Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 8

"How dared she, Gwen?" Lauren gazed after the disappearing figure. "She is Neville's wife. She is your sister-in-law. She is the Countess of Kilbourne. Besides, I was the first to speak." She laughed, though there was no amus.e.m.e.nt in the sound. "She is very lovely."

"Lovely?" Gwendoline spoke with the utmost scorn. "She would put even a beggar to the blush. Is she deliberately trying to disgrace Neville, or does she simply not know any better? She has appeared in both villages for all to see, looking like that-no bonnet, no shoes, no-" She made a sound of exasperation. "Does she know nothing about how to behave?"

"But oh, Gwen," Lauren said so quietly that her cousin almost did not hear the words, "did you not see that she is vivid and original? Something quite out of the ordinary? The sort of woman who would draw a man's eyes and desires? Neville's, for example?"

Gwendoline looked incredulously at her cousin. "Are you mad?" she asked rhetorically. "She is disgusting. She is impossible. And you of all people should hate her, Lauren. You are not defending her, are you?"

Lauren laughed quietly again as she crossed the driveway and strode in the direction of the dower house. "I am merely trying to see her through Neville's eyes," she said. "I am trying to understand why he left me and told me not to wait and then met her and married her. Oh, Gwen, of course I hate her." For the first time her voice became impa.s.sioned though she did not raise it. "I feel the most intense hatred for her. I wish she were dead. I know I ought not to feel that way. I am horrified by my own feelings. I wish she were dead. And so I must try, you see-yes, I really must try to understand. It is not her fault after all, is it? I daresay Neville did not tell her about me any more than he told me about her. And what was there to tell anyway? He had told me not to wait. He was under no obligation to me. We were not betrothed. I must try to like her. I will try to like her."

Gwendoline limped along beside her, finding it difficult to keep up. "Well, I do not intend even to try," she said. "I will hate her enough for both of us. She has ruined your life and Neville's-though it is entirely his own fault-and you are the two people I love above all others. And do not tell me that Lily is not to blame. Of course she is not to blame and of course I am being unfair to her. But she is a loathsome creature for all that, and how can I not hate her when I see you so dreadfully unhappy?"

They had arrived at the house. But Lauren stopped before entering it. "We are going to have to teach her things," she said, her voice flat again as it had been the day before. "How to dress, how to behave, how to be a lady. I will call on her tomorrow, Gwen. I will try-to be kind to her."

"And we are going to try learning to play the harp and to balance halos on our heads too," Gwendoline said crossly, "so that we will be ready to become saints or angels when we die."

They both laughed.

"Please, Gwen," Lauren said, taking her cousin's arm in a tight grip, "help me not to hate her. Help me ... Oh, how could Neville have married such a-such a wild fairy creature? What is the matter with me?"

Gwendoline did not answer. There was no reasonable answer to give.

9.

Lily felt suddenly almost as if she were returning to a prison. Her footsteps lagged as the house came into sight. But then they quickened again. She could see that Neville was outside on the terrace, three other gentlemen with him. For so long she had held him steadfastly in her memory and her dreams. But now he was real again. And he was watching her approach, his lips pursed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. They were all watching her approach. She had been right earlier, she thought. Things did look brighter this morning after all.

Neville bowed to her when she was close and reached out a hand for hers-and then kissed it.

"Good morning, Lily," he said.

"I have been down on the beach," she told him. "I wanted to watch the sun come up. And then I explored the rocks and found myself in the village." Her purpose and destination would explain her appearance.

"I know." He smiled at her. "I watched you go from my window."

The marquess with the long name bowed to her then. "I am awed into incoherence," he said, but he went on talking anyway. "None of the ladies of my acquaintance ever rise early enough to know that the sun even does anything as peculiar as rise in the morning."

"Then they miss one of the greatest joys of life," Lily a.s.sured him. "Please will you tell me your name again, sir? I only remember that it is long."

"Joseph," he said, and laughed, revealing himself to be a very good-looking gentleman indeed. "You are a cousin now, Lily, and do not need to get your tongue around Attingsborough."

"Joseph," she repeated. "I believe I can remember that."

