One Night for Love

"You are tired," Gwendoline said briskly, "and a little dispirited. Everything will look better in the morning."

"But there is one thing I do have the courage to do," Lauren said, getting to her feet. She stretched up with great care to remove a costly porcelain shepherdess from the mantel and held it in her hands, smiling at it. "Oh, yes, indeed I do."

She dashed the ornament onto the hearth, where it smashed into a thousand pieces.

***

The main celebrations for the countess's birthday party were to occur during the evening, but with so many house guests at Newbury Abbey, even tea was a crowded, noisy affair. It was a raw, autumn day outside. Everyone was quite happy to be indoors.

Except Elizabeth. Oh, she was delighted to be home again, to see all her relatives again, to join in a family celebration. And she was more than delighted to see that what she had hoped for since the spring was about to happen. Although the occasion was nominally Clara's birthday, everyone understood quite clearly that there was something far more significant than that afoot. The sort of love that Neville and Lily obviously shared was rare and wonderful to behold.

It gladdened the unselfish part of Elizabeth's heart.

And saddened the selfish part.

She would no longer be needed, either by Lily or by—or by Lily's father.

She withdrew quietly from the drawing room sooner than most of the other guests, fetched a warm cloak and bonnet and gloves from her rooms, and stepped outside for a solitary stroll to the rock garden. It looked rather bleak and colorless at this time of the year, she found. She remembered coming here on the day of Lily's first arrival at Newbury Abbey, the day that was to have seen Neville and Lauren's nuptials. Lyndon had questioned Lily closely on that occasion, and she, Elizabeth, had chided him, not knowing that even then he had suspected the truth. Such a long time ago…

"Is company permitted?" a voice asked from behind her. "Or would you prefer to be alone?"

He had come after her. She turned to smile at him. She wished she had the strength to tell him that yes, indeed she did prefer to be alone, but it would have been a lie. She had the rest of a lifetime in which to be alone. There was no point in beginning before it was necessary.

"Lyndon," she said as he walked closer to her, "does it make you just a little sad? You have had so little time with her." She had watched the transformation of her friend since his discovery of Lily with amazement and gladness—and an unwilling chill at her heart.

"That she is going to desert me for Kilbourne?" he said. "Yes, a little. The past few months have been the happiest of my life. Shall we take the rhododendron walk? Or will you be too cold?"

She shook her head. But he did not offer his arm, she noticed, perhaps because she clasped her hands so determinedly behind her. She had never felt awkward with him. She felt awkward now.

"But there is also a certain feeling of satisfaction," he said. "Lily will be happy—if she accepts him. But I feel little doubt that it will happen. Neither does the countess or anyone else here at Newbury for that matter. There is a certain satisfaction, Elizabeth, in the knowledge that finally I will be able to proceed with my own life."

"When you wept at Frances's grave last summer," she said, "as Lily did too, you were finally able to accept that she had gone, were you not? You must have loved her very dearly."

"Yes, I did," he said. "A long, long time ago. I used to think of remarrying, you know, and fathering a son and bringing him up as my heir. And then I used to imagine discovering Frances's child and my own—and finding that it was a son. I pictured the enmity and bitterness that would develop between those two brothers—both children of my own loins but only one of them able to be my heir."

There was more beauty on the hill path than there had been in the garden. The leaves were multicolored above their heads and beneath their feet. The year was not yet quite dead.

"It is not too late, Lyndon," she forced herself to say, her heart cold and heavy, in tune with the chill breeze that blew in their faces. "To father a son and heir, I mean. You are not so very old, after all. And you are extremely eligible. If you were to marry a young woman, you might yet have several more children. You might have a family to comfort you for Lily's absence."

"It is what you would advise then, my friend?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said, hoping that her voice was as cool and as firm as she intended it to be.

