One Night for Love

He might have sent another messenger to make further inquiries. But he chose instead to go in person to Leavenscourt in Leicestershire, where Thomas Doyle's belongings had been sent after their return to England. Doyle's father was a groom at the manor of Leavenscourt.

It was a long journey through weather that had turned wet and blustery and chilly. Neville was forced to travel in a closed carriage, something he always found tedious in the extreme. And he expected to find nothing at the end of the journey. But at least, he thought as he kicked his heels in the taproom of the rickety apology for an inn the weather had forced him to put up at one night—at least he was doing something. Newbury had become abhorrent to him, and so much there reminded him of Lily. He had even made the mistake of spending one night at the cottage, lying where they had lain on the bed, filled with such a vast emptiness that he had not even been able to force himself to move, to get out of there.

Leavenscourt was a small but prosperous-looking property. He looked about him with some curiosity as he approached the house. This was where Doyle had grown up? The family was not in residence and his appearance threw the housekeeper into consternation. She stared at him when he explained that he had come to speak with Mr. Doyle, one of the grooms, father of the late Sergeant Thomas Doyle of the Ninety-fifth. She even forgot to keep bobbing curtsies.

Henry Doyle, it seemed, had been dead these four years and more.

Neville felt a door slamming in his face. "I understand," he said, "that the regiment returned Sergeant Doyle's belongings here after his death more than eighteen months ago. Would you know anything about those, ma'am?"

"Oh." She curtsied. "I daresay they were given to William Doyle, my lord. Henry Doyle's son, that is."

Ah. "And where may I find William Doyle?" he asked.

"He is dead, my lord," she told him. "He died about a year ago in a nasty accident, my lord."

"I am sorry to hear it," Neville said. And he was too. Two men who would have been perhaps Lily's only surviving relatives were both dead. "Would you know, ma'am, what happened to his belongings?"

"I daresay Bessie Doyle has them, my lord," she said. "She is William's widow. She still lives in the cottage. She has two growing lads and the master was too kind of heart to turn them out. She takes in laundry."

Lily's aunt—and her cousins.

"Perhaps," he said, "you would direct me to the cottage, ma'am."

The housekeeper, considerably flustered again, assured his lordship that she could have Bessie summoned to the house, but he declined her offer and was given the directions he needed.

Bessie Doyle was a stout, florid-faced woman of middle years. She kept an untidy home, though it looked clean enough. She greeted the sight of a fashionably dressed earl on her doorstep with an assessing head-to-toe glance and hands firmly planted on ample hips.

"If it is laundry you has for me," she told him, "you have come to the right place. Though I do not answer for fancy boots like them there after they have tramped through the mud. You had better wipe your feet if you intends to come inside."

Neville grinned at her. The tail of the army was full of Bessie Doyles, strong, capable, practical women who would have greeted the whole of Napoleon Bonaparte's army with hands on hips and some tart remark on their lips.

Yes, Bessie remembered the letter that had come to tell them about Thomas's getting killed—Will had taken it to the vicar to read. And yes, this was where his stuff had been sent—useless junk all of it. It had been in a heap over there—she pointed to a corner of the room in which they stood—when she came back from nursing her old mum, who had not died after all, as it happened, though Will had. She had been called back from her mother's a few miles away with the news that he had fallen from his horse and knocked his brains out on a stone when he landed.

"I am very sorry," Neville told her.

"Well," she said philosophically, "at least it proved that he did have brains, didn't it? Sometimes I wondered."

Bessie Doyle, Neville gathered, was not an inconsolably grieving widow.

"I burned the stuff," she told him before he could ask. "The whole bloody lot."

Neville closed his eyes briefly. "Did you look through it carefully first?" he asked her. "Was there no letter, no package, no—no money, perhaps?"

The very idea of money drew a short bark of laughter from Mrs. Doyle. Will, in her wifely opinion, would have drunk it up in a hurry if there had been.

"P'raps that was what made him fall off," she said, but it was not a serious suggestion. "No, course there weren't no money. Tom wouldn't have kept no money for the likes of Will to get his hands on after he croaked, would he now?"

"Thomas Doyle had a daughter," Neville told her.

Well, Bessie Doyle did not know about that and showed no burning desire to learn anything about her long-lost niece. Her lads were going to be home from the stables soon, she told his lordship. They worked there. And they were going to be hungry enough to eat an ox apiece.

Neville took the remark as a hint to be on his way. But something caught his eye as he turned to leave—a military pack hanging from a nail beside the door.

"Was that Thomas Doyle's?" he asked, pointing at it.

"I daresay it was," she said. "It was the only useful thing out of the whole lot. But filthy? Had to scrub it to a thread, I did, before I could use it." It was stuffed full of rags.

"May I have it?" Neville asked her. "May I buy it from you?" He took his purse out of his pocket and withdrew a ten-pound note from it. He held it out to her.

She eyed it askance. "Are you daft?" she asked his lordship. "That is more than I and the lads earn in a year between us. For that old bag?"

"Please." Neville smiled. "If ten pounds are not enough, I will double the amount."

But Bessie Doyle had her pride. His lordship of the expensive muddy boots might be daft, but she was no robber. She emptied the contents of the pack onto the floor, handed it over with one hand, and took the ten pounds with the other.

The clean, misshapen pack that had been his sergeant's lay on the carriage seat opposite the one on which Neville sat all the way back to Newbury. It would be Lily's one memento of her father. He would have paid a hundred pounds for it—a thousand. But he felt disappointment too. Had Mrs. Doyle inadvertently burned a letter or some sort of package that had contained something more personal for Lily?

Neville had given himself a month to remain at Newbury before removing to his town house in London. Two weeks had passed by the time he returned from Leicestershire. Only half of a month with half still to go! And even then, the faint hope that had sustained him might well prove to have been illusory. Lily, he suspected, would not easily be persuaded to change her mind.

But just before the month was over, before he had decided upon an actual date for his departure, a small package arrived from Elizabeth.

"I have procured you this," she had written in a short note, "having let it be known that you are planning to come to town soon. You may wish to be in attendance, Neville."

The accompanying invitation was to a ball at Lady Ashton's on

Cavendish Square

.

Neville nodded his head to the emptiness of the library. "Yes," he said aloud. "Oh yes, Elizabeth. I'll be there."

Chapter 18

Lady Ashton's annual ball on

Cavendish Square

was always one of the Season's great squeezes. It was the ball at which Lady Elizabeth Wyatt had decided to introduce her companion to society.

Elizabeth had many friends and acquaintances. A number of them had called upon her during the month since her return to town, and she had done a great deal of visiting herself. She had also attended a number of evening entertainments. But no one had met her new companion, Miss Doyle, or shown any great curiosity about her until Elizabeth let drop, as if by accident, at a dinner one evening shortly before the Ashton ball the information that Lily Doyle and the woman who had caused such a stir at the Earl of Kilborne's wedding at Newbury earlier in the spring were one and the same person.

Everyone knew about Lily. She was perhaps the most famous, or the most notorious, woman in England during that particular spring—among members of the beau monde, at least. Even her appearance in the church at Newbury, completely disrupting one of the greatest ton weddings of the year, was surely enough to have fed conversations for the whole Season and beyond. But long before that sensation had begun to die, the rest of the deliciously bizarre story was revealed—Lily was not after all the Countess of Kilbourne because her marriage to the earl had never been properly registered.

Lily's story had been told and discussed in every fashionable drawing room and dining room in London. There were so many unanswered questions that there were unending issues for debate: Who was she? Why had Kilbourne married her? Why had he never told anyone? Where exactly had she been during all the time Kilbourne had thought her dead? What had happened when Kilbourne had discovered the truth about the legality of the marriage? Had she begged on bended knee that he marry her again? Was it true that she had threatened to throw herself off a cliff to be dashed on the rocks below? Had anyone heard for sure how large a settlement Kilbourne had been forced to make on her? Was she really as vulgar as everyone said she was? Where had she gone? Was it true that she had run off with half the earl's fortune and one of his grooms to boot? When was Kilbourne to marry Miss Edgeworth? Would they decide upon a quiet wedding this time? Was it true that Miss Edgeworth had spurned the earl's offer? And who was this Lily? Was she really just the daughter of a common soldier?

And then it became known that the Miss Doyle who was living with Lady Elizabeth Wyatt as her companion was in fact Miss Lily Doyle, formerly and briefly the Countess of Kilbourne. And that she was to attend Lady Ashton's ball. It occurred to very few, if any, that as the daughter of a mere infantry sergeant, a member of the lower classes, Lily had no right to appear at a society ball or that Elizabeth was committing a serious breach of etiquette by taking her there.

The fact was that everyone was avidly eager to set eyes upon Lily Doyle, and if that could be done only at the Ashton ball, well then, so be it. Some of those who had already seen her in the church at Newbury remembered the thin, unkempt woman, whom all of them had mistaken for a beggar, and wondered in some fascination how Lady Elizabeth could have the audacity to think of introducing her to society—even if as a paid companion she would be expected to sit quietly in a corner with the chaperones. But most of those same people were glad for their own curiosity's sake that Elizabethdid have the audacity—they wanted a second look at the woman they had seen so briefly.

Those who had never seen Lily craved a glimpse of the woman who had somehow snared the Earl of Kilbourne into such an indiscreet marriage in the Peninsula and had then proceeded to set the whole ton on its ears. What must a woman be like, everyone asked, who had spent all her life with the riffraff of the army? Vulgar? How could she possibly be anything else?

Lady Ashton's ball was always a well-attended event. This year was to be no exception. Indeed the beau monde, usually flagging with a certain ennui this far into the Season, buzzed with eager anticipation of an entertainment that was sure to be different.

And then two days before the ball the Earl of Kilbourne himself arrived at Kilbourne House on

Grosvenor Square

. One day before the ball the whole of London knew it—and that he had accepted his own invitation from Lady Ashton.

***

The Duke of Portfrey had arrived, Lily saw as soon as she entered Elizabeth's drawing room. She had known that he was to escort the two of them to the ball, and so seeing him was no shock. But it was a meeting that played upon her nerves. He had been out of town since her arrival with Elizabeth—not that she would have seen him even if he had been there. She had seen no one except Elizabeth and the servants and the various teachers who had come to give her instruction. She wished the duke had stayed away from town even though she had convinced herself in the month since she last saw him that there was nothing sinister about him.

She stopped not far inside the drawing room door, but not too far into the room—she had been taught the exact distance—and curtsied. It had taken her an absurd amount of time to learn to curtsy correctly. A mere bending of the knee and bobbing of the head was not good enough—it made one look like a servant. The opposite extreme—almost scraping the ground with both her knee and her forehead—was far too lavish except perhaps when being presented to the queen or the prince regent And it sent Elizabeth into whoops of infectious laughter. Actually, Lily was forced to admit, the learning had been fun—to borrow the word Elizabeth liked to use about the activities of the past month. There had been a great deal of shared laughter.

"Your grace," she said, keeping her eyes modestly lowered while she curtsied, raising them as she rose to look directly at him—not too boldly, but with her chin held just so, and her back and shoulders straight but not as stiff as a soldier on parade would hold them. Relaxed, dignified grace was the term Elizabeth used frequently.

"Miss Doyle?"

The duke made her a slight but elegant bow. Everything about him was elegant, from the fashionably disheveled Brutus style of his dark hair on down to his equally fashionable dancing pumps. Lily had learned something of fashion during the past month—both gentlemen's and ladies' fashions—and recognized the distinction between good taste and dandyism. His grace dressed with immaculate good taste. He was really very handsome for an older man, Lily thought. She did not wonder that Elizabeth had accepted him as her beau. But he was looking closely at her too, even using his quizzing glass with which to do so, and she was reminded of the discomfort he had caused her at Newbury.

"Extraordinary. Exquisite," he murmured.

"But of course," Elizabeth said, sounding very pleased indeed. "Did you expect otherwise, Lyndon?" She smiled warmly at Lily. "You do indeed look lovely, my dear. More than lovely. You look like—"

"A lady?" Lily said into the pause that Elizabeth had filled with an expressive hand but no words.

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Oh, that, yes, without a doubt," she said. "But poised is the word I was searching for, I believe. You look—oh, to the manner born. Does she not, Lyndon?"

"You will perhaps, Miss Doyle," the duke said, "do me the honor of dancing the first set with me?"

"Thank you, your grace."

Lily stopped herself from either biting her lip or saying what she had been telling Elizabeth for the past week—to no avail. She had argued that though she had the most magnificent ballgown she had ever seen, and though she had learned how to curtsy, how to hold her head and her body and her arms just so, and though she had learned how to address various people and how to do ridiculous things like use her fan correctly—it was not intended, it seemed, merely to cool her off when she felt hot—she really could not possibly think of participating in the ball as a dancer. It was true that she had had dancing lessons three times each week and had been pronounced an apt and graceful pupil by a fussy master who caused her and Elizabeth to explode into merry laughter every time he left, but even so she did not feel even nearly confident enough to perform the steps at a real live ton ball. She did not even feel competent enough to stand perfectly still in the darkest shadows at a ton ball.

"Shall we be on our way, then?" the duke suggested.

Five minutes later Lily was sitting in his grace's crested town carriage beside Elizabeth, facing the duke, who sat with his back to the horses. They were on their way to Lady Ashton's ball. It was Lily's duty to accompany her there, Elizabeth had said when Lily had first protested in dismay. And of what use was a companion if she could not move in society as an equal of her employer? Elizabeth had no use for another servant—she already had a full complement. She needed a friend.

Lily was terrified. Newbury Abbey had given her a taste of what life among the upper classes was like. It was an alien, totally unfamiliar world. That fact had been a large part of her reason for welcoming the knowledge that she was not after all married. And yet now she was to attend a ton ball in London during the social Season. Her stomach felt decidedly queasy despite the fact that she had eaten no more than a few bites of her dinner. And if her knees would hold her upright when she was forced to descend from the carriage, she would be very surprised indeed.

She hoped that after the Duke of Portfrey danced with her she would be able to fade into the shadows—but were there any shadows into which to fade at a grand ball? She hoped Elizabeth would not force her to dance with anyone else. She hoped no one would know who she was. She was well aware, of course, of the fact that some of tonight's guests must have been in the church at Newbury for the wedding she had interrupted. But she did not believe any of them would recognize her. Why should they? She certainly looked very different. She hoped no one would recognize her. Surely she would be tossed out ignominiously if anyone discovered who she was—or more important, what she was not. She was not a lady.

The Duke of Portfrey was looking at her quite steadily, she saw when she stole a glance at him. He always made her feel breathless—not in the way that Neville did, and not exactly with fear. She could not identify the feeling except that it made her uncomfortable.

"It is really quite remarkable," he murmured.

"Is it not?" Elizabeth said gaily. "Cinderella herself, would you not agree, Lyndon? But not incredible, you must confess. There was a great deal of beauty and natural grace and refinement on which to build. We have not created a new Lily. We have merely polished the old and made her into what she was always meant to be."

"I wonder." His grace raised his eyebrows and kept his eyes on Lily. He spoke softly, leaving Lily with the uncomfortable impression that Elizabeth had misunderstood his earlier remark.

But there was no more time for that particular discomfort. The carriage was slowing and then stopping. They were behind a line of carriages, Lily could see when she looked out through the window. Ahead of them a great deal of light spilled from the open doors of a brilliantly lighted mansion. A red carpet extended from the doors all the way down the steps and across the pavement so that guests alighting from their carriages would not have to set their feet on hard, cold ground.

They had arrived—or very nearly so. They would have to await their turn while the carriages ahead of them drew up one at a time to the carpet, where liveried footmen helped their richly clad passengers to alight.

Lily wished fervently that their turn would never come. And she wished it would come now, without any further delay, without any further moment for thought.

"You will be entering the house and the ballroom on my arm, Miss Doyle," his grace said quietly, clearly detecting her agitation, though she had thought she was showing no outer sign of it. "You will be quite perfectly safe. And even without my escort, you look every inch the lady and quite lovely enough to excite the admiration of every other person in attendance."

Lily had no wish to attract such notice, but his words were reassuring, she had to admit. And suddenly he looked perfectly dependable and trustworthy to her. She felt herself grow calmer. Until, that was, the carnage moved forward another few inches and one of the footmen opened the door and set down the steps.

***

Neville did not arrive early at the ball. He dined with the Marquess of Attingsborough, and they lingered over their port longer than was necessary.

"The fact is I have not set eyes on her," the marquess told him. "Elizabeth has kept her very close. I would not even have known she was in town if I had not been at Newbury when she left there. The word is out now, though. The whole world knows she will be at the ball—and you too, of course."

Neville winced. He thought he knew—he hoped he knew—what Elizabeth was up to, but he was not sure he liked her methods. This was going to be an alarmingly public encounter. And at a ton squeeze too. He would have preferred to call quietly at Elizabeth's, but she had refused to allow it. He would be willing to wager that Lily did not even know he was in London.

He tried not to imagine how she might react to the knowledge—or how she might react to seeing him unexpectedly tonight.

But poor Lily—she would have far more than that with which to contend tonight. He would have expected Elizabeth to be more sensitive to her feelings of inadequacy than to haul her off to a ton ball when even ordinary day-by-day life at Newbury Abbey had been beyond her ability to cope with. She would just not be able to handle such an ordeal, and she would hate it. The nervousness he felt as he finally approached

Cavendish Square

with his cousin and ascended the stairs to the Ashton ballroom was as much for her as it was for himself.

"The devil," he muttered to the marquess as the two of them stood in the doorway. "Why am I doing this?"

The dancing was unfortunately between sets, and there was a very definite hush at his appearance, to be followed a mere fraction of a second later by a renewed buzzing of conversation while a ballroomful of people did a poor job of pretending to mind their own business. Lily must indeed be here, then. Neville did not believe his appearance alone would be causing such an obvious stir.

This situation, he supposed, really must be the sensation of the year. Perhaps of the decade. Deuce take it, but he should not have agreed to this. This was ail wrong.

"Damn Elizabeth," he said, still muttering.

"My dear Nev," the marquess said languidly, "it was for just such occasions as this that the quizzing glass was invented." He had his own to his eye and was haughtily surveying the gathering through it.

"So that I might see my embarrassment magnified?" Neville asked, clasping his hands at his back and forcing himself to look around. For a whole month he had craved even a single sight of Lily, and yet now he found that he was afraid of seeing her—afraid of seeing her paralyzed by the embarrassment that even he was finding almost intolerable.

"To your far left, Nev," his cousin said.

Portfrey was immediately visible, and beside him, Elizabeth. There was a cluster of people making up their group—almost exclusively male, though there appeared to be a female somewhere in their midst. Lily? Being subjected to a mob? Neville felt himself turn cold in much the way he had always done during battle if he saw one of his men beset by a multiple number of the enemy.

The mob had obviously not noticed him. Everyone else had. Everyone else watched him avidly—though he guessed he would not have caught a single one of them at it if he had turned his head to look—as he strode across the ballroom in the direction of the crowd.

