Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 9

Before a large party of them set out, the plans had become more elaborate, and urgent directions had been sent below-stairs for a picnic tea to be sent down onto the beach later even though they had just drunk tea in the drawing room.

Neville was glad of the diversion, both for his own sake and for Lily's. She had been confined to the house for a day and a half, and he knew that she was feeling bewildered and oppressed though she had not complained. Lauren's visit in particular must have put a severe strain on her.

But any thought he had to taking her on his arm and leading her, perhaps, a little away from the larger group was squashed even before they left the house. Lauren had not left her side. She took Lily's arm with a smile.

"You and I will walk together, Lily," she said. "We will become better acquainted."

10.

They walked sedately across the terrace and down the lawn. They walked sedately down the steep hillside and sedately along the beach. They walked farther along it than Lily had walked before, past a huge rock that towered above them as they pa.s.sed beneath it.

Lily was wearing her old shoes though apparently some new pairs were being made for her by the village cobbler. But she was wearing a new primrose dress and pelisse-Mrs. and Miss Holyoake must have worked very hard indeed to complete them within a day-and the plain straw bonnet she had picked out from the supply they had brought to the abbey with them. In the absence of a milliner in the village, Elizabeth had explained, Mrs. Holyoake had undertaken to keep a select supply on hand.

The wide brim of the bonnet shielded Lily's face from the sun, which shone clear of the scudding clouds most of the time. Lauren's parasol, which she insisted on sharing, prevented even a stray ray of sunlight from finding her face. They must be very careful of their complexions, Lauren explained, especially now that summer was almost upon them. She had noted that Lily's face was unfortunately bronzed, probably a casualty of the voyage home from Portugal. But she must not despair-the color would fade if she carried a parasol with her whenever she was out of doors. Lauren would lend her one.

Wilma would not walk too close to the water's edge as the salt from the sea would make her skin rough and coa.r.s.en her hair. And they must stroll very slowly across the sand for fear of getting some of it inside their shoes. When they reached a sheltered spot suitable for the picnic tea and servants had arrived with blankets and baskets, the gentlemen were set the task-by Wilma-of building what amounted to a tent with the blankets so that they would be shielded from the wind and the ruinous airs off the sea. When they sat down, they could not see the water-or even the sand.

They might as well have stayed indoors, Lily thought.

The gentlemen had been having a far better time of it. They had walked briskly to the end of the beach and back before the ladies met them halfway. And they had done their walking down close to the water's edge, where the gulls were flying and the wind was blowing its hardest. There had been much merry laughter from their group. Lily wished she might have walked with them.

They all sat down to tea, but as soon as the edge had been taken from their appet.i.tes, some of the younger cousins-Hal and his brothers Richard and William-were eager to be off exploring again. William winked at Miranda, who was about his own age, and beckoned, and Miranda looked anxiously at her mama, who was busy holding two gla.s.ses while her son Ralph, Viscount Sterne, filled them with wine. Then Miranda looked uncertainly at Lily.

"I long to escape too," Lily whispered, all her good intentions, which she had kept faithfully for a day and a half, forgotten. Neville, with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, was listening politely to a monologue that his Aunt Mary had been delivering for the past five minutes or longer.

And so within moments they were off, the two of them, with the young gentlemen, running down the beach until one more step would have soaked their shoes.

"I would wager the water is cold enough to give one a heart seizure at this time of year," Richard said.

"No," said Lily, who was accustomed to bathing in mountain streams at all seasons of the year except the dead of winter. "It would be refreshing. Oh, the wind feels wonderful." She lifted her face to it and to the sunshine.

"Sea bathing is all the crack in the fashionable resorts," Hal said. "But not here, more is the pity, and not in May. I did it at Brighton last year with the Porters."

"I would die before I would set a toe in sea water," Miranda said. "It would quite shrivel up the skin, I daresay."

Lily laughed. "It is just water, though not to be drunk, of course, because of the salt." And without even thinking of what she did, she shook off her shoes and peeled off her stockings, carried them in one hand while lifting her skirt with the other, and waded into the water until it was halfway to her knees.

Miranda giggled and the young gentlemen hooted with glee.

"It is cold," Lily said, laughing even more gaily. "It is lovely. Oh, do try it."

Richard came next and then Hal and then William. Finally even Miranda was persuaded to remove her shoes and stockings and step gingerly into the water almost up to her ankles. She laughed with fear and excitement.

"Oh, Lily," she cried, "you are so much fun."