She had always loved the way the path had been constructed to bring one above the level of the treetops at its highest point so that one suddenly had a vast view over the abbey and the park to the sea in the distance. She concentrated her mind on the beauty of her surroundings while the silence stretched between them. They had stopped walking, she realized.

"Do you consider yourself young, Elizabeth?" he asked her at last.

Something lurched inside her. She gazed ahead to the leaden gray sea, refusing to pay attention to the fact that he was unclasping her hands from her back and taking one of them in his own.

"Not young enough," she said. "I am not young enough, Lyndon. I am six-and-thirty. I have remained single from choice, you know. I have always chosen not to marry where I cannot love. But now I am too old."

"Do you love me?" he asked her.

He was not himself looking at the view, which seemed absurd in light of the fact that they had walked all this way in order to do so. He was turned toward her and looking at her. It was not a fair question that he had asked. Her heart pounded so hard that it threatened to rob her of breath.

"As a very dear friend," she told him.

"Ah," he said softly. "That is a pity, Elizabeth. I might have said the same of my feelings for you until a few months ago. But no longer. There is little point in broaching the subject of marriage with you, then? You do not love me as you would wish to love a husband?"

"Lyndon," she whispered, "it is too late for me to bear you a son."

"Is it?" he asked her, lifting her hand to his lips and holding it there after pulling back her glove. "But you are only six-and-thirty, my dear."

He was laughing. Oh, not out loud, but there was laughter in his voice, wretched man. She tried to draw her hand away, but his own closed more tightly about it.

"Lyndon," she pleaded, "be sensible. You owe me nothing. You owe much to your name and your position."

"I owe something to myself," he told her. "I owe it to myself to marry where I love, Elizabeth. I love you. Will you marry me?"

"Oh," she said—and could think of nothing else to say for several moments while he turned her hand and found her bare wrist with his lips. "You will regret this in a few days' time after everything is settled with Lily and you realize you will soon be free to do whatever you wish with your life. You will be relieved that I have said no."

"Are you saying no, then, my dear?" He sounded suddenly sad, the laughter all gone from his voice. "Will you look at me now and tell me that it is because you do not love me and choose rather to live the rest of your life alone than with me? Into my eyes, if you please."

She turned her head and looked at his chin—and then into his very blue eyes. Ah, could such a look be intended for her? The sort of look with which Neville regarded Lily and which she had so envied? But the Duke of Portfrey was looking unwaveringly into her eyes.

"Promise me you will never regret it." Hope and terror all mingled together were doing painful and peculiar things to her insides. "Promise me you will not be sorry in a year's time or two years' time if mere are no children. Promise me—"

He kissed her hard.

"I have never known you to babble nonsense before today, Elizabeth," he said well over a minute later.

"Lyndon." She blinked her eyes to clear her vision. Somehow her hands had found their way to his shoulders. "Oh, Lyndon, are you quite, quite's—"

He kissed her again, open-mouthed this time, and pressed his tongue past her startled lips and teeth right into her mouth. It was such a shockingly intimate embrace that she lost both her breath and her knees and was forced to lock her arms about his neck and cling for dear life. And then she kissed him back, touching his tongue with her own, sucking on it, listening with exhultation to the soft murmurs of appreciation with which he responded.

He was smiling when he lifted his head again. "I do beg your pardon," he said. "I interrupted you. What were you saying?"

"I have the feeling," she said severely, "that you will not allow me to complete any sentence you do not wish to hear."

"You learn fast," he said, rubbing his nose against hers and then trailing soft kisses across one cheek to her ear before nibbling on her earlobe and startling a cry of pure pleasure from her. "But then you are an intelligent woman. You must understand now how I intend to enforce wifely obedience."

"I never realized how absurd you can be," she said. "Or how unscrupulous. Lyndon?"

"Mmm?" He feathered kisses along her jaw toward her chin.

"I do love you, you know," she said, closing her eyes. "As a dear friend and so very much more than just that. If I marry you, I will try my very hardest to give you a son."

