by Mary Balogh
She kept wondering what he was doing at that precise moment.
Elizabeth resumed their interrupted conversation after Joseph had handed them back into the carriage and they were on their way again.
“Well, Lily,” she said, patting her briskly on the knee, “I can see that the next month or two with you are going to be interesting indeed. Did I use the word fun yesterday? The coming months are certainly going to be fun—yes, it is quite the right word. We, my dear, with the help of all the best instructors I can hire, are going to transform you into a lady, with a lady’s education and accomplishments—all within a month or two or ten. Obviously some things will take longer than others. What do you say?”
Lily said nothing for several moments. They had been playing a game of what-if, had they not? “No,” she said, frowning. “Oh, no. Teachers would have to be paid salaries.”
“And the best teachers would have to be paid high salaries.” Elizabeth was smiling. “Lily, my dear, I am almost indecently wealthy.”
“But you cannot spend any of it on me,” Lily said, aghast. “I am your servant.”
“Well, yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “For your pride’s sake I will concede that point, Lily. But servants, you know, have to earn their salaries. And how do they do that? By obeying their employers, by catering to their every whim. I am one of the most fortunate of women, you know, for any number of reasons. But having everything—almost everything—one could possibly need can have its disadvantages, especially when one is a woman. There is a certain boredom with which to contend. I cannot tell you when I last had fun. Overseeing your education will be that, Lily. You must not deny me, not when you have confessed that it is what you want more than almost anything else in this world.”
It had not been a game, Lily realized suddenly. And she had not been hired to serve—at least, not in any conventional sense. Elizabeth had intended this all along. She had intended to amuse herself and delight Lily by making a lady out of her.
It would be impossible.
It would not!
It would be glorious and wonderful. She could learn to read. She would be able to read books. She would be able to fill a room with music—with her very own fingers. She would be able … Oh, there were too many dazzling possibilities crowding her mind.
There was a new dream.
“What are you thinking?” Elizabeth asked.
“I will be able—when I leave you, that is,” Lily said, “to find employment as a shop assistant or perhaps even as—as a governess.” It was a dizzying prospect. She would acquire knowledge and then she would be able to pass it on to others.
“Of course,” Elizabeth said. “Or perhaps you will marry, Lily. I intend to take you with me to meet the ton before the Season is over. It is one of the duties of a companion, you know. But you will be more than a companion—you will be a friend and a participant in the social functions we will attend.”
Lily sat back in her seat. “Oh, no,” she said. “No, no, that would be impossible. I am not a lady.”
“Very true,” Elizabeth agreed. “And the beau monde is very high in the instep about such matters as birth and connections. Behaving like a lady does not, with the highest sticklers, make one into a lady. But there are exceptions to most rules. Remember if you will, Lily, how famous you are. Your story—your arrival in the middle of Neville and Lauren’s wedding, his announcement that you were the wife he had long thought dead, his account of your wedding and apparent death—will still be the sensation of London. The rest of the story—the discovery that your marriage is not valid after all, your refusal to make it valid by going through another nuptial service with the Earl of Kilbourne—will set the ton on its ears. They will be in a frenzy to meet you, even to catch a glimpse of you. When it is known that you are living with me, invitations will pour in. But we will keep everyone waiting for a while. When you do appear, Lily, you will take London by storm. In addition to the story, you see, there are your natural beauty and grace and charm. And by the time you appear, we will have added the refinement of genteel manners and fashionable appearance. I daresay you could marry a duke if you wished—and if there were a suitable one available.” She laughed softly. She was clearly enjoying herself.
“I cannot ever marry,” Lily said, ignoring the rest of the frightening—and undeniably exciting—picture Elizabeth had just painted for her. She smoothed her hands over the gloves that lay in her lap.
“Why not?” The question was quietly asked, but it demanded an answer.
Lily was quiet for a long time. Because I am already married. Because I love him. Because I have lain with him and given him, not only my body, but all that is myself. Because … Because, because.
“I cannot,” she said at last. “You must know the reason.”
“Yes, my dear.” Elizabeth reached along the seat and squeezed one of her hands. “It would be trite for me to assure you that time will heal. I have never experienced anything nearly as intense as what you have suffered and are suffering, and so I cannot know for sure that such wounds as yours will ever heal. But you are a woman of great fortitude and strength of character, Lily. I am sure I am correct in that judgment. You will live, my dear. You will not merely drag on an existence. I will give you the benefit of my resources and connections, but I will not be doing anything of substance for you. You will do that for yourself. I have every confidence in you.”
Lily was not sure it was well placed. Her spirits, which the game-turned-reality had sent soaring with the excitement of new dreams, were flagging again. With every passing hedgerow and milepost more distance was being set between her and him, and it was a distance that could never again be closed. She was not sure at that precise moment that she wanted even to drag on an existence, let alone make the effort to live.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Tell me.” Elizabeth spoke again after they had traveled some distance in silence. “What happened to you, Lily, during all those months when Neville thought you dead?”
Lily swallowed. “The truth?” she said.