"Steady, Nev," the marquess said from the vicinity of his right shoulder. "You look as if you are about to lay about you with both fists. It would not be good ton, old chap. The scene would be lapped up, of course, with all the enthusiasm of a cat for cream and would make you notorious for a decade or so. But it would do the same for Lily, you see."

Elizabeth saw them coming and smiled graciously. "Joseph? Neville?" she said. "How delightful to see you both."

Good manners took over. Neville bowed, as did his cousin. They exchanged bows with the Duke of Portfrey, who had also turned to greet them.

"You left your mother well, I trust, Neville?" Elizabeth asked. "And Gwendoline and Lauren too?"

"All three," Neville assured her. "They all send their regards."

"Thank you," she said. "Have you met Miss Doyle? May I present you?"

The gall of the woman, Neville thought. She was enjoying herself. The mob, he was aware, had fallen quieter. Several of them had melted away. And then stupidly, he was afraid to turn his head. It was physically difficult to do so. But he did it—rather jerkily.

He forgot that he was being observed by half the ton—and that she was too.

She was all in white—all delicate simplicity. She looked like an angel. She wore a high-waisted, square-necked, short-sleeved satin gown with a netted tunic, and white fan and slippers and long gloves. Even the ribbon threaded through her hair was white—her hair! It had been cut short and curled softly about her face, making it look more heart-shaped, making her blues eyes look larger. She looked dainty and innocent and exquisitely alluring.

Lily. Ah, dear God, Lily! He had missed her every minute of every hour since she had left. But he had not realized quite how painfully until he saw her again.

"May I present the Marquess of Attingsborough and the Earl of Kilbourne to you, Lily?" Elizabeth said. "Miss Doyle, gentlemen."

What farce was this? Neville wondered, not taking his eyes from her face. Her own eyes had widened at the sight of him and become fixed on him and she flushed—she had not been warned that he was to be here, then. But she did not lose her composure. Instead, she curtsied prettily.

"My lord," she said, first to Joseph and then to him.

He found himself bowing formally, becoming an actor in the farce. "Miss Doyle?"

He had never called her that, he realized. He had always liked her and always respected her as Sergeant Doyle's daughter, but he had always called her just Lily, as he would surely not have done if she had been the daughter of a fellow officer. He had always treated her, then, as less than a lady. Had he?

"Yes," she was saying in response to some question Joseph had asked her. "Very much, thank you, my lord. Everyone has been most obliging and I have danced all three sets so far. His grace was kind enough to lead me into the first."

How was she different—apart from her hair, which looked very pretty indeed, though Neville felt that he would mourn the loss of the wild mane once he had been given a chance to think about it. She was different in another way—oh, in a thousand other ways. She had always been graceful. But tonight she seemed elegantly graceful. There was something too about her speech. It had always been correct—she had never spoken with a vulgar accent. But tonight there was a suggestion of refinement to her voice. The main difference, though, he realized without having to give the matter a great deal of thought, was that she did not look lost or bewildered as she had always looked at Newbury Abbey. She looked poised, at her ease. She looked as if she belonged here.

"Will you dance with me… Miss Doyle?" he asked abruptly. The sets were forming, he could see.

"I am sorry, my lord," she informed him. "I have already promised this set to Mr. Farnhope."

And sure enough, there was Freddie Farnhope, hovering and looking uncomfortable but determined to stand his ground.

"Perhaps the next," Neville said.

"Thank you," she said, placing her hand on Farnhope's outstretched wrist—where had she learned to do that? "That would be pleasant, my lord."

My lord. It was the first time she had called him that. She was being formal and impersonal, as he had been with her. As if they had just met for the first time. Could Lily dance a quadrille? But it was clear to him from the first measure of music that she could. She danced it with competence and even grace—and with an endearing look of concentration on her face. As if, he thought, she had only recently learned the steps—as was doubtless the case.

Elizabeth and Lily, he understood then, had not been idle during their month in London.

The realization hurt in a strange way. He had carried on with his life at Newbury out of necessity, but he had pictured Elizabeth carrying on with hers while Lily hovered unhappily and awkwardly in the background. All month he had been contriving ways of persuading her to come back to him, ways of making life at Newbury Abbey less daunting to her. Or, failing that, he had been trying to think of what kind of life and environment would suit a young woman who had lived a sort of nomadic existence away from England all her life. He had been determined to settle her happily somewhere. He had dreamed of being her savior, of setting her own happiness above his own, of doing what was right for her.

But all the time Elizabeth and Lily between them had been doing what he had never once considered—indeed, he had resisted his mother's attempts to do so. They had been making her into a lady.

Surely she could not be happy, he thought, gazing at her sadly as she danced. Could she? Where was Lily, that happy, dreamy little fairy creature whom he had used to watch in the Peninsula with such a lifting of his spirits long before he fell in love with her? The nymph with the long hair and bare feet who had sat on the rock in Portugal, watching a bird wheeling overhead and dreaming of being borne on the wind? The bewitching woman who had stood in beauty beside the pool at the foot of the waterfall, telling him that she was not just watching the scene but was it?

She had become the dainty, elegant, alluring lady who was dancing the quadrille at a ton ball in London, smiling at Freddie Farnhope and concentrating on her steps.

"By Jove, Elizabeth," Joseph was saying, using his quizzing glass again, "she has turned into a rare beauty."

"Only to eyes attuned to ballroom beauties, Joe," Neville said, more to himself than to his cousin. "She always has been a rare beauty."

"Neville," Elizabeth said, "you may escort me to the refreshment room, if you please."

He offered her his arm and led her back toward the doors.

"Louisa must be very gratified," she said as soon as they had moved to the relative quietness of the landing beyond the ballroom. "Her ball is even more of a squeeze than it usually is. Or perhaps it is just that most people have been crowding the ballroom itself instead of wandering off to the card room or the salon as they usually do."

"Elizabeth," he asked, "why are you doing this? Why are you trying to change Lily? I liked her just as she was."

"Then you are being selfish," she said. "Yes, the refreshment room is this way. I need a glass of lemonade."

"Selfish?" He frowned.

"Of course," she said. "Perhaps Lily was not happy with herself just the way she was. But there is no question of my changing her, Neville. When one learns, one adds knowledge and accomplishments to what one already is. One enriches one's life. One grows. One does not change in fundamentals. I liked Lily as she was too. I like her as she is. She is still Lily and always will be."

"She hated being at Newbury Abbey," he said, "even though everyone tried to be kind to her. Even Mama was kind after she had recovered from the shock. She was quite prepared to take some of the burdens of being my countess off Lily's shoulders. But Lily hated it anyway—you knew that. She must hate this. I will not have her unhappy, Elizabeth, or bullied into doing what she does not want to do or into being who she does not want to be. I will settle her somewhere—in some country village, I believe—where she can live her own quiet life."

"Perhaps it is what she will choose eventually," Elizabeth said. "But perhaps not. Perhaps she will choose employment of some kind—even possibly as my permanent companion. Or perhaps she will marry despite her lack of fortune. There are any number of gentlemen this evening who appear fascinated by her."

"She will not marry," he said between his teeth. "She is my wife."

"And you will challenge to pistols at dawn any man who feels inclined to dispute that fact," she said cheerfully as they entered the refreshment room. "Lemonade, if you please, Neville."

She was smiling when he came back to her, glass in hand.

"Thank you," she said before sipping her drink and resuming their conversation. "The point is, Neville, that Lily is twenty years old. In two months time she will be of age. Perhaps you should begin to consider not what you wish for her future but what she wishes."

"I want her to be happy," he said. "I wish you had known her in the Peninsula, Elizabeth. Despite the conditions of her life she was the happiest, most serene person I have ever known. I want to give back to her that life of simple pleasures."

"But you cannot," she said. "Even apart from the fact that you have no say in what she does, a great deal has happened to her since those days—the death of her father, marriage to you, captivity, arrival in England, all that has happened since. She cannot go back. Allow her to go forward and find her own way."

"Her own way," he said with more bitterness than he had intended. "Without me."

"Her own way," she repeated. "With or without you, Neville. Ah. We are about to be joined by Hannah Quisley and George Carson."

Neville turned with a polite smile.

Chapter 19

The Duke of Portfrey was not in the habit of gracing fashionable ballrooms during the Season. He was not by any means a hermit, but balls, he was fond of remarking to his friends, were for young sprigs in search of wives or flirts. At the age of two-and-forty he was not interested in such public pursuits—besides there was Elizabeth, with whom he certainly had a relationship though its exact nature had never been defined.

But he was in attendance at the Ashton ball because of a peculiar fascination with Lily—and because Elizabeth had asked for his escort and it would not have occurred to him to deny her when she made so few demands on him. He had danced the first set with Lily, the second with Elizabeth—and had then been compelled to add an edge of frost to his habitually impeccable manners in order to dissuade his hostess from presenting him to a whole host of other young ladies she was sure would be delightful dancing partners.

Two or three of his acquaintances had teased him with threats of matchmaking mamas setting their caps at him once more—their interest had waned a number of years ago as his age and his indifference to feminine wiles and lures had gradually outweighed the attractions of his rank and wealth and enduring good looks.

"They would be better served to keep their caps firmly tied beneath their chins," his grace replied with languid good humor. But good nature deserted him when Mr.

Calvin Dorsey wandered up to him after Neville had led Elizabeth away to the refreshment room. The duke ignored him and engaged in a casual perusal of the room through his quizzing glass. Dorsey was his dead wife's first cousin and heir to her father, Baron Onslow. His grace had never liked him, neither had his wife.

"Portfrey? Your servant," Mr. Dorsey said pleasantly, sketching a careless bow. "I arrived late. But can gossip possibly have the right of it? Did the Duke of Portfrey lead the sergeant's daughter into the opening set at the grandest squeeze of the Season?" He shook his head, chuckling. "The lengths to which some men are prepared to go in order to curry favor with their mistr—" But he cut himself off with one finger to his lips. "With their particular friends."

"Congratulations, Dorsey," his grace said without deigning to look at his companion. "You still have a talent for avoiding by half a word having a glove slapped in your face."

Mr. Dorsey chuckled good humoredly and said nothing more for a while as he watched the patterns of the dance unfold. He was of an age with the duke, but time had been somewhat less kind to him. His once-auburn hair had grayed and thinned and he looked by far the older of the two. But he was a man of good humor and a certain charm. There were not many people to whom he spoke with a deliberately barbed tongue. The Duke of Portfrey was one of those few.

"I have been told that you called at Nuttall Grange a couple of weeks ago," he said after a while.

"Have you?" His grace bowed to a buxom dowager with gorgeously nodding hair plumes who passed in front of them.

"A little out of the way of anywhere of any importance to you, was it not?" Mr. Dorsey asked.

For the first time the duke turned his glass on his companion before lowering it and regarding him with the naked eye.

"I may not pay my respects to my father-in-law without being quizzed by his nephew?" he asked.

"You upset him," Mr. Dorsey said. "He is in poor health and it is my business to see that he is kept quiet."

"Since you have been waiting for twenty years with barely concealed impatience to succeed to Onslow's title and fortune," his grace said with brutal bluntness, "I would have thought it more in your interest to encourage me to, ah, upset him, Dorsey. But you need not fear—or hope. I merely sent up my card as a courtesy since I was in the neighborhood. I neither expected nor wished to be received. There was never any love lost between Onslow's family and my own even before Frances and I defied both with our secret marriage. There was even less after her death and my return from the West Indies."

"Since we are into plain speaking," Mr. Dorsey said, "you might oblige me by explaining why you were snooping around at the Grange when my uncle was too ill to send you packing."

"Snooping?" His grace had his glass to his eye again. "Taking tea with the housekeeper is snooping, Dorsey? Dear me, the English language must have different meanings in Leicestershire than anywhere else I have ever been."

"What did you want with Mrs. Ruffles?" Mr. Dorsey demanded.

"My dear fellow," the duke said faintly. "I wished to know—I felt a burning desire to discover, in fact—how many sets of bed linen she keeps in the linen closet."

Mr. Dorsey flushed with annoyance. "I do not like your levity, Portfrey," he said. "And I would warn you to stay away from my uncle in future if you know what is good for you."

"Oh, I certainly know what is good for me," his grace said, the languidness back in his voice. "You will excuse me, Dorsey ? A pleasure to converse with one of my wife's relatives again. It has been a long time, has it not, given the fact that we rather pointedly ignored each other at Newbury Abbey a month or so ago. One can only hope it will be at least as long again before the next time." And he strolled away to exchange civilities with the dowager who had passed them a few minutes before.

What Mrs. Ruffles had been able to do was answer the Duke of Portfrey's questions rather satisfactorily. She had had to think very carefully because the events about which he inquired were twenty years and more in the past. But yes, there had been a Beatrice employed at the Grange. The housekeeper particularly remembered, now she thought about it, because the girl had been dismissed for impertinence, though not to Miss Frances, if she recalled correctly. Why had she thought it might have been Frances, the duke asked. Well, Mrs. Ruffles told him, remembering clearly then, because Beatrice had been Miss Frances's personal maid and Miss Frances had been fond of her and very annoyed with her cousin. The housekeeper had frowned in thought, Yes, that was it. It was Mr. Dorsey to whom Beatrice had been insolent, though she did not remember, probably had never known, exactly what the girl had said to him or done.

Beatrice had left Nuttall Grange a year or more—oh yes, surely more—before Miss Frances's death, Mrs. Ruffles believed. She did not know where the maid had gone. But she had a sister still living in the village, she had added almost as an afterthought.

His grace had called upon the sister, who, once she had recovered from the flusters and the almost incoherent babble that had succeeded them, had been able to inform him that Beatrice had gone away to stay with their aunt and had then married Private Thomas Doyle of the army, whose father had been head groom at Mr. Craddock's estate of Leavenscourt six miles away. The Doyles had gone to India, where Beatrice had died years ago. She thought Thomas Doyle must be dead by now too. She had never heard of his coming back. Not that he would go to Leavenscourt anyway, she supposed. His dad and his brother were both dead, she had heard.

She had not heard of there having been any children born to Beatrice and Thomas.

She knew nothing of Lily Doyle, whom the Duke of Portfrey now watched intently as she danced a quadrille at the Ashton ball with Freddie Farnhope.

***

Lily was in a daze. She smiled and even conversed. She danced the intricate, newly learned steps without faltering. She coped with all the frightening, dizzying newness of being at a ton ball and of being a full participant. It had not taken her long to realize that she was not merely the anonymous companion of Lady Elizabeth Wyatt, but that everyone knew exactly who she was and had probably known even before her arrival. It had not taken her long, either, to realize that she was not going to be treated with hostility but with an indulgent, avid curiosity.

It was all a challenge, she realized, that Elizabeth had deliberately set her in the belief that she would rise to the occasion. She had not disappointed either Elizabeth or herself, she believed. She had remembered everything she had been taught, and somehow it had all worked. If she had not felt exactly at her ease, she had at least felt in command of herself.

Until she had turned her head to meet yet another gentleman who had applied to Elizabeth for an introduction—and had found herself looking at Neville.

She had been in a daze since. She was not even sure she remembered quite what had happened. He had bowed; she had curtsied. He had called her Miss Doyle—had he? He had never called her that before. And it had been a formal bow. He had not been smiling. She had remembered—she believed she had—to call him "my lord."

They had both behaved as if they had not met before. And yet…

Mr. Farnhope said something to her, and she smiled at him and replied without giving her answer thought.

And yet there had been that night at the pool and in the cottage—that night she had relived over and over again during the past month. The memories had become more and more painful as time passed. It was all very well to steel oneself to doing what one knew must be done, she had found. One somehow assumed that the pain would pass, that time would heal. Time did not heal—not some wounds, at least.

She had dreamed the dream—the nightmare—a number of times during the past month.

She danced with Mr. Farnhope and knew that the eyes of the ton were on her even more intently than they had been at the start of the ball. She danced and smiled and all the while felt raw pain. Why had he come? He could not have expected to find her at tonight's ball, of course. But why had he come to London? To acquire a special license, perhaps? For Lauren this time?

She did not wish to know. It was none of her business.

And then she remembered that she was to dance the next set with him. For the first time all evening she felt the sort of panic she had felt often at Newbury Abbey and the urge to run away. But there was no park beyond the doors of Lady Ashton's mansion into which to run and no forest and no beach. Besides, running away would serve no purpose except to make it impossible to come back. A lady did not run away. Neither, for that matter, did Lily Doyle. Not any longer.

He was standing with Elizabeth, she saw as the quadrille came to an end. Mr. Farnhope led her in their direction. Neville was looking extremely elegant and handsome all in black and cream and white. He was looking at her with an unsmiling, almost haughty expression. Perhaps he too was feeling the embarrassment of knowing them to be the focus of attention, though everyone was far too well bred to stare openly. He looked unfamiliar. It was hard to believe that he was the man who had once married her—Major Lord Newbury. And the same man who had made love to her in the cottage by the waterfall.

He bowed to her again and she curtsied again.

"I hope the Countess of Kilbourne is well, my lord?" she asked him.

"I thank you, yes," he said.

"And Lauren and Gwendoline too?"

"Both well, thank you."

She smiled and wished fervently that Elizabeth would step into the breach—she remained silent.

"I trust you are enjoying yourself… Miss Doyle?" he asked.

"Oh, exceedingly well, thank you, my lord." Lily remembered her smile and her fan and made use of both.

"And I trust you have been seeing something of London?"

"Not a great deal yet, my lord," she said. "I have been very busy."

If Elizabeth only had a knife, Lily thought without a glimmering of amusement, she would surely be able to slice the air between them. Would no one come to the rescue? And then someone did.

"Lady Elizabeth? Would you do me the honor of presenting me—again?" It was a pleasant man's voice, and Lily turned with a grateful smile toward its owner. But she recognized him. He had been at Newbury Abbey for a few days after her arrival. He was a friend of Baron Galton, Lauren's grandfather.

"Mr. Dorsey?" Elizabeth said. She turned to Lily. "Lily, do you remember Mr. Dorsey? Miss Doyle, sir."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir," Lily said, curtsying and hoping fervently that he would stay awhile and make conversation, though she was fully aware that at any moment the next sets would be forming.

"Charmed, Miss Doyle," he said. "And charming too if I may be allowed to say so. Would you honor me with your hand for the next set?"

"It is promised to his lordship," Lily said.

"Ah, of course." He smiled at Neville. "How do you do, Kilbourne. Then perhaps the next?"

"The next is promised to me, Dorsey."

Lily turned in some surprise to see that the Duke of Portfrey had come up behind her. His words had been clipped and none too politely spoken.

"And every set after that is also promised," his grace went on to say, quite erroneously. He had not even reserved the next set but one with her.

"Lyndon—" Elizabeth began.

"Good evening, Dorsey," the duke said in quite decisively dismissive accents.

