by Mary Balogh
As the wife of an officer and a gentleman, Lily will be treated with honor and courtesy even by the French. And the Reverend Parker-Rowe, the regimental chaplain, who finds life in camp as tedious as the most restless soldier, has come with the scouting party.
“She will be my wife, Sergeant. She will be safe.” He is not quite sure the dying man understands. The cold fingers still pluck weakly at his own.
“My pack back at the base,” Sergeant Doyle says. “Inside my pack …”
“It will be given to Lily,” Neville promises. “Tomorrow, when we arrive safely back at camp.”
“I should have told her long ago.” The voice is becoming fainter, less distinct. Neville leans over him. “I should have told him. My wife … God forgive me. She loved her. We both did. We loved her too much to …”
“God forgives you, Sergeant.” Where the devil is the chaplain? “And no one could ever have doubted your devotion to Lily.”
Parker-Rowe and Lily arrive at the same moment, the latter hurtling down the hill at reckless speed. Neville gets to his feet and stands to one side as Lily takes his place beside her father, gathering his hand into both her own, bending low over him, her hair a curtain about his face and her own.
“Papa,” she says. She whispers his name over and over again and remains as she is for several minutes while the chaplain murmurs prayers and the company stands about, helpless in the presence of death and grief.
After they have buried Sergeant Doyle on the hillside where he died, Neville orders the camp moved two or three miles farther on. He walks on one side of a silent, frozen-faced Lily while Parker-Rowe walks on the other side. He has already spoken with the chaplain.
Lily has not wept. She has not spoken a word since Neville took her by the shoulders and raised her to her feet and told her gently what she already knew—that her father was gone. She is accustomed to death, of course. But one is never prepared for the death of a loved one.
“Lily,” Neville says in the same gentle voice he used earlier, “I want you to know that your father’s last thoughts were of you and your safety and your future.”
She does not answer him.
“I made him a promise,” he tells her. “A gentleman’s promise. Because he was my friend, Lily, and because it was something that I wanted to do anyway. I promised him that I would marry you today so that you will have the protection of my name and rank for the rest of this journey and for the rest of your life.”
There is still no response. Has he really made such a promise? A gentleman’s promise? Because it was what he wanted? Has he wanted to be forced into doing something impossible so that it can be made possible after all? It is impossible for him, an officer, an aristocrat, a future earl, to marry an enlisted man’s humble and illiterate daughter. But doing so has now become an obligation, a gentleman’s obligation. He feels a strange welling of exultation.
“Lily,” he asks her, bending his head to look into her pale, expressionless face—so unlike her usual self, “do you understand what I am saying to you?”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice is flat, toneless.
“You will marry me, then? You will be my wife?” The moment seems unreal, as do all the events of the past two hours. But there is a sense of breathless panic. Because she might refuse? Because she might accept?
“Yes,” she says.
“We will do it as soon as we have made camp again then,” he says.
It is unlike Lily to be so passive, so meek. Is it fair to her …
But what is the alternative? A return to England, to relatives he knows she has never met? Marriage to an enlisted soldier of her own social rank? No, that is an unbearable thought. But it is Lily’s life.
“Look at me, Lily,” he commands, no longer gently, using the voice that she, as well as all the men under his command, obeys instinctively. She looks. “You will be my wife within the hour. Is it what you want?”
“Yes, sir.” Her eyes stare dully back into his before he looks over her head and locks eyes with the chaplain.
It will be so, then. Within the hour. The great impossibility. The obligation.
Again the panic.
Again the exultation.
The marriage service is conducted before the whole company and is officially witnessed by Lieutenant Harris and the newly promoted Sergeant Rieder. The gathered men seem not to know whether to cheer or to maintain the subdued solemnity they have carried from Sergeant Doyle’s funeral three hours ago. Led by the lieutenant, they applaud politely and give three cheers for their newly married major and for the new Viscountess Newbury.
The new viscountess herself appears totally detached from the proceedings. She goes quietly off to help Mrs. Geary prepare the evening meal. Neville does not stop her or mention the fact that a viscountess must expect to be waited upon. He has duties of his own to attend to.
It is dark. Neville has checked on the pickets and the schedule for the night watch.
He will remain in the army, he has decided. He will make a permanent career of it. In the army he and Lily can be equals. They can share a world with which they are both familiar and comfortable. He will no longer feel pulled in two directions as he has since he left Newbury. They would not want him back there now anyway. Not with Lily. She is beautiful. She is everything that is grace and light and joy. He is in love with her. More than that, he loves her. But she can never be the Countess of Kilbourne, except perhaps in name. Cinderellas are fine in the pages of a fairy tale and might expect to live happily ever after with their princes. In real life things do not work that way.
He is glad he has married Lily. He feels as if a load has been lifted from his soul. She will be his world, his future, his happiness. His all.
