One Night for Love

For all the kindness of Elizabeth and the respect shown by the two dressmakers, Lily soon felt like a passive doll that lifted its arms when someone pulled the right string and pirouetted when someone pulled another, and smiled constantly with a painted smile. All the joy of having new clothes fled early. She knew nothing and was forced to leave all decisions to those who did. And all the time there was the foolish worry—could he possibly afford all this? And she had forgotten to ask him if he would send the money she had borrowed from Captain Harris. How could she have neglected that?

Elizabeth took her arm when the ordeal was finally over and they had left the dressmakers to pack up their things—they had declined Lily's offer of help, looking startled and agitated as they did so.

"Poor Lily," she said. "This is very difficult for you, is it not? Come and have luncheon and relax." She laughed ruefully. "But even a meal is not relaxing for you, is it? It will all get easier as time goes on, I promise you."

Lily would have liked to believe her. But she was not sure she did. If only she could go back, she thought, even just a few days… But what else could she have done but come here? Even if she could go back and decide to wait for Captain Harris to write a letter, she would merely be postponing the inevitable. She could not simply have stayed away. She was Neville's wife. He had a right to know that she was still alive.

What she really wished was that she could go all the way back to that day when her father had been killed. She wished she could go back and hear more clearly, more responsibly, what Major Newbury had said to her afterward so that she could summon the courage to say no where she had said yes.

Was that really what she wished? That she had never married him? That there had never been that night? If there had not been that night, that dream of love and perfection, she did not know if she would have been able to survive what had happened to her afterward. Not with her sanity intact, at least.

***

Lily did not go outside again. Neville watched her with deep concern as she was swept up and borne along by his relatives, most of whom at least were ready enough to do what was proper and accept her into their midst. And she did her best to look cheerful, to learn names and relationships, to answer questions that were put to her, to follow his lead and his mother's and Elizabeth's in matters of etiquette. But the color that had been in her cheeks when she had returned from her morning outing and the brightness in her eyes and the pertness in her manner—all the signs of the old Lily—faded again as the day progressed.

He took her on a tour of the house, and she was interested and seemed impressed. She gazed long and attentively at the family portraits in the long gallery.

"How wonderful it must be," she said when they were halfway down the long room, "to know so much about your ancestors and even to have pictures of them. You look very like your grandfather in this portrait of him. Neither Mama nor Papa ever talked about their families, about my ancestors. Until Papa died, I did not realize how very alone I was. If I had wanted to find his relatives, or Mama's when I came back to England, I would not even have known where to look. I daresay Leicestershire is a large place."

"You were not alone," he told her, his heart aching for her. "You had me and my family." But the day after their wedding he had accepted the unconfirmed evidence of his eyes and the hastily observed evidence of Harris's and had not gone in search of her to bring her home to safety.

She moved on to the next painting.

"Did you not have portraits of your mother and father in your locket, Lily?" he asked her. She had always worn it, he remembered, though she did not do so now.

She touched a hand to her throat as if it were still there. "No," she said. "It was empty."

He did not ask where the locket was. It had probably been taken from her during her captivity, and reminding her further of its loss would be painful to her.

He was disappointed the following morning to find that she had not gone out again to watch the sun rise. It had rained during the night and was still rather cloudy and blustery, but he did not believe it was the weather that had deterred her. He found her, when he peeped into her room, sitting at the window, gazing quietly out. She smiled at him and told him that one of her new dresses was to be delivered early and that she was waiting to wear it. His mother was to introduce her to the housekeeper and include her in the discussion of the day's menu.

It was important, he supposed—certainly his mother believed it was—that she learn about the running of a great house. But he did not want her new life to sap all the light and joy from her. He wanted her to be Lily, the person he remembered from the Peninsula.

As it turned out, Neville discovered later, Lily had misunderstood and had not realized that the housekeeper was to come to her, not the other way around. She went alone down to the kitchen, expecting to meet her mother-in-law there. By the time, much later, Mrs. Ailsham informed her ladyship, the dowager, that the Countess of Kilbourne was belowstairs and a startled mother-in-law followed her down there, Lily was seated at the large kitchen table, an oversized apron protecting her new dress, peeling potatoes with a kitchen maid and regaling a flustered but delighted kitchen staff with tales of cooking for a regiment on rations that arrived all too irregularly and when they did arrive were often quite inadequate to the men's needs.

After Neville had been told the story and had chuckled over it, though his mother was not amused, he went to find Lily. But by that time she had been safely restored to the respectability of the morning room and the company of his aunts and female cousins. She was looking cheerful and mute and listless all at the same time—and very pretty in her new blue morning gown.

***

Word had been sent up from the dower house that Lauren and Gwendoline would call during the afternoon.

There was a general air of tension as the family gathered in the drawing room. No one behaved naturally. Everyone smiled a great deal and talked a great deal and laughed more than was necessary. Lily was very quiet.

Neville awaited their arrival with the deepest dread.

But when they came, the moment was almost anticlimactic. They had chosen not to be announced, but entered the room together as soon as a footman had opened the doors, just as they would have done on any other occasion before Lily's arrival. They were both looking their most elegant. Gwen was not smiling. Lauren was—brightly and graciously. And she looked about her, meeting everyone's eyes, apparently perfectly at her ease.

The moment must have cost her enormous effort, Neville guessed as he jumped to his feet and hurried toward them.

"Lauren," he said, resisting the impulse to take both her hands in his. He bowed to her instead. "How are you? Gwen?"

"Hello, Neville." Lauren smiled at him and held out her hands to him. "We came to pay our formal respects to your wife, did we not, Gwen? But not to be presented to her. We met her yesterday morning when we were all out for a walk and our paths crossed. Oh, there you are, Lily." She turned away from Neville with a warm smile and held out her hands again. "Looking—tamed." She laughed. "What a very pretty dress. Primrose suits your coloring." She took Lily's hands in hers and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

It was a stellar performance. But surely it was a performance? She went on to greet everyone else with ease and affection before seating herself beside Lily on a love seat.

The contrast between the two of them—between his wife and the woman who had so nearly become his wife two mornings before—could scarcely be more marked. Lily, small, pretty, quiet, slightly flustered when anyone addressed a remark her way, reclining back on the seat, drinking all her tea down without once setting her cup back in its saucer before it was empty, quite without the "presence" his mother considered so important in a countess. Lauren, tall and beautiful and elegant, perfectly at her ease, sitting with erect but graceful posture, her back not touching the love seat, sipping from her cup and setting it down again in its saucer with all the appreciation of a true lady for fine possessions.

It was almost, Neville thought, as if she had seated herself deliberately beside Lily, knowing how the contrasts would be observed and interpreted. But it was an unkind thought. Lauren had never been an unkind woman. But then, of course, she had never found herself in such a situation before.

Gwen was behaving far more as he would have expected the rejected bride to behave. Although she was perfectly well bred, she pointedly ignored both Lily and himself after the first stiff acknowledgment. She confined her conversation to a group of cousins.

Neville had half expected—and more than half hoped—that Lauren would leave Newbury during the morning with her grandfather and Mr. Calvin Dorsey, who had offered the elderly gentleman quiet comfort since the day of the aborted wedding and had been kind enough to offer his company for the first day of the baron's journey home to Yorkshire. But Lauren had not gone with them. Newbury, after all, had been her home for most of her life. And perhaps, Neville thought, it was important to her not to run away but to stay and face the new conditions of her life.

She was doing magnificently well. Perhaps he should feel relieved—he was relieved. But he could not help remembering how Lauren as a child used to prattle happily about what she would do when her mama came home—until she stopped completely one day, never to mention her mother again. And how when she was older she had talked eagerly of writing to her father's family and becoming reacquainted with them and perhaps going to spend a few months with them—until she had stopped talking about them altogether after she had had a reply to her letter. Just the silence on both topics. No loss of cheerfulness. Just total silence.

No stranger appearing in the drawing room now would guess that Lauren had been a bride two mornings before—his bride—or that her hopes had been abruptly and cruelly dashed.

Lauren, he thought uneasily, reminded him somewhat of a keg of gunpowder, quite harmless in appearance but awaiting the spark that would ignite it.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was just not that much passion in Lauren.

But part of him wished she had raged at him when he had called on her two mornings before. And part of him wished she had stormed into the drawing room this afternoon and made a noisy and scandalous scene.

Pauline Bray, James's sister, finally made a suggestion that broke up the strangely tense normality of the gathering in the drawing room.

"I do believe I am going to take a walk," she announced. "Look. The sun has come out, and the grass must have had sufficient time to dry after last night's rain. Would anyone care to join me?"

It seemed that almost everyone would. The cousins took up the suggestion with some enthusiasm, and even some of the older relatives expressed their willingness to taste the air. There was a brief argument over whether to take the rhododendron walk over the hill behind the house or to go down onto the beach. The beach won even though Wilma protested that sea air was ruinous on the complexion and that sand got everywhere about one's person no matter how carefully one trod.

Before a large party of them set out, the plans had become more elaborate, and urgent directions had been sent belowstairs for a picnic tea to be sent down onto the beach later even though they had just drunk tea in the drawing room.

Neville was glad of the diversion, both for his own sake and for Lily's. She had been confined to the house for a day and a half, and he knew that she was feeling bewildered and oppressed though she had not complained. Lauren's visit in particular must have put a severe strain on her.

But any thought he had to taking her on his arm and leading her, perhaps, a little away from the larger group was squashed even before they left the house. Lauren had not left her side. She took Lily's arm with a smile.

"You and I will walk together, Lily," she said. "We will become better acquainted."

Chapter 10

They walked sedately across the terrace and down the lawn. They walked sedately down the steep hillside and sedately along the beach. They walked farther along it than Lily had walked before, past a huge rock that towered above them as they passed beneath it.

Lily was wearing her old shoes though apparently some new pairs were being made for her by the village cobbler. But she was wearing a new primrose dress and pelisse—Mrs. and Miss Holyoake must have worked very hard indeed to complete them within a day—and the plain straw bonnet she had picked out from the supply they had brought to the abbey with them. In the absence of a milliner in the village, Elizabeth had explained, Mrs. Holyoake had undertaken to keep a select supply on hand.

The wide brim of the bonnet shielded Lily's face from the sun, which shone clear of the scudding clouds most of the time. Lauren's parasol, which she insisted on sharing, prevented even a stray ray of sunlight from finding her face. They must be very careful of their complexions, Lauren explained, especially now that summer was almost upon them. She had noted that Lily's face was unfortunately bronzed, probably a casualty of the voyage home from Portugal. But she must not despair—the color would fade if she carried a parasol with her whenever she was out of doors. Lauren would lend her one.

Wilma would not walk too close to the water's edge as the salt from the sea would make her skin rough and coarsen her hair. And they must stroll very slowly across the sand for fear of getting some of it inside their shoes. When they reached a sheltered spot suitable for the picnic tea and servants had arrived with blankets and baskets, the gentlemen were set the task—by Wilma—of building what amounted to a tent with the blankets so that they would be shielded from the wind and the ruinous airs off the sea. When they sat down, they could not see the water—or even the sand.

They might as well have stayed indoors, Lily thought.

The gentlemen had been having a far better time of it. They had walked briskly to the end of the beach and back before the ladies met them halfway. And they had done their walking down close to the water's edge, where the gulls were flying and the wind was blowing its hardest. There had been much merry laughter from their group. Lily wished she might have walked with them.

They all sat down to tea, but as soon as the edge had been taken from their appetites, some of the younger cousins—Hal and his brothers Richard and William—were eager to be off exploring again. William winked at Miranda, who was about his own age, and beckoned, and Miranda looked anxiously at her mama, who was busy holding two glasses while her son Ralph, Viscount Sterne, filled them with wine. Then Miranda looked uncertainly at Lily.

"I long to escape too," Lily whispered, all her good intentions, which she had kept faithfully for a day and a half, forgotten. Neville, with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, was listening politely to a monologue that his Aunt Mary had been delivering for the past five minutes or longer.

And so within moments they were off, the two of them, with the young gentlemen, running down the beach until one more step would have soaked their shoes.

"I would wager the water is cold enough to give one a heart seizure at this time of year," Richard said.

"No," said Lily, who was accustomed to bathing in mountain streams at all seasons of the year except the dead of winter. "It would be refreshing. Oh, the wind feels wonderful." She lifted her face to it and to the sunshine.

"Sea bathing is all the crack in the fashionable resorts," Hal said. "But not here, more is the pity, and not in May. I did it at Brighton last year with the Porters."

"I would die before I would set a toe in sea water," Miranda said. "It would quite shrivel up the skin, I daresay."

Lily laughed. "It is just water, though not to be drunk, of course, because of the salt." And without even thinking of what she did, she shook off her shoes and peeled off her stockings, carried them in one hand while lifting her skirt with the other, and waded into the water until it was halfway to her knees.

Miranda giggled and the young gentlemen hooted with glee.

"It is cold," Lily said, laughing even more gaily. "It is lovely. Oh, do try it."

Richard came next and then Hal and then William. Finally even Miranda was persuaded to remove her shoes and stockings and step gingerly into the water almost up to her ankles. She laughed with fear and excitement.

"Oh, Lily," she cried, "you are so much fun."

"Wilma is an old fuddy-duddy," Richard remarked with marvelous lack of respect for his elders. "And Lauren and Gwen always have to remember that they are ladies."

They all waded through the water, carrying their shoes and stockings, until they came to the great rock and Lily decided that a rock in just such a position and built in just such a way must have been placed there to be climbed. She scrambled to the top and sat up there, her arms clasped about her knees, her head tipped back. She could feel her hem heavy and wet from the sea water, but it would dry soon enough. It was quite impossible, she thought, to remain for long in low spirits when one could feel the sun and the air on one's face and hear waves rolling their way to shore and gulls screaming overhead. She took off her bonnet and set it down beside her with her shoes and stockings. She felt even better.

The other four had climbed up after her and were seated together a little below her, talking and laughing among themselves. Lily forgot them and enjoyed the familiar feeling of being alone with the universe. She had always had the gift—necessary when there had been so little actual privacy in her life—of being able to shut herself off from crowds.

"Miranda!"

The voice, loud and shocked, made Lily jump and brought her back to her surroundings. Aunt Theodora had appeared at the base of the rock with Elizabeth and Aunt Mary. "Put your shoes and stockings and your bonnet and gloves back on this instant. And get down from there! Gracious me, your hem is wet. Have you been wading! You shocking, vulgar, disobedient girl. A true lady would never so much as dream of—" But she had looked upward and spied Lily, who was considerably more disheveled than her daughter.

Elizabeth clucked her tongue and laughed. "How provokingly clever of Lily and Miranda," she said. "They are doing what all of us have been secretly longing to do and are enjoying the sunshine and the sea air—and even the sea."

But her attempt to smooth over the awkwardness of the situation did not quite succeed. The whole party had come into view, Aunt Theodora had turned very red, and Miranda had burst into tears. Aunt Mary was assuring everyone in agitated accents that she dared say her sons were entirely to blame. They were such high-spirited lads. Hal was reminding her indignantly that at the age of one-and-twenty he no longer appreciated being referred to as a lad.

Lily quietly pulled on her stockings and shoes and tied the ribbons of her new bonnet beneath her chin and turned to descend carefully back to the beach. Wilma was loudly complaining about something and Gwendoline was telling her not to be tiresome. The marquess was asking in a deliberately languid voice if anyone had heard about storms in teacups and Pauline choked on a laugh. A pair of strong arms lifted Lily down when she was still carefully picking her footholds.

He turned her and smiled at her, his hands still at her waist. "I had such a vivid memory, seeing you up there," he said, "of watching you sitting on an outcropping of rock, looking about at the hills of Portugal." But his smile faded even before he had finished speaking. "I am sorry. It was just before your father died."

And just hours before their wedding. How he must regret that any of it had ever happened. How she regretted it.

Everyone had begun walking back toward the valley and the path up to the house amid a general atmosphere of discontent and awkwardness. Lily and Neville fell into step a short distance behind.

"I am sorry," she said.

"No," he told her firmly. "No, you must not be, Lily. You must not always be sorry. You must live your life your way."

