Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 4

"I shall have food and drink brought up immediately,"

Neville said, striding across the room to pull on a ta.s.seled strip of silk beside the bed, "and then I shall have hot water carried up to the dressing room for a bath. It should be possible to retrieve your bag, but for now I am sure a nightgown and a dressing gown can be found for you. You must sleep then, Lily. You look weary."

Yes, she was tired, she supposed. But weariness had been a condition of her life for so long that she hardly recognized it for what it was. She knew she was hungry, though she was not at all sure she would be able to eat. His tone was brisk and formal. It was not at all the joyful homecoming she had imagined-or the horrified rejection she had feared. He knew what had happened to her, yet he had brought her to the house, to this grand apartment.

"Is this your room?" she asked him. She did not know. what to call him. "Neville" seemed too familiar, even though she was his wife. She would have felt comfortable calling him "sir," but he was no longer an officer and she was no longer a part of his regiment. She could not bring herself to call him "my lord." And so she called him nothing.

"It is the countess's room," he said. He nodded toward a door in the room she had not yet seen beyond. "You will find the dressing room through there."

The countess? The countess would be his wife or his mother. He would hardly have put her in his mother's room. That tall lady at the church was to have been his wife, his countess. But he had been unable to marry her because he was already married to herself, to Lily. That made her ... the countess. Did it? She really had not thought of it before. She had been startled when her French captors had called her "my lady" and she had realized that she was Viscountess Newbury. But that had been a long, long time ago.

"It is to be my room?" she asked. "I am to stay, then?" She had never really thought beyond the end of the journey. She had known deep down that an earl would surely rid himself of a sergeant's daughter at the slightest excuse-and the Earl of Kilbourne would have an excuse that was hardly slight. But she had tried to focus on the fact that the Earl of Kilbourne was also Major Lord Newbury. Her Major Newbury, the man she had always admired, trusted, adored. Neville. Her husband. Her lover. Her love. But she knew, standing in the countess's room, that she had never really expected a happily ever after. Only some sort of completion.

"Lily." He stepped toward her, and she could see that he was as uncertain and bewildered as she. More so, perhaps. He had had no warning of what was to happen to him this morning. "Let us not look beyond the moment. You are alive. You are here. And you are in the countess's room. To eat and to rest. Do both before we speak further."

"Yes. All right." Yes, she wanted oblivion more than anything else in this world. She did not know how to stay on her feet any longer, how to keep her eyes open, how to focus her mind on anything more than its need for sleep.

The door opened behind Lily and she turned to see a young girl in crisp black dress and white ap.r.o.n and mob cap, saucer-eyed and curtsying. Neville gave her instructions while Lily walked over to the window and gazed out with heavy-lidded eyes. He was ordering enough food to feed an army. And a hot bath-what an unbelievable luxury!

He came to stand behind her after the maid had left. "I will stay until the tray arrives," he said. "I shall leave you alone then while you eat. There will be water and night clothes awaiting you in the dressing room by the time you have finished. Then you must lie down and sleep. I shall come back for you later. We will talk then."

"Thank you, sir," she said, and immediately felt foolish.

She wondered suddenly if she had merely imagined that once upon a time, for one brief night, there had been a glorious flowering of love-strangely mingled with deep grief for her father. Both emotions had been shared with this man, this stranger who was her husband. Love-or what sometimes went by the name of love-had been so very ugly since that night that it was hard to believe it ever could be beautiful. But it had been. Once. Once in her life. With him-with Major Lord Newbury. With Neville.

It had been the most beautiful experience of her life. All the love she had stored secretly in her heart since she first knew him had culminated in that night of carnal pa.s.sion. And she had believed-she had felt-that it was a shared love, though she had learned since that men were capable of pa.s.sion without feeling one iota of love. They could even murmur endearments.

Had she imagined that Neville had felt both that night? In her naivete had she imagined it-or in the need she had felt during the months following that night to believe that once, for one short night, she had loved a man who had loved her in return?

The tray arrived while she was lost in memory and was set down on an elegant little table. Neville drew back a chair, and when Lily went toward it, he seated her and pushed the chair closer. There really was enough food for an army. She looked hungrily at a couple of boiled eggs while he poured her a cup of tea.

"I will leave you in privacy now," he said then, taking her right hand in both of his. "I can't express to you how glad I am that you did not die, Lily. I am glad you survived everything else." He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers before turning and leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind him.

