One Night for Love (31 page)

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

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

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

“When?”

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

“One month.”

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

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

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

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

“Promise me something,” Neville said.

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

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

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

“Thank you.”

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

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

“What are friends for?” the marquess asked him.

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

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

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

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

Until she did.

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

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

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

But she was shaking her head slowly.

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

“Lily—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  
PART IV
  
The Education of a Lady

  
17
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And your last wish, Lily?”