"But I got Miranda into trouble," she said. "I did not think."

"I will have a word with Aunt Theodora," he told her, chuckling. "It was no very great mischief, you know."

"No," she said, "I will have a word with her. You must not always be protecting me. I am not a child."

"Lily," he said softly. "This is not working well, is it? Let us take a little time for ourselves, shall we? Let me show you the cottage."

"The one in the valley?" she asked him.

He nodded. "My private retreat. My haven of peace and tranquility. I'll take you there."

***

He took her hand in his and laced his fingers with hers. He did not care that someone ahead of them might look back. They were married, after all.

"The cottage is your own, then?" she asked him. "It is very pretty."

"My grandmother was a painter," he explained. "She liked to be on her own, painting. My grandfather had the cottage built for her on surely the loveliest spot of the whole estate. It is furnished, and it is cleaned and aired once a month. It is there for all of us to use and enjoy, though I believe it has come to be considered my own special place. I like to be alone and quiet too at times."

She smiled at him. Obviously such antisocial needs were quite understandable to her.

"It was the one thing I found hard about military life," he said. "The lack of privacy. You must have felt it too, Lily. And yet there was something about you… I used to notice, you know, that you often went off on your own, though never beyond your father's sight. You used to sit or stand alone, doing nothing except gazing about you. I always used to imagine that you had discovered a world that was closed to me and to almost everyone else. Had you?"

"There are some places," she said, "that seem more specially graced than others. Places where one feels… God, I suppose. I have never been able to feel the presence of God inside a church. Rather, I feel closed in there, op-pressed, as I do in many buildings. But there are places of unusual beauty and peace and… holiness. They are rare, though. I did not have a valley like yours when I was growing up, or a waterfall or pool or cottage. And I did not find many of those places with the regiment, though there were some. I learned to—to…"

"To what?" He bent his head closer to hers. He had often talked with Lily in the past, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. They had always been comfortable with each other despite the differences in their gender and stations. He had felt that he knew her well. But he had never asked her about her private world, only observed it. There were depths to her character that were still unknown to him. There was great beauty there, he suspected, and wisdom too despite her youth and lack of formal education. There was nothing shallow about his Lily.

"I do not know how to say it," she said. "I learned to be still and to stop doing and listening and even thinking. I learned to be. I learned that almost any place can be one of those special places if I allowed it to be. Perhaps I learned to find the place within myself."

He gazed down at her—pretty, dainty Lily in her new primrose dress and pelisse and straw bonnet. The serenity he had always observed in her had an explanation, then. She had discovered in her short, difficult life what not many people discovered in a whole lifetime, he suspected. He had not progressed as far himself though he knew the value of solitude and silence. He wondered if Lily's ability to find a place within, simply to be, as she had put it, had helped her endure her ordeal in Spain. But he would not ask her about that. He could not even bear to think about it.

They had reached the valley and walked up the path toward the cottage and the pool at the base of the waterfall. Everyone else had already disappeared up the hill and in among the trees. They stopped by unspoken assent when they were a short distance away and feasted their eyes on the beauty of the scene and their ears on the soothing sound of rushing water.

"Ah, yes," she said at last with a sigh, "this is one of those places. I can understand why you come here."

He had noticed that she had not called him by any name since her return even though he had reminded her that she was his wife and might use his given name. He longed to hear it on her lips again. He could remember how it had sounded like the most intimate endearment on their wedding night. But he could not, would not press the point with her. He must give her time.

"Come and see the cottage," he said. It occurred to him suddenly with some surprise that he had never come here with Lauren, or not at least since they were children.

There were just two rooms, both cozily furnished and both possessing fireplaces with logs piled beside them in readiness for a chilly day—or night. He occasionally spent a night here. He had done it sometimes during the past year or so, when he had been remembering his life with the Ninety-fifth and his years in the Peninsula and had been restless with a nameless yearning.

No, not nameless. He had yearned here for Lily, whom he had grown gradually to love during the years he had known her, though that love had bloomed into sexual passion only a short time before its final glorious flowering the night before he believed she'd died.

He had tried not to think of Lily at Newbury. There he had tried to think only of his new life, the life of duty for which he had been raised and educated, the life that included Lauren. He had come to the cottage to do his remembering and his leftover mourning.

It was still strange to realize that Lily had not died. That she was here. Now.

She peered into the bedchamber, but it was the other room that appeared to fascinate her more. There were chairs, a table, books, paper, quill pens and ink—and a view directly over the pool and the waterfall. He liked to sit here, reading or writing. He also liked to sit and merely gaze. Perhaps it was what she called being.

"You read here," she said, picking up one of the books after taking off her bonnet and setting it down on one of the chairs. "You learn about other worlds and other minds. And you can go back and read them again and again."

"Yes," he said.

"And sometimes you write down your own thoughts," she said, running a finger along one of the quill pens. "And you can come back and read them and remember what you thought or how you felt about something."

"Yes." She sounded wistful, he noticed.

"It must be the most wonderful feeling in the whole world," she said, "to be able to read and write."

He took so much for granted, he realized. He had never really considered how privileged he was to have been educated. "Perhaps," he suggested, "you could learn, Lily."

"Perhaps," she agreed. "Though probably I am too old. I daresay I would not be an apt pupil. Papa always said learning to read was the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life. He never did find it easy." She set the book down and went to stand at the window, looking out.

He had not meant to ask her the question whose answer he dreaded to hear—certainly not yet. He did not feel strong enough to know. But somehow the time and the place seemed right and somehow the words just came spilling out.

"Lily," he asked her, "what did you suffer?"

He went to stand beside her, facing her profile. He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek. She looked so delicate, yet he knew her to be as tough in her own way as even the most hardened of veterans. But how badly had her toughness been tested? "Are you able to talk about it?"

She turned her head and her huge blue eyes gazed back into his. Curiously, they looked both wounded and calm. Whatever she had suffered had hurt her, perhaps permanently, but it had not broken her. Or so her eyes seemed to say.

"It was war," she said. "I saw sufferings far worse than my own. I saw maiming and torture and death. I have not been maimed. I did not die."

"Were you… tortured?"

She shook her head. "Beaten a few times," she said, "when I—when I did not please. But only with the hand. I was never really tortured."

He would have liked a certain Spanish partisan suddenly to materialize before him. He would have liked to break every bone in me man's body with his fists and then pluck him apart limb from limb with his bare hands. He had beaten Lily? Somehow it seemed almost as heinous a crime as the rape.

"Not tortured, then," he said. "Only beaten and… used."

"Yes." Her gaze lowered to his cravat.

It hurt to imagine another man using Lily. Not because it made her less desirable to him—he had already considered that possibility the night before and rejected it—but because she had been all innocence and light and goodness and someone had taken her as a slave and thrust darkness and bitterness into her very body with his lust. And perhaps hurt her irreparably.

How was he to know? Perhaps she did not know herself. Perhaps her calm acceptance of what had happened, her sensible explanation about its having been war, was merely a small bandage covering a large and gaping wound.

Perhaps in a way her manner of coping was not unlike Lauren's…

He lost his courage suddenly—or what little of it he had found with that first question. Had he asked, she would perhaps have told him the rest. All the atrocious details of what she had suffered and endured and survived. He did not want to know. He could not bear to know. Even though he realized that perhaps she needed to tell.

Ah, Lily, and you spoke of cowardice?

He stroked her cheek and her jaw with the backs of his fingers and then set them beneath her chin to lift it. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Lily," he said. Did she feel ashamed? But she had fully expected that he might divorce her for adultery. "You did no wrong. I was the one who did wrong. I am the one who should feel shame. I should have protected you better. I should have guessed that they would attack the center of the line. I should have realized that there was a chance you still lived. I should have moved heaven and earth to find you and ransom you."

"No!" Her eyes gazed calmly into his. "Sometimes it is easier to find fault and place the blame—even on oneself—than to accept the fact that war just does not make sense. It was war. That is all."

And yet she blamed herself, as had been apparent the night before last. She blamed herself for cowardice in not fighting for her virtue, in not dying with the French prisoners rather than submit. And he could not accept the excuse of war as absolution for his own guilt.

He had thought himself recovered from his wounds. She looked as if she had none. But perhaps in reality they were two wounded people who must somehow find pardon and peace and healing together.

But to do that they surely needed to have everything in the open between them. Yet he could not bear to know…

He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers. They were soft and warm and yielding. And her eyes, he saw when he drew back his head to look into them, were deep with yearning. He kissed her again, as lightly as before until he felt her lips cling to his own and press back against them—just as they had when he had drawn her beneath his blanket in his tent on their wedding night.

Ah, Lily. He had missed her. Even believing her dead, he had missed her. His life had been empty without her. There had been a void that nothing and no one had filled or would ever have filled. But she was back. Ah, she had come home to him. He set his arms about her and drew her against him. He parted his lips over hers.

And found himself fighting a wild thing, who clawed at him and pushed him away in panic, making mewing noises of distress. She whirled away from him across the room and set a chair between them. When he stared at her in shock, she was staring back, her eyes huge with terror. And then suddenly she shut them tightly, and when he would have spoken, she pressed her hands over her ears and continued with the noises. Shutting him out. Shutting herself in.

He turned to ice inside.

"Lily." He used the only voice he knew instinctively she would recognize and respond to—his officer's voice. "Lily, you are quite safe. My honor on it. You are safe"

She fell silent and after a few moments took her hands from her ears. She opened her eyes, though she did not look at him. They were huge and blank, the terror and everything else erased from them, he saw in some alarm.

"I am sorry," he told her. "My deepest apologies. I did not intend either to hurt or to frighten you. I will never do anything… physical to you against your will. I swear it. Please believe me."

"I am afraid," she said, her voice toneless. "So afraid."

"I know." All of his earlier questions had been answered more forcefully than if he had articulated them and she had answered them in words. She was maimed as surely as a soldier who had returned from the wars with missing limbs—more so. He was afraid too—mortally afraid he would never be able to atone. He took a deep breath and used his officer's voice again. "Look at me, Lily."

She looked. All the vibrant color she had gained from her escapade on the beach had fled from her face. She was pale and haggard again.

"Take a good look," he told her. "Whom do you see?"

"You," she said.

"And who am I?"

"Major Lord Newbury."

"Do you trust me, Lily?" he asked her.

She nodded. "With my life."

It was an answer that terrified him—he had betrayed her trust once with appalling, incalculable results—but he could not afford to show his own weakness at the moment. "I will not promise never to kiss you again," he said, "or never to do more than kiss you. But I will never do either without your full, free consent. Do you believe me?"

She nodded again. "Yes."

"Look about you," he commanded her. "Where are you?"

She looked. "In the cottage," she said. "At Newbury Abbey."

"And where is that, Lily?" he asked.

"In England."

"There is no war in England," he told her. "There is peace here. And this little portion of England is mine. You are safe here with me. Do you believe me?"

"Yes," she said.

"Let me see you smile again, then," he said.

Her smile was tremulous. But her terrible fear had gone, he could see, even if his own had not.

"I am sorry," she said.

"Don't be," he told her. He sighed. "We had better not try talking further today. I did not bring you here to upset you. I brought you here because I love this place and instinct told me that you would love it too. It is yours as well as mine, my dear. You are my wife. You must come here whenever you wish. You will always be safe here—even from me. I swear it. And you may be yourself here. You may be exactly the person you choose to be."

She nodded and reached for her bonnet. He watched her tie the ribbons beneath her chin and turn toward the door. He opened it for her and they stepped outside again to make their way down the valley in the direction of the hill path. He walked beside her, his hands clasped at his back. He was afraid to offer even his arm.

The wounds were far deeper than had been apparent, then. Would they ever heal? And was he capable of healing them? Here, where she did not belong, where she was unable to be the woman she had grown up to be, vibrant and spontaneous and free?

But he had no choice except to try to help her heal and cope with the present reality of her life. She was his wife. He had loved her deeply before he married her. He had loved her passionately for that one night of their marriage. He had loved her without ceasing since her apparent death.

And he had loved her again from the moment she had stepped into the nave of the church on his wedding day two mornings ago.

Chapter 11

Lily made her apologies to Aunt Theodora, Viscountess Sterne, and took all the blame upon herself for Miranda's wayward behavior. She did it publicly, at dinner, so that everyone would know that the fault had been hers. But Aunt Theodora merely flushed and assured Lily that the incident had really been nothing at all. Hal added hotly that indeed it had not been and his father, Sir Samuel Wollston, told him sharply to hold his tongue. Joseph, the marquess of that long place, sounding decidedly bored, muttered again about storms in teacups. Pauline giggled. And Elizabeth changed the subject.

Lily was left with the conviction that yet again she had done the wrong thing.

It was a feeling with which she became increasingly familiar over the coming days. After she had taken a new dress down to the kitchen one morning and insisted upon ironing it herself and had then helped a kitchen maid carry out an enormous basket of laundry to be pegged on the clothesline, she had been told very gently by her mother-in-law that servants were hired to perform such tasks so that ladies might busy themselves with more important work. But the important work involved a daily meeting with the housekeeper and a perusal of accounts that were written in a ledger Lily could not decipher. Soon enough the dowager countess resumed the task alone.

Ladies—and a few gentlemen—came to call at the abbey, and Lily had to face the ordeal of having them presented to her and of then having to make conversation with them while they all sipped tea. One afternoon Mr. Cannadine, who had accompanied his mother, spoke of the war with Neville and the Duke of Anburey and some other gentlemen, and Lily enthusiastically joined in the conversation. But after the visitors had left, Lauren drew her to one side and pointed out to her that it was not quite genteel for ladies to discuss such unpleasant subjects. Lily was not to blame, of course, Lauren had added hastily. Mr. Cannadine ought not to have introduced the subject when it was possible the gentlemen's conversation might be overheard by the ladies.

The calls had to be returned. It was common courtesy, the dowager explained, to acknowledge those who had shown such civility. But when the barouche was passing through the village one afternoon on its way to Lady Leigh's, Lily spied Mrs. Fundy and impulsively called to the coachman to stop. She asked Mrs. Fundy how she did, and how her husband and her children did. They were not rhetorical questions. She listened with interest to the answers and reached out her arms for the Fundy baby so that she could hug him and kiss him—even though Mrs. Fundy warned her that he needed his nappy changed and did not smell too sweet. But when the barouche was on its way again and Lily turned a brightly smiling face toward her mother-in-law, she found that she had incurred yet another gentle lecture. One might nod graciously to certain people, but it was quite unnecessary to engage them in conversation.

"Certain people," Lily understood, were those of the lower classes. Of her own class.

Lily escaped out of doors whenever she could. It was not very difficult to do, especially after the house guests had left Newbury. By the end of the week everyone except the Duke and Duchess of Anburey, their daughter, Wilma, Joseph, Elizabeth, and the Duke of Portfrey had returned to their own homes—and the others planned to leave for London within a few days. Lily usually succeeded in leaving the house and returning undetected—she had not forgotten that side door and the servants' stairs by which she had approached her room on the first day.

She explored the whole park—in sunshine and in rain. There was a great deal of the latter in the second half of the week, but adverse weather conditions never deterred Lily. She loved the beach best—though she developed the habit of approaching it with her head averted from the valley and the cottage. She loved also the cultivated lawns and gardens before the house, the dense woods that lay between them and the village and through which the winding driveway passed, and the hill behind the house with its carefully landscaped walk that formed roughly a horseshoe shape from just beyond the rock garden up over the hill to emerge in the rose arbor behind the stables. It was called the rhododendron walk.

She climbed it late one afternoon after returning from the tedious visit to Lady Leigh's. She had changed into her old dress and let down her hair, though the chilliness of the day forced her to wear a cloak and shoes. But the climb and the view from the top and the sense of solitude she acquired up there were well worth the discomfort of the weather. She could see the sea and the beach and the cove from where she stood. If she turned, she could see fields and common grazing land stretching away into the distance.