Mr. Dorsey smiled, bowed to them all, and strolled away without another word.

"Lyndon," Elizabeth said, "whatever possessed you to be so ill-mannered?"

"Ill-mannered, ma'am?" he said coldly. "To keep rogues away from young innocents? I am amazed that you would deem it unexceptionable to present to Miss Doyle any scoundrel who asks for the favor."

Elizabeth was tight-lipped and pale. "And I am amazed, your grace," she said, "that you would presume to instruct me in proper behavior. Mr. Dorsey, I recollect, was your wife's cousin. If you have a quarrel with him, you can scarce expect that I will make it mine."

It had been a short, sharp exchange conducted in lowered voices. It shocked and upset Lily, who felt that she had been the cause of the unexpected quarrel. It also helped quench her own indignation over the Duke of Portfrey's presuming to speak and act on her behalf.

"Lily," Neville said, extending his arm for hers, "the sets are forming. Shall we join one?"

For a few moments she had forgotten him. But the sets were indeed forming, and she had agreed to spend all of half an hour in his company. It was not an enticing thought. The prospect of half an hour with him when there must be a whole lifetime and a whole eternity beyond it without him was a mortal agony to her.

She raised her hand, hoping it was not trembling quite noticeably, and set it, as she had been taught to do, on the cuff of his black evening coat. She felt his strength and his warmth. She smelled his familiar cologne. And she well-nigh forgot her surroundings and lost her awareness that this was the moment for which the gathered members of the beau monde must have waited ever since he entered the ballroom. She wanted to grip his wrist tightly and turn in to his body and burrow safely and warmly there. She wanted to sob out her grief and her loneliness.

A moment later she was horrified both by the wave of forgetfulness and by her own weakness. A month had passed, a month of hard work and fun. A month of living and preparing herself to live an independent and productive life. She had set a whole month between herself and him. A mighty bulwark, she had thought. But one sight of him, one touch, and everything had come crashing down again. The pain, she was sure, was worse than it had ever been.

She took her place in the line of ladies facing the line of gentlemen. She smiled—and he smiled back at her.

***

Elizabeth was still tight-lipped. She was looking about her for some friend whom she might join. The Duke of Portfrey gazed at her coldly.

"Take my arm," he commanded. "We will go to the refreshment room."

"I have just come from there," she said. "And I do not answer to that tone, your grace."

He sighed audibly. "Elizabeth," he said, "will you please accompany me to the refreshment room? It will be quieter there. Experience has taught me that a quarrel that is not resolved in the immediate aftermath of a heated moment is likely never to be resolved."

"Perhaps," she said, "it would be as well if this one never were."

"Do you mean that?" he asked her, the coldness all gone from his voice.

She looked at him—a long, measuring look—and then took his arm.

"Do you know Dorsey well?" he asked her as they walked.

"Scarcely at all," she admitted. "I do not believe we exchanged more than a dozen words at Newbury this spring. I was surprised when he applied to me for a formal introduction to Lily since he had seen her there. But it was hardly an unusual request this evening, and I knew of no reason to decline his request. Is there one?"

"He forced his attentions on Frances—my wife," he said. "Unwelcome attentions even after he knew that they were so. Is that reason enough?"

"Oh, heavens!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I am so sorry, Lyndon. I will not excuse him by saying that it was all of twenty or more years ago and he must have been young and headstrong. To you the offense must seem very fresh."

"He was desperate to marry her," he said. "Apart from the title, everything of Onslow's is unentailed, including Nuttall Grange. He had willed it all to Frances. When she would not accept Dorsey, he tried to—to force her into matrimony. It was one reason for our rushing into a secret marriage the day before I was to leave for the Netherlands with my regiment. There was the family feud, which made it difficult for us to marry openly. We both thought that when I returned we would be better able to persuade both families that our attachment had been of a long enough duration that it must be accepted. We were young—though both of age—and foolish. But at least the fact of our marriage could have been her trump card against Dorsey's insistence."

He had never before spoken of his wife, Elizabeth thought as they entered the refreshment room, which was deserted apart from a couple of servants who were doing something at a sideboard, their backs to the room. She had never liked to ask about his marriage.

"I can understand," she said, "why you dislike him so. He may, of course, have changed in twenty years, and there can certainly be nothing about Lily to attract his greed. But I will discourage any future attempt he may make to extend his acquaintance with her."

"Thank you," he said. "Keep her from him, Elizabeth."

She frowned suddenly and regarded him closely, her head tipped to one side. She did not care for the feelings she was experiencing. Jealousy? "What is your particular interest in Lily?" she asked him.

He did not answer in words. He did what he had never done before despite a close acquaintance of several years. He leaned toward her and kissed her fiercely on the lips.

"This must be the supper dance," he said, "the reason this room is so empty. Shall we go early to the dining room?"

Elizabeth fought to set her thoughts into working order as she took his arm. She felt, she thought with self-mockery, like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom who had just experienced her first kiss—all breathless and weak-kneed and eager for more. And hopelessly in love, of course. She was usually well disciplined enough to disguise that fact even from herself.

***

It was a slow and stately country dance in which they engaged. Since the patterns had them several times dancing about each other or joining hands, there were opportunities for some conversation. But Neville availed himself of none of them, and Lily for her part made no attempt to talk to him, though she smiled all the time they danced. Short snatches of conversation could deal with only trivial topics. Besides, any conversation under such circumstances might have been overheard. They danced in silence.

He knew they were watched. He knew that every look and gesture, every touch and word would be noted and commented upon tomorrow in many drawing rooms and that significance would be read into every detail. He found that he did not care.

She danced lightly and gracefully. She held herself proudly and elegantly. She looked as if she had always belonged in such surroundings. She was a beauty, a diamond of the first water. He could not—he would not—take his eyes from her.

He had come to London with hopes, albeit anxious ones. He had expected to find her miserable. He had hoped to be able to gather her—both figuratively and literally, perhaps—into his arms and assure her that he would protect her for the rest of his life even if she would not marry him. But she looked as if she belonged in Lady Ashton's ballroom. She looked poised and relaxed.

He felt almost as if he were seeing her for the first time. She had recovered the weight she had lost before coming to Newbury, weight she had never regained there. She was still small and slender, but she was all pleasing, enticing curves now. There were no traces left of the coltish, carefree girl he remembered so well. And none either of the beautiful, rather gaunt woman who had stepped into the church at Newbury. She looked now—

There were no words adequate to the task. She was femininity personified. No, too tame. She was everything he had ever wanted, could even want. Not just a companion, a wife, a soulmate. She was everything his body craved. She was—she was woman.

If this were only a waltz, he thought, he would maneuver her close to the French windows, twirl her through them, dance her into the shadows beyond the candlelight, and kiss both her and himself senseless.

It was not a waltz. They danced toward each other, moved about each other back to back, and returned to their respective lines without once touching, though he felt her body heat curl about him like a warm blanket. She held the smile she had worn from the start, but her eyes surely smoldered with an answering awareness to his own.

Thank God it was not a waltz. Her eyes merely smiled.

Honor dictated that he not even try to take advantage of her without her full and free consent.

Ah, Lily.

It was the supper dance, Neville realized as the set drew to an end, and she clearly knew what that meant. She took his arm without protest and allowed him to lead her into the dining room, where he was fortunate enough to procure them two places at a table slightly apart from any other guests. He seated her and brought her a plate of food and a cup of tea.

"Lily," he asked her, taking the seat beside her and resisting the impulse to take her hand in his, "how are you?"

"I am very well, I thank you, my lord," she said. Her eyes, which had smiled into his throughout the dance, were focused somewhere in the region of his chin.

"You look lovely," he told her. "But I could weep for your hair."

That drew her eyes to his, and he saw the old Lily in the amusement that lit them. "Dolly did weep, the silly girl," she said, "until I promised that I would still need her services. She used to spend hours on my hair. She is still always busy, though. I no longer iron my own clothes or do any alterations or mending."

"Or make your own bed or help peel potatoes or chop onions?" he asked her.

"Or those things," she agreed. "Ladies do not do such things."

"Unless they choose to," he said, smiling.

"They are too busy with other things," she told him.

"Are they, Lily?" he asked her. "Such as?"

But she would not tell him what had kept her so busy during the past month—apart from having her hair cut and learning to dance and behave like a lady. She changed the subject.

"I thank you for repaying the money I borrowed from Captain Harris, my lord," she said, "even though you were under no obligation to do so. I have called on them a number of times. Elizabeth said she would willingly spare me to visit them."

"Is she a hard taskmaster in general, then?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said. "Would I offend you, my lord, if I offered to repay what you sent to Captain Harris as soon as I am able?"

"I would be offended, Lily," he said. He added a further truth. "I would be hurt, my dear."

She nodded. "Yes," she said. "I thought you would. So I will not insist."

"Thank you," he said.

She had been toying with her food, he noticed. But then he had not even touched his own.

"May I call upon you, Lily?" he asked her. "Tomorrow afternoon?"

"Why?" Her eyes looked fully into his again. He was jolted by the question. Was she going to say no?

"I have something for you," he said. "Something in the nature of a gift."

"I may not accept gifts from you, my lord," she said.

"This is different," he assured her. "It is not personal. It is something you will certainly accept and delight in. May I bring it myself and put it into your hands? Please?"

Her eyes brightened for a moment with what might have been tears, but she looked down before he could be sure. "Very well, then," she said, "if Elizabeth will permit your call. You must remember, my lord, that I am her paid companion."

"I will apply to her for permission," he said. And after all he could not resist the self-indulgence of possessing himself of one of her hands and raising it briefly to his lips. "Lily, my dear…"

Her eyelids came down faster this time, but not before he was quite sure of the tears she hid from him. He forced himself to stop what he had been about to say. Even if her feelings were still engaged, he knew she would not easily capitulate to his wooing. Love, or lack of love, had had little if anything to do with her rejection of him. If they could not find a common world in which to live together, and if they could not live somehow as equals, she would reject him even if he asked her weekly for the next fifty years.

But her feelings were still engaged. He was certain of it. It was both a painful and an encouraging discovery. At least there was something still to hope for, something to live for.

Chapter 20

Lily had reached a frustrating point in her education. At first everything had been bewildering and exhausting but really rather easy—and definitely exciting. Every day there had been something new to learn, and every day she had been able to see her progress. Within the month, she had thought, she would know everything—or at least she would have a thorough grasp of the basic skills that would enable her to know as much as she would ever wish to know.

But inevitably the time came when the lessons became repetitious and tedious, when progress seemed slow and sometimes nonexistent, when it seemed to her that she would never achieve anything resembling even a tolerably basic education.

She had learned all the letters of the alphabet—she could recognize them in both their upper and lower cases, and she could write them all. She could decipher a number of words, particularly those that looked the way they sounded and those that occurred in almost every sentence. Sometimes she persuaded herself that she could read, but whenever she picked up a book from a shelf in Elizabeth's book room, she found that every page was still a mystery to her. The few words she could read did not enable her to master the meaning of the whole, and the slowness with which she read even what she could decipher killed interest and continuity of meaning. When she picked up an invitation from the desk one day and discovered that the appearance of the writing was so different from what she had been taught from books that she could scarcely recognize a single letter, she felt close to despair.

Sheer stubbornness kept her going. She would not admit defeat. She even insisted upon sitting at her lessons all through the morning following the ball even though it had been almost dawn when they arrived home and Elizabeth had suggested sending a note to stop the tutor from coming.

And she sat at her music lesson immediately after luncheon. The pianoforte was proving equally frustrating. At first it had been wonderful just to be able to depress the keys and learn their names. She had felt that she had somehow begun to unravel the mystery of music. It had been exhilarating to learn scales, to practice playing them smoothly and with the correct fingering and the fingers correctly arched, her spine and her feet and her head held just so. It had been sheer magic to play an actual melody with her right hand and to be able to tell herself that she could play the pianoforte. But then had come the demon of the left hand, which played something simultaneously with the right hand but different from it. How could she divide her attention between the two and play both correctly? It was akin to the old game the army children had used to laugh over—of trying to rub one's stomach and pat one's head both at the same time.

But she persevered. She would learn to play. She would never be a great musician. She probably would never be good enough even to play to a drawing room audience, as most ladies seemed able to do. But she was determined to be able to play correctly and somewhat musically for her own satisfaction.

She had been playing the same Bach finger exercise over and over for half an hour. Every time her teacher stopped her to point out an error or commented adversely on what she had done when she played through it without interruption she felt ready to indulge in a tantrum, to hurl the music and some abuse at his head, to declare that she never wanted to touch a pianoforte keyboard ever again, to yell that she just did not care. But every time she listened and tried one more time. She recognized her tiredness—not only had the night been short, but she had lain awake thinking about him—and her anxiety. He was to call later. He had a gift for her. How could she see him again without crumbling, without showing him how very weak she was?

But she played on. And finally she succeeded in playing, not only without interruption, but with what she considered more competence than ever before. She lowered her hands to her lap when she was finished and waited for the verdict.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed.

Her head whipped back over her shoulder. He was standing in the open doorway of the drawing room with Elizabeth, looking both astonished and pleased.

"This is what you have been doing with your time, Lily?" he asked.

She got to her feet and curtsied to him. If there had been a deep black hole at her feet, she would gladly have jumped into it. She had been caught practicing an exercise that a five-year-old would surely be able to play with twice the competence. She glanced reproachfully at Elizabeth.

"I believe, Mr. Stanwick," Elizabeth said to the music teacher, "Miss Doyle will agree to release you early today. Lily?"

Lily nodded. "Yes," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Stanwick."

Elizabeth went, quite unnecessarily, to see him on his way, and did not come back immediately.

"That sounded very pretty," Neville said.

"It was a very elementary exercise," she said, "which I played indifferently well, my lord."

"Yes," he agreed gravely, "it was and you did."

And so he had taken argument away from her as a weapon. She felt indignant then. Had he paid her a compliment only to withdraw it?

"And all within one month," he continued. "It is an extraordinary achievement, Lily. And you have learned how to mingle with high society with grace and ease—as well as how to dance. What else have you been doing?"

"I have been learning to read and write," she said, lifting her chin. "I can do neither even indifferently well—yet."

He smiled at her. "I remember your saying—it was at the cottage," he said, "that you thought it must be the most wonderful feeling in the world to be able to read and write. I missed my cue then. It was no idle dream, was it? I thought all you needed was freedom and the soothing balm of wild nature."

She half turned from him and sat down on the edge of the pianoforte bench. She did not want to be reminded of the cottage. Those memories were her greatest weakness.

"How is Lauren?" she asked—had she asked him that last night?

"Well," he said.

She was examining the backs of her hands. "Are you—is there to be a summer wedding?" she asked without ever intending to.

"Between Lauren and me?" he said. "No, Lily."

She had not realized how much she had feared it until she heard his answer, though of course he had not said there would not be an autumn wedding or a winter one or…

"Why not?" she asked him.

"Because I am already married," he said quietly.

Lily felt as if her insides had somersaulted. But it was exactly the way he had talked at Newbury. Nothing had changed. If he were to ask her again what he had asked there, her answer would be the same. It could not change.

"I have brought you the gift I mentioned last evening," he said, walking a little closer to her. Glancing at him she could see that he carried a package. He held it out to her.

He had said it was nothing personal. If it were, she must refuse it. He had bought her clothes and shoes when she was at Newbury Abbey, and she had kept them. But that was different. She had thought herself to be his legal wife at that time. Now she was a single woman in company with a single gentleman and could not accept gifts from him. But she lifted one arm and took the package.

She knew what it was as soon as she opened the wrapping, even though it was faded and misshapen and unnaturally clean. But she asked the question anyway as she set her hand flat on top of it.

"Papa's?" she whispered.

"Yes," he said. "I am afraid the contents are all gone, Lily. This is all I could retrieve for you. But I thought you would wish to have it anyway."

"Yes." There was a painful aching in her throat. "Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you." She watched a dark wet spot spreading on the pack and blotted it with one finger. "Thank you." She stumbled to her feet and had her arms about his neck and her face among the folds of his cravat before she realized what she was doing. His arms came firmly about her. She clutched the pack tightly in one hand and felt the link of security there had been during those years in the Peninsula—her father, Major Lord Newbury, and herself. They had not been carefree years—war could never be anything but horrifying—but nostalgia washed over her nonetheless. She had her eyes tightly shut almost as if she were willing herself to be back there in that life when she opened them.

He let her go when she had recovered herself, and she sat on the stool again.

"I am sorry about the contents," he said. "I am sorry you will never know what your father kept there for you."

"Where did you find it?" she asked.

"It had been sent to your grandfather at Leavenscourt in Leicestershire," he told her. "He was a groom there. He died before your father, I am afraid, and his son, your father's brother, died soon after. But you have an aunt still living there, Lily, and two cousins. Your aunt had the pack."

She had relatives of her own—an aunt and two cousins. The thought should excite her, Lily supposed. Perhaps in time it would. But she was too full of grief for her father at the moment. She had never properly grieved for him, she realized. She had married a mere three hours after his death, and a few hours after that the long, long nightmare had begun when she had been shot above the heart. She had never had a chance fully to realize the enormity of her loss.

"I miss him," she said.

"I do too, Lily." He had gone to lean against the far end of the pianoforte. "But you have at least something now by which to remember him. What happened to your locket? Did the French take it—or the Spanish?"

"Manuel," she said. "But he returned it to me when I was released. It is broken, though. The chain snapped when he tore it from my neck."

She heard him suck in his breath. "You always wore it," he said. "Was it a gift from your father or mother?"

"From both, I suppose," she said. "I have always had it, for as far back as I can remember. Papa used to say I must always wear it, that I must never take it off or lose it."

"But the chain is broken," he said. "You must wear the locket again, Lily, as a more personal remembrance of both your parents. Will you allow me to take it to a jeweler to have the chain mended?"

She hesitated. She would trust him even with her life, but she could not bear the thought of allowing the locket out of her possession again. She had been stripped of clothes when she was first taken by the Spanish, but she had felt most naked when Manuel had torn the locket from her neck. She had felt that part of herself had been ripped away.

"Better still," Neville said, reading her hesitation correctly, "will you allow me to escort you to a jeweler's, Lily, to have the chain mended? I would not doubt it can be done on the spot while you watch."

She looked at him and trusted him and forgot for the moment the barrier that must forever be kept between them. "Yes," she said. "Thank you, Neville." And she sucked her lower lip between her teeth as their eyes met and held. She felt as if she had spoken an endearment; he looked as if he had heard one.

But the door opened at that opportune moment and Elizabeth came into the room, smiling cheerfully. "Oh, dear," she said, "Mr. Stanwick does like to talk when one gives him the opportunity. Do forgive me for abandoning you, Neville. But I daresay Lily has kept you entertained. She has become adept at social conversation."

"I am not complaining," Neville told her.

"Let us all go to my sitting room for tea," Elizabeth suggested. "There is a fire burning there. It is a rather chilly day for summer, is it not? Damp too."

