Bedwyn: One Night For Love Part 14

"Thank you, Dolly."

Lily had to use all her willpower not to rush with unladylike haste. He was in the library, waiting for her. She could not reach him fast enough. More than anything in the world she wanted to feel his arms about her. She wanted to press her body to his and feel his warmth and his strength. She wanted to rest her head against his shoulder and hear the steady beating of his heart.

She wanted to climb right inside him.

15.

The afternoon's post had brought the rest of the replies Neville had awaited. But Lily had been nowhere to be found. She had returned from the village with his mother but had not come down for tea. He was not surprised after he had heard his mother's account of the afternoon. Being stranded at the vicarage for two hours had severely embarra.s.sed her. He did not doubt that Lily had been gently scolded on the way home.

He would have found the thought of her lengthy absence in the lower village amusing if he had not been feeling so agitated. He had stayed in the drawing room for a scant half hour and had been pacing in the library ever since. It was impossible to settle to any task.

At last there was a tap on the door, it opened, and Lily came past the footman in a rush, it seemed, until she came to a sudden stop before him, flushed and smiling. He held out both hands and she set her own in them.

"Lily." He raised both hands to his lips and then leaned forward to kiss her lips. But he paused as he was lifting his head away and searched her eyes with his own. "What is the matter?"

She hesitated and her hands gripped his own more tightly. "Nothing," she said breathlessly. "It was just foolishness."

"More shadows?" he asked. He had hoped last night would have banished them forever. But he must not expect that it would have solved every problem.

She shook her head and smiled. "You wished to see me?"

"Yes. Come and sit down." He kept hold of one of her hands and led her to one of the leather chairs that flanked the fireplace. He took the other chair after she had seated herself. "Did my mother upset you? Is that it? Did she scold you?"

"Oh." She bit her lip. "No, not really. She meant to be kind. She believes I should make more of an effort to behave as the Countess of Kilbourne ought, and of course she is right. I kept her waiting for-oh, for a very long time. I suppose it did not occur to her that I could have walked home."

No, it would not have. "I would wager," he said, "that a couple of my tenants were quite delighted with you this afternoon. You have a gift for delighting people." Himself included.

She gazed at him but did not reply. He felt suddenly nervous and leaned back in his chair. He had not asked her here to discuss the afternoon's events. He just did not know how to broach what he had to say. He must just say it, he supposed.

"We will be leaving for London in the morning," he said. "Just you and I, Lily. I thought at first of going alone, but when I gave the matter more careful consideration, I realized it would be better to take you with me."

"To London?"

He nodded. "I need to procure a special license," he told her. "I could get it in London and bring it back here and we could marry in the village church. It could all be done within a week, I daresay. But it might cause confusion in minds that do not need to be confused."

"A special license." She was looking blankly at him.

"A marriage license. So that we can marry, Lily, without the delay of banns." He really was not explaining this very well at all, he thought uneasily.

"But we are married." Blankness was turning to puzzlement.

"Yes." His hands, he noticed, were gripping the arms of his chair. He relaxed them. "Yes, we are, Lily, in every way that matters. But the church and the state are very particular about certain really rather unimportant details. The Reverend Parker-Rowe died in that ambush, and his belongings were abandoned with his body. Captain Harris confirmed that fact in a letter I received yesterday. Today I have received answers to several other letters I wrote on the day of your arrival. Our marriage papers were lost, Lily, before they could be properly registered. Our marriage, it seems, does not exist in the eyes of either the church or the state. We must go through the ceremony again."

"We are not married?" Her blue eyes had widened and were staring, unblinking, back into his own.

"We are, Lily," he hastened to a.s.sure her. "But we must satisfy the powers-that-be by making it quite unquestionably legal. No one need know except us. We will go to London-perhaps for a week or two to do some shopping, to see some of the sights, even to take in some of the entertainments of the Season. And while we are there, we will marry by special license. I will not allow this to be an embarra.s.sment to you. No one will know."

He desperately wanted to save her from the shock of feeling utterly alone and abandoned. He was very aware that she had no one but him. He did not want her to believe, even for a single moment, that he would seize upon this small loophole to wriggle out of his obligation to her.

"We are not married." There was nothing in her eyes that suggested she had listened to anything else. They looked dazed. Her face was pale.

"Lily," he said distinctly, "you must not fear. I have no intention of abandoning you. We are married. But there is a formality we must observe."