It was not hard, she thought, closing her eyes, to feel a certain sense of belonging. This was England, which her father had so loved, and it was her new home. If only, she thought wistfully, Neville merely owned one of the cottages in the lower village and went out fishing every day with the other men. If only…

But there was no point in if onlys. She looked about her for somewhere to sit so that she could relax and let the beauty of the scene seep into her bones and her soul. And then she spotted the perfect place. It was a good thing Miranda was no longer there to be under her bad influence, she thought ruefully as she climbed the tree, her dress hitched about her knees. A couple of minutes later she was perched on the branch that had looked so perfect from below. Her eyes had not deceived her. It was a broad and sturdy branch. She could wedge her back against the trunk and stretch out her legs and feel perfectly safe.

Now… If she could just let go of everything, even thought, and become a part of the beauty and peace of her surroundings. She drew several deep breaths, smelling leaves and bark and earth and the salt of the sea air. But the old skills would just not work for her this afternoon. She felt lonely. Neville had been very gentle with her since that dreadful scene at the cottage. Very gentle and courteous—and very remote. He seemed to go out of his way to avoid being alone with her. Perhaps he did not want to frighten her again.

He had misunderstood what had happened. He had thought she was afraid of him, afraid that he would force himself on her against her will. It had not been that at all. She had been afraid that there would be more than just the kiss, and she had been afraid to find out what it would be like. She had been afraid that the one sustaining dream of the last year and a half would be destroyed for all time and there would be nothing with which to replace it. What if it had proved no different with him than it had been with Manuel? What if it had left her feeling like a thing, an inanimate object, which had been used to bring him physical relief? She knew it would have been different. Memory told her so. And he had been warm and gentle and had smelled clean and musky. She had felt a surge of intense longing.

But what if it had turned out to be ugly?

There were birds singing, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Yet almost all of them were invisible among the branches of the trees—as perhaps she was. But she was not singing. She set her head back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes.

There had been another element to her fear, one she did not want to admit. She had been afraid that it would be ugly for him—that she would be ugly for him. She had been afraid that he would find her spoiled, contaminated. She had been with Manuel for seven months. By some miracle she had never conceived—maybe she was barren. But perhaps Neville would have remembered if she had allowed him inside her body that she had belonged, however unwillingly, to another man. And perhaps it would have made a difference. Perhaps despite himself he would have felt disgust.

She would have known. And she would have found the knowledge unbearable.

She would have found herself unbearable. She could remember after her release, during the long walk back to Lisbon, bathing in a stream and finding suddenly that she could not bring herself to climb out of the water or to stop scrubbing at herself with her folded chemise—scrubbing and scrubbing until she became hysterical. She had felt dirtier than she had ever felt, but she had been unable to wash away the dirt because it had been beneath her skin.

It had not happened again, but she had understood after she'd finally coaxed herself out of the water and lay shivering and frightened on the bank that perhaps she would never feel clean again. It was a secret fear she had learned to live with. But if he should ever come to share the feeling, she would no longer be able to do so.

She should have spoken her fears in the cottage, she thought. She should have told him exactly how she felt. She should have told him about Manuel, about her long trek to Lisbon, about her dreams, her fears, her nightmares—no, there was only one of those. She should have told him. But she had been unable to.

That, perhaps, had been the worst thing of all. How could they ever grow close again if they did not share everything that was themselves?

Lily, opening her eyes to gaze sightlessly out over the roof of the abbey to the sea in the distance, became aware suddenly of a slight movement to her left. Someone was coming up the path from the direction of the rock garden. Or rather someone was standing off there in the distance close to a tree trunk, scanning the path ahead with one hand shading his eyes. Or hers. It was impossible to tell who it was, but it was someone tallish, wearing a dark cloak. Perhaps it was Neville, come looking for her. Her heart leapt with gladness. Perhaps they could talk after all in a secluded place like this. And he would not care that she had climbed a tree. She waved an arm even as she realized that it was not he. There was something about the way the figure stood that was unfamiliar.

The man—or woman—disappeared. Or ducked out of sight. Embarrassed, perhaps, to see her perched in a tree branch? Or perhaps whoever it was had not seen her at all.

Lily was disappointed. Being alone was obviously not the best idea this afternoon. She would go back home, she decided as she climbed carefully back to the ground and made her way down the path toward the rock garden. Perhaps Elizabeth would care to take a stroll with her.

As she rounded a bend halfway down she walked almost headlong into the Duke of Portfrey, who was coming in the opposite direction—wearing a dark cloak.

"Oh," Lily said, "it was you."

"I was in the stables when you passed awhile ago," he told her, "and guessed you were on the rhododendron walk. I just now decided to come to meet you." He offered her his arm.

"That was kind of you," she said, taking it. But why had he stood there so furtively, searching for her, or for someone, and then doubled back only to come onward again and pretend that he was just now coming to meet her?

"Not at all," he said. "You were telling me about your mother some time ago, Lily, when we were interrupted."

They had been interrupted by Elizabeth, who had told him he was being too inquisitive.

"Yes, sir," Lily said.

"Tell me," he asked her. "Was she from Leicestershire too?"

"I believe so, sir," she said.

"And her maiden name?"

Lily had no idea and told him so. But the probing nature of his questions was making her uneasy.

"What did she look like?" he asked. "Like you?"

No. Her mother had been plump and round-faced and rosy-cheeked and dark-eyed. She had been tall—or so she had appeared to a child who was only seven when she died. She had had an ample and comfortable bosom on which to pillow one's head—though Lily did not add that detail to the description she gave the duke.

"How old are you exactly, Lily?" he asked.

"Twenty, sir."

"Ah." He was silent for a few moments. "Twenty. You do not look so old. What is your date of birth?"

"I am twenty years old, sir," she replied firmly, beginning to feel annoyed by the duke's persistent questions.

They had already passed through the rock garden and were approaching the fountain. He looked down at her. "I beg your pardon, Lily," he said. "I have been impertinent. Forgive me, please. It is just that you have reminded me of an old—oh, obsession, I suppose one might call it, from which I thought I had long recovered until you stepped into the nave of the village church."

She was puzzled by him. She was annoyed with him. And she was not sure whether she ought to be a little frightened of him.

"Forgive me." He stopped at the fountain, smiled at her, and raised her hand to his lips.

"Of course, sir," she said graciously, drawing her hand away and turning to run lightly up the steps to the terrace. She forgot that looking the way she did, she ought to have run around to the servants' entrance. But she was fortunate enough not to see anyone except the footman, Mr. Jones, who blushed and responded to her bright greeting with an embarrassed smirk.

The Duke of Portfrey had a handsome, elegant appearance and a pleasant smile, she thought. But it would be foolish indeed to stop being wary of the man.

***

The following day Neville went out early in the morning on estate business with his steward. It was not quite noon when he returned alone through the village. He decided to stop at the dower house to see how Lauren and Gwen did, though they called most days at the abbey. Lauren insisted on behaving just as if nothing untoward had happened. It might even be said that she had taken Lily under her wing. She sometimes even read and played the pianoforte for her. While it might seem to be a happy turn of events, it had Neville worried.

Gwendoline was alone in the morning room. She set down a book when Neville was shown in and raised her face for his kiss on the cheek. She did not smile at him. Gwen had not done much smiling lately.

"You have missed Lily by only a quarter of an hour," she told him. "She came here after walking on the beach. She returned to the abbey through the forest instead of going by the driveway. She is very unconventional."

"If that is meant as a criticism," he said, "stow it, Gwen. Lily has my full permission to be as unconventional as she pleases."

She looked assessingly at him. "Then she will never learn to fit in," she said. "It is unwise of you, Nev. But I will tell you something that annoys me more than I can say. In many ways I envy her. I have never waded in the sea water—not since we were children, anyway. I have never climbed that rock and tossed off my bonnet and kicked off my shoes. I have never just… walked off into the forest without taking the path."

They looked at each other gravely for a few moments and then exchanged rueful smiles.

"Don't hate her, Gwen," he said. "She had no intention whatsoever of causing anyone pain. And she is dreadfully lonely. I am not sure my support is enough for her. I need help."

She picked up some tatting from a table beside her and bent over it. "It was such a pleasant dream," she said. "You marrying Lauren and living at the abbey with her. Me here with Mama. All of us together as we always were before I—before I married Vernon. Now it is all spoiled. And Lauren is suffering so much that she will hardly confide even in me. Nev, we have always talked about everything."

"Where is she?" he asked.

"She went out a few minutes after Lily left," she said. "She said she needed air and exercise, but she did not want me to go with her. I wish she would not insist upon making Lily a—a project. She needs to prove something—that she can rise above adversity, that she can refuse to bear a grudge, that she can continue to be the perfect lady, as she has always been. If only she would—"

"Hurl things at my head and hate Lily?" he suggested when she hesitated.

"At least," she said, "it would be healthy, Nev. Or if she would saturate a few towels with bitter tears. She has even spoken of moving back to the abbey so that she can always be available to Lily, to help her cope with her new life."

"No," he said firmly.

"No," she agreed. "I will develop leprosy or something else deadly so that she will have to remain here to nurse me."

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.

Chapter 12

The 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.

***

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?"

"My father was a manager," he said. "He liked to organize the lives of all those he loved. He did it because he loved us, of course. He had our lives planned out for us—Gwen's and Lauren's and mine. I rebelled. I wanted my own life. I wanted to make my own choices. Sometimes I was downright spiteful about it. My father opposed my purchasing a commission, but when he finally relented and tried to choose a prestigious cavalry regiment for me, I insisted upon a foot regiment, which he thought beneath the dignity of his son. I loved him, Lily. I would in time have grown past the age of rebellion and have been close to him, I believe. But he died before I had the chance to tell him any of the things he deserved to be told."

"He knew." She hugged her knees. "If he loved you as well as you say he did, then he understood too. He had lived long enough to know about the various stages of life. And I believe that for many people rebellion during youth is normal. You must not blame yourself. You never did anything to disgrace him. I am sure he must have been proud of you."

"And what makes you, at the advanced age of twenty, so wise?" he asked her, a smile on his lips and in his eyes.

"I have seen and listened to many people in those twenty years," she said. "Many different types of people. Everyone is unique, but I have discovered that there are common traits of humanity too."

"I wish I had known your mother," he said. "She was one of the indomitable women who follow the drum even after they have children. It is my good fortune, of course, that she did and that your father was so devoted to you that he kept you with him even after she was gone. They produced a very special daughter."

"Because they were very special people," she said. "I wish I had known Mama better too. I remember her, but more as a sensation than as a person. Endless comfort and security and acceptance and love. I was very fortunate to have her even as long as I did, and to have had Papa. You were fortunate to have had such a father too—one who cared even enough to let you go. He did that for you, you know. He purchased your commission and even allowed you to choose a regiment he disapproved of. I am glad for my sake that he did."

They smiled at each other.

They talked for all of an hour while the fire burned down, was rebuilt once, and burned down again. They talked without any deliberate choice of topic, a comfort and ease between them that had not been there during the past week. It was quite like old times.

Eventually their chatter gave place to longer silences, companionable at first, but inevitably more and more charged with something else. Lily was fully aware of the changing atmosphere, but she allowed it to be. Tonight she had chosen to put fear behind her, to relinquish her personal will to the unfolding pattern of her life. She allowed to be what would be.

"Lily," he said finally, still apparently relaxed in his chair, "I want to make love to you. Do you want it too?" he asked her.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Here?" he said. "On the bed in the next room? In this cottage? To erase the memory of what happened the last time we were here?"

"It is why we are here, is it not?" she answered. "To weave ourselves into the magic, to be simply ourselves again, to be together despite all that has happened and is happening. Together as we have been outside in the pool and here by the fire. And together in—in there." She nodded toward the bedroom.

"You must not be frightened," he told her. "Not at any moment. However far advanced in passion I might become, I will stop the instant you tell me to stop. Will you believe that?"

"Yes," she said. "I believe it. But I will not tell you to stop."

She knew that she would want to. Before he came inside her, she would want to stop him. Because once he was in her, she would know. She would know if her dreams of love had been as insubstantial as most dreams are. And she would know if after all he found himself repulsed by the knowledge that another man had known her since their wedding day. But she would not stop him. This—tonight, all of it—was meant to be, and she would let it be, however it turned out.

"Come, then, Lily."

He got to his feet and held out a hand for hers. She stood beside him while he banked the fire, and then took his hand again to go into the bedchamber.

Chapter 13

They undressed without awkwardness or embarrassment, perhaps because they had bathed naked together just an hour or so before. He set his hands on her shoulders and held her away from him before drawing her close. She was small but exquisitely formed. His eyes focused, though, on the purplish, puckered scar on the upper side of her left breast. He traced it lightly with his fingertips and then lowered his head to touch it with his mouth.

"I was this close to losing you forever, Lily?" he said while she ran one hand lightly over the scar that almost circled his left shoulder—the relic of the saber wound that had very nearly hacked off his arm at Talavera.

"Yes," she said, and when he lifted his head she traced the line of his facial scar with one forefinger. "War is cruel. But we both survived it."

He kissed her, merely touching his lips to hers while his hands rested on either side of her small waist, holding her a little away from his own body. She looked and felt, he thought, like a sweet innocent. He could almost imagine that it was her first time even though memory of their wedding night was strong in him. And he thought quite deliberately of the Spaniard, the partisan without a name—a name he did not want to know, though she might at some time in the future need to talk about him, and he would force himself to listen. He thought about the man and what he had done to Lily over and over again for seven months. He did not want to suppress the knowledge that she had been forced to be another man's mistress.

"It matters, does it not?" She was looking into his eyes. "That there has been someone else?"

"It matters," he said, "because it happened to you, Lily. Because you suffered it all while I was recuperating in hospital and then was here, beginning a new life or, rather, resuming the old one. It matters because you were totally blameless while I was not. It matters because I do not feel worthy of you."

She set the fingers of one hand lightly to his lips.

"The past is unchangeable," she said. "It was war. This is the present, the only element of time we will ever have in which to create new memories. Better ones."

Ah, Lily. His beautiful, wise, innocent Lily, who could see life as something so incredibly simple that it was profound. He took her hand from his lips with his own, kissed her palm, and then kissed her mouth. He wanted to restore all her lovely innocence. He wanted to restore his honor.

"I am not going to hurt you," he told her. "I am not going to use you for my pleasure and give none in return. I am going to make love to you."

"Yes," she said. "Oh, don't be afraid. I know it. It is what you did the last time."

He brought her against him, slid one arm about her shoulders, the other about her waist, parted his lips over hers, and kissed her more deeply. It was hard to go slowly. The memories of the searing passion of his wedding night were suddenly very vivid—and he had had no woman since. But she set her arms about him, arched her body against his, as she had done on that night, and opened her mouth. He pressed his tongue inside.

"It will be all right," he murmured to her awhile later, forcing his mouth away from hers and feathering kisses at her temples, along her jaw, on her chin. "It is going to be all right."

"Yes," she whispered. "Oh, yes. It is all right."

He was as fearful as she—if she was fearful. He had to make things right for her. And he would make them right. He had heard from Captain Harris by the afternoon post and would surely hear from everyone else soon. Harris had given the answers he had fully expected. The Reverend Parker-Rowe's papers had been abandoned with his body in that Portuguese pass.

He knew what the other answers would be too—what they must be.

"Come and lie down," he whispered to Lily.

He lay on the bed with her, on his side, his head propped on one hand. She gazed back at him without apparent fear. Her eyes were dreamy with desire.

"I want to come on top of you," he said. "It is how I can love you most deeply. But if my weight will make you feel trapped, if you would like it better, I will take you on top. Tell me what you want."

She turned onto her back and lifted one arm. "Come," she said. "I will not feel trapped. I am not afraid. I never was afraid of you, only of myself. I should have explained, told you that. I have always trusted you."

He knelt between her thighs, which she spread as he came over her, but he did not immediately either mount her or lower his weight onto her. He hooked her legs about his own and loved her body slowly with his hands and his mouth, leaning over her but not yet touching his body to hers. She was alive, he thought, his body exulting over her as if the reality of that fact had only just come home to him. She was warm and soft and alive, and she was on the bed with him in the valley cottage, where he had lain many times during the past year, dreaming of her, mourning her.

She was his wife and his love. She was alive.

And ready for love. He slid his hand down over the mound of dark-blond hair at the apex of her thighs. His fingers found her core and caressed her there until he could feel the heat and the slippery wetness of her desire.