Lily's eyes went to the drawing room window. It was indeed a gray, cloudy day. There were raindrops on the glass though it appeared that it was not raining at that moment. The weather had depressed her all morning, she remembered. Yet she had had the distinct impression that the sun had been shining this afternoon. She had been mistaken.

***

Elizabeth had always openly admitted to Neville that he was her favorite nephew. She wished for his happiness, he knew. He knew too that she was aware of the depth of his feelings for Lily. But she would not press Lily to come back to him. She had too great an integrity for that. She had set herself to giving Lily the opportunity to learn skills and acquire confidence so that she could choose her future for herself. If Lily chose to marry him, Elizabeth would be pleased. If she chose not to do so, Elizabeth would support her.

Women, when they banded together, Neville thought ruefully, could be as easily moved as the Rock of Gibraltar.

He was eager to take Lily to a jeweler's. He knew that the locket was precious to her and he wanted to help restore it to her whole so that she could wear it again. That was his main motive, he was quite sure. There was also, of course, the excuse the expedition would give him to spend some time with Lily again.

But the following day would not do at all, Elizabeth informed him during tea on the afternoon he had brought Doyle's pack. Lily would be busy all morning with her lessons, and there was the Fogies' garden party in the afternoon. She would need Lily to attend her for that occasion. And the following day there were the morning lessons and a dancing lesson during the afternoon. It was also to be the day of the week on which Elizabeth was regularly at home to callers, and this week she would have Lily sit with her and help her entertain.

The best Neville could do, since he had not received an invitation to the garden party, was call at Elizabeth's the following afternoon and sit drinking tea and conversing with a group of visitors that did not include Lily. It was not until the next afternoon that she was finally declared free to go with him to a jeweler's. And even then Elizabeth would have accompanied them if he had not been able to assure her that he would be taking an open carriage with his groom up behind.

Elizabeth, of course, had always been a high stickler. But she was treating Lily more like a treasured ward than a paid companion. It was frustrating, but Neville found himself glad of it too. All too many young blades had called for tea at Elizabeth's with no other apparent reason for doing so than a wish to ogle Lily.

The sun was shining again at last on the appointed afternoon, and Lily was wearing an attractive and extremely fashionable green dress with a straw bonnet. Neville handed her into his phaeton and took his seat beside her before taking the ribbons from his groom's hand and waiting for the boy to clamber up behind.

"Tell me the truth, Lily," he said as they drove in the direction of Bond Street. "Are you enjoying yourself?"

She considered her answer. "I feel… at ease," she said. "I feel that I can now mingle with almost any company in which I happen to find myself during the rest of my life. It is a good feeling, my lord."

"And are you learning all you wished to learn?" he asked her.

"By no means," she said. "I doubt one can ever learn or even be in the process of learning all the fascinating facts and mysteries of life. I am learning far more slowly than I expected. I can barely read and yet I have been having lessons for over a month. Yet every day when I become frustrated and unhappy with myself I remember how I have always yearned for knowledge and skills. And I remember how very fortunate I am to be able to satisfy my yearning at last."

He sighed. "I did not want you to change, Lily," he said. "I liked you just as you were. But when I told Elizabeth that, she pointed out to me how selfish I was being. And I must admit that it is a delight to see you at your ease, as you put it." He smiled across at her. "And I do like your hair that way."

"So do I." She smiled gaily and raised one gloved hand in greeting to two ladies who were emerging from a milliner's shop. At the same moment George Brigham, who was passing on the street, touched the brim of his hat with his cane and inclined his head to Lily.

She was looking like and she was being treated like a young lady of ton, Neville realized. Her own courage and Elizabeth's encouragement had brought her out of hiding and she was at ease. He would have sheltered and protected her and made her forever uncomfortable and unhappy. It was not a pleasant admission to make to himself.

He escorted her into the shop of the jeweler he had selected as the best and explained that Miss Doyle would rather not leave her locket to be collected later, but would like to watch as the chain was mended. And so they were given seats, and the precious piece did not leave her sight.

The locket was gold. So was the chain. It was not the sort of trinket one would expect to have been within the means of a soldier who had not even had a sergeant's pay when it had been purchased. Neville had seen it dozens of times about Lily's neck. It had seemed a part of her. It had never occurred to him to wonder about it. There was some sort of intricate design on the outside of the locket, but he did not attempt to lean close enough to examine it. For some reason Lily guarded its privacy. He would respect her wishes.

He paid for the work when it was finished, and she put the locket carefully back inside her reticule.

"You are not going to wear it?" he asked her as they left the shop.

"I have not worn it for so long," she said, "that I wish to choose some special occasion on which to wear it for the first time again. I do not know when. I will think of the right time."

"Let me take you to Gunter's for an ice?" he asked.

She bit her lip, but she nodded. "Yes," she said. "Thank you, my lord. And thank you for having my locket mended. You are very kind."

He stopped on the pavement with her and bent his head closer to hers so that he could look into her eyes.

"Lily," he said, "do not deceive yourself into thinking I acted from kindness. I have been selfish again. When you wear the locket once more, I hope—indeed, I believe-that you will remember not only your mama and papa but also the man who will always consider himself your husband."

"Oh, don't," she said quickly, gazing back at him with wide blue eyes.

"But you will remember that, will you not?" he said.

She did not answer him, but she nodded almost imperceptibly after a few moments.

***

Lily had been dreading the afternoon. She had prayed that Elizabeth would go with them. After the question of the carriage had been settled, she had prayed for rain so that he would be forced to bring a closed carriage and Elizabeth would have to accompany them after all.

She was so very weak. It was so difficult to see him, to speak with him, to be alone with him and not reveal her true feelings to him. It was an agony to know that these memories of him would cling about her with almost unbearable pain once he had gone home again. She did not need more memories. She already had far too many.

But in the event she was finding the afternoon quite magical. The weather had turned summery again after several days of gloom and intermittent rain. Riding in an open phaeton and feeling the warmth of the sun and seeing its brightness gave a wonderful lift to her spirits. So did his company.

But it was something else that created the magic. An idea had struck her and excited her, and she could not help but be buoyed up by it even though she knew she must return home and think carefully about it before in any way acting upon it.

She had refused to marry Neville because she was uncomfortable in his world and could never fit the role of countess. She had refused for her own sake and for his too—eventually he would have been made intensely unhappy by her inadequacy.

But the realization had come that she would no longer be uncomfortable or unfit in his world. Oh, she had not been transformed in little over a month. She still had a vast long way to go before she could function like a lady who had been born and raised to the life. But she was on the way. And slow and difficult as some of the lessons were, she knew that she could master them. She would never be a lady by birth, and there were those in the beau monde who would always hold that against her, but she would be a lady by training. And there were plenty of people—people she liked and respected—who would accept her.

What was to stop her, then, from marrying Neville again ?

She would not allow him to marry her out of a sense of obligation, she told herself at first. But she knew that was ridiculous. She knew that he still loved her even before he stopped her outside the jeweler's shop and said what he did about her locket. And she certainly knew that she loved him. She had not stopped adoring him since she was fourteen and first set eyes on him.

She must think carefully, though. She must be very sure that she was not rationalizing. She must be certain that no lingering sense of inferiority would prevent her from seeing herself as his equal. She would not be his equal in birth or fortune. She must know for sure that that fact would never be a stumbling block for either of them—even after the first bright bloom had worn off their love, as it inevitably would in the course of their lives.

But she would think when she was alone again. For this afternoon she would allow herself to relax into the magic and simply enjoy herself. And so she went to Gunter's with him, and she ate her ice and talked to him about all the lessons she had learned in the past month. She chose to amuse him with all the comical details she could think of—most of them at her own expense. They laughed merrily together, and she knew, perhaps with a twinge of unease, that the magic had taken hold of him too.

It was something of a disappointment to have their tête-à-tête interrupted, but Lily smiled politely at the gentleman who stopped at their table to have a word with them. It was difficult to remember the names of all the people to whom she had been introduced since the evening of the Ashton ball, but she remembered Mr. Dorsey immediately, partly because he had been at Newbury Abbey for a day or two after her arrival, but mainly because it was over him that Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey had quarreled.

"Ah, Miss Doyle. Good afternoon," he said, smiling and bowing and looking surprised, as if he had just spotted her. "Kilbourne?"

They both answered politely but without any great enthusiasm. Neville wanted to be alone with her as much as she wished to be alone with him, Lily guessed. She was remembering Elizabeth's brief reference to the incident at the ball the morning after. She could not break a confidence to give a full explanation, Elizabeth had said, but she believed there was indeed good reason for Lily to avoid furthering an acquaintance with Mr. Dorsey.

But he was an amiable gentleman and surely harmless, Lily thought over the coming five minutes, during which he sat uninvited at their table and chatted with them. He had heard that the Earl of Kilbourne had recently been at Leavenscourt in Leicestershire. He wished he had known. He was heir to the ailing Baron Onslow, who lived at Nuttall Grange a mere five or six miles away. He would have been delighted to go there himself to show the earl the countryside. Or perhaps his lordship had been there on business?

It was a rather embarrassing coincidence, Lily thought, that the Duke of Portfrey himself should happen to walk past Gunter's during those five minutes and, glancing in, see the three of them there. He paused for a moment and then walked on after touching his hat to Lily. Well, she thought, at least she would be able to assure Elizabeth that she and Neville had been given no choice beyond being rude.

A minute or two later Mr. Dorsey took his leave.

"A curiously amiable fellow," Neville said. "He would have gone all the way to Leicestershire merely to show me the countryside if he had known I was five miles away from his uncle's estate? And yet I scarcely know him. Perhaps he believes he owes me a courtesy because he was a guest at Newbury in May. But he came as an acquaintance of Lauren's grandfather. At least he has gone out of his way to show that he bears me no grudge."

They smiled at each other.

"You have not, I suppose," he said, leaning toward her, the interruption forgotten, "been to Vauxhall Gardens yet, have you, Lily?"

"No." She shook her head. "But I have heard of them. They are said to be enchanted at night."

"Will you go there with me," he asked her, "if I can get up a party?"

It might well be a most dangerous place to go if upon careful consideration she decided that she could not after all change her mind about him. She should perhaps refuse outright now. Or at least she should say no more than that she would think about it and talk with Elizabeth about it.

But she found herself leaning eagerly toward him until their faces were only inches apart.

"Oh, yes," she said. "Yes, please, my lord."

Chapter 21

"I wonder," the Duke of Portfrey said, "what Mr. Calvin Dorsey's interest in you might be, Miss Doyle."

Elizabeth and Lily were members of a party of guests the duke had invited to share his box at the theater. Lily had been enthralled by the whole experience so far—by the sumptuous elegance of the theater, by the audience in the other boxes, the pit, and the galleries, by the first act of the play. She had been swept away into another world as soon as the performance had begun and had lost all sense of her separate identity—she had become the characters on stage and had lived their lives with them. But now there was an interval, and the box had filled with visitors come to greet Elizabeth or other members of the party—and to get a closer look at the famous Lily Doyle.

His grace had wasted no time on idle chatter. He had suggested that Lily stroll outside the box with him for a while.

"What is anyone's interest in me, your grace?" she said in answer to his remark. "By ton standards I am a nobody."

"He has never been in the petticoat line," his grace said, "or into any particular gallantries to the ladies. But he has deliberately sought you out on two separate occasions that I am aware of."

"I believe, your grace," Lily said, "it is none of your concern."

"Ah, that flashing of the eye and jerking upward of the chin," he said, shaking his head. "Lily, what does one do when… Well, no matter."

"Besides," Lily said, "Mr. Dorsey was more interested in the Earl of Kilbourne than in me at Gunter's. He would have gone to Leicestershire himself a few weeks ago, he said, if he had known his lordship was there."

"Kilbourne was in Leicestershire?" the duke asked.

"At Leavenscourt," Lily said, "where my father grew up—my grandfather was a groom there."

"He is still alive?" his grace asked.

"No," Lily said. "He died before my father did, and my father's brother has died since then too."

"Ah," the duke said, "so there is no one left. I am sorry."

"Only an aunt," Lily said, "and two cousins."

"My wife was from Leicestershire," the duke said. "Did you know I was once married, Lily? She grew up at Nuttall Grange a few miles from Leavenscourt. Calvin Dorsey was her cousin. And your mother was once her personal maid."

Lily stopped walking abruptly. She stared at him, not even noticing other strollers, who almost collided with them and were obliged to circle about them. Suddenly, for no reason she could name, she felt very afraid.

"How do you know?" she asked almost in a whisper.

"I have spoken with her sister," he said. "Another aunt."

During the past week Lily had discovered certain facts about her parents' roots. And she had just discovered that both had surviving family. She was not quite as alone in the world as she had thought. But instead of exulting, her mind was churning with unease—worse than unease. She could get no grip on the feeling, though. Of what exactly—or of whom exactly—was she afraid?

"I believe," his grace said, "it is time we returned to the box, Lily. The second act will be beginning soon."

Lily was extremely fond of Elizabeth, who exemplified for her all the finer qualities of a true lady. Lily respected and admired her. She was also aware of the fact that she was Elizabeth's employee, who did almost no work for her very generous salary. All Elizabeth required by way of service was that Lily apply herself to the lessons she herself had dreamed of and that she display as much as possible of her newly acquired knowledge and skills by attending certain social functions with her employer.

Lily had worked very hard, both for her own sake and for that of her employer. And she was pleased with the results, if a little impatient with the slowness by which some of them were being achieved. But sometimes a nostalgia for the old way of life became almost overwhelming. Sometimes the need to be outdoors, to be in communion with nature, to disappear into her own world of inner tranquility could not be denied. Hyde Park was no real substitute for the countryside, surrounded as it was by the largest, busiest city in the world. And through most of the day it was a fashionable resort for the beau monde, who liked to parade there to see and be seen, to exchange the latest on dits of gossip. But Lily had rarely known idyllic conditions in which to enjoy the natural world. She was accustomed to seeing what she wished to see while shutting out the world around her for precious moments of time. And Hyde Park in the early mornings came close to being idyllic.

A few times since her arrival in London Lily had stolen out of the house alone soon after dawn in order to enjoy a quiet hour by herself before the lessons and the busy round of activities began. She never told Elizabeth, and if Elizabeth knew, she gave no indication. If she had admitted to knowing, of course, she would have felt obliged to insist that Lily take a maid or a footman with her. And that would have ruined the whole thing.

Lily went to the park the morning after the play. It was a cool morning, a little misty, but with the promise of another lovely day ahead. There was scarcely anyone about. Lily avoided the paths and walked on the dew-wet grass. She was tempted to remove her shoes and stockings, but she did not do so. There were, alas, proprieties to be observed. The park was not quite deserted, after all. There were a few tradesmen hurrying about their early-morning business, and the occasional rider cantered along the paths.

Lily tipped back her head to gaze at the treetops while she drew in deep lungfuls of air. She tried to clear her mind, in which unease and exhilaration mingled to such a disturbing degree that she had been waking and sleeping and waking and sleeping all night long—and there had been the old nightmare again.

She could not understand quite why she had been frightened by what she had learned last evening. Perhaps it was just that she was accustomed to believing that she was without close connections. Since she was seven there had been only her father—a rock of security while he lived, but the only rock. Yet now suddenly there was a whole crowding of connections—two aunts, two cousins, and two acquaintances who had close ties with the place where her mother had been a maid. Lily had not even known that her mother had been in service. But she had been a personal maid to Mr. Dorsey's cousin, the Duke of Portfrey's wife.

What made her vaguely uneasy about those facts? Lily could still not find an answer this morning. She tried to shake off the feeling.

She knew very well why she was exhilarated. Neville had indeed got together a party to go to Vauxhall Gardens three evenings hence. She would have been excited just at the prospect of going to the famous pleasure gardens, Lily thought. But… Well, it was not just the idea of going there that had her so excited she could hardly sleep. Vauxhall Gardens was the place for romance, she had heard, with its tree-lined, lantern-lighted avenues and more private paths, with its private boxes and concerts and dances and fireworks displays.

And she would be going there within a few evenings with Neville. The party was to consist of eight persons, but that fact meant nothing to Lily. She knew that he had invited the other six only because he could not invite her alone.

She wondered if he planned an evening of romance—and if she would allow it. She still had not quite made up her mind.

She tried not to mull over the old arguments as she walked in the park. She kept her face lifted and listened to the birds, which were singing in full chorus. She tried to focus her mind on the precious present moment.

She would wear her locket to Vauxhall, she decided. He would notice and remember her telling him that she would wear it for some special occasion.

But was she prepared to give him such a signal?

She breathed in the slightly damp air with its strong smell of vegetation and listened to the distant sounds of a horse's cantering hooves.

If the Duke of Portfrey had talked with her mother's sister, he too must have been in Leicestershire recently. But why not? He had been married to a woman who had grown up there. Perhaps he was still on terms of intimacy with her family.

The horse was coming closer from behind her. Its pace had quickened almost to a gallop. The few times Lily had been on horseback, she had found riding a most wonderful sensation. She thought she would rather like to fly along the paths of Hyde Park on a horse's back.

And then three things happened simultaneously—the sound of the horse's hooves became muffled, as if they were riding now on grass; someone screamed; and Lily had that feeling again—that feeling of bone-chilling, mind-numbing terror. When she turned her head, horse and rider were almost upon her. By sheer instinct she twisted away and fell heavily to the grass. The horse thundered past and continued on its way at full gallop.

The scream was repeated and a young serving girl came rushing across the grass, dropping a large basket as she did so. Two men, one in the dress of a laborer, the other looking more like a prosperous merchant, also appeared as if from nowhere. Lily lay dazed on the wet grass, gazing up at them.

"Oh, miss." The girl came down on her knees beside Lily. "Oh, miss, are you dead?"

"She's shocked, not dead, you daft girl," the laborer said. "Are you 'urt, miss?"

"No," Lily said. "I think not. I do not know."

"Best not to move, ma'am," the merchant said briskly, "until you are sure. Get your breath back and then see how your legs feel."

"The brute!" the maid exclaimed, glaring after the fast-disappearing horse and rider. " 'E did not even look where 'e was going, 'e didn't. Prob'ly don't even know 'e almost killed someone."

" 'E wouldn't care," the laborer added cynically. "The quality don't care about 'urting a bloke or a wench provided they don't damage the 'orseflesh under 'em. 'Ere, miss, do you want an 'and up?"

"Leave her for a moment," the merchant said. "You do not have your maid with you, ma'am?"

Lily's mind was just beginning to inform her that she had escaped death by a whisker—again. It had not yet drawn her attention to the various bruises she had sustained in her awkward fall.

"I am quite all right," she said. "Thank you."

" 'E looked like the devil from 'ell, 'e did," the maid was informing them all, "with that black cloak flying out be'ind 'im. I didn't see 'is face. P'raps there was no face. Oooh, p'raps 'e really were the devil."