His tent, he notices, has been set up a tactful distance away from the rest of the camp. She is standing alone outside it, looking off into the moonlit valley.
“Lily,” he says softly as he approaches.
She turns her head to look at him. She says nothing, but even in the dim moonlight he can see that the glazed look of shock has gone from her eyes. She looks at him with awareness and understanding.
“Lily.” Everything they say now is in whispers so that they will not be overheard. “I am so sorry. About your father.”
He lifts one hand and touches the tips of his fingers lightly to one of her cheeks. He has thought about this. He will not force himself on her tonight. She must be allowed time to grieve for her father, to adjust to the new conditions of her life. She still says nothing, but she raises one hand and sets it against the back of his, drawing his palm fully against her cheek.
“I ought to have said no,” she says. “I did know what you were asking of me. I pretended even to myself that I did not so that I would not have to refuse you and face an empty future. I am sorry.”
“Lily,” he says, “I did it because I wanted to.”
She turns her head and sets her lips against his palm. She closes her eyes and says nothing.
Lily. Ah, Lily, is it possible …
“You take the tent,” he tells her. “I will sleep on the ground here. You must not worry. I will keep you quite safe.”
But she opens her eyes and gazes at him in the moonlight. “Did you really want to?” she asks him. “Did you really want to marry me?”
“Yes.” He wishes he could retrieve his hand. He is not made of stone.
“You asked me what my dream was,” she tells him. “How could I tell you then? But I can tell you now. It was this. Just this. My dream.”
He touches his mouth to hers and wonders while he still can if they have an audience.
“Lily,” he says against her mouth. “Lily.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Neville,” he tells her. “Say it. Say my name. I want to hear you saying it.”
“Neville,” she says, and it sounds like the most tender, the most erotic of endearments. “Neville. Neville.”
“Will I share the tent with you, then?” he asks
her.
“Yes.” There can be no mistaking that she means it, that she wants him. “Neville. My beloved.”
Surely only Lily could utter such a word without sounding theatrical.
It seems strange to him that they are about to consummate a marriage when they buried his comrade, her father, a mere few hours ago. But he has had enough experience with death to know that life must reaffirm itself immediately after in the survivors, that living on is an integral part of the grieving process.
“Come then,” he says, stooping to open the flap of the small tent. “Come, Lily. Come, my love.”
They make love in near silence since there undoubtedly are listeners enough eager to hear grunts of pleasure, cries of pain. And they make love slowly so as not to cause any undue shaking of the tent’s flimsy structure. And they make love fully clothed except in essential places, and covered by their two cloaks so that they will not be chilled by the December night.
She is innocent and ignorant.
He is eager and experienced and desperate to give her pleasure, terrified of giving her pain.
He kisses her, touches her with gentle, exploring, worshipful hands, first through her clothing, then beneath it, feathering touches over her warm, silken flesh, cupping her small, firm breasts, teasing his thumb across their stiffening crests, sliding gentle, caressing fingers down into the moist heat between her thighs, touching, parting, arousing.
She holds him. She does no caressing of her own. She makes no sound except for quickened breathing. But he knows that she is one with his desire. He knows that even in this she is finding beauty.
“Lily …”
She opens to him at the prodding of his knees and wraps herself about him at the bidding of her own instincts. She croons soft endearments to him—mostly his own name—as he mounts her, surprising himself with his own sobs as he does so. She is small and tight and very virgin. The barrier seems unbreakable and he knows he is hurting her. And then it is gone and he eases inward to his full length. Into soft, wet heat and the involuntary contraction of her muscles.
She speaks to him in a soft whisper against his ear.
“I always knew,” she tells him, “that this would be the most beautiful moment of my life. This. With you. But I never expected it to happen.”
Ah, Lily. I never knew.
“My sweet life,” he tells her. “Ah, my dear love.”
But he can no longer think only of not hurting his bride. His desire, his need, pulses like a drumbeat through every blood vessel in his body and focuses as exquisite pain in his groin and the part of himself that is sheathed in her. He withdraws to the brink of her and presses deep again, hears her gasp of surprise and surely of pleasure too, and withdraws and presses deep.
He holds the rhythm steady for as long as he is able both for her sake and his own, resisting the urge to release into pleasure too soon, before she can learn that intimacy consists of more than simple penetration.
She lies relaxed beneath him. Not out of distaste or shock or passive submission. He would know. Even if she were not making quiet sounds of satisfaction to the rhythm, he would know. She is enjoying what is happening. He finds her mouth with his own and it is warm, open, responsive.
“My love,” he tells her. “This is what happens. Ah, you are beautiful, Lily. So very beautiful.”
He can hold back no longer. He slows the rhythm, pressing deeper, pausing longer. He is enclosed by her, engulfed by her, part of her. Lily. My love. My wife. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, heart of my heart.
He withdraws and delves deep again. Deeper. Beyond barriers. Beyond time or place. He releases deep into the eternity that is himself and Lily united.
