Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 17

He might have sent another messenger to make further inquiries. But he chose instead to go in person to Leavens-court 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 bl.u.s.tery 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 fl.u.s.tered again, a.s.sured 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 a.s.sessing 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sed 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."

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 cla.s.ses, 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 Elizabeth did 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 gla.s.s 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 partic.i.p.ating in the ball as a dancer. It was true that she had had dancing lessons three times each week and had been p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sengers 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 rea.s.suring, she had to admit. And suddenly he looked perfectly dependable and trustworthy to her. She felt herself grow calmer. Until, that was, the carriage 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 all wrong.

"d.a.m.n Elizabeth," he said, still muttering.

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

"So that I might see my embarra.s.sment 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 embarra.s.sment 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 a.s.sured 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.