"I am Lily Doyle," she said. "I am still Lily Doyle."

He got to his feet then and closed the distance between them. He reached out a hand for hers. Foolish Lily. After last night how could she doubt for a moment? But he had given all the facts too abruptly. He had not prepared her. Deuce take it, he was a clumsy oaf.

Lily did not take his hand. But when she looked up into his eyes, he could see that the dazed look had gone from hers.

"We are not married," she said. "Oh, thank G.o.d."

"Thank G.o.d?" He felt as if his stomach had performed a somersault inside him.

"Oh, do you not see?" she asked him, and she gripped the arms of her chair and leaned toward him. "We never should have married, but I was in shock after Papa's death and frightened too, and you were being loyal to him and chivalrous to me. But it was a dreadful mistake on both our parts. Even if we could have spent the rest of our lives with the regiment it would have been a mistake. Even there the gap between an officer and a sergeant's daughter would have been a huge one. I could not easily have been an officer's wife and mixed with the other wives. But here." With one sweep of an arm she seemed to indicate the whole of Newbury Abbey and everyone who lived within its house and park. "Here the gap is quite insurmountable. It is an impossible one. I have dreamed of escape, just as you must have done. And now by some miracle it has been granted us. We are not married."

It had never, even for one moment, occurred to him that she might be glad to hear the truth. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a terror he had had no chance of bracing himself against. He had lost her once, forever he had thought. And then, by some glorious miracle, she had been restored to him. Was he to lose her again even more cruelly than before? Was she going to leave him? No, no, no, she did not understand. He went down on his haunches before her chair and possessed himself of both her hands.

"Lily," he said, "there are some things more important than church or state. There is honor, for example. I promised your dying father that I would marry you. At our wedding I vowed before you and before G.o.d and witnesses to love and to cherish and keep you until my death. I had your virginity that night. We were together again last night. Even if we never go through the ceremony that will make all legal, I will always consider myself your husband. You are my wife."

"No." There was no vestige of color in her face, except for her blue eyes intent on his. She shook her head. "No, I am not. Not if everyone else says it is not so. And not if it ought not to be so and if we do not wish it to be so."

"It ought not to be? I have been inside your body, Lily." He squeezed her hands until she winced. Though it was more than just that-far more. He had been ... united with her. Last night they had become one.

She looked back directly into his eyes. Her lips moved stiffly when she spoke. "So has Manuel," she said. "But he is not my husband either."

He recoiled almost as if she had slapped him. Manuel. Neville shut his eyes tightly and fought a wave of dizziness and nausea. The man now had a name. And she was putting the two of them on the same footing-men who had possessed her but had no marital claim on her. Was there really no difference in her mind? Had last night been nothing to her except s.e.x? Except the exorcism of some of her demons? He would not believe it.

"Lily," he said, "after last night you may be with child. Have you thought of that? You must marry me." But that was not the reason. Not practical details like that. She was his love. He was hers.

"I am barren, sir," she said, her voice quite flat. "Have you not wondered how I could have been with Manuel for seven months without conceiving? We must not marry. You must marry someone who can be the Countess of Kilbourne as well as your wife. You will be able to marry Lauren after all. She is the one for you, I think. She is right in every way."

He squeezed her hands again before getting to his feet and running the fingers of one hand through his hair. This was madness. He must be in the throes of some bizarre nightmare. "I love you, Lily," he told her, recognizing the frustrating inadequacy of words even as he spoke. "I thought you loved me. I thought that was what last night was all about. And our wedding night too."

She was staring up at him with set, pale face and eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears. "Love has nothing to do with it," she said. "Can you not see? That I could be your mistress but not your wife? Not your countess?" Before he could draw breath to protest his outrage, she spoke again, her voice low and toneless. "But I will not be your mistress."

Lord G.o.d!

"What would you do?" He was whispering, he realized. He cleared his throat. He could not believe he was actually asking these questions. "Where would you go?"

Her lips moved without sound for a moment, and he felt a glimmer of hope. She had no alternative but to stay with him. She had no one else, nowhere else. But he had reckoned without Lily's indomitable spirit. Her quiet, sometimes almost childlike demeanor were as illusory now as they had always been.

"I shall go to London," she said, "if you will be so good as to lend me the fare for the stagecoach. I believe Mrs. Harris might be willing to help me find employment. Oh, if only I could have returned to Lisbon in time to find my father's pack. There might have been enough money there ... But no matter." She stopped talking for a few moments. "You must not worry about me. You have been kind and honorable and would continue to be kind if I would allow it. But you are not responsible for me."

