Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 5

"And how I despise my own selfishness," Gwendoline said when no one responded to her words. "I am thinking of my own unhappiness when it is nothing to poor Lauren's. Oh, what a brute I am." She gathered up her skirts and dashed toward the house, avoiding Neville's outstretched arm as she pa.s.sed him.

"Poor Gwen," Lauren said. "She wanted so very much to go back in time after Lord Muir's death, Neville. She wanted life to be as it was when we were children, and it seemed to her that her dream was coming true. But we can never go back. Only forward. We cannot go back to yesterday or early this morning. There is Lily now."

"Yes"

"I have been selfish too," she told him. "I have been preoccupied by my own disappointment. But you must be so very happy, Neville, even though in your kindness you are sad for me and have taken time to come and talk with me. Lily is alive and she has come to you. How wonderful for you."

"Lauren," he said softly. "My dear, don't do this. Please don't."

"You want me to tell you how much I hate her, then?" she said. "How much I wish she had died and stayed dead? How much I wish even now that she would die? You want me to tell you how much I resent your going away after telling me not to wait and then marrying a sergeant's daughter on mere impulse? You want me to tell you how much I hate you for not telling me? For caring so little for me that you did not mention the fact that this would be your second marriage? For causing me such humiliation this morning?"

He drew a slow breath. "Yes," he said. "This is what I want to hear, Lauren. Let it out. Yell at me. Throw things at me. Hit me. Don't just sit there." He ran his fingers through his hair again. "Oh, dear G.o.d, Lauren. I am so wretchedly sorry. If I could only-"

"But you cannot," she said quietly, though there was an edge to her voice at last. "You cannot, Neville. And hatred is pointless. As are violent emotions. Will you go now, please? I wish to be alone."

"Of course," he said. It was the only thing he could do for her. To take himself out of her sight.

She was still pushing the swing with one foot when he turned to leave. Nursing her shock. Her conviction that if she just stayed calm and rational, everything would be all right. Her intense hatred for the sergeant's daughter who had destroyed her hopes and her dreams, her very life, in one stroke. And for the man she had loved all her life.

It did not help Neville to know beyond all doubt that she had always loved him with a far deeper intensity than he had ever loved her.

He thought suddenly, as he made his way back up the drive, of Lauren as she had been the night before-radiant, glowing with happiness, asking him if anyone could possible deserve to be so happy.

She could, as he had told her then. But life did not always give what one deserved.

What had he done to deserve Lily's return? His footsteps quickened as he thought of her even then asleep, alive, in the countess's bed.

6.

The food and the tea had satisfied Lily; the deep, hot bath with perfumed soap and large, fluffy towel had soothed and lulled her; she had slept long and deep and had woken refreshed but bewildered. For several moments she was unable to remember where she was or how she had got there. She could not recall when she had last slept so well.

It did not take long for everything to come back to her, of course. She had arrived. She had reached the end of a journey that had begun she did not know how long ago when Manuel had come to her and told her she could go. Just like that-after seven months of captivity and enslavement. She had been somewhere in Spain. All she had known to do was set her face for the west, where Portugal lay, to search for him-for Neville, Major Lord Newbury, her husband. She had not even known if he was still alive. He might have died in the ambush that had wounded and made a prisoner of her. But she had begun the journey anyway. There had been nothing else to do. Her father was dead.

She had arrived, she thought, flinging back the bedcovers and stepping out onto the soft pile of the pink and green carpet. She had to hold up the hem of her nightgown in order not to trip over it. It was at least six inches too long, or she was six inches too short-probably the latter. She had arrived in spectacularly embarra.s.sing circ.u.mstances, and distressing ones too. But she had not yet been turned away even though she had admitted the essential truth that might have caused him to dismiss her without further ado.

He might still do it, of course. But he had treated her kindly despite the fact that she had ruined his future plans. Surely he would at least give, or lend, her enough money to get her back to London. Perhaps Mrs. Harris would be good enough to help her find some employment, though she did not know what she was capable of doing.

She turned the handle of the dressing room door as gingerly as she had done earlier. But this time she was not so fortunate. There was someone else in there.

"Oh, I am sorry," she said, closing the door quickly.

But it opened again almost immediately and the startled face of a young girl about Lily's own age looked in at her. The girl was wearing one of those pretty mob caps the servant who had brought the food had worn.

"I beg your pardon, I am sure, my lady," the girl said. "I just come up with your clothes, and Mrs. Ailsham told me to stay to help you dress and do your hair. She said his lordship is to come for you in half an hour, my lady, to take you to tea."

"Oh." Lily smiled and held out her right hand. "You are a maid. What a relief to learn that. How do you do? I am Lily."