"Wilma is an old fuddy-duddy," Richard remarked with marvelous lack of respect for his elders. "And Lauren and Gwen always have to remember that they are ladies."

They all waded through the water, carrying their shoes and stockings, until they came to the great rock and Lily decided that a rock in just such a position and built in just such a way must have been placed there to be climbed. She scrambled to the top and sat up there, her arms clasped about her knees, her head tipped back. She could feel her hem heavy and wet from the sea water, but it would dry soon enough. It was quite impossible, she thought, to remain for long in low spirits when one could feel the sun and the air on one's face and hear waves rolling their way to sh.o.r.e and gulls screaming overhead. She took off her bonnet and set it down beside her with her shoes and stockings. She felt even better.

The other four had climbed up after her and were seated together a little below her, talking and laughing among themselves. Lily forgot them and enjoyed the familiar feeling of being alone with the universe. She had always had the gift-necessary when there had been so little actual privacy in her life-of being able to shut herself off from crowds.

"Miranda!"

The voice, loud and shocked, made Lily jump and brought her back to her surroundings. Aunt Theodora had appeared at the base of the rock with Elizabeth and Aunt Mary. "Put your shoes and stockings and your bonnet and gloves back on this instant. And get down from there! Gracious me, your hem is wet. Have you been wading? You shocking, vulgar, disobedient girl. A true lady would never so much as dream of-" But she had looked upward and spied Lily, who was considerably more disheveled than her daughter.

Elizabeth clucked her tongue and laughed. "How provokingly clever of Lily and Miranda," she said. "They are doing what all of us have been secretly longing to do and are enjoying the sunshine and the sea air-and even the sea."

But her attempt to smooth over the awkwardness of the situation did not quite succeed. The whole party had come into view, Aunt Theodora had turned very red, and Miranda had burst into tears. Aunt Mary was a.s.suring everyone in agitated accents that she dared say her sons were entirely to blame. They were such high-spirited lads. Hal was reminding her indignantly that at the age of one-and-twenty he no longer appreciated being referred to as a lad.

Lily quietly pulled on her stockings and shoes and tied the ribbons of her new bonnet beneath her chin and turned to descend carefully back to the beach. Wilma was loudly complaining about something and Gwendoline was telling her not to be tiresome. The marquess was asking in a deliberately languid voice if anyone had heard about storms in teacups and Pauline choked on a laugh. A pair of strong arms lifted Lily down when she was still carefully picking her footholds.

He turned her and smiled at her, his hands still at her waist. "I had such a vivid memory, seeing you up there," he said, "of watching you sitting on an outcropping of rock, looking about at the hills of Portugal." But his smile faded even before he had finished speaking. "I am sorry. It was just before your father died."

And just hours before their wedding. How he must regret that any of it had ever happened. How she regretted it.

Everyone had begun walking back toward the valley and the path up to the house amid a general atmosphere of discontent and awkwardness. Lily and Neville fell into step a short distance behind.

"I am sorry," she said.

"No," he told her firmly. "No, you must not be, Lily. You must not always be sorry. You must live your life your way."

"But I got Miranda into trouble," she said. "I did not think."

"I will have a word with Aunt Theodora," he told her, chuckling. "It was no very great mischief, you know."

"No," she said, "I will have a word with her. You must not always be protecting me. I am not a child."

"Lily," he said softly. "This is not working well, is it? Let us take a little time for ourselves, shall we? Let me show you the cottage."

"The one in the valley?" she asked him.

He nodded. "My private retreat. My haven of peace and tranquility. I'll take you there."

He took her hand in his and laced his fingers with hers. He did not care that someone ahead of them might look back. They were married, after all.

"The cottage is your own, then?" she asked him. "It is very pretty."

"My grandmother was a painter," he explained. "She liked to be on her own, painting. My grandfather had the cottage built for her on surely the loveliest spot of the whole estate. It is furnished, and it is cleaned and aired once a month. It is there for all of us to use and enjoy, though I believe it has come to be considered my own special place. I like to be alone and quiet too at times."

She smiled at him. Obviously such antisocial needs were quite understandable to her.

"It was the one thing I found hard about military life," he said. "The lack of privacy. You must have felt it too, Lily. And yet there was something about you ... I used to notice, you know, that you often went off on your own, though never beyond your father's sight. You used to sit or stand alone, doing nothing except gazing about you. I always used to imagine that you had discovered a world that was closed to me and to almost everyone else. Had you?"