"And James too," one of the other gentlemen said, bowing to her. "Another cousin, Lily. I have a wife, who is Sylvia, and a young son, Patrick. My mother is Nev's Aunt Julia, his father's sister. My father-"

"Devil take it, James." The fourth gentleman tossed his glance at the sky. "Lily's eyes are crossing and her head is spinning on her shoulders. Why do you not add for her edification that Nev's other paternal aunts are Mary and Elizabeth and that his uncle is the famous black sheep, the lost sheep, who embarked on a wedding journey more than twenty years ago and never returned? I am Ralph, Lily. Yes, another cousin. If you cannot recall my name the next time we meet, you are welcome to call me 'you.' "

"Thank you," she said, laughing. It was definitely easier this morning. Maybe everything would be easier. But then she had always been comfortable in the company of men, perhaps because she had grown up surrounded by so many of them.

"The exercise has whipped the most lovely roses into your cheeks, Lily," the marquess said. "But however have you managed to walk so far in bare feet?" He was observing them through his quizzing gla.s.s.

"Oh." She glanced down at them. "It is so much more comfortable than walking in shoes. If you were to take off your boots and walk in the gra.s.s, Joseph, you would discover that I am right."

"Dear me," he commented.

"But you will not do it," she said, smiling sunnily at him. "I know. There were some men in the Peninsula who never removed their boots-ever. I swear they went to bed with them on. Sometimes I wondered if they had feet at all, or if their legs ended just below the knee. They would not wish to admit to such a deformity, of course. Just imagine how short they would have been-and men set great store by their height. They hate to have to look up to other men and feel perfectly shamed to have to look up to a woman."

The gentlemen were all laughing. Lily joined them.

"Good Lord," Joseph said, using his quizzing gla.s.s now to look down at his own boots, "my secret is out. When I stopped growing at four foot ten, Lily, I had Hoby make me boots-tall boots. So that I could look down on the world from a lofty height."

"He even dances in them, Lily," Ralph said. "You would not wish to risk your toes by tripping a measure with Joe."

"If you knock on them," James added, "they ring hollow."

"This conversation," Lily declared gleefully, "has become absurd. But despite your teasing, I have felt the gra.s.s and the dew beneath my feet this morning and the sand between my toes. And I have seen the sun rise over the sea. England is a lovely country, as my papa always said it was."

Neville smiled at her. "You are right, Lily," he said. He offered her his arm. "Let me escort you to your room and summon Dolly to help you tidy up. My mother has come up from the dower house and is awaiting you in the morning room with several of the other ladies."

He did not sound in any way annoyed. He did not utter one word of reproach either then or after they had left the company of his cousins. And yet Lily had not missed the detail about several of the ladies.

"Are the others out enjoying the morning?" she asked.

"They are still in bed or in their boudoirs. Ladies generally do not, ah, enjoy the morning until their maids have dressed and coiffed them and they have breakfasted, Lily." He smiled down at her as they climbed the grand staircase.

"Oh," she said. Maids-she had not thought of ringing for Dolly when she got up. Besides, she would not have wished to wake the girl so early. And she had no dress suitable for Newbuiy Abbey except her green muslin, and she had doubts even about that. She might at least, she supposed, have tied back her hair and worn her shoes. "I did not think. I ought not to have gone out as I am, ought I? How embarra.s.sed you must have been when I came back and all your cousins were out there to see me. I am so sorry."

"No, no." He covered her hand on his arm with his free one. "That was not my meaning. I was not scolding, for heaven's sake. This is your home, Lily. You must do here whatever you wish."

Lily fell silent, remembering how very elegantly Lauren had been dressed. She had been wearing a bonnet and even gloves. She would not have gone dancing off in bare feet and with her hair down her back to watch the sun rise over the sea. She would not have embarra.s.sed him out on the terrace.

Neville took Lily down to the morning room after she had washed and put on stockings and her old shoes and Dolly had dressed her hair in a simple knot at the back of her head with two neat braids wound about it. Dolly had advised against wearing the green muslin as her ladyship would need something into which to change for the afternoon, and so the old cotton would have to do.

Neville stayed with her in the morning room for a short while though there was no other gentleman present, but then he was summoned away to speak with his steward.

