panicked feeling that something menacing was creeping up on her that she had felt on the rhododendron walk and in the forest this morning. It felt right that he had come. It felt as if it were meant to be. What had gone wrong here could not be put right if he were not here with her. She did not turn around.

“That I am not just someone observing this,” she said, “but that I am a part of it. People often talk about
observing nature. By saying so they set a distance between themselves and what is really a part of them. They miss a part of their very being. I am not just watching this. I
am
this.”

She was not thinking out the words, planning them, formulating a philosophy of life. She was merely speaking from her heart to his heart. She had never shared herself so deeply with another human being. But it seemed right to do so with him. He would understand. And he would accept.

He said nothing. Yet his very silence said everything. There was suddenly a feeling of perfect peace, perfect communion.

And then he was beside her, touching the backs of his fingers to the hair at her temples. “Then the one remaining garment has to go too, little water nymph,” he said.

There was no element of suggestiveness in the words. They merely showed the understanding and acceptance she had expected. While she crossed her arms and peeled her shift off over her head, he was shrugging out of his coat and waistcoat and shirt.

“You
were
planning to swim, were you not?” he asked her.

Yes. She had not known it consciously, but yes, it would have been the next logical step even if he had not come to put it into words for her. She needed to immerse herself in the waters of the pool, to make herself an inextricable part of the beauty and peace that had been restored to her this night—the perfect gift.

She nodded. He was a part of it too, magnificent in his nakedness after he had stripped away the last of his garments. They looked at each other with frank appreciation and—oh yes, with the stirrings of desire, of hunger, of need. But there was more than just that. There were needs
of the soul to be fed, and for now they were of greater importance than the cravings of the body.

Besides, there was all night …

He turned and dived into the pool—and came up gasping and shaking his head like a wet dog. His teeth flashed white in the moonlight. But before he could say anything Lily had dived in too.

The water was cold. Numbingly, breathtakingly cold. And clear and sweet and cleansing. She felt as if it were penetrating beneath the layer of her skin and soothing and cleaning and renewing. Now that she was in the water, she saw after she had surfaced and smoothed her hair back from her face, it was no longer black but shimmering with moving light. Darkness was only a perception, she realized again, dark from one viewpoint but bright from another.

It was not a large pool or even very deep. But they swam side by side for several minutes, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said. And they trod water close to the waterfall and reached out their hands in order to feel the sharp needles of water pounding against fingers and palms. The water was cold even after one had become accustomed to it.

“Wait here,” he said eventually, setting his hands on the bank and lifting himself out in one smooth motion.

Lily floated lazily on her back until he came from the cottage with one towel wrapped about himself and others folded over his arm. He reached down a hand and helped her out and then wrapped a large towel about her shivering form. He reached behind her and squeezed the excess water from her hair before giving her the other towel to wrap turban-style about it.

“We could light a fire inside the cottage,” he suggested, “if you wish to go inside there again, Lily. You
would be in no danger from me. I will not touch you without your consent. Is the prospect of warmth enticing?”

Yes, it was. But more enticing was the thought of prolonging this night of magic, this night in which she could persuade herself that all of life’s problems had been solved for all time. She knew life was never that simple, but she knew too that times like this were necessary, a balm for restoring the soul.

On a night like this love could become everything. Love could not always be so, but there were precious times like this that one ought not to deny.

Besides, the cottage was the one niggling fear that remained to be conquered.

She smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I am not afraid. How could I be after this?” She gestured with one hand at the scene about them. He would understand, she knew. He had become a part of it with her. “I want to go inside. With you.”

He must know the cottage very well, Lily thought. He had found the towels in darkness, and now it took him only a few seconds to find candles and tinderbox and bring the coziness of candlelight to the sitting room. While Lily pulled on her shift and dress, he knelt and lit the fire that was already laid in the hearth. There was more light then and the pleasant aroma of wood burning. Almost immediately there was a thread of warmth.

The remnants of fear vanished.

He sat in a chair beside the hearth after dressing—though he did not put his waistcoat and coat back on—while Lily sat on the floor close to the flames, her knees drawn up before her, her hair over one shoulder, drying in
the heat. She was reminded of the relaxed, informal life of an army camp, though she had never sat thus with him there—there had been too much of a social gap between her father and Major Lord Newbury.

“After your father died, Lily,” he said, perfectly in tune with her thoughts, it seemed, “did you have all sorts of regrets about what you might have said to him or done for him if you had only known that he was to die on that day? Or were you always so aware that as a fighting man he could die at any time that you left nothing unsaid, nothing undone?”

“I think the latter,” she said after giving the question some thought. “I was fortunate to be able to live all my life with him even to the last day. I was fortunate to have a father who loved me so totally and whom I loved without reserve. I wish, though—I do wish I could have known what he wanted so badly for me to have after his death. He was always so insistent that there was something inside his pack for me. But there was no chance to see what it was—he had left it back at the base. But the important thing is that I know he did love me and did try to provide for my future.” She looked up at Neville, sprawled and relaxed and yet elegant too in his chair. “You were not so fortunate?”