He leaned one arm against the mantel and stared unseeing down into the empty fireplace. "Don't insult me, Lily," he said. "Don't accuse me of acting toward you only out of compa.s.sion and honor." He fought panic. "You will not marry me, then? You have hardened your heart? There is nothing I can say to persuade you?"

"No, sir," she said softly.

It was the crudest blow of all. He wondered if she had deliberately addressed him as if he were still an officer and she still a mere enlisted man's daughter. She had called him "sir."

"Lily." He was on the verge of tears. He closed his eyes and waited until he was sure he had control of his voice. "Lily, promise me that you will not run away. Promise me you will stay here at least for tonight and allow me to send you in my own carriage to someone who may indeed help you. I do not know who yet or how. I had not considered this possibility. Give me until tomorrow morning. Promise me? Please?"

He thought she was going to refuse. There was a lengthy silence. But the tremor in her voice when she spoke proclaimed the reason for it. She was as close to breaking down as he.

"Forgive me," she said at last. "I did not mean an insult. Ah, I did not mean to hurt you. Neville? I did not. But I must go. Surely you understand that. I cannot stay. I promise. I will wait until tomorrow."

Sir Samuel Wollston and Lady Mary had come the five miles to Newbury Abbey with their four sons in order to dine one more time with the family members who were planning to leave the following day. Lauren and Gwendoline had come from the dower house. The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Anburey, Joseph and Wilma, the dowager countess, and Elizabeth were with them in the drawing room when Neville entered and made Lily's excuses. She had a headache, he told them all.

"The poor dear," Aunt Mary said. "I am a martyr to the migraines myself and know how she must suffer."

"It is a dashed shame, Nev," Hal Wollston said. "I was looking forward to seeing Lily again. She is a good sport."

"I am sorry, Neville," Lauren told him. "Will you give her my best wishes for her recovery when you see her later?"

Neville bowed to her.

"She was very sensible not to come down if she has a headache," Elizabeth said.

The dowager was not quite so kind. She spoke in a quiet aside to Neville. "This is the sort of family event," she said, "at which it is important that your countess appear at your side, Neville. Are these headaches to become regular occurrences? I wonder. Lily does not strike me as the type of woman to suffer from nervous indispositions."

"She has a headache, Mama," he said firmly, "and is to be excused."

The truth could not be kept from them for long, of course. It might have been if Lily had fallen in with his plans as he had fully expected her to do. Indeed, his mind could still not quite grasp the reality of the fact that he was not married to Lily and was not going to be. That he had no claim on her. That she was leaving him. That he would not see her again after tomorrow.

Yet there had been last night ...

But there was an evening to be lived through. At first he intended to live out to the end of it the charade he had begun with the announcement of Lily's illness. Everyone else appeared to be in a cheerful mood, perhaps because of the presence of several young people. Even young Derek Wollston, who was only fifteen years old, had been allowed to dine with the adults. But Neville changed his mind. There were going to be enough letters of explanation to write as it was. This evening offered the perfect opportunity to break the news to at least a number of those most nearly concerned.

And so when his mother gave the signal after the last cover had been removed from the table for the ladies to adjourn to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port, he spoke up.

"I beg that you will stay for a while, Mama," he said, raising his voice so that it could be heard the length of the table. "And all the ladies, please. I have something to say."

His mother sat down again with a smile and all eyes turned his way. He toyed for a moment with the one spoon left on the table before him. He had not planned what he would say. He had always considered rehea.r.s.ed speeches an abomination. He raised his eyes and looked about at the various members of his family. Most were looking at him with polite interest-perhaps they expected a speech of farewell to those who were leaving. A few smiled. Joseph winked. Elizabeth looked at him alertly, as if she read something in his countenance that the others had not yet seen there.

"Lily does not have a headache," he said.

The silence took on a note of decided discomfort. Uncle Samuel cleared his throat. Aunt Sadie fingered her pearls.

"She discovered this afternoon," he said, "that she is not my wife. Not legally, at least."

The silence first became tense and then was lost as everyone, it appeared, tried to question him at once. Neville held up a hand and they all stopped as abruptly as they had started.