The ladies all greeted her pleasantly. The dowager countess even got to her feet to kiss Lily's cheek and seated her beside herself on a love seat. But there was nothing comfortable about the conversation, as there had been out on the terrace. They talked about London and Almack's and lending libraries and rose gardens and the management of servants, none of which topics were within Lily's experience. And when the war was mentioned and the French spoken of as monsters of evil and depravity and Lily spoke up with the opinion that they were people just like the British and shared their capacity for tenderness and loyalty and love and all the finer feelings, the red-haired lady, who Lily remembered was Wilma-Joseph's sister?-declared herself very close to fainting, and someone else scolded young Miranda for introducing such an ungenteel subject into the conversation of ladies.

Lily smiled sympathetically at the young girl, whose numerous ringlets made her appear slightly top heavy, but she was blushing and biting a wobbling lip and gazing downward.

Aunt Sadie tried to turn the awkward moment by asking Lily if she would like some embroidery to work on. Lily had noticed that almost all the ladies were busy with needlework. She was forced to admit that she had never been taught to embroider though she was quite skilled at patching and darning. There was an awkward little silence again before her mother-in-law suggested that Miranda go into the music room and leave the door open while she played for them on the pianoforte.

Lily was finally rescued by the appearance of the butler, who announced that Mrs. and Miss Holyoake had arrived to wait upon the Countess of Kilbourne.

Lily looked at the dowager countess as did all the other ladies present, and that lady raised her eyebrows.

"Whatever can Mrs. Holyoake want with me today?" she asked. "I certainly did not summon her."

"I beg your pardon, my lady," Mr. Forbes said with a discreet clearing of his throat, "but I understand his lordship did-for his wife. I have put them in the blue salon."

Lily felt dreadfully embarra.s.sed at the quickly suppressed look of chagrin on the face of her mother-in-law, who had clearly forgotten that she, Lily, was now the Countess of Kilbourne. This was all going to be quite impossible, Lily thought for the umpteenth time-except that it could not be allowed to be. Somehow she was going to have to live with this situation. They were all going to have to live with it.

Lady Elizabeth came hurrying toward her, both hands extended, as she left the morning room.

"Lily," she said, taking her hands and kissing her cheek. "Good morning, my dear. It is quite all right, Forbes. I shall conduct her ladyship to the Holyoake ladies. They are the village dressmakers, Lily. Neville spoke to me about them earlier and asked if I would see to it that they measure you for as many pretty clothes as they have time to undertake."

It was an enticing prospect, Lily had to admit. The two dresses she possessed were certainly not adequate to the needs of her new life. But more bewilderment was awaiting her in the blue salon. After she had been presented to Mrs. Holyoake and her daughter, black-haired, black-eyed ladies, who looked remarkably alike, and after they had curtsied deeply to her and called her "my lady," she could see that they had brought with them so many bolts of fabric and so many patterns and other tools of their trade that it must have taken several servants to carry everything inside.

"Would it not have been more convenient for me to come to you?" she asked.

Both ladies looked shocked, and Elizabeth laughed.

"Not when you are the Countess of Kilbourne from Newbury Abbey, Lily," she said.

It seemed that she was not to have just two or three new dresses, which would have seemed an impossible luxury to Lily, but a dozen or more. When she protested, she discovered that she was going to need morning dresses and tea dresses and evening dresses-some for family evenings, some for dinner parties, some for b.a.l.l.s-and walking dresses and carriage dresses. And a riding habit too, when it was discovered that she could ride-though perhaps she ought not to have said she could since she had certainly never ridden a great deal.

Different functions of dress called for different fabrics and different designs, she discovered. There were many colors to choose among, but one might not simply choose just what one thought pretty. Apparently there were colors that suited certain people but not others. There were colors that looked good in daylight and others that looked better in candlelight. And there were all sorts of tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs-suited to different fabrics and functions and occasions. There were tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs identical in color to the fabrics they were to adorn. There were others that complemented the fabrics-or did not. There were styles that were fashionable and others that were too avant garde or too pa.s.se. There were styles suited to a young girl and others better suited to a young matron or to an older lady. There were measurements to be taken. There were ...

For all the kindness of Elizabeth and the respect shown by the two dressmakers, Lily soon felt like a pa.s.sive doll that lifted its arms when someone pulled the right string and pirouetted when someone pulled another, and smiled constantly with a painted smile. All the joy of having new clothes fled early. She knew nothing and was forced to leave all decisions to those who did. And all the time there was the foolish worry-could he possibly afford all this? And she had forgotten to ask him if he would send the money she had borrowed from Captain Harris. How could she have neglected that?