"There are some places," she said, "that seem more specially graced than others. Places where one feels ... G.o.d, I suppose. I have never been able to feel the presence of G.o.d inside a church. Rather, I feel closed in there, oppressed, as I do in many buildings. But there are places of unusual beauty and peace and ... holiness. They are rare, though. I did not have a valley like yours when I was growing up, or a waterfall or pool or cottage. And I did not find many of those places with the regiment, though there were some. I learned to-to ..."

"To what?" He bent his head closer to hers. He had often talked with Lily in the past, sometimes for an hour or more at a time. They had always been comfortable with each other despite the differences in their gender and stations. He had felt that he knew her well. But he had never asked her about her private world, only observed it. There were depths to her character that were still unknown to him. There was great beauty there, he suspected, and wisdom too despite her youth and lack of formal education. There was nothing shallow about his Lily.

"I do not know how to say it," she said. "I learned to be still and to stop doing and listening and even thinking. I learned to be. I learned that almost any place can be one of those special places if I allowed it to be. Perhaps I learned to find the place within myself."

He gazed down at her-pretty, dainty Lily in her new primrose dress and pelisse and straw bonnet. The serenity he had always observed in her had an explanation, then. She had discovered in her short, difficult life what not many people discovered in a whole lifetime, he suspected. He had not progressed as far himself though he knew the value of solitude and silence. He wondered if Lily's ability to find a place within, simply to be, as she had put it, had helped her endure her ordeal in Spain. But he would not ask her about that. He could not even bear to think about it.

They had reached the valley and walked up the path toward the cottage and the pool at the base of the waterfall. Everyone else had already disappeared up the hill and in among the trees. They stopped by unspoken a.s.sent when they were a short distance away and feasted their eyes on the beauty of the scene and their ears on the soothing sound of rushing water.

"Ah, yes," she said at last with a sigh, "this is one of those places. I can understand why you come here."

He had noticed that she had not called him by any name since her return even though he had reminded her that she was his wife and might use his given name. He longed to hear it on her lips again. He could remember how it had sounded like the most intimate endearment on their wedding night. But he could not, would not press the point with her. He must give her time.

"Come and see the cottage," he said. It occurred to him suddenly with some surprise that he had never come here with Lauren, or not at least since they were children.

There were just two rooms, both cozily furnished and both possessing fireplaces with logs piled beside them in readiness for a chilly day-or night. He occasionally spent a night here. He had done it sometimes during the past year or so, when he had been remembering his life with the Ninety-fifth and his years in the Peninsula and had been restless with a nameless yearning.

No, not nameless. He had yearned here for Lily, whom he had grown gradually to love during the years he had known her, though that love had bloomed into s.e.xual pa.s.sion only a short time before its final glorious flowering the night before he believed she'd died.

He had tried not to think of Lily at Newbury. There he had tried to think only of his new life, the life of duty for which he had been raised and educated, the life that included Lauren. He had come to the cottage to do his remembering and his leftover mourning.

It was still strange to realize that Lily had not died. That she was here. Now.

She peered into the bedchamber, but it was the other room that appeared to fascinate her more. There were chairs, a table, books, paper, quill pens and ink-and a view directly over the pool and the waterfall. He liked to sit here, reading or writing. He also liked to sit and merely gaze. Perhaps it was what she called being.

"You read here," she said, picking up one of the books after taking off her bonnet and setting it down on one of the chairs. "You learn about other worlds and other minds. And you can go back and read them again and again."

"Yes," he said.

"And sometimes you write down your own thoughts," she said, running a finger along one of the quill pens. "And you can come back and read them and remember what you thought or how you felt about something."

"Yes." She sounded wistful, he noticed.

"It must be the most wonderful feeling in the whole world," she said, "to be able to read and write."

He took so much for granted, he realized. He had never really considered how privileged he was to have been educated. "Perhaps," he suggested, "you could learn, Lily."

"Perhaps," she agreed. "Though probably I am too old. I daresay I would not be an apt pupil. Papa always said learning to read was the most difficult thing he had ever done in his life. He never did find it easy." She set the book down and went to stand at the window, looking out.

He had not meant to ask her the question whose answer he dreaded to hear-certainly not yet. He did not feel strong enough to know. But somehow the time and the place seemed right and somehow the words just came spilling out.

"Lily," he asked her, "what did you suffer?"

He went to stand beside her, facing her profile. He touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek. She looked so delicate, yet he knew her to be as tough in her own way as even the most hardened of veterans. But how badly had her toughness been tested? "Are you able to talk about it?"