He threw back his head and laughed aloud before hugging her very tightly to him. "Will you indeed?" he said. "Those are provocative words, my dear—very provocative. I will test your resolve on our wedding night, I promise you, and every night following it. Perhaps on the occasional morning or afternoon too. When, Elizabeth? Soon? Sooner? By special license? I have no patience with banns, have you? I am forty-two years old. You are six-and-thirty. I want us to spend every day, every moment, of the rest of our lives together."

"We are not so very old," she protested.

"Certainly not too old," he agreed, kissing her on the lips again. He grinned. "Let us see what those children decide to do during the next day or two, shall we? I shall certainly insist upon a proper wedding at Rutland for my beloved Lily—nowhere else will do. But I would dearly like her to have a stepmother to help me organize it."

"Ah," she cried, "now we come to the real point of all this. Now we come to the truth of why you are going to such pains to persuade me—"

He kissed her long and hard.

Chapter 26

Newbury Abbey, Lily had discovered, looked much the same and yet so very different. She had been oppressed by it, dwarfed by it, overwhelmed by it when she had last been here. Now she could admire its magnificence and love the light elegance of its design. Now it felt like home. Because it was his home, and surely would be hers too.

During the day and a half since her arrival she had talked with everyone and enjoyed everyone's company—including that of the kitchen staff with whom she had taken coffee at midmorning while she peeled potatoes. She had been in Neville's company too, though she had not been alone with him even once. The most private they had been was that minute—no, not even so long—when he had leaned into her father's carriage.

It did not matter. There was a way of being alone with someone even in the midst of crowds. She had grown up surrounded by a regiment of soldiers and its women and children and had learned that lesson early.

They conversed with each other—in company with others. They looked at each other and smiled at each other—in full view of everyone else. But all the time there was really just the two of them, and the shared understanding that at last the time was right. That at last she was home to stay. For the rest of their lives. Lily was sure she was not wrong.

It had not yet been spoken in words, for although the time was right, the exact, perfect moment had not yet arrived. And they would not rush it—it was as if they had a tacit agreement on that. They had waited a long time; they had endured a great deal. The moment of their final commitment would reveal itself. They would not try to force it.

The carpet in the drawing room was rolled back during the evening so that there could be dancing for the countess's birthday party. Lady Wollston, Neville's Aunt Mary, took her place at the pianoforte. Neville danced with his mother and then with Gwendoline, who liked to dance despite her injured leg. He danced with Elizabeth and Miranda.

And of course he danced with Lily—the last dance of the evening, a waltz.

"I am selfish, you see, Lily," he told her with a smile. "If it were a country set, I would have to relinquish you to other partners with every new pattern of the dance. With a waltz, I have you all to myself."

Lily laughed. She had danced with her father, with Joseph, with Ralph, with Hal. She had thoroughly enjoyed the evening. But only because she had known that finally, at last, she would dance with Neville.

"I knew it would be a waltz," she told him.

"Lily." He leaned his head a little closer. "You are a single woman, daughter of a duke, bound by all the proprieties that apply to a lady of the beau monde."

Lily's eyes danced with merriment.

"I have already spoken with Portfrey and have won his consent," he said. "I could speak with you formally in the library tomorrow. Your father or Elizabeth would bring you there and then tactfully leave us alone together for fifteen minutes. No longer than fifteen—it would be improper."

"Or?" Lily laughed again. "I hear an alternative in your voice and see it in your face. If the prospect of fifteen minutes alone in the library makes you wince, as it does me, what then?"

He grinned at her. "Portfrey would challenge me to pistols at dawn for even thinking it," he said.

"Neville." She leaned a little closer. Their proximity would have scandalized the beau monde at a ton ball. But they were among family, who watched them with affectionate indulgence while pretending not to watch at all. "What is the alternative to the library? Oh. Shall I say it? You mean the valley, don't you? And the waterfall and pool. The cottage."

He nodded and smiled slowly.