Was he glad? she wondered, staring after him. Apart from the fact that he was not a cruel man and would not wish for her death, was he glad? That she had survived, yes, perhaps. But that she had come back into his life to complicate it? Was he glad that it had happened through some ghastly coincidence on his wedding day to another woman?

How could he possibly be glad? Especially knowing the truth of what had happened to her.

Who was his intended bride? Lily wondered. She was beautiful Lily had not had a good look at her, and her face had been covered by the veil of her bonnet, but she had given an impression of grace and elegance and beauty. Did he love her? Did she love him? Were they perfect for each other? Had they been minutes away from a happily ever after?

But such thoughts were pointless. And it was impossible to think when every thought was like a leaden weight pressing down on her eyelids. Lily picked up the cup of tea and sipped the warm liquid. She closed her eyes in sheer bliss.

If only, she thought, she had been able to recover her father's pack after she had returned to Lisbon. But far too much time had elapsed. It had probably been sent back to England, she was told eventually, to some surviving relative, unless it had been simply lost or destroyed. Papa had had a father and brother living somewhere-was it in Leicestershire? Lily did not know for sure, and she had never met them. Her father had been estranged from them. But he had told her over and over again as she grew up that if he were to die suddenly she must take his pack to a senior officer and have him look at the package inside. It was her key to a secure future, he had always said, just as the gold locket she had always worn was her talisman.

She supposed her father had been saving some of his wages for her all his life. She had no idea how much money there might have been in the packet. It probably would not have been enough to last long, but it might at least have got her back to England and into some decent employment. If she had been able to find it, she need not have come here to Newbury Abbey. Though she would have done so anyway. The only thought that had sustained her through her two captivities had been the thought of him and the hope of seeing him again. She had not really thought of the impossibility of it all until recently, after her arrival in England. And especially last evening, when she had seen and then entered his home and his world.

She was his wife-but she was also by strict definition an adulteress.

If she had found the pack and the money, she would have had an alternative now ...

But just as she had finished eating one of the eggs and was biting into her second piece of toast, Lily closed her eyes tightly and fought a wave of panic. Her locket! It was in her missing bag. She had not worn it for a long time, as the chain had broken when Manuel ripped it from her neck. But by some miracle he had returned it to her when he released her. She had not let it out of her possession since-until this morning.

Would Neville find her bag? She would have rushed out herself in search of it, but she did not know that she would be able to find her way out of the house. And she might meet people on her way. No, she would have to trust him to find it for her.

But the thought of losing the last link with her father brought on a wave of nausea, and she could eat no more.

She got to her feet and crossed to the dressing room door, swaying with exhaustion as she did so. She turned the ornate handle gingerly.

5.

The Countess of Kilbourne had taken charge of a very embarra.s.sing situation, having recovered somewhat from her shock at the church. The house guests would be coming for breakfast. She had given directions that it was to be served in the ballroom, as planned. As many obvious signs as possible that it had been intended as a wedding breakfast were to be removed-the white bows and the wedding cake, for example.

The ballroom was by no means full, but it was full enough for all that. Several of the guests, the countess included, had changed out of their wedding finery and wore clothes more suited to early afternoon. Despite what they might have talked about in and outside the church and during their return to the abbey, good manners prevailed at breakfast. Polite conversation was the order of the day. Any stranger wandering into the ballroom would scarcely have guessed that the meal in progress was to have been a wedding breakfast but the wedding itself had met with catastrophic disaster-or that both family members and guests were close to bursting with curiosity to know more.

The countess was composed and gracious. She set herself to conversing with her neighbors at table on a variety of topics and showed no outer sign of the acute distress she was feeling. Private and personal concerns must wait. She was not the Countess of Kilbourne for nothing.

This was the scene that greeted Neville's eyes when he entered the ballroom. But the artificiality of it all became apparent when an immediate hush fell on the gathering and all eyes turned his way. He became horribly aware of the fact that he had not changed his clothes-he had not thought of doing so. He was a bridegroom without a bride. He stood where he was just inside the ballroom doors and clasped his hands at his back.

"I am delighted to see that the meal is proceeding," he said. He looked about him, meeting the eyes of friends and relatives, and noting without surprise that there was no sign of either Lauren or Gwen. "I shall not disturb you for long. But naturally I owe you all a little more explanation than I was able to give at the church this morning. Indeed, I cannot recall what I said there."