Elizabeth took her arm when the ordeal was finally over and they had left the dressmakers to pack up their things-they had declined Lily's offer of help, looking startled and agitated as they did so.

"Poor Lily," she said. "This is very difficult for you, is it not? Come and have luncheon and relax." She laughed ruefully. "But even a meal is not relaxing for you, is it? It will all get easier as time goes on, I promise you."

Lily would have liked to believe her. But she was not sure she did. If only she could go back, she thought, even just a few days ... But what else could she have done but come here? Even if she could go back and decide to wait for Captain Harris to write a letter, she would merely be postponing the inevitable. She could not simply have stayed away. She was Neville's wife. He had a right to know that she was still alive.

What she really wished was that she could go all the way back to that day when her father had been killed. She wished she could go back and hear more clearly, more responsibly, what Major Newbury had said to her afterward so that she could summon the courage to say no where she had said yes.

Was that really what she wished? That she had never married him? That there had never been that night? If there had not been that night, that dream of love and perfection, she did not know if she would have been able to survive what had happened to her afterward. Not with her sanity intact, at least.

Lily did not go outside again. Neville watched her with deep concern as she was swept up and borne along by his relatives, most of whom at least were ready enough to do what was proper and accept her into their midst. And she did her best to look cheerful, to learn names and relationships, to answer questions that were put to her, to follow his lead and his mother's and Elizabeth's in matters of etiquette. But the color that had been in her cheeks when she had returned from her morning outing and the brightness in her eyes and the pertness in her manner-all the signs of the old Lily-faded again as the day progressed.

He took her on a tour of the house, and she was interested and seemed impressed. She gazed long and attentively at the family portraits in the long gallery.

"How wonderful it must be," she said when they were halfway down the long room, "to know so much about your ancestors and even to have pictures of them. You look very like your grandfather in this portrait of him. Neither Mama nor Papa ever talked about their families, about my ancestors. Until Papa died, I did not realize how very alone I was. If I had wanted to find his relatives, or Mama's when I came back to England, I would not even have known where to look. I daresay Leicestershire is a large place."

"You were not alone," he told her, his heart aching for her. "You had me and my family." But the day after their wedding he had accepted the unconfirmed evidence of his eyes and the hastily observed evidence of Harris's and had not gone in search of her to bring her home to safety.

She moved on to the next painting.

"Did you not have portraits of your mother and father in your locket, Lily?" he asked her. She had always worn it, he remembered, though she did not do so now.

She touched a hand to her throat as if it were still there. "No," she said "It was empty."

He did not ask where the locket was. It had probably been taken from her during her captivity, and reminding her further of its loss would be painful to her.

He was disappointed the following morning to find that she had not gone out again to watch the sun rise. It had rained during the night and was still rather cloudy and bl.u.s.tery, but he did not believe it was the weather that had deterred her. He found her, when he peeped into her room, sitting at the window, gazing quietly out. She smiled at him and told him that one of her new dresses was to be delivered early and that she was waiting to wear it. His mother was to introduce her to the housekeeper and include her in the discussion of the day's menu.

It was important, he supposed-certainly his mother believed it was-that she learn about the running of a great house. But he did not want her new life to sap all the light and joy from her. He wanted her to be Lily, the person he remembered from the Peninsula.

As it turned out, Neville discovered later, Lily had misunderstood and had not realized that the housekeeper was to come to her, not the other way around. She went alone down to the kitchen, expecting to meet her mother-in-law there. By the time, much later, Mrs. Ailsham informed her ladyship, the dowager, that the Countess of Kilbourne was belowstairs and a startled mother-in-law followed her down there, Lily was seated at the large kitchen table, an oversized ap.r.o.n protecting her new dress, peeling potatoes with a kitchen maid and regaling a fl.u.s.tered but delighted kitchen staff with tales of cooking for a regiment on rations that arrived all too irregularly and when they did arrive were often quite inadequate to the men's needs.

After Neville had been told the story and had chuckled over it, though his mother was not amused, he went to find Lily. But by that time she had been safely restored to the respectability of the morning room and the company of his aunts and female cousins. She was looking cheerful and mute and listless all at the same time-and very pretty in her new blue morning gown.

Word had been sent up from the dower house that Lauren and Gwendoline would call during the afternoon.

There was a general air of tension as the family gathered in the drawing room. No one behaved naturally. Everyone smiled a great deal and talked a great deal and laughed more than was necessary. Lily was very quiet.