She turned her head and her huge blue eyes gazed back into his. Curiously, they looked both wounded and calm. Whatever she had suffered had hurt her, perhaps permanently, but it had not broken her. Or so her eyes seemed to say.

"It was war," she said. "I saw sufferings far worse than my own. I saw maiming and torture and death. I have not been maimed. I did not die."

"Were you ... tortured?"

She shook her head. "Beaten a few times," she said, "when I-when I did not please. But only with the hand. I was never really tortured."

He would have liked a certain Spanish partisan suddenly to materialize before him. He would have liked to break every bone in the man's body with his fists and then pluck him apart limb from limb with his bare hands. He had beaten Lily? Somehow it seemed almost as heinous a crime as the rape.

"Not tortured, then." he said. "Only beaten and ... used."

"Yes." Her gaze lowered to his cravat.

It hurt to imagine another man using Lily. Not because it made her less desirable to him-he had already considered that possibility the night before and rejected it-but because she had been all innocence and light and goodness and someone had taken her as a slave and thrust darkness and bitterness into her very body with his l.u.s.t. And perhaps hurt her irreparably.

How was he to know? Perhaps she did not know herself. Perhaps her calm acceptance of what had happened, her sensible explanation about its having been war, was merely a small bandage covering a large and gaping wound. Perhaps in a way her manner of coping was not unlike Lauren's ...

He lost his courage suddenly-or what little of it he had found with that first question. Had he asked, she would perhaps have told him the rest. All the atrocious details of what she had suffered and endured and survived. He did not want to know. He could not bear to know. Even though he realized that perhaps she needed to tell.

Ah, Lily, and you spoke of cowardice?

He stroked her cheek and her jaw with the backs of his fingers and then set them beneath her chin to lift it. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, Lily," he said. Did she feel ashamed? But she had fully expected that he might divorce her for adultery. "You did no wrong. I was the one who did wrong. I am the one who should feel shame. I should have protected you better. I should have guessed that they would attack the center of the line. I should have realized that there was a chance you still lived. I should have moved heaven and earth to find you and ransom you."

"No!" Her eyes gazed calmly into his. "Sometimes it is easier to find fault and place the blame-even on oneself-than to accept the fact that war just does not make sense. It was war. That is all."

And yet she blamed herself, as had been apparent the night before last. She blamed herself for cowardice in not fighting for her virtue, in not dying with the French prisoners rather than submit. And he could not accept the excuse of war as absolution for his own guilt.

He had thought himself recovered from his wounds. She looked as if she had none. But perhaps in reality they were two wounded people who must somehow find pardon and peace and healing together.

But to do that they surely needed to have everything in the open between them. Yet he could not bear to know ...

He lowered his head and touched his lips to hers. They were soft and warm and yielding. And her eyes, he saw when he drew back his head to look into them, were deep with yearning. He kissed her again, as lightly as before until he felt her lips cling to his own and press back against them-just as they had when he had drawn her beneath his blanket in his tent on their wedding night.

Ah, Lily. He had missed her. Even believing her dead, he had missed her. His life had been empty without her. There had been a void that nothing and no one had filled or would ever have filled. But she was back. Ah, she had come home to him. He set his arms about her and drew her against him. He parted his lips over hers.

And found himself fighting a wild thing, who clawed at him and pushed him away in panic, making mewing noises of distress. She whirled away from him across the room and set a chair between them. When he stared at her in shock, she was staring back, her eyes huge with terror. And then suddenly she shut them tightly, and when he would have spoken, she pressed her hands over her ears and continued with the noises. Shutting him out. Shutting herself in.

He turned to ice inside.

"Lily." He used the only voice he knew instinctively she would recognize and respond to-his officer's voice. "Lily, you are quite safe. My honor on it. You are safe."

She fell silent and after a few moments took her hands from her ears. She opened her eyes, though she did not look at him. They were huge and blank, the terror and everything else erased from them, he saw in some alarm.

"I am sorry," he told her. "My deepest apologies. I did not intend either to hurt or to frighten you. I will never do anything ... physical to you against your will. I swear it. Please believe me."

"I am afraid," she said, her voice toneless. "So afraid."

"I know." All of his earlier questions had been answered more forcefully than if he had articulated them and she had answered them in words. She was maimed as surely as a soldier who had returned from the wars with missing limbs-more so. He was afraid too-mortally afraid he would never be able to atone. He took a deep breath and used his officer's voice again. "Look at me, Lily."

She looked. All the vibrant color she had gained from her escapade on the beach had fled from her face. She was pale and haggard again.