The Marquess of Attingsborough, who had risen from his seat, perhaps to indicate to Neville the empty chair at his side, sat down again without saying anything.

Neville had not planned the speech. He did not know quite how much or how little to tell. But there was really no point in withholding anything. His mother was staring at him with blank-faced dignity. His uncle at her side was frowning. There were several servants present, including Forbes, the butler. But the servants had a right to know too, Neville supposed. He would not wait to dismiss them before speaking.

"I married Lily Doyle a few hours after her father, my sergeant, was killed," he said. "I married her to fulfill a dying promise to him to give her the protection of my name and rank in the event that she was captured by the French. The following day the company I led was indeed ambushed. My ... wife was killed, or so both I and the lieutenant who reported to me afterward believed. I was carried back behind British lines with a severe head wound. But Lily survived as a French captive." Her captivity by the Spanish partisans he had no intention of sharing with anyone. "She was treated honorably as my wife and finally released. She returned to England with Captain and Mrs. Harris and came on alone to Newbury Abbey to be reunited with me."

No one, it seemed to Neville, had moved a muscle since he had begun to speak. He wondered if any of those gathered here had seen Lily last night or knew that she had been turned away from the abbey with the offer of sixpence because she had been mistaken for a beggar. He wondered how many were telling themselves that she was in reality the Countess of Kilbourne. It needed to be said.

"I will be honored to present my wife, my countess, to you all later," he: said. "But understandably this would be somewhat overwhelming to her at present. Many of you know ... Lauren as a friend and relative. Most of you-all of you-will be imagining her pain today. It is my hope that you will lay none of the blame for her suffering at-at my wife's door. She is innocent of any intention to cause either disruption or pain. I-Well." There was really no more to say.

"Of course she is, Nev," the Marquess of Attingsborough said briskly, but he was the only one to break the silence.

"I beg that you will excuse me now," Neville said. "Enjoy the meal, please. Does anyone know where Lauren is?" He closed his eyes briefly.

"She is at the dower house with Gwendoline, Neville," Lady Elizabeth told him. The dower house was where they had lived with the countess ever since the betrothal last Christmas. "Neither of them would admit me when I stopped there on my way back from church. Perhaps-"

But Neville merely bowed to her and left the room. This was not the time for thought or consultation or common sense. He had to go with the momentum of the moment or collapse altogether.

Neville was on his way downstairs when his uncle's voice called to him from the landing above. He looked up to see not only the duke, but his mother too, and Elizabeth.

"A private word with you, Kilbourne," his uncle said with stiff formality. "You owe it to your mother."

Yes, he did, Neville thought wearily. Perhaps he ought to have spoken with her first, before making a public appearance and a public statement in the ballroom. He just did not know the proper etiquette for a situation like this. He was not amused by the grim humor of the thought. He turned with a curt nod and led the way down to the library. He crossed the room and stood looking down at the unlit coals in the fireplace until he heard the door close and turned to face them.

"I suppose it did not occur to you, Neville," his mother said, some of the usual gracious dignity gone from her manner to be replaced by bitterness, "to inform your own mother of a previous marriage? Or to inform Lauren? This morning's intense humiliation might have been avoided."

"Calm yourself, Clara," the Duke of Anburey said, patting her shoulder. "I doubt it could have been, though the whole thing might have been somewhat less of a shock to you if Neville had been more honest about the past."

"The marriage was very sudden and very brief," Neville said. "I thought her dead and ... well, I decided to keep that brief interlude in my life to myself."

Because he had been ashamed to admit that he had married the unlettered daughter of a sergeant even if she was already dead? It was a nasty possibility and one he hoped was not true. But how could he have explained the impulse that had made him do it? How could he have described Lily to them? How could he have explained that sometimes a woman could be so very special that it simply did not matter who she was or-more important-who she was not? He would have given the bare facts and they would have been secretly glad, relieved, that she had died before she could become an embarra.s.sment to them.

"I have been able to think only of somehow handling the dreadful disaster of this morning," the countess said, sinking down into the nearest chair and raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips, "and of what is to become of poor Lauren. I have not been able to think beyond. Neville, tell me she is not as dreadful a creature as she appeared to be this morning. Tell me it is only the clothes ..."

"You heard the boy say she is a sergeant's daughter, Clara," the duke reminded her, taking up his stand at the window, his back to the room. "I daresay that fact speaks for itself. Who was her mother, Neville?"