The maid eyed her outstretched hand askance. She did not take it but curtsied instead. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, my lady," she said. "I am Dolly. My mum and dad had me christened Dorothy, but everyone has always called me just Dolly. I am to be your personal maid, Mrs. Ailsham says, until your own arrives."

"Mrs. Ailsham?" Lily stepped into the dressing room and looked about her. The bathtub had been removed, she saw.

"The housekeeper, my lady," Dolly explained.

And then Lily saw her bag lying on the stool before the dressing table. She rushed toward it and searched anxiously inside. But all was well. Her hand closed about her locket at the bottom of the bag. She drew it out and clasped it comfortingly in her hand. She would have felt she had lost part of herself if she had lost the locket. Some other things were missing, though. She looked about the room.

"I took the liberty of taking a dress and shift out of your bag, my lady," Dolly said. "I ironed them. They was creased bad."

There they were laid carefully over the back of a chair, her cotton shift and the precious, pretty pale-green muslin dress Mrs. Harris had insisted on buying for her in Lisbon.

"You ironed them?" she said, smiling warmly at the maid. "How very kind of you, Dolly. I could have done it myself. But I am glad not to have to do so. However would I find my way to the kitchen?" She laughed.

Dolly laughed too, a little uncertainly. "You are funny, my lady," she said. "How everyone would look if you was to walk into the kitchen with your dress over your arm, asking for the iron." The idea seemed to tickle her enormously.

"Especially dressed as I am now," Lily said, grasping her nightgown at the sides and raising it until her bare toes showed. "Tripping all over my hem."

They laughed together like a pair of children.

"I'll help you dress, my lady," Dolly told her.

"Help me? Whatever for?" Lily asked her.

Dolly did not answer. She pointed to Lily's rather battered shoes, the only pair she owned. Mrs. Harris had bought those for her too, but she had told Lily that the army was paying for them. The army, in Mrs. Harris's opinion, owed Lily something. The army had bought her bag too and her pa.s.sage on the ship that had brought them to England.

"I had them polished, my lady," Dolly said. "But you need new ones, if you was to ask me."

"I do not believe I need to ask," Lily said as she dressed quickly. She was feeling curiously lighthearted. "One day soon I am going to take a step forward and my shoes are going to decide to remain where they are, and that will be the end of them."

Lily could not remember laughing with such merriment for a long, long time-until now as she did so yet again with Dolly.

"You have a pretty figure, my lady," Dolly said, looking critically at her when she was dressed. "Small and dainty, not all arms and legs and elbows like me. You will dress up nice when all your trunks have arrived."

"But I wish I had some of your height," Lily said with a sigh. "Is there a ribbon anywhere, Dolly, with which to tie back my hair? I do believe I have lost all my hairpins."

"Oh, a ribbon will not be enough, my lady." Dolly sounded shocked. "Not to go down to tea. You sit down on the stool now-here, I will move the bag to this chair-and I will dress your hair for you. You need not worry that I will make a mess of it. I dressed Lady Gwendoline's hair sometimes before she moved to the dower house, and I even patched up Lady Elizabeth's hair last night when some of it fell down during the ball and her own maid was nowhere to be found. She said I done a nice job. I want to be a lady's maid all the time instead of just a chambermaid. That's what my big ambition is, my lady. You got lovely hair."

Lily sat. "I do not know what you can do with it, though, Dolly," she said dubiously. "It curls hopelessly and is like a bush. It is more than usually unruly today because I washed it. Oh, how novel-I have never had anyone do my hair for me."

Dolly laughed. "What funny jokes you make, my lady," she said. "There are some I know as would kill for the curl in your hair. Look how it piles nice and stays high without falling like a loaf of bread when the oven door is opened too soon. And ooh, look, my lady, how it twists into ringlets without any rags or curling tongs. I would kill for this hair."

Lily looked at the developing style in the looking gla.s.s, her eyes wide with astonishment. "How extraordinarily clever you are," she said. "You have amazing skill, Dolly. I would not have thought it possible for my hair to look tame."

Dolly flushed with pleasure and pushed the final pin into place. She picked up a small hand mirror from the dressing table and held it up at various angles behind Lily so that she could see the back of her head and the sides.

"That will do for tea, my lady," she said. "For this evening we will need something more special. I will think of what to do. I hope your own maid does not arrive too soon, though I ought not to say so, ought I?" She was fluffing the short puffed sleeves of Lily's dress as she talked, watching the effect in the looking gla.s.s. "There you are, my lady. You are ready whenever his lordship comes."