“It has occurred to me,” Elizabeth said, “that the French would have informed the British if they had held an officer’s wife captive for any length of time. They might have made a very favorable exchange with one or more of their own officers held by the British. That is not what happened, is it?”
“No,” Lily said.
“Lily,” Elizabeth said before she could say more, “although I believe you are not going to allow me to forget that you are my employee, I would have you know that you will always be at liberty to guard your privacy from me. You are under no compulsion to tell me anything. But you grew up among men, my dear. Perhaps you have not known the joy of having a friend of your own sex, one who can share your perspective on events and experience.”
Lily told her everything, all the painful, sordid, humiliating details she had withheld from Neville that day in the cottage, her head back against the cushions, her eyes closed. By the time she had finished, her hand was in Elizabeth’s firm clasp again. Her touch was strangely comforting—a woman’s touch signifying a woman’s sympathy. Elizabeth would understand what it would be like to be a captive, to have one’s freedom taken away, and then, as a final indignity, to have one’s very body invaded and used for the pleasure of one’s captor. Another woman would understand the monumental inner battle that had had to be waged every single day and night to cling to that something at the core of herself that was herself, that gave her identity and dignity. That something that even a rapist—even, perhaps, a murderer—could not take away from her.
“Thank you,” they said simultaneously after a short silence. They both laughed, though not with amusement.
“You know, Lily,” Elizabeth told her, “men have the ridiculous notion that one must maintain a stiff upper lip through all the worst disasters of their lives. Women are not so foolish. It is quite all right to cry, my dear.”
Lily cried. She sobbed until she thought the pain must t
ear her in two. She wept, her face in Elizabeth’s lap while the older woman smoothed a hand over her hair and murmured nonsense that Lily did not even hear.
Finally Lily straightened up, dried her eyes, blew her nose, and apologized for the damp patch on Elizabeth’s skirt. She laughed shakily. “You will think twice,” she said, “before inviting me to cry again.”
“Does Neville know?” Elizabeth asked.
“The basic facts,” Lily said. “Not the details.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth said. “Good girl. Now. Let us look ahead, shall we, and plan? Lily, my dear, we are going to have fun, fun, fun.”
They both laughed again.
Neville waited for one month.
He tried to resume his normal life. Except that normal life since his return from the Peninsular Wars had included his very close friendship with his sister and his cousin and his gradual, inevitable courtship of Lauren.
The friendship was strained. He did not want to deceive Lauren into believing that he might resume his courtship of her—and she clearly did not wish to give the impression that she expected it. Gwen was just plain uncomfortable. As Lauren herself had said at dinner the evening before Lily’s departure, nothing would ever be the same again.
Yet obviously it was expected that he and Lauren would marry. Neighbors who called at the abbey on any flimsy excuse and who issued more than usually frequent invitations to dinners, card parties, informal dances, and picnics were too well bred to mention the subject openly, but there were all sorts of covert and ingenious ways of hinting and of digging for information.
Might they expect the return of Baron Galton, Miss Edgeworth’s grandpapa, to Newbury any time soon? Lady Leigh asked one day. Such a distinguished gentleman!
Was the Countess of Kilbourne planning to return her place of residence to the dower house? Miss Amelia Taylor wished to know. She asked only because it would not be at all the thing for her and her sister to call at the abbey one day to find only his lordship in residence. She blushed at the very idea.
Was his lordship still planning a journey to the Lakes this year? Sir Cuthbert Leigh wondered. His cousin’s inlaws had just returned from there and pronounced it a remarkably picturesque and genteel destination.
His lordship must be finding Newbury Abbey rather large and lonely with his sister and his cousin no longer living there, Mrs. Cannadine informed him.
Had his lordship quite recovered from his little upset? Mrs. Beckford, the vicar’s wife, asked him in the sort of hushed, sympathetic tones her husband used at deathbeds. She and the reverend were hoping—the hope was accompanied by an arch look that ill became her—that everything would soon be put to rights again.
It was not just the neighbors. The countess too urged a return to the original plan.
“I liked Lily, Neville,” she assured him when they were breakfasting together a week after Lily had left. “Despite myself I liked her. She has a sweet, unaffected charm. I was prepared to give her my affection and support for the rest of my life. And I know you were fond of her and have found the past week difficult. You are my son and I know that about you—and my heart has ached for you.”
“But?” He smiled at her rather ruefully.
“But she is not your wife,” she reminded him, “and does not wish to be. Lauren has been intended for you from infancy. You know each other well; you have a real fondness for each other; you have an equality of mind and education. She would fit into my role here without any painful period of adjustment. She would give stability to your life and children to the nursery. I long for grandchildren, Neville. You would not understand, perhaps, the disappointment I felt when Gwendoline miscarried as a result of her accident—as well as grief for her. But I stray from the main point. You had decided to marry Lauren. You were happy with the decision. You were literally at the altar awaiting her. Put the turmoil of the past few weeks behind you and pick up the threads of your life where you left them off. For everyone’s sake.”