"Don't be daft, girl," the laborer told her. "Though why ?e were wearing an 'ood over 'is 'ead on a morning like this, I don't know—unless 'e were a woman, that is, and she didn't want anyone seeing 'er riding astride and recognizing 'er. The quality is all queer in the upper works if you arsk me."

The merchant was more practically engaged in helping Lily to her feet and allowing her to cling to his arm for a few moments until she could be sure that her legs would hold her upright.

"Will you allow me to see you home, ma'am?" he asked her.

"Oh, thank you," she said. "But no. I am quite all right, if a little damp. Thank you all. I am very grateful to you."

"Well, if you are sure," the merchant said, ruining his gesture of gallantry by withdrawing a watch from an upper pocket, frowning, and remarking that it was just as well as he was late for an appointment.

Lily walked home alone and succeeded in getting into the house and up to her room without being seen by either Elizabeth or any of the servants. She stripped off her wet clothes before ringing for Dolly and then smiled beguilingly at her maid and told her that she had been to the park and slipped on the grass—but she would prefer that her escapade not be discovered by anyone else. Dolly entered gleefully into the conspiracy and promised that her lips would be tightly sealed—and then she proceeded, as she tended to Lily, to give an enthusiastic progress report on her budding relationship with Elizabeth's handsome coachman.

It had been an accident, Lily told herself, beginning to feel the painful effects of her bruises. A careless rider had strayed from the path and had not even noticed her.

He had been wearing a dark cloak—with the hood up.

Probably every gentleman in the nation owned at least one dark cloak. And the morning had been cool, even if not exactly cold.

And it was certainly possible that the he really had been a she.

It had been an accident.

But she feared it had not been.

Any more than the rock falling from the top of the cliff at Newbury had been.

***

Matters were progressing slowly—if at all. Neville had not even seen Lily every day since his arrival in town. And when he did see her, it was usually at some entertainment when she stayed close to Elizabeth's side and good manners kept him from trying to spend too much time with her.

They were still watched avidly wherever they appeared together. Joseph had told him that drawing room conversation was thriving on the topic. There were even said to be two items relating to them recorded in the betting book at White's Club. There were gentlemen who had placed their bets on the likelihood or otherwise of his marrying Lily again within the year. And there were others—or possibly the same ones—who had bet on the possibility of his marrying Lauren within the same time frame.

Joseph was privately amused by the whole business.

Publicly he considered it all a crashing bore—there was no one better able to show ennui than the Marquess of Attingsborough.

But Neville intended to throw caution to the wind during the Vauxhall evening. He intended to take full advantage of the setting. While he had reserved a private box and invited guests and made it his own party, he nevertheless planned to spend some time alone with Lily. He had been wooing her very gently and cautiously for almost two weeks. He intended to woo her in earnest at Vauxhall. He was not without hope of success. He remembered the afternoon at the jeweler's and Gunter's almost with bated breath. She had been relaxed and happy on that afternoon—happy to be with him.

He prayed for good weather.

And his prayers were granted. The day had been hot and sunny, if a little windy. The wind dropped as evening fell to create conditions that could not have been more favorable for Vauxhall if Neville had had the ordering of them.

They crossed the River Thames by boat—the slower but by far more picturesque way of approaching Vauxhall Gardens. Neville took a seat in the boat beside Lily while Elizabeth sat in front of them—Portfrey, who had been out of town for a few days, had been expected back today but had not yet put in an appearance. Joseph was sitting behind, flirting discreetly with Lady Selina Rawlings, his current lady love and present for the evening under Elizabeth's chaperonage. Captain Harris and his wife were seated in the stern of the boat. Colored lights from the gardens shivered across the water. Darkness had all but fallen.

"Well, Lily?" Neville bent his head closer to hers so that he could see her expression.

"It is magic," she said.

And it was too—magic to weave its spell about the two of them and not release them until the night was over, and perhaps not even then.

He took Lily on one arm, Elizabeth on the other as they entered Vauxhall Gardens and made their way to the box he had reserved, in an area with all the other boxes and the place where the orchestra members were tuning their instruments. It was one of the nights when there was to be dancing.

"Have you danced beneath the stars before, Lily?" he asked her after he had seated everyone in the box and ordered food and drinks.

"Of course I have," she said. "Do you not remember all the dancing we used to do?"

In the army? Yes, there had been a great deal of it. The officers had had dances of their own, better organized, more formal, not nearly as enjoyable, Neville had always thought, as the ones that took place about the campfires or in some rude barn. He had used to stand and watch sometimes. He had never dampened the spirits of his men by trying to join in and claim a partner when there were not nearly enough women to go around.

"Yes, I do." He smiled at her. "But have you waltzed beneath the stars? Do you know the steps of the waltz?"

"I am not allowed to dance it," she told him. "I have to be approved by one of the patronesses of Almack's first—though I daresay that will never happen."

He moved his head a little closer and spoke for her ears only. "But this is not a formal ball, Lily. The rules do not apply here. Tonight you will waltz—with me."

Her eyes told him that she wanted to do so. And her eyes told him other things too. There was a certain depth of yearning in them—he was sure he did not mistake the expression.

And then he noticed her locket.

"Is this the first time you have worn it?" he asked, touching it briefly.

"Yes," she said.

"Is this the special occasion, then, Lily?" He looked up into her eyes.

"Yes, Neville."

Strange, he thought, how his name on her lips became the most intimate of endearments.

There was no more chance for personal discourse for a while. The food and drink had arrived, the orchestra had begun playing, and conversation became general.

When the dancing began, Neville led Elizabeth out onto the dancing area and then Mrs. Harris. But the third dance was a waltz, and the time for general socializing was at an end. The time for romance had begun.

"You cannot know," Lily said, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other in his as the orchestra started to play, "how I have longed to waltz—perhaps because I thought I never would."

"With me, Lily?" he murmured. "Have you dreamed of waltzing with me?"

Her eyes widened. "Yes," she said. "Oh, yes. With you."

He did not attempt to converse after that. There was a time for words and there was a time for simply experiencing. The air was cool and the moon and stars above them were bright. But nature at Vauxhall was in happy communion with the man-made beauty of the sounds of the orchestra and the colors of the lanterns nodding gently in the trees.

And there was the woman in his arms, small and shapely and dainty, and smiling into his eyes through the whole dance without embarrassment and without any pretense of indifference.

"Well?" he asked when the waltz was almost at an end. "Is it as wicked a dance as it is said to be, Lily?"

"Oh," she said. "Wickeder."

He laughed softly and she joined him.

"Come walking?" he asked.

She nodded.

"We must take everyone with us," he said, leading her back to the box. "But with a little ingenuity, Lily, I believe we can lose them before we have gone too far."

She did not voice any objection.

***

She had not been mistaken. Oh, she had not. He had married her out of a sense of obligation. He had treated her with kindness after her arrival in England because he was a kind man. He had made love to her because he would make the best of any situation in which he found himself. He had offered for her again even after he knew they were not legally married because he had felt obligated, honor-bound to do so. There had been some love too, of course—he had said so, and she had not doubted him.

But now it was love pure and simple. There was no obligation left. She had freed him, and since then she had made a life for herself and learned the skills that would help her to live independently of anyone's charity and earn her own living.

He was wooing her now—simply because he loved her.

She would no longer entertain even a vestige of doubt. And she would no longer erect obstacles between them that just did not need to be there. She might never be his equal in the eyes of the world, but she knew now that she could live in his world with some comfort and with a good deal of self-respect. The thought of Newbury Abbey no longer filled her with despair.

She was going to allow it to happen.

And so when they strolled along the tree-lined, lantern-lighted avenue with the marquess and Lady Selina, she made no protest at the almost comical maneuverings of both gentlemen to arrange matters that the two couples part company. Neither did Lady Selina.

"You see, Lily," Neville said after the two of them had turned down one of the narrower, darker, quieter paths, "there are these areas that were made for lovers."

"Yes," she said. "How wonderfully convenient."

"And they were made narrow enough," he said, "that two people must walk single file or else with their arms about each other."

"We cannot talk if we walk single file," she said, smiling at the darkness ahead.

"Precisely." He set an arm about her shoulders and drew her close to his side. There was nowhere to put her arm then except about his waist. And then she found that her head was most comfortable against his shoulder.

There was a strange feeling of seclusion even while the sounds of the orchestra and of voices shouting and laughing were still quite audible. There was an occasional lantern in a tree, but in the main the path was lighted by moonlight. If it was romance she had been hoping for, Lily thought, then she had surely found it in abundance.

Their footsteps inevitably lagged when they had walked a distance along the path, and then they stopped altogether. He turned her, and she found her back resting comfortably against the broad trunk of a tree.

"Lily," he said, bracketing her head with his hands pressed against the trunk, "you must say no now, my dear, if you want this to go no farther."

She reached up one hand and traced his facial scar with one fingertip. "I am not saying no," she whispered to him.

He kissed her, touching her at first only with his mouth. It was a kiss of love, she thought before setting her hands on his shoulders and then sliding her arms about his neck.

There could be no other motive on either side. Just love. She parted her lips and kissed him back with love.

He lifted his head as his arms came about her and arched her in against him. She could scarcely see his face with the moonlight behind him, but she thought he was smiling.

"This," he said, his lips brushing hers as he spoke, "was meant to be, Lily, from the very first moment."

She did not ask to what first moment he referred—the moment they had first met? The moment she had walked into the church at Newbury? The first moment of time at the dawn of the world? Perhaps he meant all those moments. And he was right. This had always been meant to be.

He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her temples. He feathered kisses along her jaw to her chin. He kissed her throat. And he kissed her mouth again, murmuring endearments.

The sense of romance faded. She could feel the familiar hard planes of his body pressed against her own. She could smell his cologne and the male essence of him. She could taste the wine he had drunk earlier on his lips and his tongue, inside his mouth. She could hear his breath quicken and could feel his growingly urgent desire pressing against her abdomen. Her own body responded—had done since the first touch of his lips. There was a throbbing ache in her womb and down along her inner thighs as she pressed herself to him in a blind urge to be close—closer. Neville. She wanted him. She wanted him there. Here. Now.

But suddenly he lifted his head and his arms about her stiffened. He held his head in a listening attitude. Even in the darkness she could see the frown on his face.

Lily was never sure afterward if she heard a sound herself—a sound other than the distant noise of revelry. But certainly she was suddenly awash in that terrible dread again as he turned away from her to gaze into the trees at the other side of the path. She was not even sure afterward if she saw anything. She was not quite sure she had seen a figure in a dark cloak with a pointed pistol. Everything happened too fast.

Neville suddenly spun back toward her and whisked her around behind the tree, his own body between her and danger. The sound seemed to come after. The bullet had missed her, she thought as he pressed her painfully against the other side of the tree, his back against her, shielding her. But the noise of it still rang in her ears.

She felt suffocated. His hands were spread behind him, on either side of her body. She could scarcely breathe. Even so she welcomed the shield he had provided for her. Without it, she would disintegrate into mindless terror.

She could hear him breathing in heavy gasps that she knew he was trying to silence so that he would not betray their whereabouts. And she knew that she was an impediment to him. Without the necessity of protecting her, he could move, go in search of their assailant instead of waiting for him to find them.

It seemed that they stood there in unbearable tension for five minutes, even ten—probably, she thought afterward, it had been no longer than a minute or two. And then there was the sound of laughter fairly close and drawing closer and she knew with knee-weakening relief that someone was coming along the path—more than one person, in fact.

Actually it was four. As they came up to the tree and then passed it, Neville took her firmly by the hand and drew her out onto the path. They walked down it behind the two couples, who were so merrily foxed that they did not appear to notice that their numbers had been swelled.

"I am taking you back to Elizabeth," Neville said, setting one arm about her when they reached the main avenue. "And then I am going back to find the bast—" He cut off the word in time. He was breathing noisily.

But Lily, setting an arm firmly about his waist, fearing that she would collapse, suddenly became aware of something—something warm and wet and sticky.

"You have been hit," she said. And then in utter panic: "Neville, you have been shot!"

"It is nothing," he said through teeth she knew he had gritted together. And he increased their pace.

But as they approached the box, he released his hold on her and half pushed her into a startled Elizabeth, who was standing outside the box with the Duke of Portfrey.

"Take her," Neville said harshly. "Get her out of here. Take her home."

And he collapsed on the ground at their feet.

Chapter 22

When Neville came to himself, he was lying facedown on a bed that was not his own. His arms were spread to the sides and someone was hanging on tightly to each of his wrists. He was naked, he realized, at least from the waist up. And his right shoulder was hurting like a thousand devils.

He knew from past experience what was happening.

"The devil!" It was Joseph's voice—he was hanging on to the right wrist with a grip of steel. "You could not have slept a few minutes longer, Nev? Enjoyed dreamland and all that?"

"You can let go your infernal grip on me," Neville said. "I am not going to struggle. Who is the sawbones?"

"Dr. Nightingale is my personal physician, Neville." Elizabeth's voice, as he might have expected, was cool and sensible—no hysterics from her. "The bullet is still in your shoulder."

And Dr. Nightingale had already made a pass at removing it. That was what had brought him to, Neville realized, taking a firm grip on the edges of the mattress. He opened his eyes at the same moment. His head was turned to the left—it was Lily who was clinging to his left wrist.

"Get out of here," he told her.

"No."

"Wives are supposed to obey their husbands," he said.

"You are not my husband."

"And of course," he said, "you have seen far worse than this on the battlefield. This is nothing at all to you. Foolish of me to try to protect you from a massive fit of the vapors."

"Yes," she agreed.

The physician, far less deft at such a task than the army surgeons, came at him again then, trying to probe gently and causing prolonged and excruciating agony. Neville kept his eyes on Lily's until the pain threatened to get beyond him, and then he clenched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth hard.

"Ah," Dr. Nightingale said at last, a note of satisfaction in the sound.

"Got it!" Joseph sounded breathless, as if he had just run a mile with a wild bull in hot pursuit. "It is out, Nev."

"And no damage to the bone or sinews from what I can see," the doctor added. "We will have you patched up in no time, my lord."

The pain did not subside to any substantial degree. He felt submerged in it, peering out at reality from a long distance within it. But he knew as he opened his eyes again that Lily's hand had gone from his wrist and was somehow clasped in his own—crushed in his own. For a few moments longer his hand seemed locked in place, but gradually he relaxed it and set hers free. He saw with a curious detachment from deep inside himself that her fingers appeared white and tightly welded together, that for a short while she could neither move nor separate them. It was amazing he had not broken all of them, but she had not made a sound.

She turned away and then back again and he felt a cool, damp cloth against his hot face.

Joe was talking—Neville did not know what about. The doctor was still busy with his shoulder and apparently Elizabeth was assisting him. Neville watched Lily as she worked quietly and efficiently, as she had always done after a battle or skirmish, dipping the cloth, squeezing out the excess water, pressing it lightly to his face or his neck. He made a cocoon of his pain and hid deep inside it.

"Was he caught?" he asked finally. He had suddenly remembered being at Vauxhall, kissing Lily in one of the darker alleys, considering the very indiscreet act of moving her back father into the trees so that they could take their embrace farther, and then recognizing the strange prickling feeling along his spine as the type of sixth-sense warning of danger he had developed during his years as an officer. He had heard the snapping of a twig, perhaps, without even realizing it. He remembered seeing a cloaked figure lurking in the trees at the other side of the path, aiming a pistol at them. He remembered leaping sideways to shield Lily and taking the bullet that would surely have killed her. "Did someone catch the bastard?" He remembered Elizabeth's and Lily's presence too late.

"Harris and Portfrey went charging off in pursuit," the marquess said, "as did a small army of other men, Nev. I would wager Vauxhall emptied out faster of ladies and everyone else than in its whole history. I doubt anyone found the gunman, though. A man in a dark cloak, Lily said. There were probably fifty men there to answer the description, Portfrey and myself among them."

"You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, Neville," Elizabeth said coolly. "There, Dr. Nightingale is finished. Perhaps you would see him on his way, Lily, while Joseph and I get Neville out of the rest of his clothes and into a nightshirt."

"No," Lily said, "I am staying."

"Lily, my dear—"

"I am staying," she said.

Neville gathered that it was Elizabeth who saw the physician out. For him there followed a nightmarish few minutes—which felt more like a few hours—while Lily and his cousin undressed him and somehow got him, wounded shoulder and all, inside someone's nightshirt, and hauled him off the bed so that the towels on which he had been lying could be removed and the bedclothes properly turned back. Then there was all the difficulty of lying down again. He had suffered his share of wounds during his war years. Every time he found that he had not quite remembered the full extent of the physical agony.

He could hear the rasping of his own breathing. If he concentrated on the rhythm of it, he thought, he could impose some sort of control over the situation.

"We should not have put him on his back." That was Joseph.

"No." That was Lily. "He will be better thus. Neville, you must take this laudanum that the doctor left."

"Go to hell," he said, and his eyes snapped open. "I do beg your pardon."

Her lips were quirking into a smile. "I will support your head," she said.

He had always fought against taking medicines of any sort. But he meekly downed the whole dose of laudanum as punishment for what he had said to her.

After that everything became a blur of pain and gradual, blessed fuzziness. He thought Elizabeth and Portfrey were in the room, though he did not open his eyes to see or take any particular notice of the report that no trace had been found of any suspicious character with a pistol. And then there were just Elizabeth and Lily in the room, arguing over who would stay with him during the night. At least, Elizabeth was arguing—she would take the first watch, the housekeeper the second. It was unseemly for Lily to be alone with him in his bedchamber—if only he could climb out of the depths of himself, he would find something decidedly funny in that argument. She would tire herself out. She was too emotionally involved to make a good nurse—they could expect a fever, and then calmness and a certain detachment would be essential.

Lily put up no argument at all; she simply refused to leave.

He was sinking fast into lethargy by the time they were alone together, but he opened his eyes to confirm his impression that they were. She was standing beside the bed, gazing down at him. She was still wearing the elegant gold silk and gauze evening dress she had worn to Vauxhall.

"You are not going to sit beside the bed all night while I sleep," he told her—it sounded to his own ears as if his words were slurring. "If you are intending to stay, take off that dress and lie down beside me. You are my wife, after all."

"Yes," she said, but his mind was not focused enough to understand to what she was agreeing.

The pain had localized and became a dull pulsing in his shoulder. His tongue felt thick. His breathing was deepening. There was a new warmth along his left side and someone's small hand was in his.

***

Lily awoke when the predawn light was graying the room—an unfamiliar room. She felt as if a fire was burning close to her right side. Someone was talking.

Neville was apologizing to Lauren. Then he was telling Sergeant Doyle in marvelously profane language what a damned foolish thing he had done by throwing his body in the path of a bullet intended for someone else. Then he was instructing a whole company of men to stay where they were in the pass, to ignore the murderous French fire from the hills to either side—to search for the marriage papers until they had found them. Then he was telling someone that he was by thunder going to get Lily alone at Vauxhall and just let Elizabeth try to stop him.