"I did not know Mrs. Doyle," Neville replied. "She died in India when Lily was very young. There is no blue blood there, though, Uncle, if that is what you are asking. Lily is a commoner. But she is also my wife. She has my name and my protection."

"Yes, yes, that is all very well, Neville." His mother spoke impatiently. "But ... Oh dear, I cannot think straight. How could you do this to us? How could you do it to yourself? Surely your upbringing and education meant more to you than to-to marry a woman who looks for all the world like a vulgar beggar and is indeed a product of the lower cla.s.ses." She stood up abruptly and swayed noticeably on her feet. "I have guests I am neglecting."

"Poor Lily," Elizabeth said, speaking for the first time. She was Neville's aunt, his father's sister, but she was only nine years his senior and he had never called her aunt. She was unmarried, not because she had never had offers, but because she had declared long ago that she would never marry unless she could find the gentleman who could convince her that the loss of her independence was preferable to keeping it-and she did not expect that ever to happen. She was beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished-and no one quite knew whether the Duke of Portfrey was more friend or beau to her. "We are forgetting her distress in a selfish concern for our own. Where is she, Neville?"

"Yes, where is she?" his mother repeated, her voice unusually petulant. "Not here, I suppose. There is not a single spare room at the abbey."

"There is one unoccupied room, Mama," Neville said stiffly. "She is in the countess's room-where she belongs. I left her there to have a meal and a bath and a sleep. I have given instructions that she is to be left undisturbed until I go up for her."

His mother closed her eyes and pressed the handkerchief to her lips again. The countess's room, formerly hers, was part of the suite of rooms that included the earl's bedchamber-Neville's own. He could almost see her coming to grips with the reality of the fact that Lily belonged there.

"Yes," Elizabeth said. "I am sure it is best for her to rest for a while. I look forward to making her acquaintance, Neville."

It was like Elizabeth, he thought, to be gracious, to take a situation as it was and somehow make something bearable of it.

"Thank you," he said.

His mother had pulled herself together again. "You will bring her down to tea later this afternoon, Neville," she told him. "There is no point in keeping her hidden, is there? I will meet her at the same time as the rest of the family. We will all behave as we ought toward your-your wife, you may rest a.s.sured."

Neville bowed to his mother. "I would expect no less of you, Mama," he said. "But excuse me now. I must go and see Lauren."

"You will be fortunate if she does not throw things at your head, Neville," Elizabeth warned him.

He nodded. "Nevertheless," he told her.

He left the house a couple of minutes later and set out on foot in the direction of the dower house, which was close to the gates into the park, set back from the driveway in the seclusion of the trees and its own private garden. He was well on his way before he realized that he was still wearing his wedding finery. But he would not go back to change. Perhaps he would never regain his courage if he did that.

He was about to face, he realized, one of the most difficult encounters of his life.

Lauren was not inside the dower house. She was out behind it, sitting on the tree swing, idly propelling herself back and forth with one foot. She was staring unseeingly at the ground ahead of her. Gwendoline was seated on the gra.s.s to one side of the swing. Both of them were still dressed for the wedding.

He would rather be anywhere else on earth, Neville thought just before his sister spotted him. They were two of the dearest people on earth to him, and he had done this to them. And there was no comfort to bring. Only a totally inadequate explanation.

Gwendoline jumped to her feet at sight of him and glared. "I hate you, Neville," she cried. "If you have come here to make her unhappier still, you may go away again-now! What do you mean by it? That is what you can explain to me. What did you mean by saying that dreadful woman is your wife?" She burst into noisy, undignified tears and turned her face sharply away.

Lauren had stopped swinging, but she did not turn around.

"Lauren?" Neville said. "Lauren, my dear?" He still did not know what he could say to her.

Her voice was steady when she spoke, but it was without tone too. "It is quite all right," she said. "It is perfectly all right. It was just a convenient arrangement after all, was it not, our marrying? Because we grew up together and were fond of each other and it was what Uncle and Grandpapa had always wanted. And you did tell me not to wait when you went away. You were quite fair and honest with me. You were not betrothed to me or even promised to me. You were quite free to marry her. I do not blame you at all."

He was appalled. He would have far preferred to have her rush at him, teeth bared, fingers curled into claws.

"Lauren," he said, "let me explain, if I may."

"There is nothing to explain," Gwendoline said angrily, having mastered her tears. "Is she or is she not your wife, Neville? That is all that matters. But you would not have lied in church for all to hear. She is your wife."