"Look at me, Lily," he said, suppressing the urge simply to mount her. Even now he would not take her compliance for granted—he dared not. And she was lying very still.

She opened eyes heavy with unmistakable passion and gazed upward into his face.

"Look at me," he told her again. "I am your husband. I am going to come inside and love you and let you love me. I am not going to use you or hurt you or degrade you."

"I know," she murmured. "I know who you are."

He positioned himself carefully and pressed inward while she watched his face, unflinching. He felt her muscles clench about him and fought for control—she was soft and hot and wet. She searched his eyes with her own, but then they drifted closed and her head tipped back against the pillows and her lips parted. She was experiencing, he could not fail to see with mingled relief and desire, the beginnings of ecstasy.

It was very hard for a man to love unselfishly when desire hummed through his veins and hammered against his temples and was an agony in his groin.

He was still kneeling between her thighs, but he brought his weight down onto her now, careful to take some of it on his forearms. And he began at last to move in her, aroused by her stillness, which was nonetheless not passive, by the small, exquisite body that was unmistakably Lily's, by memory of the last time they had been together, by his long abstinence, by her return from the dead, by the steady squeaking of bedsprings that were noisy even for a single sleeper, by the sighs of pleasure that escaped her with the rhythm of thrust and withdrawal that he held steady for as long as he could.

Lily, he thought as all sensation, all awareness became focused on the exquisite pain of his desire. "Lily," he murmured. "My love. Ah, my love, my love."

She had stopped sighing. Her body had gone slack and he knew that she had moved into the world of release ahead of him with quiet joy rather than with any sudden bursting of passion. He could not have asked for a more precious reward for his patience. She was as far from fear as it was possible to be.

"Beloved." It was a mere whisper of sound. The endearment she had used on their wedding night.

His own climax came quickly. He bore her downward with all his weight as he pressed hard and deep and allowed the blessed release of all his need, all his pain, all his love into her.

It was a moment of extraordinary oneness.

Everything was going to be all right, he thought as he began to emerge into full awareness again a minute or two later. Everything. They were together and they were one. There were some problems—some minor problems that they would solve together over time. There was nothing they could not do together. All was well.

"I am sorry," he murmured, realizing how heavily he was lying on her. He lifted himself away from her, sliding slowly free of her body as he did so, and lay beside her, still warm and breathless and sweaty. He wriggled one arm beneath her neck and turned his head to look at her. But he had only one glimpse before the candle guttered and finally went out. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful.

"Thank you," she said, and she turned onto her side to curl against him as one of her hands slid up his damp chest and came to rest near his shoulder.

He felt the pain of tears in his throat. It felt like forgiveness. Like absolution.

The air was cool on his damp body. He hooked the blankets with one foot and drew them up about both of them. "Better?" he asked. He chuckled softly. "And thanks are scarcely necessary unless they are intended as a compliment. In which case I should add my thanks to yours. Thank you, Lily."

She sighed once and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

All was going to be well. He gathered her closer, rubbed his face against her hair, breathing in its fragrance, and shifted into a more comfortable position. If only he could see Lauren as happy. Surely she must be in time. She had so much to offer the right man. And Gwen—her happiness had been cut so short.

But sometimes, he thought sleepily, one could surely be pardoned for indulging in selfish happiness. He felt the deepest sympathy for both his sister and his cousin and former betrothed. But for now, for tonight, he felt so totally happy for himself, for Lily, for them, that it was difficult to spare a thought for anyone else.

He slept.

***

When Lily awoke, it was to a feeling of yearning so intense that it was painful. There were the first suggestions of dawn beyond the window. She was inside the picturesque little thatched cottage by the pool beneath the waterfall—she could imagine the scene as it appeared when one came down into the valley on the way to the beach. She was there now with Neville, her husband—his arm was slack about her, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He had made love to her and it had been wonderful beyond imagining. She had felt cleansed from the inside out. And he had not felt disgust—she would have known it if he had.

The yearning was to make this night somehow permanent. If only they could live here together, just the two of them, for the rest of their lives. If only they could forget Newbury Abbey, his responsibilities as the Earl of Kilbourne, her captivity, his family, Lauren. If only they could stay like this forever.

It was without a doubt the happiest night of her life.

But though she had always been a dreamer, she had never confused dreams with reality. Dreams gave one moments of happiness and the strength with which to deal with reality. And sometimes, when dream and reality touched and became one for a brief moment in time, as they had done this night, they were to be accepted as a precious gift, to be lived to the full, and then to be released. Trying to grasp hold of them and retain them would be to destroy them.

The night would be over, and they would return to Newbury Abbey. She would continue to feel—and to be—inadequate, inferior, out of place, and out of her depth. And he, being a gentleman, would continue to make the best of the situation. He would continue to see Lauren almost every day and would continue, perhaps unconsciously, to compare the woman who was his wife with the woman who ought to have been his wife.

Could she draw lasting strength from this dream-come-true? Lily wondered. He could not possibly love someone so unsuited to his station in life despite his endearments while he had been making love to her. But he was not averse to her either. He was not repulsed by her. He had wanted her—she had felt it in the growing tension between them as they had sat at the fireside. And he had enjoyed their lovemaking. She had enjoyed it too. All her worst fears—that the act itself would always disgust her, no matter who the lover—had been put to rest. The lover made all the difference to the act. And she loved him.

Perhaps, she thought, something had been gained from this night. They had grown comfortable together, both physically and emotionally. They had talked as friends. They had come together as lovers. She was not so naive as to believe that all their problems were now solved and that they could proceed to live happily ever after. Far from it. But perhaps an impossibility had become just a little more possible tonight.

"I always love waking up here," he said, his voice low against her ear. "I listen to the waterfall and see the edge of the thatch on the roof through the window and smell the vegetation. And I can imagine that the world is very far away."

"Do you sometimes wish it were?" she asked him.

"Frequently." He moved her hair back from her face with one finger and settled it behind her shoulder. "But not forever. Escape is a wonderful thing as long as one can go back again."

He did not, then, feel the yearning to make this night last forever?

He kissed her—softly, lazily. And she kissed him back, feeling the warm, relaxed firmness of his man's body with the soft curves of her own, feeling desire surging through her again like new blood. She could feel the gradual tightening in her breasts and the hardening of her nipples, the aching in her womb and along her inner thighs, the throbbing in the passage between. And she could feel him grow and harden against her abdomen.

They did nothing but kiss for several minutes with softly parted lips. But warmth became heat between them and they were ready without the need for more foreplay.

"Come on top of me," he said, "and take your pleasure as you wish, Lily."

What an unbelievable luxury it was, she thought, to feel desire before a coupling, to know from the throbbing ache that there would be the wonder of completion. And to be invited to take her pleasure in her way—as if she mattered as much as he did. And she believed that with him it was true. He might not love her, but she mattered to him. If he was to couple with her and take pleasure of her, he would take care to give it too.

How very different two men could be—but she did not choose to dwell upon comparisons.

They had done it this way on their wedding night, the second time, she remembered, though he had lifted her over him then and positioned her and held her firm while he took her, her body heavy on his. She had been passive, quite without knowledge. They had had to be very quiet because their tent had been set only a little apart from where a whole company of men slept. She had been sore from the first time and it had hurt and felt wonderful all at the same time.

She came astride him after he had kicked back the blankets and raised his knees to set his feet flat on the bed. She kneeled over him, hugging his sides with her knees while she took hold of him in one hand and placed him at her entrance. She spread her hands on his chest, closed her eyes, and lowered herself onto him.

There could not possibly be a more delightful sensation in the world, she thought, feeling his rigid length stretching her deep, clenching inner muscles about him—this voluntary joining of bodies in preparation for the act's beginning. Unless it was the final moment, when everything dissolved into fulfillment and peace. Or perhaps the act itself was the most beautiful part—the pounding rhythm, the ache spiraling gradually upward through her womb, into her breasts, into every nerve ending in her body, the assurance that this man, this lover, this husband would take her to its end. She opened her eyes and looked down into his.

"This feels so very good," she told him.

"Yes," he agreed, "it does."

It had never occurred to her until he had suggested it that it might be possible to be less than passive in the sexual act. She had always lain very still—in wonder and enjoyment during that first night and this last, in simple endurance for those seven months. She had never thought of the possibility of being a lover—only of being the loved or the used. But she could take her pleasure as she wished, he had told her. And true to his word—though she knew enough now about men to realize that it must be difficult for him—he was lying quite still beneath her, though he was hard and hot inside her.

How did she wish to take it? She braced her hands on his chest, lifted herself almost off him, and brought herself down again. It was possible, she discovered as she repeated the move over and over again, to set the rhythm she had always thought a man's exclusive preserve and to find it intensely exciting.

"Ah, yes," he said, his voice husky, his hands coming to her hips and grasping her lightly there, "ride me, then, Lily. Ride me hard."

It was a startling, erotic comparison. She rode him hard and harder, her eyes squeezed shut to concentrate all the sensation inside her and inside him, inside their joined selves—there. She became aware of sound as much as of feeling—their labored breathing, the wet suck and pull of her ride, the squeaking of the bedsprings. And of smell—soap and cologne and a log-dead wood fire and the musk of sex.

But then everything was focused inward on the one spot deep within where she had resisted the deep descent time and time again, tensing against it even as she rode hard onto it, tensing and tensing until fear threatened her concentration.

"Trust it, Lily. Trust me," his voice said. "I will not fail you again."

She always had, always would trust him. And he never had failed her. Never.

But it took a deliberate effort of faith to open, to ride down onto him again without any defense at all against pain, against falling, against death.

She opened—and opened and opened as he clamped his hands hard on her hips at last and held her still while he drove against and through and again through and into and beyond and…

She heard herself cry out.

She did not lose herself completely until after she felt him come deep into the secret place where only she had ever lived, and the two of them met and merged and became one self.

Seconds or minutes or hours passed before she was aware of him bringing her body down onto his and straightening her legs to rest on either side of his own. But she was too close to sleep to respond, except that she tightened her muscles for one moment and could feel him, still warm, still inside. If only they never had to be separate again.

She wondered fleetingly how he could have known, how he could have felt her fear at the very moment she became aware of it herself, how he could have known the very words to use to coax her past it, how he could have controlled his own release so as to let his seed flow into her at the exact moment when she opened to it—she had felt the heat of it deep inside at the moment she had cried out.

She listened to their heartbeats slow to normal and felt filled with well-being from her toes to the crown of her head. She would have drifted completely off to sleep if the air had not felt chilly against her back and her legs. But it also felt good, as did the warmth of his body against her front. Both made her feel alive and tingling with the strangely opposite sensations of exhaustion and energy.

"We can sleep," he said, his fingers playing through her tangled hair and massaging her scalp, "or we can swim. Which will it be?"

They could sleep just like this, all twined together and still joined. He would pull up the blankets again and they would be cocooned in warmth. She was deliciously relaxed and sleepy. Or they could go outside in the chilly dawn and jump into the even chillier water of the pool.

She grimaced. "Is that supposed to be a choice?" she asked without opening her eyes. But she grinned suddenly. "The swim, of course. Did you need to ask?"

"Not really," he assured her, chuckling and rolling with her so that they became disengaged and disentangled. "You would not be Lily if you did not prefer a frigid bath to a civilized sleep. The last one in is a brazen coward."

She could not risk incurring that opprobrious label by stopping to grab any clothes. She had the advantage of being closer to the door of the bedchamber. He had the advantage of longer legs. She had the advantage of thoughtlessness. He stopped a moment to grab up their towels. Even so he arrived on the fern-draped bank of the pool a full second ahead of her. But he paused to gloat. They hit the water at the same moment—or so they finally agreed to agree after they had surfaced gasping from the shock of the cold water and had argued the matter, breathless and with chattering teeth.

They swam and they frolicked, alternately sputtering and laughing, for perhaps fifteen minutes before the unrelenting chill of the water and the very definite arrival of day drove them regretfully out again to dry themselves off briskly and to rash for the cottage, where they dressed hastily.

It was the end, Lily realized, of a night when dream and reality had touched and merged. Those two opposites were about to separate again. The night was over and the day must take her and Neville back to Newbury Abbey, where they could not meet as equals in anything at all. And that had been the magic of the night, she understood in a moment of insight. They had been equals through this night, neither of them the other's superior or inferior. They had been equal as lovers. But two persons could not live on love to the exclusion of all else. And there was nothing else in which there was any equality between them. She was by far the inferior in every single regard at Newbury Abbey.

"Would you like to stay here and sleep while I go back to the house?" he asked her when they were both dressed. "You did not have many hours of rest, did you?"

It was tempting. But she knew that she could not bear to watch the dream walk away from her. She must walk away from it. Only in that way could she hope to gain any sort of control over reality.

She shook her head and smiled. "It is time to go home," she said, using the word home deliberately though Newbury Abbey did not feel as she had always imagined a home must feel.

"Yes." She did not believe she imagined the look of sadness in his eyes. He felt it too, then—the impossibility that one night of passion had tried to tease them into believing was perhaps possible after all.

He held her hand until they had climbed out of the valley. But though she was unaware of the exact moment when he released it, Lily noticed as they walked side by side up the lawn toward the stables that they were no longer touching. Neither were they talking.

They were going back home.

Chapter 14

Lauren had been having trouble sleeping since her ruined wedding day. And eating. And giving the appearance of being patient and cheerful and loving and dutiful. She had never in her life thought of ending it all. But there were moments during the days following that most dreadful one in her life when she had stood at one end of the church aisle and Neville had stood at the other and Lily had stood between them—there were moments when she wished that her life would somehow end itself, that she would simply fall asleep and never wake up again.

There were far more moments when she wished it were Lily who would do the dying.

She had taken to getting up at dawn, sometimes to sit in the morning room reading for an hour or more without ever turning a page, sometimes to wander alone outdoors.

Looking for Lily.

She remembered the morning after the wedding, when Lily had been down on the beach and had then walked across the rocks to the lower village and returned home by the driveway, meeting Lauren and Gwen on the way. She knew that Lily often escaped from the house in order to be alone. Watching Lily, observing all her dreadful inadequacies, trying to deny all her beauty and natural charm, had become something of an obsession with Lauren.

She had never thought of herself as a vain woman. But why had Neville left her and then married Lily? What was it about herself that caused everyone to leave her or reject her? What was it about Lily that attracted everyone? All the men at the house were half in love with her. And even the women were softening toward her. Even Gwen…

Her wanderings took her in the direction of the beach on that particular morning, as they had done before without any success. The beach had never been her favorite part of the park. She had always preferred the cultivated beauty of the lawns and flower gardens and the rhododendron walk. The wildness of the beach and the sea had seemed too elemental, too frightening to her. They had always reminded her of how close to the edge of security her life had always been lived. She did not belong at Newbury Abbey by right of birth, after all. They could turn her off at any time. If she was not good…

She was partway down the hill when she heard the voices and laughter. At first she did not know exactly where they came from. But as she descended farther—more slowly and cautiously than before—she realized that they came from the pool at the foot of the waterfall. And then she saw them—Neville and Lily—bathing there. If her shocked eyes had not deceived her, she thought as she fled upward after the merest glimpse of them immersed in the water, they were both naked. They were laughing together like carefree children—or like lovers. She could still hear them, even though the sound of her own labored breathing almost drowned out the sound. And she could still see in her mind's eye the door of the cottage standing wide open, as if they had spent the night there.

They were husband and wife, she told herself as her panicked footsteps took her hurrying back along the wood path toward the main gates and the dower house. Of course they were lovers. And of course they had every right…

But Lauren realized something suddenly that froze her heart and almost froze her mind. She would never have been able to do that. She would never have been able to be—to be naked with him. And frolicking without any embarrassment. She would never have been able even to laugh with him like that—with all the carefreeness of two people whose happiness was enclosed in the moment spent together. They had laughed when they were children, of course, she and Gwen and Neville. They had surely laughed since then. But not like that.

She would not have been able to satisfy him in the way Lily was clearly doing.

It was a terrifying realization. The idea that she and Neville belonged together, that they were perfect for each other, that they loved each other, had been so much a part of the ordered conception of her world to which she had clung all her life that she was not sure she could live with any sanity if she had to relinquish the idea.