"Tomorrow morning?" she asked. "No, that would not provoke a challenge from any irate father. You mean tonight, don't you?"

His smile lingered, as did her own. But they were gazing deep into each other's eyes, performing the steps of the waltz almost without realizing that they still danced. And Lily, feeling a tightening in her breasts and a weakening in her knees, knew that the moment had found itself. The perfect moment. He spoke again only when the music came to an end.

"You will go there with me, Lily?"

"Of course," she said.

"After everyone has settled for the night? I will knock on your door."

"I will be ready."

Yes, Lily thought as she made her way to her room a short while later, having hugged the countess, Elizabeth, and her father, and said a decorous good night to Neville. Yes, it was entirely right that they go to the cottage. Tonight. She was a lady now, daughter of a duke, and she was single, and she was bound by all the rules by which polite society regulated itself. But deeper than those realities was the fact that she was Lily, that in her heart she was married and had been for almost two years, that she was bound by something far stronger than mere man-made rules.

***

An almost full moon beamed down from a clear, star-studded sky. It was autumn and it was cold. But Lily, her hand clasped in Neville's, saw and felt only the beauty of this moment to which they had come. They hurried past the stables, down over the lawn, through the trees, through the ferns, down the steep slope to the valley. They did not speak even when they were far enough from the house not to disturb anyone with the sound of their voices. There was no need of speech. Something far deeper than words pulsed between them as they went.

They turned up the valley together at last, making their way toward the waterfall and the pool and the cottage. It was there they had lived through another moment—a tantalizingly brief moment—of total, utter happiness before being torn apart by a series of events that did not need to be remembered just now. They were back where they had been happy together. And where they would be happy again.

They were back where they belonged.

He spoke before opening the cottage door.

"Lily," he said, bending his head toward hers, cupping her face with gentle hands, "we will make love before we talk, will we? Even though church and state do not recognize our right to do so?"

"I recognize it," she told him. "And you do. It is all that matters. I am your wife. You are my husband." It had always been true, from that moment on the hillside in Portugal, when she had been dazed with shock and grief. Even then she had known that he was everything in the world that she would ever need or want. No one—least of all the impersonal forces of church and state—could destroy the sanctity of that ceremony.

"Yes." He touched his forehead briefly to hers and closed his eyes. "Yes, you are my wife."

He lighted two candles inside the cottage. She carried one of them through to the bedchamber while he knelt at the fireplace there, lighting the fire. The air was frigidly cold.

"It will take awhile to warm up in here," he said, getting to his feet and opening back his cloak before drawing her against him and wrapping it about both of them. He rested his cheek against the top of her head. "Let me hold you and kiss you until it is warm enough to undress and lie down on the bed."

But she laughed and tipped back her head to look up into his face. "It was cold," she reminded him, "on our wedding night."

"Oh, Lord, yes," he said, grinning. "Only cloaks and blankets and a tent to keep out the December chill."

"And passion," she said.

He brushed his lips against hers. "I must have crushed you horribly. It is not the introduction to passion I would have chosen for you if I had had the planning of it."

"It was one of the two most beautiful nights in my life," she told him. "The other was here. The air is already warm by the fire."

"But the floor is hard."

She smiled dazzlingly at him. "Not harder than the ground inside your tent in Portugal."

They used the pillows and all the blankets from the bed. They used their cloaks. They did not remove all their clothes. The floor was indeed hard and cold, and the air was not comfortably warm despite the crackling fire that was catching hold in the hearth.

Their passion knew none of the discomforts. For each there was only the other, warm and alive and eager. After a while, after they had caressed each other with hands and mouths and murmured endearments and he had raised her dress and adjusted his own clothing and pressed himself deep inside her, there was not even each other, but the two of them seemed one body, one heart, one being. And, after he had moved in her and with her for long minutes of shared passion and pleasure, there was not even the one left but only a mindless bliss. Oh, yes, they were married.