"Yes," Neville said.

"I hate her!" Gwendoline cried. "Shabby, ugly, low creature."

But Lauren would not partic.i.p.ate. "We do not know her, Gwen," she said. "Yes, Neville. Tell me. Tell us. There must be a perfectly good explanation, I am sure. Once I understand, I will be able to accept it. Everything will be perfectly all right."

She was in shock, of course. In denial. Trying to convince herself that what had happened was not so disastrous after all but merely something bewildering that would be perfectly acceptable once she understood. The exquisitely scalloped and embroidered train of her wedding gown, Neville noticed, was trailing in the dust.

It was so typical of Lauren to react rationally rather than emotionally, even when there was no rational way to act. She had always been thus, always the good one among the three of them, the one to think of consequences, the one to be concerned about upsetting the adults. Her story partly explained her, of course. She had come to Newbury Abbey at the age of three when her mother, the widowed Viscountess Whitleaf, married the late earl's younger brother. She had stayed at the abbey when the newlyweds left on a wedding trip-from which they had never returned. There had been letters and a few parcels from various parts of the world for a number of years and then nothing. Not even word of their deaths.

Lauren's paternal relatives had made no move to take her back. Indeed, when she had written to them on her eighteenth birthday, she had had a curt response from the viscount's secretary to the effect that her acquaintance was not something his lordship sought. Lauren, Neville suspected, had never quite trusted her lovableness. And now there ware these circ.u.mstances to confirm her in her low opinion of herself.

"I do not want to understand," Gwendoline said crossly. "And how can you sit there, Lauren, sounding so calm and forbearing and forgiving? You should be scratching Neville's eyes out." She began to sob again.

"Neville?" Lauren said, motionless once more. "I need to understand. Tell me about-about L-Lily."

"Lily!" Gwendoline said scornfully. "I hate that name. It is despicable."

"She was a sergeant's daughter," Neville explained. "She grew up with the regiment, living with it, moving about with it. She always did her share of the work and she was everyone's friend. The toughest of the men and the roughest of t.i.tle women loved her. But she was her own person. There was something dreamlike, fairylike about her-I do not: know quite how to describe that quality in her. She had been untouched by the ugliness of the life by which she was surrounded. She was eighteen when I-when I married her." He went on to give brief details of the circ.u.mstances of their marriage.

"And you loved her too," Lauren added when he had finished.

For her sake he wished he could deny it. Not that it would make any difference to essentials. He said nothing.

"That is no excuse," Gwendoline said. "You were not eighteen, Neville. You were a man. You should have known better. You should have had more of a sense of duty to your family and position than to marry a sergeant's daughter for such a stupid reason. Marriage is for life."

"I will have to learn to love her too," Lauren said as if Gwendoline had not spoken. "I am sure it will be possible. If you love her, Neville, then I ..." But her words trailed away. She set the swing in motion with one foot.

Neville wondered if it would help her if he strode all the way to the swing, hauled her off it by both shoulders, and shook her soundly. But he remembered his own shock of a few hours before. He had walked all the way from the church to the water's edge on the beach without knowing he had even moved from the altar. He could not take the alternative to shaking her of lifting her off the swing into the sheltering comfort of his arms.

"Lauren," he said, "I am so very sorry, my dear. I wish there were more to say, something to comfort you, something to make you feel less ... abandoned. I could say all sorts of meaningless things to a.s.sure you that eventually this will be in the past and ... But they would not comfort now and would be presumptuous in me. Know, though, that you are loved by this family, which is yours as much as it is mine or Gwen's." Pompous, empty words despite their truth. He did not belive he had ever felt more helpless in his life.

"But nothing is ever going to be the same," Gwendoline cried. "When Vernon died and I came home a widow and then Papa died, I thought the world was at an end. But then you came back and we three were together again and I could see that you would marry Lauren and ... But now everything is ended, shattered beyond repair."

Neville ran a hand through his hair. Lauren swung gently.

Gwendoline had married for love while he was away in the Peninsula. He had never met Viscount Muir. But it had been a short, tragic marriage, over in two years. First Gwen had had a dreadful riding accident that had caused a miscarriage and left her with a permanent limp after her broken leg had healed, and then just a year later, Muir had died in a fall through a broken banister from the balcony of his own home to the marble hall below. Gwen had fled to the familiar comfort of home rather than remain at her husband's house.