"I suspected that it might be so on the day she arrived here," he said, and he proceeded to give them the same explanation he had given Lily earlier. It was not enough that the marriage ceremony really had occurred and that a properly ordained minister had conducted it. It was not enough that he and Lily had made vows to each other and that one of the witnesses was still alive to attest to the fact. There were formalities to be observed before a marriage was valid in the eyes of church and state. And those formalities had not been completed in their case because the Reverend Parker-Rowe had died and the papers had been lost. One of the witnesses had died at Ciudad Rodrigo a month later.

"So Lily is not your wife," the Duke of Anburey said redundantly when Neville had finished speaking. "You never were married to her."

"I say!" Hal exclaimed, sounding dismayed.

"Lily is not the Countess of Kilbourne after all," Aunt Mary said, shaking her head and looking somewhat dazed. "I do not wonder that she has the migraines, the poor dear. You still have the t.i.tle, Clara."

Most of those gathered about the table had something to add-except the countess, who stared at him in silence, and Joseph, who looked at him with knitted brows, and Lauren, who gazed expressionlessly down at the table.

"But, Neville." Elizabeth had leaned forward, and as often happened when she spoke, everyone stopped to listen. "You are surely intending to satisfy the proprieties by marrying Lily again, are you not?"

All eyes turned Neville's way. He tried to smile and failed miserably. "She will not have me," he said. "She has refused me and will not be moved."

"What?" The countess spoke for the first time.

"I planned to leave for London with her tomorrow morning, Mama," he told her. "We would have married quietly there by special license and no one but the two of us would have been any the wiser. But she will not do it. She will not marry me."

Unexpectedly Elizabeth smiled as she sat back in her chair. "No, she would not," she said more to herself than to anyone else.

It was Gwendoline who vocalized one of the implications of what they had all heard. She clasped her hands to her bosom and her eyes lit up.

"Oh, but this is wonderful!" she exclaimed, smiling warmly at her brother. "You and Lauren can marry after all, Nev. You can set a new wedding date and we can begin new plans. A summer wedding will be lovelier than a spring wedding. You can carry roses, Lauren."

Neville's hand closed tightly about the spoon. He drew breath to reply, but Lauren spoke first, her voice breathless.

"No," she said. "No, Gwen. The past nine days cannot simply be erased as if they never were. Nothing can be the same as it was before." She raised her eyes and looked into his. "Can it, Neville?"

He did not know if she wished him to corroborate her words or if she was begging him to disagree with her. He could only give her honesty. He shook his head.

"The truth is," he said, "that I made vows to Lily in all good faith. I fully intended to honor them for a lifetime. Does it make any difference that they are not legally binding? Are they not morally binding? And would I wish them not to be? I consider Lily to be my wife. I believe I always will."

Lauren lowered her eyes again. It was impossible to know if she was satisfied or disappointed. One rarely did know with Lauren what her deepest feelings were. Dignity always came first with her. She was dignified now-and pale and beautiful. He felt an ache of deep affection for her. And a yearning to release her from the pain she surely must be feeling. But he was helpless to do anything.

"That is absurd, Neville," his mother said crisply. "Are you above the state? Above the church? If the church says you are not married, then of course you are not. And it is your duty to marry a lady suited to your station and able to give you heirs."

Lily was not a lady; she was not suited to his station; by her own admission, she was incapable of giving him heirs. But Lily was his wife.

"The whole thing will be a nine days' wonder, I daresay," the duke said. "The ton will be delighted by the story and will forget it as soon as some other sensation or scandal rears its head. Your mother is right, Neville-you must resume your former way of life as soon as possible. Marry someone of your own kind. I do not wish to be unkind to Lily, but-"

"Then do not be, Uncle Webster," Neville said quietly but so firmly that his uncle stopped midsentence and flushed. "If anyone has slurs to cast upon Lily, I beg to inform that person that I will defend her honor in any way I deem necessary-just as surely as if the whole world acknowledged her as my wife."

"Oh, I say," Richard Wollston said. "Bravo, Nev."

"Hold your tongue," his father instructed him sharply.

"Tempers are becoming frayed," Elizabeth said, and proceeded to bring up another pertinent point that no one else seemed to have considered-though it had tormented Neville ever since Lily had left him in the library earlier in the afternoon. "What is to become of Lily, Neville? What will she do? As I understand it, she has no family that she knows of in England."

"She wants to go to London to look for employment," he said. "I dread the thought. I hope she will agree to allow me to make a settlement on her and find her a decent home somewhere. But I am afraid she will not agree. She is a proud woman and a stubborn one, I believe."