***

He was still inside her. He had been sleeping, all his relaxed weight bearing down on her. And her back was to the hard floor of the cottage. He disengaged himself and rolled off her, keeping his arms about her. But she moaned her protest at the loss of him and turned against him with sleepy murmurings.

The fire, he saw over her shoulder, was blazing healthily. He could not have been sleeping for long, then.

"You must have a bodyful of squashed bones," he said.

"Mmm." She sighed. Then she moved her head and kissed him with soft languor on the lips. "Are you going to make an honest woman of me?"

"Lily." He hugged her to him tightly. "Oh, Lily, my love. As if you could ever be dishonest. You are my wife. You can say no a thousand times over, you can say it for the rest of our lives and never make me waver in that conviction."

"I do not intend to say no a thousand times," she said. "Or even once. I said yes the first time you asked. I married you an hour later. I have been married to you ever since even though I could not agree to make it legal back in the spring. I am not saying no now. I am married to you and I want the world to acknowledge the fact—Father, your mother, everyone. But only to acknowledge what already is."

He kissed her.

"Father will want a grand wedding," she said, "even though the only wedding that will really matter to me is the one in Portugal. He will want us to get married at Rutland Park. We must give him what he wants, Neville. He is very special to me. He is… I love him."

"Of course. And Mama will expect it too," he said, kissing her again. "Society will expect it. Of course we will get married again—in the grand manner. When, Lily?"

"Whenever Father and your mother want it," she said.

"No." He smiled at her suddenly. "No, Lily. We will decide. How does the second anniversary of our first, our real wedding sound to you? December—at Rutland Park."

"Oh, yes." She smiled back with obvious delight. "Yes, that would be perfect."

Everything was perfect—for the present. It would not remain so throughout the rest of their lives, of course. Life did not work that way. But now, this night, all was well. The future looked bright and the past…

Ah, the past. The past that Lily had endured and he had never found the courage to share completely with her. It did not matter, perhaps. The past was best left just where it was. But then the past could never remain there. It encroached on the present and could blight the future if the issues it had raised were never dealt with. Lily's past would always be something he tiptoed about, something she deliberately never spoke about to him.

"What are you thinking?" She touched her lips to his. "Why do you look so sad?"

"Lily." He spoke quietly, looking into her shadowed eyes though he would rather have looked anywhere else in the world. "Tell me about those months. There was more to tell, was there not? But I did not have the courage or fortitude to listen to the whole of it back in the spring. The pain of those we love is always harder to bear than our own, especially when there is guilt involved. But I need to know. I need to share it all so that there are no shadows left between us. And perhaps you need to tell. I need to help you let go of it, if I can. I need—"

"Forgiveness?" she said when he did not complete the thought. Her finger was tracing the line of his facial scar. "You did all you could, Neville, both for me and for the men who died in the pass. It was war. And it was Papa who took me on that scouting mission. I knew the risk; he knew it. You must not blame yourself. You must not. But yes, I will tell you. And then we will both let go of the pain. Together. It will be finally in the past, where it belongs."

Even now he wished he had left it alone. He wished he had held on to their perfect night without allowing the intrusion of the one piece of ugliness they had never confronted together.

"His name was Manuel," he said quietly.

She drew a slow and audible breath. "Yes. His name was Manuel," she said. "He was small and wiry of build and handsome and charismatic. He was the leader of the band of partisans and a fanatical nationalist. He was fiercely loyal to his countrymen, terrifyingly cruel to his enemies. I was his woman for seven months. I believe he grew fond of me. He wept when he let me go."

He held her while she continued. And after she had finished talking. She had cried at the end. She was crying now. So was he.

"It does not need to be said," he murmured against one of her ears when he had control of his voice, "because there was no guilt, Lily. But I know you blame yourself for living when those French captives died. And for allowing that man to use your body instead of fighting to the death. So I will say it, my love, and you must believe me. You are forgiven. I forgive you."