It was not a comforting prospect. He was going to take her to tea. What did that mean exactly? But there was no time for reflection. Almost immediately there was a tap on one of the three doors of the dressing room and Dolly went to answer it-she seemed to know unerringly which one to open. Lily got to her feet.

He had changed out of his pale wedding clothes. He looked more familiar wearing a dark-green coat, though it was far more carefully tailored and form-fitting than his Rifleman's jacket had been. He looked her over quickly from head to toe and bowed to her.

"You are looking better," he said. "I trust you slept well?"

"Yes, thank you, sir," she said, and grimaced. She must remember not to call him that.

"You were fast asleep when I looked in on you earlier," he told her. "You are looking very pretty."

"Thanks to Dolly," she said, smiling at the maid. "She ironed my dress and tamed my hair. Was that not kind of her?"

"Indeed." He raised his eyebrows. "You may leave us ... Dolly."

"Yes, my lord." The maid curtsied deeply without raising her eyes to him and scurried from the room.

Well, Lily could understand that reaction. She had seen soldiers leave his presence in similar fashion-though they had not curtsied, of course-after he had turned his eyes on them. His men had always worshiped him-and been terrified of his displeasure. Lily had never felt the terror.

"My name is Neville, Lily," he said. "You may use it, if you please. I am going to take you to the drawing room for tea. You must not mind. Several of my guests have already left so the numbers will not be quite overwhelming. They are mostly members of my family. I will stay close to you. Just be yourself."

But some of those grand people she had seen last night and this morning would be there, gathered in the drawing room? And he was going to take her there to join them? How could she possibly meet them? What would she say? Or do? And what would they think of her? Not very much, she guessed. She had lived most of her life with the army and was well aware of the huge gap that had separated the men-her father included-from the officers. And here she was, an earl's wife, making her first appearance at his home on the very day he was to have married someone else-a lady from his own cla.s.s, she did not doubt. It would be difficult to imagine a less desirable situation.

But all her life Lily had been led into difficult situations, none of them of her own choosing. She had grown up with an army at war. She had adjusted to all sorts of places and situations and people. She had even lived through seven months of what many women would have considered a fate worse than death.

And so she stepped forward and took Neville's offered arm without showing any of her inward qualms, and they stepped out into the wide corridor she remembered from earlier. They descended one of the grand curved staircases. She looked down over the banister to the marble, tiled hall below and up to the gilded, windowed dome above. She had that feeling again of being dwarfed, overwhelmed.

"I expected a large cottage," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Your home," she said. "I expected a large cottage in a large garden."

"Did you, Lily?" He looked gravely down at her. "And you found this instead? I am sorry."

"I thought only kings lived in houses like this," she said, and felt very foolish indeed, especially when his eyes crinkled at the corners and she realized she had said something to amuse him.

Then they were approaching two huge double doors and one of those liveried footmen waited to open them. He was the footman she'd encountered last evening, Lily saw. She could even remember what the superior servant had called him. Her life with the army had made her skilled in remembering faces and the names that went with them. She smiled warmly.

"How do you do, Mr. Jones?" she asked.

The footman looked startled, blushed noticeably beneath his white wig, bobbed his head, and opened the doors. Lily glanced upward to see that Neville's eyes were crinkled at the corners again. He was also pursing his lips to keep from laughing.

But she had no chance to consider the matter further because as soon as they stepped inside the drawing room, she was a.s.saulted by so many impressions at once that she was struck quite dumb and breathless. There was the hugeness and magnificence of the room itself-four of her imagined cottages would surely have fit inside it with ease. But more daunting than the room was the number of people who occupied it. Was it possible that any of the wedding guests had already left for home? Everyone was dressed with somewhat less magnificence than either last evening or this morning, but even so Lily suddenly realized that her own prized muslin dress was quite ordinary and her wonderful coiffure very plain. Not to mention her shoes!

Neville took her, in the hush that followed their entrance, toward an older lady of regal bearing and attractively graying dark hair. She was seated, a delicate saucer in one hand, a cup in the other. She looked as if she had frozen in position. Her eyebrows were arched finely upward.

"Mama," Neville said, bowing to her, "may I present Lily, my wife? This is my mother, Lily, the Countess of Kilbourne." He drew breath audibly and spoke more quietly. "Pardon me-the dowager Countess of Kilbourne."

She was the lady who had stood up at the front of the church during the morning and spoken his name, Lily realized. She was his mother-she set down her cup and saucer and got to her feet. She was tall.

"Lily," she said, smiling, "welcome to Newbury Abbey, my dear, and to our family." And she took one of Lily's hands from her side and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

Lily smelled a whiff of some expensive and exquisite perfume. "I am pleased to meet you," she said, not at all sure that either of them spoke with any degree of sincerity.