He reached across the table and took one of her hands in both his own. “I am truly sorry, Mama,” he said. “But no.” He tried to think of an explanation that would make sense to her, but he knew that none would. And he could not bare his heart even to his mother. “Let us all give it time,” he added lamely.
It seemed that his life these days was made up of waiting, giving himself time. He waited longer than a week for an answer to the letter he had written to regimental headquarters the morning of Lily’s departure. But at last it came—he had half expected the problem to be far more difficult, if not impossible, to solve. He had not posted the letter but had sent it, with specific verbal instructions, with his valet, who had once been his batman, a burly, rather morose man who had always served his master’s interests well by refusing to budge an inch in the course of duty. The answer gave Neville something to do—and an excuse for leaving the abbey, which had become oppressive to him.
He might have sent another messenger to make further inquiries. But he chose instead to go in person to Leavens-court in Leicestershire, where Thomas Doyle’s belongings had been sent after their return to England. Doyle’s father was a groom at the manor of Leavenscourt.
It was a long journey through weather that had turned wet and blustery and chilly. Neville was forced to travel in a closed carriage, something he always found tedious in the extreme. And he expected to find nothing at the end of the journey. But at least, he thought as he kicked his heels in the taproom of the rickety apology for an inn the weather had forced him to put up at one night—at least he was doing something. Newbury had become abhorrent to him, and so much there reminded him of Lily. He had even made the mistake of spending one night at the cottage, lying where they had lain on the bed, filled with such a vast emptiness that he had not even been able to force himself to move, to get out of there.
Leavenscourt was a small but prosperous-looking property. He looked about him with some curiosity as he approached the house. This was where Doyle had grown up? The family was not in residence and his appearance threw the housekeeper into consternation. She stared at him when he explained that he had come to speak with Mr. Doyle, one of the grooms, father of the late Sergeant Thomas Doyle of the Ninety-fifth. She even forgot to keep bobbing curtsies.
Henry Doyle, it seemed, had been dead these four years and more.
Neville felt a door slamming in his face. “I understand,” he said, “that the regiment returned Sergeant Doyle’s belongings here after his death more than eighteen months ago. Would you know anything about those, ma’am?”
“Oh.” She curtsied. “I daresay they were given to William Doyle, my lord. Henry Doyle’s son, that is.”
Ah. “And where may I find William Doyle?” he asked.
“He is dead, my lord,” she told him. “He died about a year ago in a nasty accident, my lord.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Neville said. And he was too. Two men who would have been perhaps Lily’s only surviving relatives were both dead. “Would you know, ma’am, what happened to his belongings?”
“I daresay Bessie Doyle has them, my lord,” she said. “She is William’s widow. She still lives in the cottage. She has two growing lads and the master was too kind of heart to turn them out. She takes in laundry.”
Lily’s aunt—and her cousins.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you would direct me to the cottage, ma’am.”
The housekeeper, considerably flustered again, assured his lordship that she could have Bessie summoned to the house, but he declined her offer and was given the directions he needed.
Bessie Doyle was a stout, florid-faced woman of middle years. She kept an untidy home, though it looked clean enough. She greeted the sight of a fashionably dressed earl on her doorstep with an assessing head-to-toe glance and hands firmly planted on ample hips.
“If it is laundry you has for me,” she told him, “you have come to the right place. Though I do not answer for fancy boots like them there after they have tramped through the mu
d. You had better wipe your feet if you intends to come inside.”
Neville grinned at her. The tail of the army was full of Bessie Doyles, strong, capable, practical women who would have greeted the whole of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army with hands on hips and some tart remark on their lips.
Yes, Bessie remembered the letter that had come to tell them about Thomas’s getting killed—Will had taken it to the vicar to read. And yes, this was where his stuff had been sent—useless junk all of it. It had been in a heap over there—she pointed to a corner of the room in which they stood—when she came back from nursing her old mum, who had not died after all, as it happened, though Will had. She had been called back from her mother’s a few miles away with the news that he had fallen from his horse and knocked his brains out on a stone when he landed.
“I am very sorry,” Neville told her.
“Well,” she said philosophically, “at least it proved that he did have brains, didn’t it? Sometimes I wondered.”
Bessie Doyle, Neville gathered, was not an inconsolably grieving widow.
“I burned the stuff,” she told him before he could ask. “The whole bloody lot.”
Neville closed his eyes briefly. “Did you look through it carefully first?” he asked her. “Was there no letter, no package, no—no money, perhaps?”
The very idea of money drew a short bark of laughter from Mrs. Doyle. Will, in her wifely opinion, would have drunk it up in a hurry if there had been.
“P’raps that was what made him fall off,” she said, but it was not a serious suggestion. “No, course there weren’t no money. Tom wouldn’t have kept no money for the likes of Will to get his hands on after he croaked, would he now?”
“Thomas Doyle had a daughter,” Neville told her.
Well, Bessie Doyle did not know about that and showed no burning desire to learn anything about her long-lost niece. Her lads were going to be home from the stables soon, she told his lordship. They worked there. And they were going to be hungry enough to eat an ox apiece.