Her tears stopped eventually, and she blew her nose on the handkerchief he had somehow found in the pocket of his cloak.

"Thank you," she said. She smiled tremulously. "It does not need to be said, because there was no guilt, Neville. But I know you need to hear it. I forgive you for failing to protect me, for neglecting to come in search of me, for coming home to England and proceeding with your life. You are forgiven."

He drew her head beneath his chin and massaged her scalp through her hair with light fingers. He gazed into the fire.

Strange night, he thought. Almost like the first night they spent together, ugliness and grief on the one hand, love and bliss of physical passion on the other, weaving themselves into some fabric called life. Something that despite everything was worth living and fighting for. As long as there was love—that indefinable element that gave it all a meaning and a value deeper than words.

It had been strangely right to confront the final painful barrier tonight of all nights. To recognize openly together that the path to this night and this cottage had been a long and a difficult one. But to understand that together they could ease each other's burdens and offer each other pardon and peace as well as love and passion.

"Lily." He kissed her on the mouth. "Lily—"

She pressed herself to him and clung tightly.

It was a fierce loving, without foreplay, without any great gentleness. It was the yearning of two bodies to reach beyond desire, beyond pleasure, beyond simple sexual passion to the very core of love. And blessedly they found it there in the cottage beside the pool and the waterfall, their final cries wordless, their sated bodies tangled together on the hard floor among blankets and cloaks and other garments.

They slept.

***

Neville was still fast asleep and awkwardly tangled up in the blankets after Lily had risen to her feet, straightened her clothes, fluffed up her hair as best she could, and drawn on her cloak. She was tempted to leave him there, but the fire had died down and soon enough the cold would wake him anyway. She nudged him with one foot.

He grunted.

"Neville," she said, and watched, unsurprised, as he came fully awake and sat up all in one moment—he had been an army officer, after all. "Neville, in another few hours we are going to have to go back to the house and look fresh and tidy and innocent enough to face Father and your mother and everyone else. We are going to have to tell them our news and allow them to take everything else out of our hands. Are we going to waste these precious few hours?"

He grinned and reached out an arm for her. "Now that you mention it—" he began.

But she clucked her tongue. "I did think of bathing," she admitted, "but I suppose the water would be rather chilly."

He grimaced.

"So we will go walking on the beach instead," she told him. "No, running."

"We will?" He stretched. "When we could be making love instead?"

"We will go running on the beach," she said firmly. "In fact"—she grinned cheekily at him—"the last one to the rock and up to the very top of it is a shameful slug-a-bed."

"A what?" he said, shouting with laughter.

But she was gone, into the other room, out through the door, leaving it wide open, leaving behind her only an echo of answering laughter.

Neville grimaced again, sighed, cast one longing look at the dying fire, chuckled, jumped to his feet, gathering his clothes about him as he did so, and went in pursuit.

Chapter 27

Lily had not judged the Duke of Portfrey quite correctly. He wanted a wedding for her at Rutland Park, it was true. She was his daughter, and he had finally found her and brought her home where she belonged. It was from home that he would give her away to the man who had won his blessing to be her husband.

But he left the choice to the size of wedding to Lily herself. If she wanted the whole ton there, then he would coerce every last member to come. If, on the other hand, she preferred something more intimate, with only family and friends in attendance, then so be it.

"The whole ton would not fit into the church," she told him. It was an ancient Norman church, set on a hill above the village, a narrow path winding upward through the churchyard to its arched doorway. It was not a large church.

"They will be squeezed in," he assured her, "if it is what you wish."

"Are you sure you would not mind," she asked him, "if I were to choose a wedding with just relatives and some friends?"

"Not at all." He shook his head. "I know, Lily, that this wedding will take second place to your first. But I want it to be a precious second place. Something you will remember fondly for the rest of your life."

She threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly. "It will be," she said. "It will be, Father. You will be there this time, and Elizabeth will be there, and all of Neville's family. Oh, it will not take second place, I promise you, but an equal place."

