by Mary Balogh
“Lily.” The Duke of Portfrey leaned forward in his chair suddenly and possessed himself of her free hand with both his own. The letter slipped unheeded to the floor. “Beatrice and Thomas Doyle were your mama and papa. They gave you a family and security and a good upbringing and an unusually deep love, I believe. No one—least of all me—is ever going to try to take them away from you. They will always be your parents.”
She nestled her head against Neville’s arm, but he could see that she had raised her eyes to look at Portfrey.
“We loved each other, Lily,” Portfrey said, “your m—Frances and I. You were conceived in love. We would have lavished all our affection on you if …” He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “She loved you enough to give you up temporarily for your safety. In twenty years I have never been quite able to lay her to rest or to let go of the possibility of you. We did not abandon you. If you can possibly think of her—of Frances, my wife—as your mother, Lily, if not your mama … If you could possibly think of me as your father … I do not set myself up as a rival to your papa. Never that. But allow me …” He lifted her hand to his lips and then released it and got abruptly to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Elizabeth asked.
“She is in shock,” he said, “and I am pressing my own selfish claims on her. I have to leave, Elizabeth. Excuse me? I will call tomorrow if I may. But you must not try forcing Lily to receive me. Look after her.”
“Your grace.” Lily spoke for the first time since Neville had come into the room. Portfrey and Elizabeth spun around to look at her. “I will receive you—tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” He did not smile, but he looked at her again as if he would devour her. He made a formal bow and turned toward the door.
“Wait for me, Portfrey, will you?” Neville asked. “I will be with you in a minute.”
His grace nodded and left the book room with Elizabeth.
Neville got to his feet and drew Lily to hers. He set his arms about her and drew her close. What must it feel like, he wondered, suddenly to discover that one’s dearly loved parents were not one’s real mother and father after all? He tried to imagine discovering it of his own parents. He would feel without roots, without anchor. He would feel … fear.
“I want you to forget about the party,” he told her, “and go up to your room. Ring for Dolly and then go to bed. Try to sleep. Will you?”
“Yes,” she said.
It hurt him to see her so listless, so willing to obey, just like an obedient child. So unlike Lily. But Portfrey was right. She was in deep shock. He was reminded of the way she had been in the hours following Doyle’s death.
“Try not to think too much tonight,” he said. “Tomorrow you will better be able to adjust to the new realities. I believe you will eventually realize that you have lost nothing. It is one thing, Lily, to care for the child of one’s own seed or womb. It is another to love and cherish someone else’s child for whom one really has no responsibility at all. That is what your mama and papa did for you. I did not know your mama, but I always marveled that a father could feel such devoted, tender love for his daughter as your papa felt for you. You have not lost them. You have merely gained people who will love and cherish you in the future and not be jealous of the past.”
“I am so very tired,” she said, and she lifted her face to him—her pale, large-eyed face. “I cannot think straight—or even in crooked lines.”
“I know.” He lowered his head and kissed her, and she sighed and pushed her lips back against his own and raised her arms to twine about his neck.
He had missed her dreadfully during his journey into Leicestershire. And he had been sick with worry for her safety—especially after reading the letter. Feeling her small, shapely body against his own again, feeling her arms about his neck and her lips cleaving to his awoke hungers that threatened to overwhelm him. But she was in no condition for passion. Besides, there was a matter of grave importance to be attended to tonight—and Portfrey would be waiting for him.
“Go to bed now, my love,” he said, lifting his head and framing her face with both hands. “I will see you tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow. Maybe my brain will work tomorrow.”
24
Lily awoke from a deep sleep when the early-morning sun was already shining in at her window. She threw back the covers and leaped out of bed as she often did, and stretched. What a strange dream she had been having! She could not even remember it yet, but she knew it had been bizarre.
She stopped midstretch.
And remembered. It had not been a dream.
She was not Lily Doyle. Papa had not been her father. She was not even Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne. She was Lady Frances Lilian Montague, a total stranger. She was the daughter of the Duke of Portfrey. Her grandfather was Baron Onslow.
For one moment her mind threatened to take refuge in last evening’s daze again, but there was nothing to be served by doing that. She fought panic.
Who was she?
All through those seven months in Spain she had fought to retain her identity. It had not been easy. Everything had been taken from her—her own clothes, her locket, her freedom, her very body. And yet she had clung to the basic knowledge of who she was—she had refused to give up that.