He was in a raging fever, with the accompanying delirium.

Lily had opened his nightshirt down the front and was bathing him with cool water when Elizabeth arrived. But apart from raising her eyebrows as she observed Lily clad only in her shift and then glancing at the left side of the bed, which had obviously been slept in, she made no comment. She quietly set about sharing the nursing. She had, she told Lily, made arrangements to cancel all lessons until further notice.

Lily steadfastly refused to leave the room until late in the afternoon. She knew from experience that many more men died from the fever that succeeded surgery than ever died from the wounds themselves. A bullet in the shoulder ought not to be a mortal wound, but the fever might well kill. She would not leave him. She would nurse him back to health or she would be by his side when he died.

But Elizabeth had been right—it was hard to nurse a man when one had an emotional involvement with him. When one loved him so deeply that one knew his death would leave a yawning emptiness in one's own life that could never again be filled. When one knew that he had taken the bullet intended for her. And when one did not understand why it had happened.

She had never told him that she loved him—or not since her wedding night. Now it might be too late. She could tell him so a dozen times during the course of the day—and she did so—but he could not understand.

She had never told him that to her dying day she would consider him to be her husband no matter what the church and the state had to say to the contrary—that she had never wavered in her fidelity to their marriage.

He caught her wrist in a hot, bruising grip late in the morning. "I should have kept her with me at the head of the line, should I not?" he asked her, his eyes bright with fever. "I should not have entrusted her safety to other men at the center. I should never have done that. I should have died protecting her."

"You did your very best, Neville," she told him, leaning close to him. "That is all anyone can ever do."

"I might have saved her," he said, "from—Is it true that it is a fate worse than death, do you suppose? I wish I could have died to save her from that."

"Nothing is worse than death," she said. "There is always hope this side of the grave. As long as I was alive, I could dream of coining back to you. I loved you. I have always loved you."

"You must not say that, Lauren," he said. "Please do not say that, dear."

Elizabeth finally persuaded her late in the afternoon to return to her own room—with the promise that she would not argue about Lily's keeping the night watch again. Dolly was waiting for Lily, she said, and was threatening to come and drag her mistress away by force. There was a hot bath awaiting her and a bed.

"I will have you woken if there is any change," she promised. "He is tough, Lily. He will come through this."

Lily would have known very well that Elizabeth spoke the truth if he had been anyone but Neville. But she was too desperate for him to live to believe that he would.

She surprised herself by sleeping deeply and dreamlessly for four hours. When she rang for Dolly, her maid informed her that his grace, the Duke of Portfrey, begged a few minutes of her time in the drawing room before she returned to the sickroom.

Lily had very firmly pushed from her mind all thoughts of what had happened at Vauxhall. It was easier said than done, of course, but she had refused to dwell upon the terrifying mystery. She could not afford to do so now. She needed all her emotional strength for Neville. But the terror came rushing back when she learned that the duke was belowstairs—and with it the memory that he had suddenly appeared at Vauxhall between the time she and the others had left for their walk and the time of their return. And he had been wearing a long black opera cloak.

She went down to the drawing room anyway.

He came hurrying across the room toward her, both his hands outstretched. "Lily, my dear," he said. His handsome face was all frowning concern.

Lily leaned back against the door and clutched the doorknob with both hands behind her.

He dropped his hands and stopped a few feet away from her. "We were unable to catch him," he said. "I am so sorry. Did you see him, Lily? Did you have a good look at him? Can you remember anything in addition to the dark cloak and the pistol?"

"Was it you?" She was whispering.

He stared at her in seeming incomprehension. "What?" he said.

"Was it you who shot Neville?" She was speaking aloud now.

He said nothing for what seemed a long while. "Why would you think it was me?" he asked her.

"It was you on the rhodondendron walk," she said. "Was it you in the woods? And you who pushed the stone over the cliff and tried to kill me on the rocks below? Was it you who tried to run me down with your horse in Hyde Park? I know I was the target at Vauxhall, not Neville. Was it you?" Curiously she felt very calm. His face, she noticed, was drained of all color.

"Someone tried to kill you at Newbury?" he asked her. "And in Hyde Park?"

"I saw a figure on the rhododendron walk," she said, "standing still and looking for me—I was in a tree. And then I came down the path and there you were. Why do you want me dead?"

His hand was over his eyes, which he had closed. "There is only one explanation," he muttered. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "But how the devil am I going to prove it?" He blinked and looked at her with more awareness in his eyes. "Lily, it was not I. I swear it. I do not wish you any harm. On the contrary. If you but knew…" He shook his head. "I have no proof… of anything. Please believe that it was not I."

And suddenly her suspicions seemed ridiculous to her. She could not imagine why she had ever entertained them. But then the idea that someone wanted her dead was ridiculous too. And one could hardly expect a prospective murderer to confess to the victim he had stalked for well over a month.

"For your own peace of mind," he said, "please believe me. Oh, Lily, if you just knew how I love you."

She recoiled in horror and pressed herself against the door so that the knob to which she clung dug painfully into her back. What did he mean? He loved her? In what way? But there was only one way, surely. Yet he was old enough to be her father. And he was dangling after Elizabeth—was he not?

His grace ran the fingers of one hand through his silvering hair and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. "Forgive me," he said. "I have never been so inept. Go up to Kilbourne, Lily, and ask Elizabeth to join me here, if you will. And do me the honor of trusting me, I beg you."

She did not answer him. She turned and opened the door and fled through it. She had every reason to distrust him—now more than ever. What had he meant by saying that he loved her? And yet, when he had asked her to trust him, she had felt inclined to do just that.

***

The room was dark when he opened his eyes. He was not sure if it was the same night as the one during which a bullet had been dug out of his shoulder. He rather thought it was not. He was feeling weak—and his shoulder was stiff and as sore as hell. He turned his head and winced from the pain. She was lying beside him, her head turned toward him, her eyes open.

"If I am dreaming," he said, smiling at her, "don't tell me."

"Your fever broke two hours ago," she said. "You have been sleeping. But you are awake now. Are you hungry?"

"Thirsty," he said.

She was wearing only a thin shift, he could see when she got out of bed and crossed the room to pour him a glass of water. She held it while he sat up. It took him awhile to do so—he had refused her help. But she set a bank of pillows behind him after he had taken the glass. He leaned gingerly back against them after he had finished drinking.

"Civilian life makes one soft, Lily," he said. "If this had happened in the Peninsula, I would have been back on the battlefield by now."

"I know," she said.

He patted the bed beside him and took one of her hands in his when she sat down. "I suppose," he said, "no one was caught."

She shook her head.

"You must not fear," he told her—not that he could really imagine Lily cowering with prolonged terror. "It was one of those senseless and random acts of violence that always seem to happen to other people. He was some sort of madman, or else something had happened on that night to give him a grudge against the world and we happened to be there in his line of fire. It will not happen again."

"It has happened before," she said.

He did not for a moment misunderstand her. He felt himself turn cold. He had not, he realized, believed his own explanation—except that he had nothing to offer in its place. Why would anyone wish to shoot at either him or Lily?

"Someone has shot at you before?" It was too bizarre even to think about.

She shook her head. "Not shot," she said, and proceeded to tell him about the distant glimpse she had had on the rhododendron walk of a figure in a black cloak and the feeling she had had in the woods that she had spotted someone in a cloak again. She told him about the stone falling from the cliff as she had been scrambling on the rocks below. She told him about her near encounter with death in Hyde Park.

"Someone wants me dead," she said.

"Why?" He frowned. He wished he did not feel so damnably weak. He wished his brain was not working so sluggishly.

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

Someone wanted Lily dead and had almost got his wish on three separate occasions—once at Newbury.

He reached for her suddenly, hardly even noticing the screaming pain in his shoulder. He brought her down half across him and wrapped his arms about her, her head cradled on his left shoulder.

"No," he said, almost as if by his very will he could protect her, "it is not going to happen, Lily. I swear it is not. I failed once to save you. It will not happen again."

"You must forget about that ambush in Portugal," she said, her hand smoothing over the side of his face. "You saved my life at Vauxhall. The slate is wiped clean."

"No one is going to harm you," he said. "My word on it." Ridiculous word of a man who had not even known that her life had been threatened and almost lost on his own property.

She kissed the underside of his jaw. "You must rest again," she said, "or the fever will come back."

"Lie down with me, then," he said. "I do not want to let you out of my sight."

She came around the bed and lay down beside him beneath the covers. "Rest," she said. "I should not have said anything until you were strong again."

He took her hand in his and turned his head to look at her. "Let me make love to you?"

She hesitated, but she shook her head. "No," she said. "Not yet, Neville. It is not the right time."

She was calling him Neville again, he noticed. And although she had said no, she had added not yet. He closed his eyes and smiled. Where the devil would he have found the energy if she had said yes?

"Besides," she said, "you are still too weak."

"Grrr," he said without opening his eyes.

She laughed softly.

She must have used up a great deal of energy nursing him. And for all her calm manner, she must have been exhausted by anxiety. She was fast asleep within minutes.

Neville lay beside her, staring upward. Someone wanted Lily dead. It made no sense. Why? What possible motive could anyone have? Who could possibly have any reason to resent her? Try as he would, he could think only of Lauren or Gwen. And the sort of resentment either of them might feel was certainly not the stuff from which murder came. Besides, they were far away, Gwen at Newbury, Lauren at her grandfather's. She had decided to go there quite on the spur of the moment soon after his departure for London, his mother had written, but had refused company for the journey.

Who else?

There was no one else.

What did Lily have that anyone could want, then? Lily had nothing. Her locket was the only thing of any value that she possessed, and no one would want to kill her for the sake of a gold locket when almost every mansion in Mayfair must be loaded down with far costlier jewels. Besides, until the evening of Vauxhall, she had not worn the locket since the Peninsula. There might have been money for her in Doyle's pack, but it would not have been a sum for which to kill. Besides, whatever it was had been burned.

His mind for some reason stuck on that idea. Perhaps because there were no other ideas.

Was it likely that Bessie Doyle would have burned the contents of that pack without sifting through them first? If there had been anything of value, would she not have kept it? Had she kept something apart from the bag itself? She seemed a woman of open enough honesty, though. He had not been given the impression that she was hiding anything—he still did not believe it.

She had been away from home when the pack arrived. Presumably her husband had received it. He had died in an accident before she returned home, leaving the pack and its contents spilled all over the floor in one corner of the cottage.

Almost as if he—or someone else—had been searching for something.

Without understanding the reason, Neville felt chilled and uneasy.

Sergeant Doyle had been trying to tell him something before his death. Something he ought to have told Lily and someone else. Something about the pack he had left back at the base. He had repeatedly told Lily that there was something inside it for her. Was it possible that William Doyle had found whatever it was?

And had been killed as a result?

But there was no way now of discovering the answers.

This was ridiculous, Neville thought impatiently. He would be writing Gothic novels before he was finished. But then the idea of three attempts being made on Lily's life was ridiculous too.

And then a memory popped into his head as if from nowhere—a detail he had not paid much attention to at the time. A letter had come, Bessie Doyle had told him, informing them of Sergeant Doyle's death. And William, who could not read, had taken the letter to the vicar to read to him. If the pack itself had contained a letter or a package with some writing, would he have taken that too to the vicar?

This was ridiculous stuff, Neville thought again.

Someone wanted Lily dead. Nothing was more senseless than that. But somehow, somewhere, there must be a reason for it.

He knew then what he was going to have to do.

He closed his hand more protectively about Lily's.

He was going to save her. If it cost him his life, if it cost him her, he would save her from terror and death. He would not stop looking until he found and destroyed whatever—or whoever—was threatening her.

Chapter 23

Lily was feeling depressed. Neville had made a quick recovery after coming out of his fever, as might have been expected of a seasoned soldier, and had returned to Kilbourne House two days later. He had called the day after that, but only briefly to announce that he was leaving town for a few days. He had not explained either where he was going or when he expected to return—if he ever did. His manner had been abrupt and impersonal, though he had taken Lily's hands in his when he took his leave. Elizabeth had been in the room too.

"Lily," he had said, "you will promise me, if you please, not to leave this house alone and not to leave any room in a house other than this without company."

He had waited for her answer. It had not seemed an appropriate moment to assert her independence. Anyway, she would have done as he suggested even if he had not asked it of her.

"I promise."

He had squeezed her hands, hesitated a moment, and then said more. "When you do leave this house," he had told her, "you may sense that you are being watched and followed. You must not be alarmed even though you will be right. There will be more than one of them—watching out for your safety."

Her eyes had widened, but she had not argued. It was no longer possible to persuade herself that she had been imagining any of the attacks on her life. And he had earned the right—with a bullet in his shoulder—to show an active concern for her safety.

She had nodded again and he had left after squeezing her hands once more and bending toward her to place one light kiss on her cheek.

Since then she had gone driving in the park twice at the fashionable hour with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, and she had been to one private dinner at the Duke of Anburey's and one select soiree at the home of one of Elizabeth's friends—a lady with a reputation as a bluestocking. And her lessons had resumed.

She had thrown herself into her studies with a frenzy of energy and determination. At last she seemed to have passed a frustrating plateau and could see progress again in almost all skills except embroidery.

But she was depressed. No progress had been made in apprehending the man who had tried on three separate occasions to kill her. She had kept quiet about her own groundless suspicions. There were no clues, no leads. But in the meantime she felt as if she lived in a cage. She could go nowhere alone even though the weather had been uniformly glorious and the early mornings had beckoned her with an almost irresistible invitation. And even when she was from home she felt the presence of her guards.

Her nerves were feeling frayed. Elizabeth had mentioned quite casually that she was glad to have learned that Lauren was going to her grandfather's in Yorkshire. A change of scene would be good for her.

When had she left?

"Did Gwendoline go with her?" Lily had asked.

But Lauren had intended going alone. Had she really gone to Yorkshire? Lily could not help asking herself. But it was absurd. Lauren, though she rode, was not the type to gallop astride across the open stretches of Hyde Park. And one could not somehow imagine her aiming and firing a pistol. Or thrusting a rock from its moorings on top of a cliff. But even so…

Worst of all, Neville was gone—just at the time when Lily had thought there was a new courtship between them and he was on the verge of declaring himself. She tried not to think about him. She had a life to live. But that life was so very dreary at present. She looked forward to the evening party Elizabeth had been planning for several weeks. It was expected to be a large gathering. Lily's fame had reached new heights after the incident at Vauxhall. Besides, invitations to Elizabeth's select parties were always coveted.

Lily dressed carefully for the occasion. She intended to enjoy herself and to acquit herself well. She was to be in the nature of a hostess since she lived here, and that was an entirely new venture for her.

"What do you think, Dolly?" she asked her maid before going downstairs. "Am I beautiful or am I beautiful?" She pirouetted, her arms held gracefully to the sides.

"Well, I don't know as how either word would describe you exactly, my lady," Dolly said, her head tipped to one side, one finger against her chin—Dolly had never stopped addressing her as if she were a countess. "If you was to ask me—which you are doing—I would say you look beautiful."

They both laughed, tickled at the sorry joke.

"You always look lovely in white," Dolly continued. "And lots of ladies would kill for all that fine lace. You need some jewelry, though."

"Shall I wear the diamonds or the rubies?"

They chuckled together again, and Lily fetched her locket from the drawer beside her bed. She had not worn it since Vauxhall—that very special occasion that had gone all awry. But she would not be superstitious. She touched a hand to it after Dolly had clasped it about her neck. Oh yes, he had been right, she thought, closing her eyes briefly. The locket made her papa seem closer and reminded her of her mama. But most of all it made her think of him taking her to the jeweler's to have the chain mended so that she could wear it again.

"He will come back, my lady," Dolly said.

Lily looked at her, startled. Her maid was nodding sagely.

"Gracious," Lily lied, "I was not even thinking of him, Dolly."

"Then how do you know which him I was talking about?" Dolly asked saucily, and went off into peals of laughter again.

Lily was still smiling as she went downstairs. The guests began arriving almost immediately, and she had no time for further thought or brooding. She concentrated on her posture and smiles, on listening and on saying the right things. It was not so very difficult after all, she was finding, to mingle with the ton. And most people were kind to her.

She was in the book room about an hour later with Elizabeth, the Marquess of Attingsborough, and two other gentlemen. Mr. Wylie had asked her in the drawing room if she had taken out a subscription to any of the libraries, and the marquess had informed him that Miss Doyle could not read but they would not hold that against her as she was certainly one of the loveliest young ladies in town. Lily had been unwise enough to protest indignantly that indeed she could read.

Joseph had grinned at her. "People who tell fibs, you know, Lily," he had said, "go straight to hell when they die."

"Then I shall prove it to you," she had told him.

That was why they were in the book room. Lily had challenged the marquess to withdraw any book from any shelf and she would read the first sentence aloud.

"Are there any books of sermons here, Elizabeth?" he asked, looking along the shelves.

"I say," Mr. Wylie told Lily, "I would take your word for it, Miss Doyle. I am sure you read very prettily indeed. And I cannot see that it matters if you don't. I was merely making conversation."

Lily smiled at him.

"Gallantry to ladies," Elizabeth said, "was never Joseph's strongest point, Mr. Wylie. There are no sermons, Joseph. I hear enough at church on Sundays."

"A shame," he muttered. "Ah, here, this will do—The Pilgrim's Progress." He made a great to-do about drawing the leather-bound volume from the shelf and opening it to the first page before handing the book to Lily.

She was laughing and feeling horribly flustered at the same time. She felt even more embarrassed when someone else appeared in the doorway and she saw that it was the Duke of Portfrey. He must have just arrived and had come to greet Elizabeth.

"Ah, Lyndon," she said, "Joseph has insulted Lily by claiming that she is illiterate. She is about to prove him wrong."

The duke smiled and stood where he was in the doorway, his hands clasped behind him. "We should have had a wager on it, Attingsborough," he said. "I would be about to relieve you of a fortune."

"Oh, dear," Lily said. "I do not read very well yet. I may not be able to decipher every word." She bent her head and saw with some relief that the first sentence was not very long; neither did it appear to contain many long words.

" 'As I walked through the wild-er-ness of this world,' " she read in a halting monotone, " 'I l-lighted on a cer-tain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and, as I slept, I drrr-eamed a dream.' " She looked up with a triumphant smile and lowered the book.

The gentlemen applauded and the marquess whistled.

"Bravo, Lily," he said. "Perhaps you are bound for heaven after all. My humblest, most abject apologies." He took the book from her hands and closed it with a flourish.

Lily glanced toward the Duke of Portfrey, who had taken a couple of steps closer to her. But her smile died. He was staring at her, all color drained from his face. Everyone seemed to notice at the same time. An unnatural hush fell on the room.

"Lily," he said in a strange half whisper, "where did you get that locket?"