"A smaller, more intimate wedding it will be then," he told her. "It is what I hoped you would choose, anyway."

It was not as small or as intimate as his own wedding to Elizabeth, though, which took place at Rutland at the beginning of November, with only Lily and the duke's steward in attendance. And yet nothing, he said afterward, could possibly have made the day happier for him or his bride.

Elizabeth, always beautiful, elegant, dignified, serene, glowed with a new happiness that put the bloom of youth back into her cheeks. She threw herself with eager energy into the plans for the wedding of her stepdaughter and her favorite nephew.

***

And so on a crisp, frosty, sunny morning in December, Neville waited before the altar of the church in Rutland for his bride to make her appearance. The church was not quite full, but everyone who was important in his life and Lily's was there, with the exception of Lauren, who had insisted despite all their protests on staying at home. His mother was there, sitting in the front pew with his uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Anburey. Elizabeth, the Duchess of Portfrey, was there in the pew across the aisle from them. All the uncles and aunts and cousins were there. Captain and Mrs. Harris had come as well as a number of Portfrey's relatives. Baron Onslow had got up from his sickbed in Leicestershire in order to attend his granddaughter's wedding.

And Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough, was at Neville's side as his best man.

There was a stirring of movement at the back of the church and a brief glimpse of Gwen as she stooped to straighten the hem of the bride's gown. The bride herself stayed tantalizingly out of sight.

But not for long. Portfrey stepped into view, immaculate in black and silver and white, and then the bride herself stepped up beside him and took his arm. The bride, in a white gown of classically simple design that shimmered in the dim light of the church interior, her short blond curls entwined with tiny white flowers and green leaves.

There was a sigh of satisfaction from those gathered in the pews.

But Neville did not see a bride dressed with elegance and taste and at vast expense. He saw Lily. Lily in her faded blue cotton dress, draped in on old army cloak that was still voluminous even though she had cut it down to size. Lily with bare feet despite the December chill, and unfettered hair in a wild mane down her back to her waist.

His bride.

His love.

His life.

He watched her coming toward him, her blue eyes steady on his and looking deep into him. And he knew in that moment that she was not seeing a bridegroom in wine velvet coat with silver brocaded waistcoat and gray knee breeches and crisp white linen. He knew she was seeing on officer of the Ninety-fifth, shabby and dusty in his green and black regimentals, his boots unpolished, his hair cropped short.

She smiled at him and he realized that he was smiling back. Portfrey was placing her hand in his and turning to take his seat beside Elizabeth.

Neville was back in the church at Rutland Park with his elegantly, expensively dressed bride. His beautiful Lily. Beautiful in her wildness, beautiful in her elegance.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered…"

He turned his attention to the service that would join them together in the eyes of church and state, just as that service in the hills of central Portugal had joined them forever in their own hearts.

***

Cold air met them when they stepped out of the church. But it was the coldness of a perfect winter's day, the sort of coldness that whipped color into cheeks and a sparkle into eyes and energy into muscles.

Lily laughed. "Oh, dear," she said.

She really had not noticed as they had walked up the aisle after signing the church register, smiling to right and to left at relatives and friends, who beamed back at them, that a significant number of the congregation, especially its younger members, had disappeared. It was obvious now. There they were on either side of the winding churchyard path, their hands loaded with ammunition.

Neville was laughing too. "Where the devil," he asked irreverently, "did they come by all those live flowers in December?"

"Father's hothouses," Lily guessed. "But they are no longer flowers. They are petals."

Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All in the clutches of cousins who waited gleefully to pelt the bride and groom with them.

"Well," Neville said, eyeing the open carriage that was to take them back to the house for the wedding breakfast, "we must not disappoint them and walk sedately as if we did not mind being covered with debris, Lily. We had better run for it."