Now, this morning, she no longer knew herself. Who was Frances Lilian Montague? How could that austere, handsome man—with blue eyes like hers—be her father? How could the woman whose initial was twined with his on her locket be her mother?
They had been separated, the duke who was her father and the woman who was her mother, very soon after their marriage. Lily knew what that felt like. She knew the ache of longing and loneliness the woman must have felt. And they had loved each other. Lily had been conceived in love, the duke had told her last evening. They had loved each other and been separated forever. Their child had been left for what had been intended to be a short spell with the people who had become Lily’s parents.
Mama and Papa, who had loved her as dearly as any parents could possibly love their child.
The woman, her mother, must have loved her too. Lily pictured to herself how she would have felt if she had had a child of Neville’s after their separation. Oh, yes, her mother had loved her. And for over twenty years the duke, her father, had been unable to let go of either his wife or his conviction that somewhere she, Lily, existed.
She did not want to be Lady Frances Lilian Montague. She did not want the Duke of Portfrey to be her father. She wanted her papa to be the man who had begotten her. But it was all true whether she wanted it to be or not. And she could not stop herself from thinking that while for eighteen years she had had the best papa in the world and for the three years since his death had had her memories of him, the Duke of Portfrey for all that time had been without his own child. All those years, so filled with love for her, had been empty for him.
He was her father. She tested the idea in her mind without shying away from it. The Duke of Portfrey was her father. And Papa had always intended that she know it eventually. He and Mama had given her the locket to wear all her life, and Papa had always insisted that she must take his pack to an officer if he should die in battle. She did not know why he had kept the truth from her for so long or why he had not tried to contact the Duke of Portfrey. Oh, yes, she did. She could remember how her mama had doted on her, how her papa had acted as if the sun rose and set on her. They had found themselves unable to give her up and had doubtless found all sorts of good reasons for not doing so. Papa had intended to tell her when she reached adulthood. She was sure he must have intended that.
She would never know for sure what his intentions or motives had been, Lily decided. But she did know two things. Papa had not intended to keep the truth a secret from her forever. And Papa had loved her.
It was not, she thought suddenly, a bad thing to be the daughter of a duke and the granddaughter of a baron. She had dreamed of equality with Neville and had bel
ieved that perhaps she would achieve it in everything except birth and fortune.
She smiled rather wanly.
Elizabeth was dressed and in the breakfast room before Lily—an unusual occurrence. She got to her feet, took Lily’s hands in hers, and kissed her on both cheeks before looking searchingly into her face.
“Lily,” she said, “how are you, my dear?”
“Awake,” Lily said. “Fully awake.”
“You will receive him this morning?” Elizabeth sounded rather anxious. “You need not if you do not feel quite ready to do so.”
“I will receive him,” Lily said.
He came an hour later, when they were sitting in the drawing room, working at their embroidery—or at least pretending to. He came striding into the room close on the butler’s heels, made his bow, and then hovered close to the door as if he had suddenly lost all his confidence.
“Gracious, Lyndon,” Elizabeth said, hurrying toward him, “whatever happened?”
“An unfortunate encounter with a door?” he said, phrasing the words as a question, as if asking if they would be willing to accept a patently ridiculous lie. His face was shiny with bruises. His left eye was bloodshot and purplish at the outer corner.
“You have been fighting Mr. Dorsey,” Lily said quietly.
He came a few paces closer to her. “You have not been in grave danger from him for some time, Lily,” he said. “Kilbourne, I gather, has had a close watch put on you, and I have had a close watch put on Dorsey. I knew it was he, you see, but did not have proof of it until last evening. He will not be bothering you ever again.”
Lily supposed that she had known last night why the duke and Neville left the party so early. But her mind had not been able to cope with the knowledge, or with anything else for that matter.
“He is dead?” she asked.
He inclined his head.
“You killed him?”
He hesitated. “I knocked him insensible,” he said, “in a fist fight. Kilbourne and I had agreed with considerable regret that we could not reconcile it with our consciences to kill him in cold blood or even in a duel to the death, but we did agree that we would punish him severely before turning him over to a constable and a magistrate for trial. But we were careless. He snatched up a gun before he could be taken away and would have killed me if Kilbourne had not first shot him.”