Her hand lifted to it and covered it protectively. "It is mine," she said. "My mother and father gave it to me."

"When?" he asked.

"I have always had it," she told him, "for as long as I can remember. It is mine." She was frightened again. She curled her fingers around the locket.

"Let me see it," he commanded her. He had come within arm's length of her.

She tightened her hold of the locket.

"Lyndon—" Elizabeth began.

"Let me see it!"

Lily took her hand away and he stared at the locket, his face paler if that were possible—he looked as if he might well faint.

"It has the entwined F and L," he said. "Open it for me. What is inside?"

"Lyndon, what is this?" Elizabeth sounded annoyed.

"Open it!" His grace had taken no notice of her.

Lily shook her head, sick with terror even though there were four other people in the room besides the two of them. The Duke of Portfrey seemed unaware of them—until he withdrew his eyes from the locket suddenly and passed one hand over his face. Then while they all watched silently he loosened his neckcloth sufficiently that he could reach inside his shirt to pull out a gold chain that bore a locket identical to the one Lily wore.

"There were only two of them," he said. "I had them specially made. Is there anything inside yours, Lily?"

She was shaking her head. "My papa gave it to me," she said. "He was not a thief."

"No, no," he said. "No, I am quite sure he was not. Is there anything inside?"

She shook her head again and took one step back from him. "It is empty," she said. "The locket is mine. You are not going to take it from me. I will not let you."

Elizabeth had come to stand beside her. "Lyndon," she said, "you are frightening Lily. But what is the meaning of this? You had two such identical lockets specially made?"

"The L stands for Lyndon," he said. "The F is for Frances. My wife. Your mother, Lily."

Lily stared at him blankly.

"You are Lily Montague," he said, gazing back at her. "My daughter."

Lily shook her head. There was a buzzing in her ears.

"Lyndon." It was Elizabeth's voice. "You cannot just assume that. Perhaps—"

"I have known it," he said, "since the moment I set eyes on her in the church at Newbury. Apart from the blue eyes, Lily bears a quite uncanny resemblance to Frances—to her mother."

"I say! Look to Miss Doyle," one of the gentlemen was saying, but his words were unnecessary. The Duke of Portfrey had lunged for her and caught her up in his arms.

Lily, only half conscious, was aware of her locket—no, his—swinging from his neck just before her eyes.

He set her down on a sofa and chafed her hands while Elizabeth placed a cushion behind her head.

"I had no proof, Lily," his grace said, "until now. I knew you must exist, though I had little evidence for that either. But I could not find you. I have never quite stopped searching for you. I have never been quite able to proceed with my life. And then you stepped into that church."

Lily was turning her head from side to side on the cushion. She was trying not to listen.

"Lyndon," Elizabeth said quietly, "go slowly. I am well-nigh fainting myself. Imagine how Lily must be feeling."

He looked up at Elizabeth then and about the room.

"Yes," she said, "the other gentlemen have tactfully withdrawn. Lily, my dear, do not fear. No one is going to take anything—or anyone—away from you."

"Mama and Papa are my mother and father," Lily whispered.

Elizabeth kissed her forehead.

"What is going on in here?" a new voice asked briskly from the doorway. "Joseph told me as I was walking through the door that I had better get in here fast. Lily?"

She gave a little cry and stumbled to her feet. She was in his arms before she could take even one step away from the sofa—tightly enfolded in them, her face against his neckcloth.

"I am the one who has upset her, Kilbourne," the Duke of Portfrey said. "I have just told her that she is my daughter."

Lily burrowed closer into warmth and safety.

"Ah, yes," Neville said quietly. "Yes, she is."

***

"The letter was addressed to Lady Frances Lilian Montague," Neville said. "But someone had written beneath it in a different hand—or so the vicar assured me—'Lily Doyle.' "

He was sitting on the sofa beside Lily, her hand in his, her shoulder leaning against his arm. She was gazing down at her other hand in her lap. She was showing no apparent interest in the conversation. The Duke of Portfrey had crossed the room and come back with a glass of brandy, which he had held out silently to her. She had shaken her head. He had set it down and pulled up a chair so that he could sit facing her. He was gazing at her now, his eyes devouring her. Elizabeth was pacing the room.

"If only we could know what was in the letter," his grace said wistfully.

"But we do." Neville drew the duke's eyes from Lily for a moment. "The letter was addressed to Lily Doyle. William Doyle was her next of kin though he had not known of her existence. The vicar opened the letter and read it to him."

"And the vicar remembers its contents?" his grace asked sharply.

"Better yet," Neville said. "He made a copy of the letter. After reading it, he advised William Doyle to take it over to Nuttall Grange, to Baron Onslow, Lily's grandfather. But he believed that William had a right to a copy of it too. He seemed to feel that the Doyles might wish to claim some sort of compensation for the years of care Thomas Doyle had given Lily."

Lily was pleating the expensive lace of her overdress between her fingers. She was like a child sitting quietly and listlessly while the adults talked.

"You have this copy?" the duke asked, his voice tight.

Neville drew it out of a pocket and handed it over without a word. His grace read silently.

"Lady Lyndon Montague informed her father that she was going to stay with an ailing school friend for a couple of months," Neville said after a few minutes. Elizabeth had come to sit close by. "In reality she went to stay with her former maid and the girl's new husband—Beatrice and Private Thomas Doyle—in order to give birth to a child."

Lily smoothed out the creases she had created and then proceeded to pleat the lace again.

"Her marriage to Lord Lyndon Montague had been a secret one," Neville said, "and both had pledged not to reveal it until his return from his posting to the Netherlands. But he was sent on to the West Indies with his regiment and she discovered she was with child. She was afraid of her own father's wrath as well as his. Worse, she was afraid of her cousin, who was pressing her to marry him so that he would inherit the fortune and the estate as well as the title after Onslow's death. She was afraid of what he would do to her—and the child—if he discovered the truth."

"Mr. Dorsey?" Elizabeth asked.

"None other." His grace had folded the letter and held it in his lap. His gaze had returned to Lily. "We were foolish enough to believe that our marriage would protect her from him. The opposite was, of course, true."

"She was afraid to go home and take the baby with her," Neville said. "She was waiting for her husband to return from the West Indies—she had written to him there to tell him of her condition. In the meantime she left the baby with the Doyles. She must have intended to write to her husband again after she returned home. But he was an officer and therefore always in danger of death. And she must have been very fearful for her own safety. And so she left her locket with the baby and a letter to be given to her husband on his return or to her daughter in the event that neither of them ever came for her."

"I always suspected," his grace said, "that her death was no accident. I suspected too that Dorsey had killed her. She had indeed written to tell me there was to be a child—but if she wrote another letter, I certainly did not receive it. When she died there was no child within her, and no one knew of any recently born to her. She might have been mistaken when she wrote that first letter, I realized, or she might have miscarried. But somehow I have always known that there was a child, that there was someone in this world who was my son or my daughter. I explored every possibility I could think of—but I did not know about Beatrice Doyle."

"Lyndon," Elizabeth asked, "is it Mr. Dorsey who has tried to kill Lily, then? But surely not. I cannot believe such a thing of him."

"Onslow is bedridden," Neville said. "Probably it was into Dorsey's hands that William Doyle placed the letter. He would have discovered the truth then, though it would not have appeared very awful to him because Lily was dead. I do wonder, though, if William Doyle's death was accidental. He might have made some awkward claims on Onslow for the years of support given his granddaughter. The vicar at Leavenscourt is perhaps fortunate to be still alive. But then, of course, came Lily's sudden appearance at Newbury. Dorsey was there in the church too. He saw what Portfrey saw and must have realized the truth immediately."

"Lily." The Duke of Portfrey leaned forward in his chair suddenly and possessed himself of her free hand with both his own. The letter slipped unheeded to the floor. "Beatrice and Thomas Doyle were your mama and papa. They gave you a family and security and a good upbringing and an unusually deep love, I believe. No one—least of all me—is ever going to try to take them away from you. They will always be your parents."

She nestled her head against Neville's arm, but he could see that she had raised her eyes to look at Portfrey.

"We loved each other, Lily," Portfrey said, "your m—Frances and I. You were conceived in love. We would have lavished all our affection on you if…" He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "She loved you enough to give you up temporarily for your safety. In twenty years I have never been quite able to lay her to rest or to let go of the possibility of you. We did not abandon you. If you can possibly think of her—of Frances, my wife—as your mother, Lily, if not your mama… If you could possibly think of me as your father… I do not set myself up as a rival to your papa. Never that. But allow me…" He lifted her hand to his lips and then released it and got abruptly to his feet.

"Where are you going?" Elizabeth asked.

"She is in shock," he said, "and I am pressing my own selfish claims on her. I have to leave, Elizabeth. Excuse me? I will call tomorrow if I may. But you must not try forcing Lily to receive me. Look after her."

"Your grace." Lily spoke for the first time since Neville had come into the room. Portfrey and Elizabeth spun around to look at her. "I will receive you—tomorrow."

"Thank you." He did not smile, but he looked at her again as if he would devour her. He made a formal bow and turned toward the door.

"Wait for me, Portfrey, will you?" Neville asked. "I will be with you in a minute."

His grace nodded and left the book room with Elizabeth.

Neville got to his feet and drew Lily to hers. He set his arms about her and drew her close. What must it feel like, he wondered, suddenly to discover that one's dearly loved parents were not one's real mother and father after all? He tried to imagine discovering it of his own parents. He would feel without roots, without anchor. He would feel… fear.

"I want you to forget about the party," he told her, "and go up to your room. Ring for Dolly and then go to bed. Try to sleep. Will you?"

"Yes," she said.

It hurt him to see her so listless, so willing to obey, just like an obedient child. So unlike Lily. But Portfrey was right. She was in deep shock. He was reminded of the way she had been in the hours following Doyle's death.

"Try not to think too much tonight," he said. "Tomorrow you will better be able to adjust to the new realities. I believe you will eventually realize that you have lost nothing. It is one thing, Lily, to care for the child of one's own seed or womb. It is another to love and cherish someone else's child for whom one really has no responsibility at all. That is what your mama and papa did for you. I did not know your mama, but I always marveled that a father could feel such devoted, tender love for his daughter as your papa felt for you. You have not lost them. You have merely gained people who will love and cherish you in the future and not be jealous of the past."

"I am so very tired," she said, and she lifted her face to him—her pale, large-eyed face. "I cannot think straight—or even in crooked lines."

"I know." He lowered his head and kissed her, and she sighed and pushed her lips back against his own and raised her arms to twine about his neck.

He had missed her dreadfully during his journey into Leicestershire. And he had been sick with worry for her safety—especially after reading the letter. Feeling her small, shapely body against his own again, feeling her arms about his neck and her lips cleaving to his awoke hungers that threatened to overwhelm him. But she was in no condition for passion. Besides, there was a matter of grave importance to be attended to tonight—and Portfrey would be waiting for him.

"Go to bed now, my love," he said, lifting his head and framing her face with both hands. "I will see you tomorrow."

"Yes," she said. "Tomorrow. Maybe my brain will work tomorrow."

Chapter 24

Lily awoke from a deep sleep when the early-morning sun was already shining in at her window. She threw back the covers and leaped out of bed as she often did, and stretched. What a strange dream she had been having! She could not even remember it yet, but she knew it had been bizarre.

She stopped midstretch.

And remembered. It had not been a dream.

She was not Lily Doyle. Papa had not been her father. She was not even Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne. She was Lady Frances Lilian Montague, a total stranger. She was the daughter of the Duke of Portfrey. Her grandfather was Baron Onslow.

For one moment her mind threatened to take refuge in last evening's daze again, but there was nothing to be served by doing that. She fought panic.

Who was she?

All through those seven months in Spain she had fought to retain her identity. It had not been easy. Everything had been taken from her—her own clothes, her locket, her freedom, her very body. And yet she had clung to the basic knowledge of who she was—she had refused to give up that.

Now, this morning, she no longer knew herself. Who was Frances Lilian Montague? How could that austere, handsome man—with blue eyes like hers—be her father? How could the woman whose initial was twined with his on her locket be her mother?

They had been separated, the duke who was her father and the woman who was her mother, very soon after their marriage. Lily knew what that felt like. She knew the ache of longing and loneliness the woman must have felt. And they had loved each other. Lily had been conceived in love, the duke had told her last evening. They had loved each other and been separated forever. Their child had been left for what had been intended to be a short spell with the people who had become Lily's parents.

Mama and Papa, who had loved her as dearly as any parents could possibly love their child.

The woman, her mother, must have loved her too. Lily pictured to herself how she would have felt if she had had a child of Neville's after their separation. Oh, yes, her mother had loved her. And for over twenty years the duke, her father, had been unable to let go of either his wife or his conviction that somewhere she, Lily, existed.

She did not want to be Lady Frances Lilian Montague. She did not want the Duke of Portfrey to be her father. She wanted her papa to be the man who had begotten her. But it was all true whether she wanted it to be or not. And she could not stop herself from thinking that while for eighteen years she had had the best papa in the world and for the three years since his death had had her memories of him, the Duke of Portfrey for all that time had been without his own child. All those years, so filled with love for her, had been empty for him.

He was her father. She tested the idea in her mind without shying away from it. The Duke of Portfrey was her father. And Papa had always intended that she know it eventually. He and Mama had given her the locket to wear all her life, and Papa had always insisted that she must take his pack to an officer if he should die in battle. She did not know why he had kept the truth from her for so long or why he had not tried to contact the Duke of Portfrey. Oh, yes, she did. She could remember how her mama had doted on her, how her papa had acted as if the sun rose and set on her. They had found themselves unable to give her up and had doubtless found all sorts of good reasons for not doing so. Papa had intended to tell her when she reached adulthood. She was sure he must have intended that.

She would never know for sure what his intentions or motives had been, Lily decided. But she did know two things. Papa had not intended to keep the truth a secret from her forever. And Papa had loved her.

It was not, she thought suddenly, a bad thing to be the daughter of a duke and the granddaughter of a baron. She had dreamed of equality with Neville and had believed that perhaps she would achieve it in everything except birth and fortune.

She smiled rather wanly.

Elizabeth was dressed and in the breakfast room before Lily—an unusual occurrence. She got to her feet, took Lily's hands in hers, and kissed her on both cheeks before looking searchingly into her face.

"Lily," she said, "how are you, my dear?"

"Awake," Lily said. "Fully awake."

"You will receive him this morning?" Elizabeth sounded rather anxious. "You need not if you do not feel quite ready to do so."

"I will receive him," Lily said.

He came an hour later, when they were sitting in the drawing room, working at their embroidery—or at least pretending to. He came striding into the room close on the butler's heels, made his bow, and then hovered close to the door as if he had suddenly lost all his confidence.

"Gracious, Lyndon," Elizabeth said, hurrying toward him, "whatever happened?"

"An unfortunate encounter with a door?" he said, phrasing the words as a question, as if asking if they would be willing to accept a patently ridiculous lie. His face was shiny with bruises. His left eye was bloodshot and purplish at the outer corner.

"You have been fighting Mr. Dorsey," Lily said quietly.

He came a few paces closer to her. "You have not been in grave danger from him for some time, Lily," he said. "Kilbourne, I gather, has had a close watch put on you, and I have had a close watch put on Dorsey. I knew it was he, you see, but did not have proof of it until last evening. He will not be bothering you ever again."

Lily supposed that she had known last night why the duke and Neville left the party so early. But her mind had not been able to cope with the knowledge, or with anything else for that matter.

"He is dead?" she asked.

He inclined his head.

"You killed him?"

He hesitated. "I knocked him insensible," he said, "in a fist fight. Kilbourne and I had agreed with considerable regret that we could not reconcile it with our consciences to kill him in cold blood or even in a duel to the death, but we did agree that we would punish him severely before turning him over to a constable and a magistrate for trial. But we were careless. He snatched up a gun before he could be taken away and would have killed me if Kilbourne had not first shot him."

Elizabeth had both hands to her mouth. Lily merely looked calmly into the duke's eyes and knew that she had heard everything that he was prepared to tell. She knew that although Mr. Dorsey had probably killed her mother and Mr. William Doyle, that although he had tried three separate times to kill her and had almost killed Neville, it might have been difficult to prove any one of those murders or attempted murders in a court of law. She was not sure if it was carelessness that had left a gun within Mr.

Dorsey's reach. Perhaps they had wanted him to have that gun. Perhaps they had wanted him to try to use it so that there would be a perfectly good excuse to shoot him in self-defense.

The duke himself would never say, of course. Neither would Neville. And she would never ask. She did not really wish to know.

"I am glad he is dead," she said, almost shocked to realize that she spoke the truth. "Thank you."

"And that is all we need say on the topic of Calvin Dorsey," he said. "You are safe, Lily. Free."

She nodded.

"Well," Elizabeth said briskly, "I am due to meet with my housekeeper. It is our day for going over the accounts. You will excuse me for half an hour, Lyndon? Lily?"

Lily nodded and the duke bowed.

He looked wary when he turned back from seeing Elizabeth out of the room, but Lily smiled at him.

"Will you have a seat, your grace?" she asked.

He took a chair quite close to hers and looked at her silently for several moments.

"I will understand," he said at last, sounding as if he were delivering a well-rehearsed speech, "if you feel yourself unable to acknowledge the relationship, Lily. Kilbourne told me a good deal last night about Sergeant Thomas Doyle. I can understand your pride in him and your affection for him. But I beg you—please!—to allow me to settle a considerable portion of my fortune on you so that you may live in comfortable independence for the rest of your life. At the very least allow me to do that for you."

"What would you wish to do," she asked him, "if I said I was willing to accept more than the very least?"

He leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath, looking at her consideringly as he did so. "I would acknowledge you publicly," he said. "I would take you home to Rutland Park in Warwickshire and spend every available minute of every day getting to know you and allowing you to get to know me. I would clothe you and deck you with jewels. I would encourage you to continue with your education. I would take you to Nuttall Grange in Leicestershire to meet your grandfather. I would… What is left? I would try in every way available to me to make up for the lost years." He smiled slowly. "And I would have you tell me every single thing you can remember about Thomas and Beatrice Doyle and your growing years. That is what I would wish to do, Lily."

"You must do it, then, your grace," she said.

They stared at each other for a long time, it seemed, before he got to his feet, came closer to her, and extended a hand for hers. She stood up, gave him her hand, and watched as he raised it to his lips.

"Lily," he said. "Oh, my dear. My very, very dear."

She withdrew her hand, set her arms about his waist, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. "He will always be my papa," she said. "But from this day on you will be my father. Shall I call you that? Father?"

His arms were like iron bands about her. She was a little alarmed when she heard the first painful-sounding sob, but she closed her arms more tightly about him when he would have pulled away.

"No, no," she said. "It is all right. It is quite all right."