Neville awaited their arrival with the deepest dread.

But when they came, the moment was almost anticlimactic. They had chosen not to be announced, but entered the room together as soon as a footman had opened the doors, just as they would have done on any other occasion before Lily's arrival. They were both looking their most elegant. Gwen was not smiling. Lauren was-brightly and graciously. And she looked about her, meeting everyone's eyes, apparently perfectly at her ease.

The moment must have cost her enormous effort, Neville guessed as he jumped to his feet and hurried toward them.

"Lauren," he said, resisting the impulse to take both her hands in his. He bowed to her instead. "How are you? Gwen?"

"h.e.l.lo, Neville." Lauren smiled at him and held out her hands to him. "We came to pay our formal respects to your wife, did we not, Gwen? But not to be presented to her. We met her yesterday morning when we were all out for a walk and our paths crossed. Oh, there you are, Lily." She turned away from Neville with a warm smile and held out her hands again. "Looking-tamed." She laughed. "What a very pretty dress. Primrose suits your coloring." She took Lily's hands in hers and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.

It was a stellar performance. But surely it was a performance? She went on to greet everyone else with ease and affection before seating herself beside Lily on a love seat.

The contrast between the two of them-between his wife and the woman who had so nearly become his wife two mornings before-could scarcely be more marked. Lily, small, pretty, quiet, slightly fl.u.s.tered when anyone addressed a remark her way, reclining back on the seat, drinking all her tea down without once setting her cup back in its saucer before it was empty, quite without the "presence" his mother considered so important in a countess. Lauren, tall and beautiful and elegant, perfectly at her ease, sitting with erect but graceful posture, her back not touching the love seat, sipping from her cup and setting it down again in its saucer with all the appreciation of a true lady for fine possessions.

It was almost, Neville thought, as if she had seated herself deliberately beside Lily, knowing how the contrasts would be observed and interpreted. But it was an unkind thought. Lauren had never been an unkind woman. But then, of course, she had never found herself in such a situation before.

Gwen was behaving far more as he would have expected the rejected bride to behave. Although she was perfectly well bred, she pointedly ignored both Lily and himself after the first stiff acknowledgment. She confined her conversation to a group of cousins.

Neville had half expected-and more than half hoped-that Lauren would leave Newbury during the morning with her grandfather and Mr. Calvin Dorsey, who had offered the elderly gentleman quiet comfort since the day of the aborted wedding and had been kind enough to offer his company for the first day of the baron's journey home to Yorkshire. But Lauren had not gone with them. Newbury, after all, had been her home for most of her life. And perhaps, Neville thought, it was important to her not to run away but to stay and face the new conditions of her life.

She was doing magnificently well. Perhaps he should feel relieved-he was relieved. But he could not help remembering how Lauren as a child used to prattle happily about what she would do when her mama came home-until she stopped completely one day, never to mention her mother again. And how when she was older she had talked eagerly of writing to her father's family and becoming reacquainted with them and perhaps going to spend a few months with them-until she had stopped talking about them altogether after she had had a reply to her letter. Just the silence on both topics. No loss of cheerfulness. Just total silence.

No stranger appearing in the drawing room now would guess that Lauren had been a bride two mornings before-his bride-or that her hopes had been abruptly and cruelly dashed.

Lauren, he thought uneasily, reminded him somewhat of a keg of gunpowder, quite harmless in appearance but awaiting the spark that would ignite it.

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was just not that much pa.s.sion in Lauren.

But part of him wished she had raged at him when he had called on her two mornings before. And part of him wished she had stormed into the drawing room this afternoon and made a noisy and scandalous scene.

Pauline Bray, James's sister, finally made a suggestion that broke up the strangely tense normality of the gathering in the drawing room.

"I do believe I am going to take a walk," she announced. "Look. The sun has come out, and the gra.s.s must have had sufficient time to dry after last night's rain. Would anyone care to join me?"

It seemed that almost everyone would. The cousins took up the suggestion with some enthusiasm, and even some of the older relatives expressed their willingness to taste the air. There was a brief argument over whether to take the rhododendron walk over the hill behind the house or to go down onto the beach. The beach won even though Wilma protested that sea air was ruinous on the complexion and that sand got everywhere about one's person no matter how carefully one trod.