He hears her whisper his name.
They have only a few miles to go before reaching the base camp. But there is a narrow pass to be negotiated before they get there. There can be no real danger of any French force being this far in front of its winter lines, but Neville is cautious. He sends men ahead to scout the hills. He arranges the line of his company so that he has the most dangerous position in front while Lieutenant Harris is at the rear and the rawest of his men as well as the chaplain and the two women are in the middle.
Lily is quiet today though no longer dazed. The reality of her father’s death has begun to sink in. She has begun to grieve. But she made love with him for a second time in the early-morning darkness before he got up, and she twined her arms about his neck and told him that she loved him, that she had always loved him from the first moment she saw him, perhaps even before that, before her birth, before time and creation. He had laughed softly and told her that he adored her.
She is wearing a package on a cord about her neck. In the package is a copy of their marriage papers—the other copy will be duly registered by Parker-Rowe when they return to camp. Lily’s package is a final precaution. Anyone opening it will see that she is the wife of a British officer and will treat her with the appropriate chivalry.
The French are clever. At least this particular company is. They have evaded detection by the advance British party. They allow the front of the British line to march through the pass and emerge on the other side before they attack the weak center.
Neville whips around at the sound of the first volley of shots from the hills. It seems to him that the world slows and his vision becomes a dark tunnel through which he observes Lily in the middle of the pass, throwing up her hands and tipping backward out of sight amid the smoke and the milling bodies of his trapped men.
She has been hit.
He calls her name.
“L-i-l-y! L-I-L-Y!”
Instinctively he acts like the officer he is, drawing his sword, bellowing out orders, fighting his way back into the killing field of the pass. Back to Lily.
Lieutenant Harris meanwhile has led his men from the rear up onto the: hill. Within minutes the French are put at least to temporary flight. But during those minutes Neville has reached the middle of the pass and found Lily, who has blood on her chest. More blood than was on her father’s yesterday.
She is dead.
He looks down at her slain body and falls to his knees beside her, his duty forgotten. His arms reach for her.
Lily. My love. My life. So briefly my life. For one night.
Only one night for love.
Lily!
He feels no pain from the bullet that grazes his head. The world blacks out for him as he falls senseless across Lily’s dead body.
PART III
An Impossible Dream
4
They did not proceed up the driveway as Lily had expected. They turned just inside the gates and were soon walking along an unpaved, wooded path. Neville neither spoke to her nor looked at her. His grip on her hand was painful. She had to half run to keep up with his long strides.
He was dazed, she knew, not quite conscious of where he was going or with whom. She did not try to break the silence.
In truth she was hardly less in shock herself. He had been about to get married. He had thought her dead—she knew that from Captain Harris. But it had been less than two years ago. He had been about to marry again. So soon after.
Lily had caught sight of his bride when she had burst into the church in a panic. She was tall and elegant and beautiful in white satin and lace. His bride. Someone from his own world. Someone whom perhaps he loved.
And then Lily had hurried past his bride and into the nave of the church. It had been like last night, like stepping into a different universe. But worse than last night. The church had been filled with splendidly, richly clad ladies and gentlemen, and they had all been looking back at her. She had felt their eyes on her even as her own had focused on the man who stood at the front of the church like a prince of fairy tales.
He was clothed in pale blue and silver and white. Lily had scarcely recognized him. The height, the breadth of shoulder, the strong, muscular physique were the same. But this man was the Earl of Kilbourne, a remote English aristocrat. The man
she remembered was Major Lord Newbury, a rugged officer with the Ninety-fifth Rifles.
Her husband.
The Major Newbury she remembered—Neville, as he had become to her on that last day—had always been careless of his appearance and impossibly attractive in his green and black regimentals, which were often shabby, often dusty or mud-spattered. His blond hair had always been close cropped. Today he was all immaculate elegance.
And he had been about to marry that beautiful woman from his own world.
He had thought Lily dead. He had forgotten about her. He had never spoken of her—that had been clear from everyone’s reaction in the church. He had perhaps been ashamed to do so. Or she had meant so little to him that he had not thought to do so. His marriage to her had been contracted in haste because he had felt he owed it to her father. It had been dismissed as an incident not worth talking about.
Today was his wedding day—to someone else.
And she had come to put a stop to it.
“Lily.” He spoke suddenly and his hand tightened even more painfully about hers. “It really is you. You really are alive.” He was still looking straight ahead. His pace had not slackened.
“Yes.” She stopped herself only just in time from apologizing, as she had done in the church. It would be so much better for him if she had died. Not that he was an unkind man. Never that. But—
“You were dead,” he said, and she realized suddenly that the path was a short route to the beach where she had spent the night. They had left the trees behind them and were descending the hillside, brushing through the ferns at reckless speed. “I saw you die, Lily. I saw you dead with a bullet through your heart. Harris reported to me afterward that you had died. You and eleven others.”