She would not relinquish it. She did love him. More than Lily did. Lily could love him in that raw, physical way, perhaps, but Lily could not read or write or talk with him on topics that mattered to him. She could not run the abbey for him or entertain his friends or perform the hundred and one duties of his countess. She could not make him proud of her. She could not know him through and through as someone who had grown up with him could do or know unerringly what to do to secure his comfort and happiness.

Lily could never be his soulmate.

But Lily was Neville's wife.

Lauren stopped abruptly on the path and drew her dark cloak tightly about herself for warmth. She was shivering despite her long walk.

It was not fair.

It was not right.

How she hated Lily. And how frightened she was of the violence of her own emotions. As a lady she had practiced restraint and kindness and courtesy all her life. If she was good, she had thought as a child, everyone would love her. If she was a perfect lady, she had thought as she grew older, everyone would accept her and depend upon her and love her.

Neville would depend upon her and love her. Finally she would truly belong.

But he had gone away and married Lily. Lily! The exact antithesis of what she, Lauren, had always thought would win him in the end.

She wished Lily was dead. She wished she was dead.

She wished she would die.

Lauren stood on the path for a long time, huddled inside her cloak, shivering with the unaccustomed vehemence of her own hatred.

***

Lily returned to the abbey buoyed by fresh hope. She was not naive enough to imagine that all her problems would magically evaporate, but she felt that she had the strength, and that Neville had the patience, to face and overcome them one at a time.

Dolly was in her dressing room waiting for her when she stepped into it. She looked her mistress over from head to toe and shook her head.

"You will catch your death yet, my lady," she scolded. "Your hair is wet. And your feet are bare. I do not know what I will tell his lordship when you catch a chill."

Lily laughed. "I have been with him, Dolly," she said.

"Oh, my," Dolly said, momentarily confounded. "Here, let me help you out of your dress, my lady." She was always slightly shocked when she observed Lily doing something that she thought of as a maid's preserve—like taking off or putting on a garment.

Lily chuckled again. "And his hair is wet too, Dolly." she said, "though I daresay his valet will not have the problem that you will have getting a comb through this bush. We were swimming."

"Swimming?" Dolly's eyes widened in horror. "At this time of day? In May! You and his lordship? I always thought he was—" She remembered to whom she was speaking and turned to pick up the morning gown she had set out for her mistress.

"Sensible?" Lily laughed once more. "He probably was, Dolly, until I came here to corrupt him. We have been swimming together in the pool—last night and again this morning. It was wonderful." She allowed Dolly to slip the dress over her head and turned obediently to have it buttoned up the back. "I believe I am going to swim every day of my life from now on. What do you think the dowager countess will say?"

Dolly met her eyes in the looking glass as Lily sat down to have her hair dressed and they dissolved into laughter.

Dolly thought of something else after she had picked up Lily's brush and considered where to start the daunting task of taming her hair. "Why is it that your underthings were not wet, my lady?" she asked.

But she understood the answer even as she spoke and blushed rosily. They both laughed merrily again.

"All I can say," Dolly said, brushing vigorously, "is that it is a very good thing no one came along to see the two of you."

They both snorted with glee.

Lily was determined to cling to the lightheartedness with which she had started the day. After breakfast, when she knew that the ladies as usual would proceed to the morning room to write letters and converse and sit at their embroidery, she went down to the kitchen and helped knead the bread and chop some vegetables while she joined happily in the conversation—the servants, she was glad to find, were becoming accustomed to her appearances and were losing their awkwardness with her. Indeed, the cook even spoke sharply to her after a while.

"Haven't you finished those carrots yet?" she asked briskly. "You have been doing too much talk—" And then she realized to whom she was talking, as did everyone else in the kitchen. Everyone froze.

"Oh, dear," Lily said, laughing. "You are quite right, Mrs. Lockhart. I shall not say another word until the carrots are all chopped."

She laughed gaily again after a whole minute of awkward silence had passed, broken only by the sound of her knife against the chopping board.

"At least," she said, "I do not have to fear that Mrs. Ailsham will sack me, do I?"

Everyone laughed, perhaps a little too heartily, but then relaxed again. Lily finished the carrots and sat with a cup of tea and the crisp, warm crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread before reluctantly going back upstairs. But she brightened again when her mother-in-law asked if she would like to join her in making a few calls in the village after luncheon and in delivering a couple of baskets to the lower village—one to an elderly man who had been indisposed, and one to a fisherman's wife who was in childbed.

But the delivery of the baskets, Lily discovered later while they were sitting in the parlor of the Misses Taylor, drinking the inevitable cup of tea, was to be done by proxy. The coachman was to carry them down the hill and take them to the relevant cottages.

"Oh, no," Lily protested, jumping to her feet. "I will take them."

"My dear Lady Kilbourne," Miss Amelia said, "what a very kind thought."

"But the hill is too steep for the carriage, Lady Kilbourne," Miss Taylor pointed out.

"Oh, I shall walk." Lily smiled dazzlingly. She had not been down to Lower Newbury since that morning when she had climbed across the rocks to it. She welcomed the chance to return there.

"Lily, my dear." The dowager countess smiled at her and shook her head. "It is quite unnecessary for you to go in person. It will not be expected."

"But I wish to go," Lily assured her.

And so after they had left the Misses Taylors' genteel cottage a few minutes later, the dowager proceeded to the vicarage while Lily tripped lightly down the steep hill, one large basket on her arm. The coachman, who had the other, had wanted to carry both, but she had insisted on taking her share of the load. And she would not allow him to walk a few paces behind her. She walked beside him and soon had him talking about his family—he had married one of the chambermaids the year before and they had an infant son.

Mrs. Gish, who had given birth to her seventh child the day before after a long and difficult labor, was attempting to keep her house and her young family in order with the assistance of an elderly neighbor. Lily soon had the main room swept out, the table cleared and wiped, a pile of dirty dishes washed and dried, and one infant knee cleansed of its bloody scrape and bandaged with a clean rag.

Elderly Mr. Howells, who was sitting outside his grandson's cottage, smoking a pipe and looking melancholy, was in dire need of a pair of ears willing to listen to his lengthy reminiscences about his days as a fisherman—and a smuggler. Oh, yes, he assured an interested Lily, they had their fair share of smuggling at Lower Newbury, they did. Why, he could remember…

"My lady," the coachman said eventually after a deferential clearing of his throat—he had been standing some distance away—"her ladyship has sent a servant from the vicarage…"

"Oh, goodness gracious me," Lily said, leaping to her feet. "She will be waiting to return to the abbey."

The dowager countess was indeed waiting—and had been for almost two hours. She was gracious about it in front of the vicar and his wife. Indeed she was gracious about it in the carriage on the way home too.

"Lily, my dear," she said, laying one gloved hand over her daughter-in-law's, "it is like having a breath of fresh air wafted over us to discover your concern for Neville's poorer tenants. And your smiles and your charm are making you friends wherever you go. We have all grown remarkably fond of you."

"But?" Lily said, turning her head away to look out through the window. "But I am an embarrassment to you all?"

"Oh, my dear." The dowager patted her hand. "No, not that. I daresay you have as much to teach us as we have to teach you. But we do have a great deal to teach you, Lily. You are Neville's wife, and he is clearly fond of you. I am glad of that, for I am fond of him, you know. But you are also his countess."

"And I am also the daughter of a common soldier," Lily said, some bitterness creeping into her voice. "I am also someone who knows nothing about life in England or in a settled home. And absolutely nothing at all about the life of a lady or of a countess."

"It is never too late to learn," her mother-in-law said briskly but not unkindly.

"While everyone watches my every move to find fault with me?" Lily asked. "Oh, but that is unfair, I know. Everyone has been kind. You have been kind. I will try. I really will. But I am not sure I can—give up myself."

"My dear Lily." The dowager sounded genuinely concerned. "No one expects you to give up yourself, as you put it."

"But the part of me that is myself wants to be in Lower Newbury mingling with the fisherfolk," Lily said. "That is where I feel comfortable. That is where I belong. Am I to learn to nod graciously to those people and not speak to them or show personal concern for them or hold their babies?"

"Lily." Her mother-in-law could seem to think of nothing more to say.

"I will try," Lily said again after a minute or two of silence. "I am not sure I can ever be the person you want me to be. I am not sure I want to stop being myself. And I cannot see how I can be both. But I promise I will try."

"That is all we can ask of you," the dowager said, patting her hand once more.

But Lily, as she raced upstairs to her own apartment after their return to the house, felt like a dismal, hopeless failure who would bring nothing but ridicule upon Neville if she continued as she was.

It had been a happy day for Lily—wondrously happy. With memories of last night and this morning fresh in both her mind and her body and the hope that perhaps he would come to her again tonight, she had lived the day the way she had wished to live it—just as he had told her she might—and she had been happy. But only because she had turned away from reality. The reality was that she was not one of the servants at the abbey—she was the countess. And she was not one of the fisherfolk—they were her husband's tenants. She had avoided the people with whom she ought to have spent the day if she were a good countess. She had made no real effort to learn to be the countess she was in name.

But she was incorrigible, it seemed. Instead of ringing for Dolly and changing into another dress and going down to tea to try somehow to make amends, Lily almost tore off her pretty sprigged muslin dress as soon as she had reached her dressing room, dragged on her old cotton, grabbed her old shawl, and scurried down the back stairs to the side door. She half ran down the lawn and slipped and slid down the hill, grabbing at giant ferns to steady herself. She did not even glance at the valley—she did not want to spoil the memories in her present state of agitation—but ran out onto the beach and along it, her face turned up to the sky, her arms stretched out to the sides so that she would feel the full resistance of the wind.

She grew calm again after a few minutes. She could adjust, she told herself. It would take effort, but she could do it if she tried. She had spent most of her life adjusting to constantly changing circumstances. She forced herself to think about the greatest adjustment of all she had had to make. She had learned docility and obedience—she had even learned the Spanish language—as means to survival. If she could do that, she could certainly learn to be a lady and a countess.

The tide was on its way out. The rocks that connected the beach with the cove of Lower Newbury were half exposed. Lily clambered up onto them. Not that she had any intention of going all the way to the village again even if she could, but she needed to use up more energy than a walk or run along the beach would require. And there was a greater sense of wildness and solitude on the rocks, with the sea to one side, an almost sheer cliff wall to the other. She stood still after a while and turned her head to gaze out to sea.

But as she did so, she heard something that was neither the ocean nor the wind nor the gulls. Something unidentifiable that nevertheless almost froze her in place while panic crawled up her spine. She looked sharply to either side of her, but there was nothing. No one. She could see a good distance in both directions.

But the feeling would not go away. What was it she had heard, the crunching of stones?

She looked up.

Everything happened within so few seconds that it would have been difficult afterward to give a clear account—even with a clear head. Lily's was far from clear. She saw someone standing at the top of the cliff above her—a figure in a dark cloak. And then the figure turned into a large rock, hurtling down upon her. She twisted away from it, in toward the cliff face, and it crashed onto the very spot where she had been standing—a huge boulder that would without any doubt at all have killed her.

She stood with her back pressed to the cliff face, her hands flat against it on either side of her, clawing for something to grip on to. And she stared at the rock that would have been her death, her heart hammering in her throat and her ears, robbing her of breath and of rationality.

It had been an accident, she told herself with her first coherent thought. The stone had become dislodged through the erosion of time—that was what she had heard—and had fallen. The rocks about her, she saw when she looked, were dotted with similar boulders that must at some time have fallen from above.

No, it was not an accident. The stone had been pushed—by someone in a dark cloak. By the Duke of Portfrey? That was ridiculous. By Lauren? Ridiculous! Of course there had not been anyone up there. In that fraction of time she had seen danger to herself in the falling stone and had translated it into the danger she had been imagining ever since that afternoon up on the rhododendron walk.

But there had been someone there!

Was he there now, standing above her, waiting to see if he had succeeded in killing her? Or she?

Why would anyone want to kill her?

Was the would-be killer even now coming down the hill path into the valley to circle around onto the rocks and see for himself if he had succeeded? Or she?

Lily was mindless with panic again. If she moved a muscle, she thought, she would disintegrate. But if she did not move, she might stand here forever. If she did not move, she could be in no way mistress of her own fate. Memories came flooding back of similar moments during that long, terrifying walk through Spain and Portugal. Several times she had almost lost all nerve, imagining partisans behind every rock, imagining them not believing her story.

She stepped away from the cliff face on shaky legs and drew a slow breath. She looked upward. There was no one there—of course. There was no one down on the beach either—at least not yet. She was tempted to make her way in the opposite direction and hope that the tide was out far enough that she could reach the village and the company of other people. But she would not run from her fear. She would never conquer it if she did that. She clambered carefully back over the rocks to the beach. There was no one there. There was no one in the valley either, or on the hillside.

There was no one at all, she told herself firmly as she climbed resolutely upward. When she reached the top, she forced herself to take the wood path a short distance until she thought she must be close to the spot, and then she made her way through the trees until she came to the open land that ended with the cliff edge. Yes, she was in roughly the right place, though she did not approach the edge to make sure. There was no one there and no sign that anyone had been there.

All she had seen was a rock.

She was satisfied with the explanation until she drew closer to the abbey. Panic returned as the security of its walls drew nearer. Perhaps, she thought, she would have rushed through the front doors, demanded to know where Neville was, and gone hurtling into the safety of his arms if she had not remembered how she was dressed. But she did remember and so she went around to the side entrance and climbed the back stairs to her room. She washed and changed with hands that gradually grew steady again.

There was a knock on the door and it opened halfway before Dolly's head appeared around it.

"Oh, you are here, my lady," she said. "His lordship has been looking for you. He is in the library, my lady."

"Thank you, Dolly."

Lily had to use all her willpower not to rush with unladylike haste. He was in the library, waiting for her. She could not reach him fast enough. More than anything in the world she wanted to feel his arms about her. She wanted to press her body to his and feel his warmth and his strength. She wanted to rest her head against his shoulder and hear the steady beating of his heart.

She wanted to climb right inside him.

Chapter 15

The afternoon's post had brought the rest of the replies Neville had awaited. But Lily had been nowhere to be found. She had returned from the village with his mother but had not come down for tea. He was not surprised after he had heard his mother's account of the afternoon. Being stranded at the vicarage for two hours had severely embarrassed her. He did not doubt that Lily had been gently scolded on the way home.

He would have found the thought of her lengthy absence in the lower village amusing if he had not been feeling so agitated. He had stayed in the drawing room for a scant half hour and had been pacing in the library ever since. It was impossible to settle to any task.

At last there was a tap on the door, it opened, and Lily came past the footman in a rush, it seemed, until she came to a sudden stop before him, flushed and smiling. He held out both hands and she set her own in them.

"Lily." He raised both hands to his lips and then leaned forward to kiss her lips. But he paused as he was lifting his head away and searched her eyes with his own. "What is the matter?"

She hesitated and her hands gripped his own more tightly. "Nothing," she said breathlessly. "It was just foolishness."

"More shadows?" he asked. He had hoped last night would have banished them forever. But he must not expect that it would have solved every problem.

She shook her head and smiled. "You wished to see me?"

"Yes. Come and sit down." He kept hold of one of her hands and led her to one of the leather chairs that flanked the fireplace. He took the other chair after she had seated herself. "Did my mother upset you? Is that it? Did she scold you?"

"Oh." She bit her lip. "No, not really. She meant to be kind. She believes I should make more of an effort to behave as the Countess of Kilbourne ought, and of course she is right. I kept her waiting for—oh, for a very long time. I suppose it did not occur to her that I could have walked home."

No, it would not have. "I would wager," he said, "that a couple of my tenants were quite delighted with you this afternoon. You have a gift for delighting people." Himself included.

She gazed at him but did not reply. He felt suddenly nervous and leaned back in his chair. He had not asked her here to discuss the afternoon's events. He just did not know how to broach what he had to say. He must just say it, he supposed.

"We will be leaving for London in the morning," he said. "Just you and I, Lily. I thought at first of going alone, but when I gave the matter more careful consideration, I realized it would be better to take you with me."

"To London?"