"Let me present you to everyone else, Lily," Neville said. The room was remarkably silent. "Or perhaps not. It might prove too overwhelming for you. Perhaps a general introduction for now?" He turned and smiled about him.

But the dowager countess had other ideas and told him so. "Of course Lily must be presented to everyone, Neville," she said, drawing Lily's arm through her own. "She is your countess. Come, Lily, and meet our family and friends."

There followed a bewildering spell that felt hours long to Lily though it was doubtful it exceeded a quarter of an hour. She was presented to the silver-haired gentleman and the lady with all the rings she had seen downstairs last evening and understood that they were the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Anburey, the dowager countess's brother and sister-in-law. She was presented to their son, the Marquess of something impossibly long. And then she was aware only of faces, all of which belonged to persons with first names and last names and-all too often-t.i.tles too. Some were aunts or uncles. Some were cousins-either first or second or at some remove. Some were family friends or her husband's particular friends or someone else's friends. Some of them inclined their heads to her. Several of the younger people bowed or curtsied to her. Most smiled; some did not. All too many of them spoke to her; she could think of nothing to say in reply except that she was pleased to meet them all.

"Poor Lily. You look thoroughly bewildered," the lady behind the tea tray said when Lily and the dowager countess finally reached her. "Enough for now, Clara. Come and sit on this empty chair, Lily, and have a cup of tea and a sandwich. I am Elizabeth. I daresay you did not hear it the first time, and really it does not matter if you forget it the next time you see me. We have only one name to remember while you have a whole host. Eventually you will sort us all out. Here, my dear."

She had been pouring a cup of tea as she spoke and handed it to Lily now with a plate of tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Lily was not hungry, but she did not want to refuse. She took a sandwich and then discovered that if she was to drink, as she dearly wished to do, she must eat the sandwich first so that she might have a hand free with which to lift the cup. The china was so very delicate and pretty that she felt a sudden terror of dropping some of it and smashing it.

Neville's hand came to rest on her shoulder.

The room was no longer silent, Lily noticed in some relief, and all attention was no longer focused on her. Everyone was being polite, she gathered. She listened to the conversation that flowed around her as she ate her sandwich and succeeded in sipping her tea without mishap. But she was not being ignored either. People whose names she could not remember-what a time for her usual skill of memory to have deserted her!-kept trying to draw her into the conversation. A few of the ladies had been having a spirited discussion on the relative merits of two types of bonnet.

"What do you think, Lily?" one of them, a dashingly dressed red-haired lady, asked graciously. Was she one of the cousins?

"I do not know," said Lily, to whom a bonnet was simply something to keep off the sun.

Then they talked about a certain theater in London and had differing opinions on whether its audiences preferred comedies or tragedies. Lily found herself remembering with pleased nostalgia the farces the soldiers had sometimes put on for the merriment of the regiment.

"What do you think, Lily?" one gentleman asked, a pleasant-faced youngish man with receding fair hair. Was he a relative or one of the friends?

"I do not know," Lily replied.

They talked about a conceit several of them had attended in London a few weeks before. The d.u.c.h.ess of Anburey thought Mozart the greatest musical genius ever to have lived. A portly, florid-faced gentleman disagreed and put forward the claims of Beethoven. There were firm supporters of both sides.

"What do you think, Lily?" the d.u.c.h.ess asked.

"I do not know," Lily said, not having heard of either gentleman.

She began to wonder if they asked her opinion deliberately, knowing that she knew nothing, that she was almost as ignorant now as she had been on the day she was born. But perhaps not. They did not appear to be looking at her with malicious intent.

They were discussing books, the gentlemen speaking in favor of political and philosophical treatises, some of the ladies defending the novel as a legitimate art form.

"Which novels have you read, Lily?" an extremely elegantly dressed and coiffed young lady asked.

"I cannot read," Lily admitted.

Everyone looked suddenly embarra.s.sed on her behalf. There was an awkward little silence that no one seemed in a hurry to fill. Lily had always wanted to read. Her parents had told her stories when she was a child, and she had always thought it would be wonderful to be able to pick up a book and escape into those magical worlds of the imagination whenever she wished-or acquire knowledge of matters on which she was ignorant. She was so very ignorant. But there had never been the chance to go to school, and her father, who had been able to read a very little and to write his name, had always declared himself incompetent to teach her himself.

Neville half bent over her from behind her chair. He was going to rescue her and take her from the room, she thought in some relief. But before he could do so, the lady behind the tea tray spoke up-Elizabeth. She was very beautiful, Lily had noticed earlier, though she was not young. She had a grace and elegance that Lily envied and a face full of character and hair as blond as Neville's. She was his aunt.