He did not weep for long. Men did not. She knew that from experience. They saw it as a sign of horribly embarrassing weakness, even if they had just watched a close friend smashed to a thousand pieces by a cannonball or had just had a limb sawn off by the surgeons—or had just discovered a daughter after almost twenty-one years. He drew away from her after a couple of minutes and moved off to the window, where he stood with his back to the room, blowing his nose in a large handkerchief.

"I am so very sorry to have subjected you to that," he said. "It will not happen again. You will find me strong and dependable, I believe, Lily—a good provider and a good protector."

"Yes, I know, Father," she said, smiling at his back.

She heard him draw an inward breath and hold it for a few moments. "I could, I suppose," he said, "have remarried any time during the past twenty years. I could have had a nurseryful of children and been called that a thousand times and more before now. I believe, Lily, it has been worth waiting to hear it first from your lips."

"When will we leave for Rutland Park?" she asked. "Is it a large house? Will I like it… Father?"

He turned to look at her. "As soon as possible," he said. "It is larger than Newbury Abbey. You will love it. It has been waiting for you all these years. We had better see if Elizabeth will come with you. Today is Thursday. Shall we say Monday?"

Lily nodded.

He smiled at her and strode to the bell pull. He told the servant who answered the summons to ask Lady Elizabeth to return to the drawing room at her convenience. Then they both sat down again and gazed at each other.

It would be more accurate, Lily thought, to say that he was beaming at her. Despite the battered look of his face, he appeared very happy. She deliberately kept her own expression bright—not that it was all pretense. But a part of it was. She was stepping into the unknown again as she had done so many times, it seemed, during the past couple of years.

She remembered traveling down to Newbury Abbey from London and hoping that the long journey was almost ended. She remembered seeing Neville for the first time in almost a year and a half and experiencing, despite the difficulty of the circumstances, a feeling of final homecoming.

But she had not been home. And she still was not. She wondered if she ever would be. Would the time ever come when she would feel at last that she had arrived, that she could settle in peace to live out the rest of her life?

Or was life always a journey along an unknown path?

"Kilbourne," the duke said to her just before Elizabeth came back into the room, "asked me to inform you of his intention to call this afternoon, Lily—if you are willing to receive him."

***

Killing another human being was not something one did with any relish, Neville thought during the night and the morning following the death of Calvin Dorsey. Certainly not in battle—one was too aware of the fact that the men one killed were no more evil or deserving of death than one was oneself. But not even when the man one killed was a murderer and had killed one's wife's mother and had tried on a number of occasions to kill her too. There had been a certain satisfaction, perhaps, in watching Dorsey take the bait of that carelessly abandoned pistol and in being given then little choice but to kill him—especially when Portfrey had won the argument about which of them was to punish Dorsey before he was turned over to the law. But certainly no relish.

Was there pleasure in having discovered the truth about Lily's birth? In having learned that she outranked him? That he had nothing to offer her that she did not now have in overabudance herself? And was that how he had hoped to win Lily—with his position and his wealth and the hope that her own near destitution would force her back to him? Surely not. He wanted her to be his equal, to feel his equal. The fact that she had felt herself to be by far his inferior had wrecked any chance they might have had for happiness when she had come to Newbury.

He should be rejoicing, then, in this turn of events. Why was he not? It was because of Lily herself, he concluded finally. Poor Lily had suffered so much turmoil in the past year and a half. How could she sustain the loss of her very roots? Would he find her all broken up when he called at Elizabeth's during the afternoon? Worse, would he find her still quite unlike her indomitable self, dazed and passive as she had been last evening?

He approached Elizabeth's with a great deal of trepidation. He even found himself half hoping as he entered the house and asked if Miss Doyle would receive him that she would send down a refusal. But she did not. The butler showed him up to the drawing room. Both Lily and Elizabeth were there.

"Neville," Elizabeth said, coming across the room toward him after he had made his bow and exchanged greetings with them. She kissed his cheek. "I will allow you a private word with Lily." And she left the room without further ado.

Lily was not looking crushed—or dazed. Indeed, she looked remarkably vibrant in a fashionable sprigged muslin dress with her hair softly curling about her face.

"You killed Mr. Dorsey," she said. "My father told me this morning. I am not sorry that he is dead though I have never before wished for anyone's death. But I am sorry you were forced to do it. I know it is not easy to kill."

Yes, Lily would know that, having grown up with an army whose business it was to kill.

But—my father?

"This one," he said, "was almost easy."

"We will say no more of it," she said firmly. She had risen from her chair and came across the room toward him. "Neville, I am going to go to Rutland Park on Monday with my father and Elizabeth. There is to be a notice in the papers tomorrow. I am going to spend some time with him, learning to be his daughter, letting him learn to be my father. I am going to see my grandfather and my mother's grave. I am going to… go."

"Yes." His heart felt as if it somersaulted and then sank all the way to the soles of his boots—even as he told himself that he was glad for her.

She half smiled at him. "I was Lily Doyle," she said. "Then I was Lily Wyatt—and then not. Now I am Lily Montague. I have to discover who I really am. I thought I was discovering the answer after I came here to London, but today it feels as far away as ever."

"You are Lily." He tried to smile back at her.

She nodded and her eyes brightened with tears.

"How long?" he asked her.

She shook her head.

He could not press her on the point, he realized. She did not need one more burden to carry. And he knew the question to be unanswerable.

He had begun to believe that there was a future for them after all. He had been on the brink of putting the matter to the test at Vauxhall. He hated to remember that night, which had started with such magical promise. Now he would have to wait an indefinite length of time again with no certainties to make the wait easy.

He reached out both hands for hers, and she set her own in them.

"You will like him, Lily," he said. "You will even love him, I daresay. He is a good man and he is your father. Go then and find yourself. And be happy. Promise me?"

She was biting on her upper lip, he could see.

He squeezed her hands and raised them one at a time to his lips. "I am not overfond of London," he said. "I shall be glad to return to Newbury for the summer. I daresay I will go tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps, if you think it appropriate, you will write me a letter there?"

"I cannot… write well enough," she said.

"But you will." He smiled at her. "And you will be able to read my reply too."

"Will I?" she asked him. "Sometimes I wish—oh, how I wish I were Lily Doyle again and you were Major Lord Newbury and Papa…"

"But we are not," he said sadly. "I want you to know something, though, Lily. Not so that you will have one more burden to shoulder, but so that you will know that some things are unchanged and unchangeable. I loved you when I married you. I love you today. I will love you with my dying breath. I have loved you and will love you during every moment between those time spans."

"Oh. But it is not the right moment," she said, her eyes clouding with some emotion he was unable to enter into. Poor Lily. So much had happened to her recently and she had borne it all with dignity and integrity.

"I will not prolong this visit," he told her. "I will take my leave, Lily. Make my excuses to Elizabeth?"

She nodded.

They clung to each other's hands for a few moments longer. But she was correct. It was not the right time. If she came back to him—when she came back to him—there must be no other need in her except to be with him for the rest of their lives.

He withdrew his hands gently, keeping the smile in his eyes, and left her without another word.

He was halfway back to Kilbourne House, striding unseeing along the streets, before he remembered that he had driven his curricle to Elizabeth's.

PART V

A Wedding

Chapter 25

Lily gazed eagerly from the carriage window, not even trying to appear properly genteel. The village of Upper Newbury looked so very familiar. There was the inn, where she had descended from the stagecoach, and the steep lane leading down to the lower village. And there—

"Oh, may the carriage be stopped?" she asked.

The Duke of Portfrey, from his seat opposite, rapped on the front panel, and the carriage drew to an abrupt halt. Lily had the window down in a trice despite the coolness of the day and leaned her head through it.

"Mrs. Fundy," she called. "How are you? And how are the children? Oh, the baby has grown."

While the duke and Elizabeth exchanged glances of silent amusement, Mrs. Fundy, who had been gawking at the grand carriage with its ducal crest, smiled broadly, looked suddenly flustered, and bobbed a curtsy.

"We are all very well, thank you, my lady," she said. "It is good to see you back again."

"Oh, and it is good to be back again," Lily said. "I shall call on you one day if I may."

She beamed at Mrs. Fundy while the carriage lurched into motion again. She was not coming home, she reminded herself. Newbury Abbey was not home. Oh, but she felt as if it were. She had come to love Rutland Park, as her father had predicted she would. She had come to love him too, as she had been determined to do, though it had not proved difficult at all. She had even enjoyed their extended visit to Nuttall Grange, where she had won the affection of her bedridden grandpapa and of her two aunts who were not really aunts at all—Bessie Doyle and her mama's sister. She had even come to feel happy and settled and at peace with herself and the world. She had not once, since leaving London, dreamed the nightmare.

But Newbury Abbey, though she had not seen either the park or the house yet, felt like home.

"Oh, look!" she exclaimed in awe after the carriage had turned through the gates and was proceeding along the driveway through the forest. The trees were all glorious shades of reds and yellows and browns. A few of the leaves had fallen already and lay in a colorful carpet along the drive. "Have you ever seen anything more splendid than England in autumn, Father? Have you, Elizabeth?"

"No," her father said.

"Only England in the springtime," Elizabeth said. "And that is not more splendid, I declare, only as splendid."

It had been springtime when Lily had come here first. It was autumn now—October. How much had happened in the months between, Lily thought. She could remember trudging along this driveway at night, her bag clutched in her hand…

She had written to him at the beginning of September, as he had asked her to do. She had asked Elizabeth if it was unexceptionable to do so—for her to write to a single gentleman. Elizabeth had answered, with a twinkle in her eye, that it was really not the thing at all. But Father, who had also been present at the time, had reminded them all that she was Lily and was quite adept at stretching every rule almost to the breaking point without ever doing anything shockingly improper—that was her chief charm, he had added with the smiling indulgence that had surprised her about him at first. And so she had written—with laborious care and round, childish handwriting. She was working on her penmanship but it was going to take time.

She was happy with her father, she had written. She was happy with Elizabeth's company. She had been to Nuttall Grange and met her grandfather. She had put flowers on her mother's grave. She hoped Lady Kilbourne was well and Lauren and Gwendoline too. She hoped he was well. She was his obedient servant.

He had written back to invite her and her father to come as guests to Newbury Abbey for the celebration of his mother's fiftieth birthday in October. Elizabeth had already made arrangements to attend.

And so here they were. They were merely guests. But it felt like a homecoming. And Lily, looking suddenly with shining eyes at her father as the house came into view, saw that he understood and was a little saddened, though he smiled at her.

"Father." She leaned forward impulsively and took his hand. "Thank you for agreeing that we might come. I do love you so."

He patted her hand with his free one. "Lily," he said, "you are one-and-twenty, my dear. Shockingly old to be still at home with your father. I do not expect to have you all to myself for much longer."

But that was far too explicit a thing to say. She sat back, her smile fading a little. She would take nothing for granted. Several months had passed. A great deal had changed in her life and might have changed in his also. He had invited them out of courtesy. Doubtless there were to be many other guests too. She would not set great store by the fact that he had invited her.

If she told herself those foolish things often enough, perhaps she would come to believe them in the end.

Their carriage had been spotted. The great double doors opened as it approached, and people spilled out of the house—Gwendoline, Joseph, the countess, and… him.

It was the marquess who opened the carriage door and set down the steps. The duke was out almost before they had been lowered and turned to hand Elizabeth down. The countess came forward to hug her. Everyone was trying to talk at once.

Then someone leaned inside the carriage and reached out a hand toward Lily—and they might as easily have been alone. Everything else faded from sight and sound. He was gazing at her with shining eyes and tightly compressed lips. She was beaming foolishly back at him.

"Lily," he said.

"Yes." And suddenly she knew that all her anxieties had been very foolish indeed. "Hello, Neville."

She set her hand in his.

***

There were a number of guests already at the house even though the birthday party was still one day away. Dinner was a crowded and noisy affair. His mother, Neville was pleased to note, had seated Portfrey at her right hand, Lily at her left. They were far distant from his place at the head of the table. Apart from those moments on the terrace during the afternoon, there had been scarcely a chance to exchange a word with her.

He did not really mind. He was content for the moment to observe, to watch her, to note the changes a few months had wrought in her. He remembered Elizabeth telling him at one time that new knowledge and skills did not change a person but merely added to what was already there. It was true of Lily. She was fashionable and poised and animated. Gone was the terrible sense of inadequacy that had tongue-tied her in genteel company—in female company, at least—when she was last at Newbury Abbey. She talked as much as anyone and more than many. She smiled and laughed.

But she was still Lily. She was Lily as she had been created to be—but free now to find joy in any company and in any surroundings.

He caught snippets of her conversation for the simple reason that she seemed somehow to be the focus of attention with everyone and there was often near silence along the length of the table as everyone leaned forward to hear her—when Joseph asked her how her reading skills were coming along, for example.

"Oh, you would lose a very large wager if you were foolish enough to make one now, I do assure you," she told him. "I read very well indeed. Do I not, Elizabeth? I can read a whole page in half an hour, I daresay, if there are no distractions and no very long words. And I do not have to say the words aloud or even mouth them silently. What do you think of that, Joseph?" She laughed merrily at her own expense, a sound that was echoed along the table.

"I think I would fall asleep long before you reached the end of the page, Lily," Joseph said, yawning, the fingers of one hand delicately patting his mouth.

She was delightful, Neville thought, trying to take his eyes off her occasionally so that he could keep up a conversation with the relatives who sat closer to him. It was not easy to do.

Oh, yes, she was still Lily, he thought a few minutes later. One of the footmen leaned across the table beside her to remove a dish, and she looked up at him, her face brightening with recognition.

"Mr. Jones!" she exclaimed. "How do you do?"

Poor Jones almost dropped the dish. He blushed scarlet and mumbled something that Neville did not catch.

"Oh, I know," Lily said, instantly contrite. "I do apologize for embarrassing you. I shall come down to the kitchen tomorrow morning if I may and chat with everyone. It seems an age since I saw you all."

His mother, Neville noticed, was smiling at Lily with what looked to be genuine affection.

"If you do not mind, that is, ma'am," Lily said, turning to her. "I forget that I am not at home. I often go down to the kitchen at home, do I not, Father? It is the coziest room in the house, and I can always be sure of finding something useful to do there. Father does not mind."

"And neither do I, child," the countess said, patting her hand on the table.

"One quickly learns, ma'am," the Duke of Portfrey said with a sigh, "that daughters were created for the express purpose of wrapping their fathers about their little fingers."

He looked like a different man, Neville had noticed almost from the moment of his arrival. There was a glow of happiness about him, and he did little if anything to disguise the enormous pride he felt in his daughter.

Later, in the drawing room, Lily made herself charming to everyone, sitting and talking with each of his aunts and with his mother. After the tea tray had been removed and some of the cousins had gone into the music room to entertain themselves with music, she sat for a while with Lauren and talked earnestly to her, holding her hand as she did so. And then Gwen was bending over her, saying something, and they smiled at each other before going into the music room arm in arm.

It must be a difficult evening for Lauren, Neville thought sadly. There had been a certain awkwardness between them since his return from London—she had not after all gone to Yorkshire—for though nothing had been said in their hearing, they both knew that speculation was rife in the neighborhood about his future plans. Did he intend to offer for Lady Lilian Montague, or did he intend to renew his plans to marry Lauren?

He and Lauren both knew the answer. But it had never been put into words between them. How could it be? How could he tell her that he had no intention of renewing his addresses to her without implying that she expected such a thing? And how could she tell him that she understood there could be nothing more between them than friendship without implying that she expected him to marry her?

But as always she behaved with outer poise and dignity. There was no knowing what went on in her mind.

He had loved Lily for a long time. He had not thought it possible back in the spring to love her more. But he did. He had tried to live his old life without brooding constantly about her. He had tried not to be too certain that she would in her own time come back to him.

But one sight of her had banished all pretense from his mind. Without Lily life would have very little meaning for him. She was sunshine and warmth and laughter. She was… Well, she was simply his love.

He kept his distance from her. He would not rush her even though there was an inevitability to the way this visit was developing. She had come with her father to celebrate a birthday party. He would allow her to enjoy it, then—tomorrow. But after tomorrow…

All his dreams rested upon what would surely happen after tomorrow. He refused to doubt, to fear.

***

Lauren and Gwendoline did not go immediately to bed when they returned to the dower house even though the hour was late. They sat together in the sitting room, in which a fire had been lit. It was a smaller, cozier room than the drawing room. They both gazed into the depths of the crackling flames for a while without talking.

"Do you know what she told me?" Lauren said at last.

"What?" Gwendoline asked. There was no need to clarify about whom they were talking.

"She told me that she knows I must resent her," Lauren said. "She told me that she resented me too last spring because I was so perfect, the model of what all ladies should be, so much more suited to being Neville's countess than she was. She told me that she admires my restraint, my dignity, my unfailing kindness to her despite what my real feelings must be. She asked me to forgive her for ever doubting my motives."

"She is right to have spoken so openly of what is between you," Gwendoline said. "She does speak her mind, does she not?"

"She is—" Lauren closed her eyes. "She is the woman Neville wants. Did you notice the way he looked at her all evening? Did you see his eyes?"

"She told me," Gwendoline said quietly, "that she knew she had hurt me by stepping all unbidden into the midst of my family when I had not finished grieving for Vernon or adjusting to all the upheavals of my life. She asked me to forgive her. She was not being obsequious, Lauren. She meant it. I still wish it were possible to hate her, but it is not, is it? She is so very likable."

Lauren smiled into the fire.

"When I said that," Gwendoline added hastily, "I did not mean—"

"That you do not therefore like me?" Lauren said, looking at her. "No, of course not, Gwen. Why should it mean that? She is not my rival. Neville and I would have married if she had not come, but it is a good thing she did. Ours would not have been a love match."

"Oh, Lauren, of course it would!" Gwendoline cried.

"No." Lauren shook her head. "You must have felt this evening what everyone else was feeling, Gwen. The air fairly crackled with the tension of their passion for each other. They were meant for each other. There was never that between Neville and me."

"Perhaps—" Gwendoline began, but Lauren was gazing into the fire again and something in her face silenced her cousin.

"I saw them once, you know," Lauren said, "when I ought not to have done so. They were down at the pool together, early one morning. They were bathing and laughing and entirely happy. The door of the cottage was open—they had spent the night together there. That is what love should be like, Gwen. It is what you had with Lord Muir."

Gwendoline's hands tightened about the arms of her chair and she drew a sharp breath, but she said nothing.

"It is the sort of love I will never know," Lauren said.

"Of course you will," Gwendoline assured her. "You are young and lovely and—"

"And incapable of passion," Lauren said. "Have you noted the contrast between Lily and me, Gwen? After the—the wedding, I could have left here. I could have gone home with Grandpapa. I daresay he would have done something for me. I could have begun a new life. I stayed here instead, hoping that she would die. And even after I decided later that I would go after all, I changed my mind. I was afraid to go lest I—miss something here. But Lily, who had far less to go to than I and far more to leave behind, went away to make a new life for herself rather than cling to what was not satisfactory for her at the time. I do not have that sort of courage."