He nodded. "I need to procure a special license," he told her. "I could get it in London and bring it back here and we could marry in the village church. It could all be done within a week, I daresay. But it might cause confusion in minds that do not need to be confused."

"A special license." She was looking blankly at him.

"A marriage license. So that we can marry, Lily, without the delay of banns." He really was not explaining this very well at all, he thought uneasily.

"But we are married." Blankness was turning to puzzlement.

"Yes." His hands, he noticed, were gripping the arms of his chair. He relaxed them. "Yes, we are, Lily, in every way that matters. But the church and the state are very particular about certain really rather unimportant details. The Reverend Parker-Rowe died in that ambush, and his belongings were abandoned with his body. Captain Harris confirmed that fact in a letter I received yesterday. Today I have received answers to several other letters I wrote on the day of your arrival. Our marriage papers were lost, Lily, before they could be properly registered. Our marriage, it seems, does not exist in the eyes of either the church or the state. We must go through the ceremony again."

"We are not married?" Her blue eyes had widened and were staring, unblinking, back into his own.

"We are, Lily," he hastened to assure her. "But we must satisfy the powers-that-be by making it quite unquestionably legal. No one need know except us. We will go to London—perhaps for a week or two to do some shopping, to see some of the sights, even to take in some of the entertainments of the Season. And while we are there, we will marry by special license. I will not allow this to be an embarrassment to you. No one will know."

He desperately wanted to save her from the shock of feeling utterly alone and abandoned. He was very aware that she had no one but him. He did not want her to believe, even for a single moment, that he would seize upon this small loophole to wriggle out of his obligation to her.

"We are not married." There was nothing in her eyes that suggested she had listened to anything else. They looked dazed. Her face was pale.

"Lily," he said distinctly, "you must not fear. I have no intention of abandoning you. We are married. But there is a formality we must observe."

"I am Lily Doyle," she said. "I am still Lily Doyle."

He got to his feet then and closed the distance between them. He reached out a hand for hers. Foolish Lily. After last night how could she doubt for a moment? But he had given all the facts too abruptly. He had not prepared her. Deuce take it, he was a clumsy oaf.

Lily did not take his hand. But when she looked up into his eyes, he could see that the dazed look had gone from hers.

"We are not married," she said. "Oh, thank God."

"Thank God?" He felt as if his stomach had performed a somersault inside him.

"Oh, do you not see?" she asked him, and she gripped the arms of her chair and leaned toward him. "We never should have married, but I was in shock after Papa's death and frightened too, and you were being loyal to him and chivalrous to me. But it was a dreadful mistake on both our parts. Even if we could have spent the rest of our lives with the regiment it would have been a mistake. Even there the gap between an officer and a sergeant's daughter would have been a huge one. I could not easily have been an officer's wife and mixed with the other wives. But here." With one sweep of an arm she seemed to indicate the whole of Newbury Abbey and everyone who lived within its house and park. "Here the gap is quite insurmountable. It is an impossible one. I have dreamed of escape, just as you must have done. And now by some miracle it has been granted us. We are not married."

It had never, even for one moment, occurred to him that she might be glad to hear the truth. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a terror he had had no chance of bracing himself against. He had lost her once, forever he had thought. And then, by some glorious miracle, she had been restored to him. Was he to lose her again even more cruelly than before? Was she going to leave him? No, no, no, she did not understand. He went down on his haunches before her chair and possessed himself of both her hands.

"Lily," he said, "there are some things more important than church or state. There is honor, for example. I promised your dying father that I would marry you. At our wedding I vowed before you and before God and witnesses to love and to cherish and keep you until my death. I had your virginity that night. We were together again last night. Even if we never go through the ceremony that will make all legal, I will always consider myself your husband. You are my wife."

"No." There was no vestige of color in her face, except for her blue eyes intent on his. She shook her head. "No, I am not. Not if everyone else says it is not so. And not if it ought not to be so and if we do not wish it to be so."

"It ought not to be? I have been inside your body, Lily." He squeezed her hands until she winced. Though it was more than just that—far more. He had been… united with her. Last night they had become one.

She looked back directly into his eyes. Her lips moved stiffly when she spoke. "So has Manuel," she said. "But he is not my husband either."

He recoiled almost as if she had slapped him. Manuel. Neville shut his eyes tightly and fought a wave of dizziness and nausea. The man now had a name. And she was putting the two of them on the same footing—men who had possessed her but had no marital claim on her. Was there really no difference in her mind? Had last night been nothing to her except sex? Except the exorcism of some of her demons? He would not believe it.

"Lily," he said, "after last night you may be with child. Have you thought of that? You must marry me." But that was not the reason. Not practical details like that. She was his love. He was hers.

"I am barren, sir," she said, her voice quite flat. "Have you not wondered how I could have been with Manuel for seven months without conceiving? We must not marry. You must marry someone who can be the Countess of Kilbourne as well as your wife. You will be able to marry Lauren after all. She is the one for you, I think. She is right in every way."

He squeezed her hands again before getting to his feet and running the fingers of one hand through his hair. This was madness. He must be in the throes of some bizarre nightmare. "I love you, Lily," he told her, recognizing the frustrating inadequacy of words even as he spoke. "I thought you loved me. I thought that was what last night was all about. And our wedding night too."

She was staring up at him with set, pale face and eyes brimming with tears. "Love has nothing to do with it," she said. "Can you not seel That I could be your mistress but not your wife? Not your countess?" Before he could draw breath to protest his outrage, she spoke again, her voice low and toneless. "But I will not be your mistress."

Lord God!

"What would you do?" He was whispering, he realized. He cleared his throat. He could not believe he was actually asking these questions. "Where would you go?"

Her lips moved without sound for a moment, and he felt a glimmer of hope. She had no alternative but to stay with him. She had no one else, nowhere else. But he had reckoned without Lily's indomitable spirit. Her quiet, sometimes almost childlike demeanor were as illusory now as they had always been.

"I shall go to London," she said, "if you will be so good as to lend me the fare for the stagecoach. I believe Mrs. Harris might be willing to help me find employment. Oh, if only I could have returned to Lisbon in time to find my father's pack. There might have been enough money there… But no matter." She stopped talking for a few moments. "You must not worry about me. You have been kind and honorable and would continue to be kind if I would allow it. But you are not responsible for me."

He leaned one arm against the mantel and stared unseeing down into the empty fireplace. "Don't insult me, Lily," he said. "Don't accuse me of acting toward you only out of compassion and honor." He fought panic. "You will not marry me, then? You have hardened your heart? There is nothing I can say to persuade you?"

"No, sir," she said softly.

It was the crudest blow of all. He wondered if she had deliberately addressed him as if he were still an officer and she still a mere enlisted man's daughter. She had called him "sir."

"Lily." He was on the verge of tears. He closed his eyes and waited until he was sure he had control of his voice. "Lily, promise me that you will not run away. Promise me you will stay here at least for tonight and allow me to send you in my own carriage to someone who may indeed help you. I do not know who yet or how. I had not considered this possibility. Give me until tomorrow morning. Promise me? Please?"

He thought she was going to refuse. There was a lengthy silence. But the tremor in her voice when she spoke proclaimed the reason for it. She was as close to breaking down as he.

"Forgive me," she said at last. "I did not mean an insult. Ah, I did not mean to hurt you. Neville? I did not. But I must go. Surely you understand that. I cannot stay. I promise. I will wait until tomorrow."

***

Sir Samuel Wollston and Lady Mary had come the five miles to Newbury Abbey with their four sons in order to dine one more time with the family members who were planning to leave the following day. Lauren and Gwendoline had come from the dower house. The Duke and Duchess of Anburey, Joseph and Wilma, the dowager countess, and Elizabeth were with them in the drawing room when Neville entered and made Lily's excuses. She had a headache, he told them all.

"The poor dear," Aunt Mary said. "I am a martyr to the migraines myself and know how she must suffer."

"It is a dashed shame, Nev," Hal Wollston said. "I was looking forward to seeing Lily again. She is a good sport."

"I am sorry, Neville," Lauren told him. "Will you give her my best wishes for her recovery when you see her later?"

Neville bowed to her.

"She was very sensible not to come down if she has a headache," Elizabeth said.

The dowager was not quite so kind. She spoke in a quiet aside to Neville. "This is the sort of family event," she said, "at which it is important that your countess appear at your side, Neville. Are these headaches to become regular occurrences? I wonder. Lily does not strike me as the type of woman to suffer from nervous indispositions."

"She has a headache, Mama," he said firmly, "and is to be excused."

The truth could not be kept from them for long, of course. It might have been if Lily had fallen in with his plans as he had fully expected her to do. Indeed, his mind could still not quite grasp the reality of the fact that he was not married to Lily and was not going to be. That he had no claim on her. That she was leaving him. That he would not see her again after tomorrow.

Yet there had been last night…

But there was an evening to be lived through. At first he intended to live out to the end of it the charade he had begun with the announcement of Lily's illness. Everyone else appeared to be in a cheerful mood, perhaps because of the presence of several young people. Even young Derek Wollston, who was only fifteen years old, had been allowed to dine with the adults. But Neville changed his mind. There were going to be enough letters of explanation to write as it was. This evening offered the perfect opportunity to break the news to at least a number of those most nearly concerned.

And so when his mother gave the signal after the last cover had been removed from the table for the ladies to adjourn to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port, he spoke up.

"I beg that you will stay for a while, Mama," he said, raising his voice so that it could be heard the length of the table. "And all the ladies, please. I have something to say."

His mother sat down again with a smile and all eyes turned his way. He toyed for a moment with the one spoon left on the table before him. He had not planned what he would say. He had always considered rehearsed speeches an abomination. He raised his eyes and looked about at the various members of his family. Most were looking at him with polite interest—perhaps they expected a speech of farewell to those who were leaving. A few smiled. Joseph winked. Elizabeth looked at him alertly, as if she read something in his countenance that the others had not yet seen there.

"Lily does not have a headache," he said.

The silence took on a note of decided discomfort. Uncle Samuel cleared his throat. Aunt Sadie fingered her pearls.

"She discovered this afternoon," he said, "that she is not my wife. Not legally, at least."

The silence first became tense and then was lost as everyone, it appeared, tried to question him at once. Neville held up a hand and they all stopped as abruptly as they had started.

"I suspected that it might be so on the day she arrived here," he said, and he proceeded to give them the same explanation he had given Lily earlier. It was not enough that the marriage ceremony really had occurred and that a properly ordained minister had conducted it. It was not enough that he and Lily had made vows to each other and that one of the witnesses was still alive to attest to the fact. There were formalities to be observed before a marriage was valid in the eyes of church and state. And those formalities had not been completed in their case because the Reverend Parker-Rowe had died and the papers had been lost. One of the witnesses had died at Ciudad Rodrigo a month later.

"So Lily is not your wife," the Duke of Anburey said redundantly when Neville had finished speaking. "You never were married to her."

"I say!" Hal exclaimed, sounding dismayed.

"Lily is not the Countess of Kilbourne after all," Aunt Mary said, shaking her head and looking somewhat dazed. "I do not wonder that she has the migraines, the poor dear. You still have the title, Clara."

Most of those gathered about the table had something to add—except the countess, who stared at him in silence, and Joseph, who looked at him with knitted brows, and Lauren, who gazed expressionlessly down at the table.

"But, Neville." Elizabeth had leaned forward, and as often happened when she spoke, everyone stopped to listen. "You are surely intending to satisfy the proprieties by marrying Lily again, are you not?"

All eyes turned Neville's way. He tried to smile and failed miserably. "She will not have me," he said. "She has refused me and will not be moved."

" What ? " The countess spoke for the first time.

"I planned to leave for London with her tomorrow morning, Mama," he told her. "We would have married quietly there by special license and no one but the two of us would have been any the wiser. But she will not do it. She will not marry me."

Unexpectedly Elizabeth smiled as she sat back in her chair. "No, she would not," she said more to herself than to anyone else.

It was Gwendoline who vocalized one of the implications of what they had all heard. She clasped her hands to her bosom and her eyes lit up.

"Oh, but this is wonderful!" she exclaimed, smiling warmly at her brother. "You and Lauren can marry after all, Nev. You can set a new wedding date and we can begin new plans. A summer wedding will be lovelier than a spring wedding. You can carry roses, Lauren."

Neville's hand closed tightly about the spoon. He drew breath to reply, but Lauren spoke first, her voice breathless.

"No," she said. "No, Gwen. The past nine days cannot simply be erased as if they never were. Nothing can be the same as it was before." She raised her eyes and looked into his. "Can it, Neville?"

He did not know if she wished him to corroborate her words or if she was begging him to disagree with her. He could only give her honesty. He shook his head.

"The truth is," he said, "that I made vows to Lily in all good faith. I fully intended to honor them for a lifetime. Does it make any difference that they are not legally binding? Are they not morally binding? And would I wish them not to be? I consider Lily to be my wife. I believe I always will."

Lauren lowered her eyes again. It was impossible to know if she was satisfied or disappointed. One rarely did know with Lauren what her deepest feelings were. Dignity always came first with her. She was dignified now—and pale and beautiful. He felt an ache of deep affection for her. And a yearning to release her from the pain she surely must be feeling. But he was helpless to do anything.

"That is absurd, Neville," his mother said crisply. "Are you above the state? Above the church? If the church says you are not married, then of course you are not. And it is your duty to marry a lady suited to your station and able to give you heirs."

Lily was not a lady; she was not suited to his station; by her own admission, she was incapable of giving him heirs. But Lily was his wife.

"The whole thing will be a nine days' wonder, I daresay," the duke said. "The ton will be delighted by the story and will forget it as soon as some other sensation or scandal rears its head. Your mother is right, Neville—you must resume your former way of life as soon as possible. Marry someone of your own kind. I do not wish to be unkind to Lily, but—"

"Then do not be, Uncle Webster," Neville said quietly but so firmly that his uncle stopped midsentence and flushed. "If anyone has slurs to cast upon Lily, I beg to inform that person that I will defend her honor in any way I deem necessary—just as surely as if the whole world acknowledged her as my wife."

"Oh, I say," Richard Wollston said. "Bravo, Nev."

"Hold your tongue," his father instructed him sharply.

"Tempers are becoming frayed," Elizabeth said, and proceeded to bring up another pertinent point that no one else seemed to have considered—though it had tormented Neville ever since Lily had left him in the library earlier in the afternoon. "What is to become of Lily, Neville? What will she do? As I understand it, she has no family that she knows of in England."

"She wants to go to London to look for employment," he said. "I dread the thought. I hope she will agree to allow me to make a settlement on her and find her a decent home somewhere. But I am afraid she will not agree. She is a proud woman and a stubborn one, I believe."

Gwendoline's eyes were swimming in tears. "I am so ashamed," she said. "My first thought was for what this could mean for our happiness—Lauren's and Nev's and mine. I did not even wonder what would happen to Lily. I wish—oh yes, I do wish—that she had not come into our lives at all. But she has come and I have liked her despite myself. Now I feel dreadfully sorry for her. She will not simply run away, Nev?"

"She has promised not to," he assured her.

"Neville," Elizabeth said, "perhaps I can do something for Lily. I have connections in London and a great liking for her even if she did come along to dash the happiness of my poor Lauren. Will you allow me to talk with her?"

"I wish you would, Elizabeth," he said. "Perhaps you could persuade her to change her mind? To marry me after all?"

"Do nothing in haste, Neville," the duke advised. "You have been given a second chance to choose your countess wisely. You would be well advised to take time to make the decision with your considered judgment rather than with your raw emotions."

Elizabeth got to her feet. "Where is she?" she asked. "In her room?"

"I believe so," he said. One could never be sure with Lily, but that was where she had been when he came down for dinner. She had been curled up on a chair close to the window, gazing out. She had not turned her head to look at him or responded to any of his questions except to shrug her shoulders in a defensive rather than a careless gesture. She had changed, he had noticed, into her old cotton dress.

"I will go up to her now, then," Elizabeth said, "if you will all excuse me."

Forbes, Neville realized belatedly, was standing silently at the sideboard. But it did not matter. Such a truth as the fact that he and Lily were not married could not be kept from the servants anyway. They might as well learn the full story from the butler as be regaled piecemeal with a mixture of truth and rumor over the coming days.

