One Night for Love (28 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To London?”

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

“A special license.” She was looking blankly at him.

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

“But we
are
married.” Blankness was turning to puzzlement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am Lily Doyle,” she said. “I am still Lily Doyle.”

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

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

“We are not married,” she said. “Oh, thank God.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lord God!

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

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

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

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

“No, sir,” she said softly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neville bowed to her.

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

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

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

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