He grasped her hand tightly, and laughing gaily they ran the gauntlet down the winding path while the cousins cheered and whooped and had the air raining multicolored petals on their hair and their bridal clothes.

"Sanctuary," Neville said, still laughing when they reached the carriage. He handed Lily inside and reached out to wrap about her shoulders the white, fur-trimmed cloak that awaited her there. "Uh-oh."

Lily snuggled into her petal-lined cloak while Neville stood up in the carriage and shook one fist at the merry wedding guests. They were all there now, sober adults as well as riotous youngsters. The countess had been weeping, Lily saw, and she stretched out a hand to her mother-in-law and kissed her when she came closer. She kissed Elizabeth, who was also dewy-eyed, and hugged her father, who was pretending that the cold had set his eyes to watering.

Neville, still standing in the carriage, was hurling a shower of coins in the direction of a large group of villagers gathered to observe the spectacle. The children among them shrieked and scampered to pick up the treasure.

And then the carriage was in motion, and both Lily and Neville became aware that it was dragging a whole arsenal of ribbons and bows and bells behind it.

"One would think," Neville said, settling beside Lily, "that the cousins had nothing better to do with their time."

"You have a petal on your nose," she said, laughing gleefully and reaching out to remove it.

But he captured her hand as soon as she had done so and carried it to his lips. His own laughter had faded. She gazed into his eyes, her own glowing.

"Lily," he said. "My wife. My countess."

"Yes." She opened her hand to cup his cheek. They had turned a bend in the country lane that would take them back to the house. Church and wedding guests and villagers had disappeared from sight. "I have changed identity so many times in the past two years that I have not known quite who I am or who I ought to be."

"I know." He set his hand over the back of hers. "And now you have found yourself at last? Who are you, Lily?"

"I am Lily Doyle," she said, "and Lady Frances Lilian Montague. And Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne. I am all three."

"You sound confused still," he said wistfully.

But she shook her head and smiled at him, all her happiness shining from her eyes.

"I am all the persons I have ever been," she said, "and all the experiences I have ever lived. I do not have to make choices. I do not have to deny one identity in order to claim another. I am who I am. I am Lily." Her smile became gay. "Also known as your wife."

He turned his head, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to her wrist. "Yes," he said. "That is exactly who you are. You are Lily. The woman I love. I do love you, Lily."

"I know." She bent her head closer to his. "You loved me enough to let me go in order that I might find myself."

"And you have come back to me."

"Yes," she said. "Because I did not have to, Neville. Because I could come freely and offer myself freely. And because I love you. I always have. From the first moment I saw you talking to Papa. You were my hero then. You became my friend after that. And then my love. And now you are even more than that. You are the person I can meet as an equal and love as an equal."

"Have I told you," he asked her, smiling slowly at her, "what a beautiful bride you make, Lily?"

"Oh," she said, "you have Elizabeth to thank for that. She is the one who convinced me that this gown was the one and that I would look better with just flowers in my hair than with a bonnet and veil."

"I meant," he said, "in your blue cotton dress with your army cloak and nothing in your hair at all. Not even a hairpin."

"Oh." She bit her lip. "What a lovely thing to say. And you were never more handsome than in your well-worn regimentals. Neville, how fortunate we are to have two such wedding days to remember."

"Uh-oh," he said suddenly. He was looking ahead along the lane while Lily was still looking into his face. She turned her head sharply.

"Oh, dear," she said.

Every servant from Rutland Park, she would swear, from the butler on down to the lowliest undergardener, was out on the terrace. They were neatly lined up in order of rank to greet the newlyweds. They were also—every last one of them—armed to the teeth with flower petals.

Neville set an arm about Lily's shoulders and bent his head to look into her face. She gazed back at him. Their lovely interlude of privacy was over, it seemed. At least for now.

"Until tonight, my love," he said.

"Yes," she said wistfully. "Until tonight."

They turned laughing faces toward the servants and the floral ambush awaiting them.

Table of Contents

PART I

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V