"Perhaps," Neville said, getting to his feet too and pushing back his chair with the backs of his knees, "we should all adjourn to the drawing room. I have no wish to imbibe port for the next half hour or so."

Derek and his brother William, aged seventeen, looked almost comically disappointed. The wave of humor Neville felt in noticing it felt incongruous with his other feelings. But it served to remind him that somehow life went on through even the worst upheavals to which it was subjected.

He was going to find that pack of Doyle's for Lily, he thought suddenly, if it was humanly possible to do so. Whatever it had contained for Lily might well have disappeared, especially if it was money, but perhaps he could retrieve something. She must be quite without a memento of her father, he realized. He remembered some of the things she had said to him when he showed her the gallery. It must be dreadful to have lost all of one's family, to be unacquainted with any who remained, to have lost everything connected with one's parents.

That was what he would do for her. If the pack still existed somewhere in this world, he would find it—even if it took him the rest of his life. He would restore something of her father to her.

It felt soothing to know that there was something, however slight, that he could do.

"Nev." Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough, set a hand on his shoulder as they were all leaving the dining room. "You don't need drawing room chatter this evening, old chap. You need to get thoroughly foxed. Would you care for sympathetic company while you do it?"

Chapter 16

Lily was still sitting on the chair she had dragged close to the window, her legs curled up beneath her. She had got up only once since she had come hurrying upstairs from the library, pulled off with frantic haste the pretty new clothes she had so recently donned, and threw on the old cotton dress again instead. She had got up to drag a blanket from the bed and wrap it about herself. The evening had turned chilly, though she would not close the window. She continued to stare out into the darkness.

The soft tap on the door of her bedchamber did not disturb her. She simply ignored it. It would be him, and she could not look at him or speak to him. Her resolve might slip and she might cling to him—for the rest of her life. She would not allow that to happen. Love was not enough. She loved him—she adored him—to the depths of her soul, but it simply was not enough. She did not belong in his life. He did not belong in hers—though that thought was potentially frightening. She did not have a life. But she refused to be daunted by the yawning emptiness that lay beyond this final night at Newbury Abbey.

"Lily?" It was Elizabeth's voice. "May I come in, my dear? May I sit here beside you?"

Lily looked up. As usual Elizabeth was the epitome of understated elegance in a dark-green high-waisted gown, her blond hair dressed in a smoothly shining coiffure. She was the quintessential aristocrat, daughter of an earl, educated, accomplished, a woman of immaculate but easy manners. And she was asking to sit beside a sergeant's daughter—Lily Doyle? Well. Lily had always been proud of her father; she cherished fond memories of her mother; she had grown up liking and respecting herself. Her self-respect had faltered during those seven months when she had chosen survival over defiance, but it had recovered. There was nothing in herself or in her life and background of which she was ashamed.

She nodded and returned her gaze to the darkness of the outdoors.

Elizabeth drew a chair close to Lily's and seated herself. She took one of Lily's hands in both her own. They were warm. For the first time Lily realized that she was still cold despite the blanket and the fact that the evening air was not so very cold after all.

"How I honor you, Lily," Elizabeth said.

Lily looked at her in surprise.

"You have done what is right for both Neville and yourself," Elizabeth said. "But it was not easy to do. You have given up a great deal."

"No." Lily shook her head. "It is not difficult to give up Newbury Abbey and all this." She gestured about her with her free arm. "You do not understand. This is the sort of life to which you were born. I grew up in the train of an army."

"What I meant," Elizabeth said gently, "was that you have given up Neville. You love him." It was not a question.

"It is not enough," Lily said.

"No, it is not, my dear." Elizabeth agreed. They sat together in silence for a while before she spoke again. "Neville says that you wish to find employment."

"Yes," Lily said. "I do not know what I am qualified to do, but I am willing to work hard. I think perhaps Mrs. Harris, with whom I came to England from Lisbon, will help me find something if I ask her."

"I can offer you employment," Elizabeth said.

"You?" Lily stared at her.

Elizabeth smiled. "I am six-and-thirty years old, Lily," she said, "and long past the age of needing chaperones wherever I go. But I am a woman living alone and there are conventions to be observed. I am expected to have a companion in residence and in tow whenever I venture out without male escort. I had Cousin Harriet with me for five years, but she was provoking enough to marry a rector just four months ago and leave me companionless. I was delighted for her, of course—she is older than I and has always believed that a woman is not a complete person until she gives up her personhood in order to marry. And, really, Lily, she was a trial to me. Two women so different in character and temperament it would be difficult to find. I need a replacement. I need a companion. Will you be she? It would be a salaried position, of course."

Lily despised herself for the rush of gladness she felt. But it would not do.

"You are kind," she said. "But I am in no way equipped to offer you companionship. Consider my deficiencies—I cannot read or write; I cannot paint or play the pianoforte; I know nothing about the theater or music or—or anything. I am not of your world. If you found your cousin tiresome, you would soon find me impossible."

"Oh, Lily." Elizabeth smiled and squeezed Lily's hand, which she still held. "If you knew how dull life can be for a woman of ton, you would not so readily reject my offer. One is cabin'd, cribb'd, and confin'd at every turn, to borrow a phrase. One is subjected to insipid company, insipid entertainments, and insipid conversation, largely because one is a woman. You cannot know, perhaps, what a delight you have been to me in the past week and a half. You think you have nothing to offer by way of companionship because you do not know the things that I know. Well, I know them, my dear. I do not need to be told them by someone else. But I do not know the things you know. We could share worlds, Lily. We could entertain each other. Life with you in my home would be great fun, I daresay. And you have a lively, intelligent mind, even if you do not realize it—intelligence is such an important attribute. Do say you will come—as my friend. For convenience's sake you would be my employee since you will need something on which to live. But to all intents and purposes you would simply be my friend. What do you say?"

She would be an employee, Lily thought. But within the confines of her employment she would also be a sort of equal. Elizabeth did not believe they were of unequal mind or intelligence. She believed that Lily would have as much to offer a friendship as she did. Lily was not quite convinced, but the temptation to say yes was strong. Overwhelming, in fact, when the alternatives were so few.

"Perhaps for a short while, then," she said. "But if you find that I am not what you expect, then you must tell me so and I will leave. I will not be anyone's charity case."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "I would not bring anyone into my own home out of charity, Lily," she said. "I have far too great a regard for my own comfort. But I agree to your terms. And they will work both ways. If you find after a while that I am impossible to work for, then you must tell me so and I will help you find something else. Can you be ready to leave in the morning?"

"Sooner," Lily said fervently. "But I promised that I would stay tonight."

"And quite right too," Elizabeth said. "Neville is not happy with the turn of events, Lily. Not happy at all. You are not intending to leave behind all your new clothes by any chance, are you?"

"I must," Lily said. "They were bought for his wife. I am not his wife."

"But he would be dreadfully hurt if you did not take them with you." Elizabeth told her. "Sometimes pride can be selfish. Will you take them as a gift from him? It is not wrong, my dear. It is not greedy. It is the right thing to do. It would be cruel not to."

Lily bit her lip. But she nodded.

"Splendid!" Elizabeth got to her feet. "We will leave early. Try to sleep?" She bent and kissed Lily's cheek.

Lily nodded. "Thank you," she said. But she stopped Elizabeth before she reached the door. One troubling possibility had occurred to her. "Will the Duke of Portfrey travel with us?"

"No. Provoking man." Elizabeth laughed. "He left this afternoon. He is not going straight to London and may not be there for a few weeks. But he did not abandon me, you know—not that I have any claim on his company anyway. Webster and Sadie will be accompanying us in their own carriage—and Wilma, of course. And Joseph will be leaving at the same time as us, though I expect he will ride on ahead at a pace more suited to his youth and gender. Fortunate man!"

Lily nodded and felt enormous relief. The Duke of Portfrey had gone. He would not be in London for a while. But he had left this afternoon? Suddenly? After he had made his attempt on her life, perhaps? Had he assumed success? But she was horrified by the direction of her thoughts. There had been no man. And even if there had been, there was no proof he had been the Duke of Portfrey. It might as easily have been a woman anyway. But if it had been Lauren, then there would be no more stalking or attempts at creating accidents. Lauren would be free to secure Neville's affections again. In all probability there had been no one at all. That fallen rock really had been an accident.

She closed her eyes after Elizabeth had left and rested her head against the back of the chair. She thought about her wedding and her wedding night, about the dream of reunion that had kept her sane during her captivity, about the long, lonely, dangerous trek back to Lisbon and the fruitless search for him there and for someone to believe her story, about the long voyage to England and Newbury, about finding him in the church in the village about to marry someone else, about all the events of the past week and a half.

About last night.

Two tears escaped from beneath her eyelashes and ran unchecked down her cheeks to drip onto her dress.

And about this afternoon's disclosures in the library.

She had not yet fully faced the reality of a shattered dream. She dared not look into the future. It appeared brighter now, or at least more secure, than it had an hour ago, it was true. But it was to be a future lived without him. Without Neville.

There had always been Neville since she was fourteen, even though for four of those years he had been unattainable and for a year and a half he had been unreachable. But always there had been the dream of him. Dream and reality had touched last night—she had been quite aware even at the time that it was a mere touch that could not last. But she had not realized that so soon they would be completely severed. She had not realized that by tonight she would have reached the end of her dream.

Even though she still loved him and always would.

Even though he loved her.

The end of the impossible dream.

Well, she thought, opening her eyes and getting to her feet in order to prepare for bed, she would survive. That had always been the chief purpose in life of the people with whom she had grown up—simply to survive. She would do it. Perhaps somewhere in the future there was another dream waiting to be dreamed. She could not imagine it now, but she could hope.

She could dream about a dream. She smiled at the absurdity—and the sustaining hope—of the thought.

***

Neville did not get drunk. He sat in the library with the Marquess of Attingsborough and toyed with the temptation to seek temporary oblivion while he downed two brandies in quick succession, but he drank no more. Liquor would not cure what ailed him. It would only cloud his mind for what must be faced in the morning.

Lily was leaving him in the morning.

"I wish there were something to say, Nev," the marquess said, setting down his own half-empty glass—his first. "When I was at the church with you nine days ago, I thought there could be no worse disaster than what happened. But there was, damn it. There was this."

"Do you think wringing her neck would help?" Neville chuckled, but the attempt at humor, black as it was, only made him feel worse. He rested his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

"She is a rare one," Joseph said. He chuckled inappropriately. "Who else but Lily would have the deuced nerve to refuse you? Especially when there seems to be nothing else for her. And more especially when she is devilish fond of you."

"Perhaps Elizabeth will persuade her to change her mind," Neville said hopefully. "What will I do if she fails? I promised Lily's father I would look after her. I made her vows. I—Well, all this has little to do with promises and vows. I—You would not understand, Joe."

"Being an inanimate block who has never rumbled into love and dreamed that he has found that one and only love he would never tumble out of again?" his cousin said ruefully. "Your feelings for her are pretty obvious, Nev, and look pretty enduring to me. I have envied you. We have all fallen a little under Lily's spell."

But Elizabeth stepped into the room at that moment, and they both scrambled to their feet. She looked significantly at their glasses but made no comment.

"Well?" Neville's hands had formed into tight fists at his sides.

"Lily will be coming to London with me in the morning, Neville," she said. "She has accepted employment with me. As my companion."

" What? " Neville could only stare at her incredulously.

The marquess cleared his throat and shuffled his feet awkwardly.

"It is what she has chosen," Elizabeth said calmly. "It will be a respectable position for her, Neville."

"Did you even try to persuade her to stay and marry me?" he asked her. But her expression gave him his answer without the need of words. All his pent-up anxieties exploded in anger. "You did not, did you? You had no intention of doing so. You deliberately misled me. Do you too want to take her out of the way, Elizabeth, so that the stage will be cleared here for a resumption of things as they were? Nothing can be as it was. Lily is my wife. I love her. Can no one understand that fact just because she is not a lady? She is lady enough for me. She is my lady. I am going to go up there now and—"

"No, Neville," she said quietly before he could take more than one purposeful step in the direction of the door. "No, my dear. It would be the wrong thing to do. Wrong for you. Wrong for Lily."

"And you know what is right for us?" Neville's eyes blazed at her. "You, Elizabeth? The spinster aunt? What do you know of love?"

"Watch it, Nev, old boy," Joseph said quietly.

Neville raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. "I am sorry," he said. "Oh, the devil. Forgive me, Elizabeth. I am so sorry."

"I would be worried," she said, quite unruffled, "if you did not react to all this with passion, Neville. But listen to me, please. This may very well prove to be the best thing that could have happened for both of you. You love her—I do not even need to ask if it is so. But you must admit that your marriage stood every chance of turning into a dismally unhappy one. Perhaps the next time you offer Lily marriage there will be more than just love and obligation to bring you together."

"The next time?" His eyebrows snapped together while the marquess strolled to one of the bookcases and examined the spines of the books on a level with his eyes.

"You were never the man to give up without a fight what you most wanted in life, Neville," she said. "And I seriously doubt there is anything you have wanted more than you want Lily. Are you really planning to give her up so easily?"

He gazed at her for several silent moments. His emotions were still raw. He could still not contemplate the prospect of Lily's leaving him on the morrow. He had not really considered the possibility of getting her back once she had left Newbury Abbey. Either she married him now, he had thought, or he would be forced to live all the rest of his life without her.

"When?"

"That is not for me to say," she told him, shaking her head. "Perhaps never. Certainly not within a month at the soonest."

"One month."

"Not one day sooner," she told him. "But we are to make an early start in the morning. I am going to bed. Good night, Neville. Good night, Joseph."

There was silence in the library after she had left, Neville staring at the door, Joseph continuing to peruse the books on the shelf without picking one up.

"It would be a foolish hope," Neville said eventually. "It would, Joe. Would it not?"

"Oh, devil take it." His cousin sighed audibly. "Who can predict female behavior, Nev? Not I, old chap. But I have always had the highest respect for Elizabeth."

"Promise me something," Neville said.

"Anything, Nev." The marquess turned from the bookcase and looked broodingly across the room at his cousin.

"Keep an eye on her," Neville said. "If she shows signs of being desperately unhappy—"

"The devil, Nev," the marquess said. "If she is unhappy? The point is, old chap, that she is free and that she will continue to make her own choices. But I will call on Elizabeth a few times. And I will ride beside her carriage all the way to London, which will be a considerable trial to my nerves since my father's carriage will be close by too and travel with my mother and Wilma is never a comfortable business. I'll see that Lily gets safe to London, though. My honor on it."

"Thank you."

"And who knows?" Joseph spoke cheerfully and crossed the room again to clap a friendly hand on Neville's shoulder. "Perhaps Elizabeth is right and Lily will see more clearly what she is missing once she is away from you. Elizabeth knows more about the workings of the female mind than I do. Are you going to get foxed or shall we call it a night and turn in?"

"I don't think I could get drunk if I tried, Joe," Neville told him. "But thanks for the thought."

"What are friends for?" the marquess asked him.

***

Neville went to bed buoyed with some faint hope. He even slept in snatches. But in the morning he could hear only the echo of Elizabeth's words perhaps never, and the sound of them drowned out hope.

They were all leaving together—Aunt Sadie and Uncle Webster with Wilma, Joe on horseback, Elizabeth with Lily. The terrace was crowded with people saying and hugging their farewells—even Gwen and Lauren had come up from the dower house for the purpose. Lily had her share of hugs, Neville noticed as he took his leave of everyone else; neither Lauren nor Gwen was dry-eyed after saying good-bye to her. She was wearing the pretty blue carriage dress that had recently been made for her—he had been very much afraid that she would refuse to take any of her new clothes.

He turned to her last, and he was aware of everyone else moving tactfully away, giving them a modicum of privacy. He took her gloved right hand in both of his and looked into her eyes. They were huge and calm and clear of the tears that were flowing free among the others.

He reached for something to say to her but could think of nothing. She stared mutely at him. He raised her hand to his lips and kept it there for several moments while he closed his eyes. But when he looked back into her face, there was still nothing to say. No, that was not right. There was everything in the world to say but no words with which to say any of it. And so he said nothing.

Until she did.

"Neville." There was almost no sound, but her lips unmistakably formed his name.

Ah, God! How he had longed to hear her say his name again. She had spoken it yesterday afternoon. She was saying it now. But he felt as if his heart had been pierced by a sharp dagger.

"Lily," he whispered, his head bent close to hers. "Stay. Change your mind. Stay with me. We can make it work."

But she was shaking her head slowly.

"We cannot," she said. "We cannot. Th-that night. I am glad there was that night."

"Lily—"

But she tore her hand from his grasp and hurried toward the open door of Elizabeth's carriage. He watched in wretched despair as a footman handed her inside.

She took her seat beside Elizabeth and stared blankly at the cushions of the seat opposite. The footman put up the steps and closed the door. The carriage jerked slightly on its springs and was in motion.

Neville swallowed once, twice. He fought panic, the urge to lunge forward, to tear open the door, to drag her out into his arms and refuse ever to let her go.

He raised a hand in farewell, but she did not look back.

Perhaps never. The words echoed and reechoed in his brain.

Ah, my love. Once dreams were shattered, there could be no assurance that they could ever be pieced together and dreamed again.

PART IV

The Education of a Lady

Chapter 17

"Amuse me, Lily," her new employer commanded her after the first hour of near silence and raw pain had passed, "and answer some questions. You must answer truthfully—that is the one cardinal rule of what-ifs."

Lily turned a determinedly smiling face to her. She still did not know how she could possibly be a competent companion to Elizabeth, but she would try her very best.

"If you had the freedom and the means to do any one thing in the world you wished to do," Elizabeth asked, "what would it be?"

Go back to Neville. But that would be a nonsensical answer. She had the freedom to go back. He had begged her to stay. But going back to him would mean going back to Newbury Abbey too and all it involved. Lily thought hard. But the answer to the question, she found eventually, should have been obvious to her from the first moment.

"I would learn to read and write," she said. "Is that two things?"

"We will consider it one," Elizabeth said, clapping her hands. "What a delightful answer. I can see that you are not going to be a disappointment, Lily. Now something else. Perhaps we will gather five wishes altogether. Proceed."

Yes, there were other things to dream of, Lily thought. Nothing sufficient to replace the dream she had lost, of course, but perhaps enough to give life some purpose. These new dreams would probably prove unattainable, but then that was the nature of dreams. It was their very attraction. But probably was the all-important word. It allowed for hope.

"I would learn to play the pianoforte," she said with conviction, "and to know all there is to know about music."

"Now that is definitely more than one thing," Elizabeth protested, laughing. "But since I have made the rules of the game, I will allow its essential unity. Next?"

Lily glanced at Elizabeth, who looked both lovely and elegant in carriage clothes that were coordinated in colors of brown, bronze, and cream, and that were perfectly suited to her age and rank and figure and coloring.

"I would learn how to dress correctly and elegantly and perhaps even fashionably," she said.

"But you already look all those things in that particular ensemble, Lily," Elizabeth told her. "Pale blue is certainly a good color for you."

"You chose everything I am wearing," Lily reminded her, "except my shift and my shoes. I could do nothing alone—I would have no idea. To me a garment has always been something that is comfortable and decent and warm in winter or cool in summer."

"Very well, then." Elizabeth smiled. "It is number three. And numbers four and five? Do you have no wish to travel or to acquire expensive possessions?"

"I have traveled all my life," Lily said. "I have dreamed of staying in one place long enough for it to feel like home. And possessions…" She shrugged. What else would she choose to make this list complete? She would read and write and learn about music. She would play the pianoforte and dress well and elegantly. She would…

"I would like to be able to figure," Lily said. "Not just on my fingers or in my head, but—oh, but as Mrs. Ailsham and the countess do in the household books. They showed them to me one morning. They could both make sense of what was written there and they could use the figures to know what had been happening at the abbey and to plan what would happen. I wish I could do that. I wish I could keep books and know how to run something as big and important as Newbury Abbey."

"And your last wish, Lily?"

"I have always been comfortable with other people," she said after thinking for a while longer. "All kinds of people, even the officers when they were a part of the regiment. But I do not feel comfortable with your kind of people. I would like to learn… how to behave, how to converse, how to do what is expected of me. I would like to learn the manners of your class. Not because I aspire to belong to it, but because—oh, I do not know quite why. Because I admire you, perhaps. Because I respect the countess."

Elizabeth said nothing for a while. "I am not sure I should consider your wishes as five, Lily," she said at last. "Really they are all one—the desire for knowledge and the education of a lady. One might add painting and needlework and dancing and the knowledge of languages, perhaps, but they would really be included in one or other of the five things for which you have wished. Do you paint or dance or know any languages other than English? I know that you can darn and mend but not embroider."

"I can speak Hindi and Spanish," Lily said. "We used to dance country dances. I have never painted."

But their conversation was interrupted at that point by the carriage's turning into the cobbled yard of a posting inn for a change of horses. It was amazing to Lily to realize that after the first hour her mind had been pleasantly occupied. She had been almost enjoying herself. And it was all Elizabeth's doing—she had set herself to take her companion's mind off the wretched misery of that parting.

The Duke of Anburey had bespoken a private parlor at the inn, and the six of them dined together. Lady Wilma was ecstatic at the prospect of going at last to London, where the Season would already be in progress. Her conversation was all of balls and routs and theaters and court presentations and Vauxhall and Almack's. It was dizzying to Lily, who forced herself to eat at least a small meal and made no attempt to participate in anything that was being said even when Joseph suggested that the discomforts of their journey were probably nothing compared with those of the sort of traveling she had done in the Peninsula. She smiled vaguely at him even as she realized that, like Elizabeth, he was trying to divert her mind from what weighed it down like a ton of lead.

She kept wondering what he was doing at that precise moment.

Elizabeth resumed their interrupted conversation after Joseph had handed them back into the carriage and they were on their way again.

"Well, Lily," she said, patting her briskly on the knee, "I can see that the next month or two with you are going to be interesting indeed. Did I use the word fun yesterday? The coming months are certainly going to be fun—yes, it is quite the right word. We, my dear, with the help of all the best instructors I can hire, are going to transform you into a lady, with a lady's education and accomplishments—all within a month or two or ten. Obviously some things will take longer than others. What do you say?"

Lily said nothing for several moments. They had been playing a game of what-if, had they not? "No," she said, frowning. "Oh, no. Teachers would have to be paid salaries."

"And the best teachers would have to be paid high salaries." Elizabeth was smiling. "Lily, my dear, I am almost indecently wealthy."

"But you cannot spend any of it on me," Lily said, aghast. "I am your servant."

"Well, yes," Elizabeth agreed. "For your pride's sake I will concede that point, Lily. But servants, you know, have to earn their salaries. And how do they do that? By obeying their employers, by catering to their every whim. I am one of the most fortunate of women, you know, for any number of reasons. But having everything—almost everything—one could possibly need can have its disadvantages, especially when one is a woman. There is a certain boredom with which to contend. I cannot tell you when I last had fun. Overseeing your education will be that, Lily. You must not deny me, not when you have confessed that it is what you want more than almost anything else in this world."

It had not been a game, Lily realized suddenly. And she had not been hired to serve—at least, not in any conventional sense. Elizabeth had intended this all along. She had intended to amuse herself and delight Lily by making a lady out of her.

It would be impossible.

It would not!

It would be glorious and wonderful. She could learn to read. She would be able to read books. She would be able to fill a room with music—with her very own fingers. She would be able… Oh, there were too many dazzling possibilities crowding her mind.

There was a new dream.

"What are you thinking?" Elizabeth asked.

"I will be able—when I leave you, that is," Lily said, "to find employment as a shop assistant or perhaps even as—as a governess." It was a dizzying prospect. She would acquire knowledge and then she would be able to pass it on to others.

"Of course," Elizabeth said. "Or perhaps you will marry, Lily. I intend to take you with me to meet the ton before the Season is over. It is one of the duties of a companion, you know. But you will be more than a companion—you will be a friend and a participant in the social functions we will attend."

Lily sat back in her seat. "Oh, no," she said. "No, no, that would be impossible. I am not a lady."

"Very true," Elizabeth agreed. "And the beau monde is very high in the instep about such matters as birth and connections. Behaving like a lady does not, with the highest sticklers, make one into a lady. But there are exceptions to most rules. Remember if you will, Lily, how famous you are. Your story—your arrival in the middle of Neville and Lauren's wedding, his announcement that you were the wife he had long thought dead, his account of your wedding and apparent death—will still be the sensation of London. The rest of the story—the discovery that your marriage is not valid after all, your refusal to make it valid by going through another nuptial service with the Earl of Kilbourne—will set the ton on its ears. They will be in a frenzy to meet you, even to catch a glimpse of you. When it is known that you are living with me, invitations will pour in. But we will keep everyone waiting for a while. When you do appear, Lily, you will take London by storm. In addition to the story, you see, there are your natural beauty and grace and charm. And by the time you appear, we will have added the refinement of genteel manners and fashionable appearance. I daresay you could marry a duke if you wished—and if there were a suitable one available." She laughed softly. She was clearly enjoying herself.

"I cannot ever marry," Lily said, ignoring the rest of the frightening—and undeniably exciting—picture Elizabeth had just painted for her. She smoothed her hands over the gloves that lay in her lap.

"Why not?" The question was quietly asked, but it demanded an answer.

Lily was quiet for a long time. Because I am already married. Because I love him. Because I have lain with him and given him, not only my body, but all that is myself. Because… Because, because.

"I cannot," she said at last. "You must know the reason."

"Yes, my dear." Elizabeth reached along the seat and squeezed one of her hands. "It would be trite for me to assure you that time will heal. I have never experienced anything nearly as intense as what you have suffered and are suffering, and so I cannot know for sure that such wounds as yours will ever heal. But you are a woman of great fortitude and strength of character, Lily. I am sure I am correct in that judgment. You will live, my dear. You will not merely drag on an existence. I will give you the benefit of my resources and connections, but I will not be doing anything of substance for you. You will do that for yourself. I have every confidence in you."

Lily was not sure it was well placed. Her spirits, which the game-turned-reality had sent soaring with the excitement of new dreams, were flagging again. With every passing hedgerow and milepost more distance was being set between her and him, and it was a distance that could never again be closed. She was not sure at that precise moment that she wanted even to drag on an existence, let alone make the effort to live.

"Thank you," she said.

"Tell me." Elizabeth spoke again after they had traveled some distance in silence. "What happened to you, Lily, during all those months when Neville thought you dead?"

Lily swallowed. "The truth?" she said.

"It has occurred to me," Elizabeth said, "that the French would have informed the British if they had held an officer's wife captive for any length of time. They might have made a very favorable exchange with one or more of their own officers held by the British. That is not what happened, is it?"

"No," Lily said.

"Lily," Elizabeth said before she could say more, "although I believe you are not going to allow me to forget that you are my employee, I would have you know that you will always be at liberty to guard your privacy from me. You are under no compulsion to tell me anything. But you grew up among men, my dear. Perhaps you have not known the joy of having a friend of your own sex, one who can share your perspective on events and experience."

Lily told her everything, all the painful, sordid, humiliating details she had withheld from Neville that day in the cottage, her head back against the cushions, her eyes closed. By the time she had finished, her hand was in Elizabeth's firm clasp again. Her touch was strangely comforting—a woman's touch signifying a woman's sympathy. Elizabeth would understand what it would be like to be a captive, to have one's freedom taken away, and then, as a final indignity, to have one's very body invaded and used for the pleasure of one's captor. Another woman would understand the monumental inner battle that had had to be waged every single day and night to cling to that something at the core of herself that was herself, that gave her identity and dignity. That something that even a rapist—even, perhaps, a murderer—could not take away from her.

"Thank you," they said simultaneously after a short silence. They both laughed, though not with amusement.

"You know, Lily," Elizabeth told her, "men have the ridiculous notion that one must maintain a stiff upper lip through all the worst disasters of their lives. Women are not so foolish. It is quite all right to cry, my dear."

Lily cried. She sobbed until she thought the pain must tear her in two. She wept, her face in Elizabeth's lap while the older woman smoothed a hand over her hair and murmured nonsense that Lily did not even hear.

Finally Lily straightened up, dried her eyes, blew her nose, and apologized for the damp patch on Elizabeth's skirt. She laughed shakily. "You will think twice," she said, "before inviting me to cry again."

"Does Neville know?" Elizabeth asked.

"The basic facts," Lily said. "Not the details."

"Ah," Elizabeth said. "Good girl. Now. Let us look ahead, shall we, and plan? Lily, my dear, we are going to have fun, fun, fun."

They both laughed again.

***

Neville waited for one month.

He tried to resume his normal life. Except that normal life since his return from the Peninsular Wars had included his very close friendship with his sister and his cousin and his gradual, inevitable courtship of Lauren.

The friendship was strained. He did not want to deceive Lauren into believing that he might resume his courtship of her—and she clearly did not wish to give the impression that she expected it. Gwen was just plain uncomfortable. As Lauren herself had said at dinner the evening before Lily's departure, nothing would ever be the same again.

Yet obviously it was expected that he and Lauren would marry. Neighbors who called at the abbey on any flimsy excuse and who issued more than usually frequent invitations to dinners, card parties, informal dances, and picnics were too well bred to mention the subject openly, but there were all sorts of covert and ingenious ways of hinting and of digging for information.

Might they expect the return of Baron Galton, Miss Edgeworth's grandpapa, to Newbury any time soon? Lady Leigh asked one day. Such a distinguished gentleman!

Was the Countess of Kilbourne planning to return her place of residence to the dower house? Miss Amelia Taylor wished to know. She asked only because it would not be at all the thing for her and her sister to call at the abbey one day to find only his lordship in residence. She blushed at the very idea.

Was his lordship still planning a journey to the Lakes this year? Sir Cuthbert Leigh wondered. His cousin's inlaws had just returned from there and pronounced it a remarkably picturesque and genteel destination.

His lordship must be finding Newbury Abbey rather large and lonely with his sister and his cousin no longer living there, Mrs. Cannadine informed him.

Had his lordship quite recovered from his little upset? Mrs. Beckford, the vicar's wife, asked him in the sort of hushed, sympathetic tones her husband used at deathbeds. She and the reverend were hoping—the hope was accompanied by an arch look that ill became her—that everything would soon be put to rights again.

It was not just the neighbors. The countess too urged a return to the original plan.

"I liked Lily, Neville," she assured him when they were breakfasting together a week after Lily had left. "Despite myself I liked her. She has a sweet, unaffected charm. I was prepared to give her my affection and support for the rest of my life. And I know you were fond of her and have found the past week difficult. You are my son and I know that about you—and my heart has ached for you."

"But?" He smiled at her rather ruefully.

"But she is not your wife," she reminded him, "and does not wish to be. Lauren has been intended for you from infancy. You know each other well; you have a real fondness for each other; you have an equality of mind and education. She would fit into my role here without any painful period of adjustment. She would give stability to your life and children to the nursery. I long for grandchildren, Neville. You would not understand, perhaps, the disappointment I felt when Gwendoline miscarried as a result of her accident—as well as grief for her. But I stray from the main point. You had decided to marry Lauren. You were happy with the decision. You were literally at the altar awaiting her. Put the turmoil of the past few weeks behind you and pick up the threads of your life where you left them off. For everyone's sake."

He reached across the table and took one of her hands in both his own. "I am truly sorry, Mama," he said. "But no." He tried to think of an explanation that would make sense to her, but he knew that none would. And he could not bare his heart even to his mother. "Let us all give it time," he added lamely.

It seemed that his life these days was made up of waiting, giving himself time. He waited longer than a week for an answer to the letter he had written to regimental headquarters the morning of Lily's departure. But at last it came—he had half expected the problem to be far more difficult, if not impossible, to solve. He had not posted the letter but had sent it, with specific verbal instructions, with his valet, who had once been his batman, a burly, rather morose man who had always served his master's interests well by refusing to budge an inch in the course of duty. The answer gave Neville something to do—and an excuse for leaving the abbey, which had become oppressive to him.