Elizabeth had both hands to her mouth. Lily merely looked calmly into the duke’s eyes and knew that she had heard everything that he was prepared to tell. She knew that although Mr. Dorsey had probably killed her mother and Mr. William Doyle, that although he had tried three separate times to kill her and had almost killed Neville, it might have been difficult to prove any one of those murders or attempted murders in a court of law. She was not sure if it was carelessness that had left a gun within Mr.
Dorsey’s reach. Perhaps they had wanted him to have that gun. Perhaps they had wanted him to try to use it so that there would be a perfectly good excuse to shoot him in self-defense.
The duke himself would never say, of course. Neither would Neville. And she would never ask. She did not really wish to know.
“I am glad he is dead,” she said, almost shocked to realize that she spoke the truth. “Thank you.”
“And that is all we need say on the topic of Calvin Dorsey,” he said. “You are safe, Lily. Free.”
She nodded.
“Well,” Elizabeth said briskly, “I am due to meet with my housekeeper. It is our day for going over the accounts. You will excuse me for half an hour, Lyndon? Lily?”
Lily nodded and the duke bowed.
He looked wary when he turned back from seeing Elizabeth out of the room, but Lily smiled at him.
“Will you have a seat, your grace?”she asked.
He took a chair quite close to hers and looked at her silently for several moments.
“I will understand,” he said at last, sounding as if he were delivering a well-rehearsed speech, “if you feel yourself unable to acknowledge the relationship, Lily. Kilbourne told me a good deal last night about Sergeant Thomas Doyle. I can understand your pride in him and your affection for him. But I beg you—please!—to allow me to settle a considerable portion of my fortune on you so that you may live in comfortable independence for the rest of your life. At the very least allow me to do that for you.”
“What would you wish to do,” she asked him, “if I said I was willing to accept more than the very least?”
He leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath, looking at her consideringly as he did so. “I would acknowledge you publicly,” he said. “I would take you home to Rutland Park in Warwickshire and spend every available minute of every day getting to know you and allowing you to get to know me. I would clothe you and deck you with jewels. I would encourage you to continue with your education. I would take you to Nuttall Grange in Leicestershire to meet your grandfather. I would … What is left? I would try in every way available to me to make up for the lost years.” He smiled slowly. “And I would have you tell me every single thing you can remember about Thomas and Beatrice Doyle and your growing years. That is what I would wish to do, Lily.”
“You must do it, then, your grace,” she said.
They stared at each other for a long time, it seemed, before he got to his feet, came closer to her, and extended a hand for hers. She stood up, gave him her hand, and watched as he raised it to his lips.
“Lily,” he said. “Oh, my dear. My very, very dear.”
She withdrew her hand, set her arms about his waist, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “He will always be my papa,” she said. “But from this day on you will be my father. Shall I call you that? Father?”
His arms were like iron bands about her. She was a little alarmed when she heard the first painful-sounding sob, but she closed her arms more tightly about him when he would have pulled away.
“No, no,” she said. “It is all right. It is quite all right.”
He did not weep for long. Men did not. She knew that from experience. They saw it as a sign of horribly embarrassing weakness, even if they had just watched a close friend smashed to a thousand pieces by a cannonball or had just had a limb sawn off by the surgeons—or had just discovered a daughter after almost twenty-one years. He drew away from her after a couple of minutes and moved off to the window, where he stood with his back to the room, blowing his nose in a large handkerchief.
“I am so very sorry to have subjected you to that,” he said. “It will not happen again. You will find me strong and dependable, I believe, Lily—a good provider and a good protector.”
“Yes, I know, Father,” she said, smiling at his back.
She heard him draw an inward breath and hold it for a few moments. “I could, I suppose,” he said, “have remarried any time during the past twenty years. I could have had a nurseryful of children and been called that a thousand times and more before now. I believe, Lily, it has been worth waiting to hear it first from your lips.”
“When will we leave for Rutland Park?” she asked. “Is it a large house? Will I like it … Father?”
He turned to look at her. “As soon as possible,” he said. “It is larger than Newbury Abbey. You will love it. It has been waiting for you all these years. We had better see if Elizabeth will come with you. Today is Thursday. Shall we say Monday?”
Lily nodded.
He smiled at her and strode to the bell pull. He told the servant who answered the summons to ask Lady Elizabeth to return to the drawing room at her convenience. Then they both sat down again and gazed at each other.
It would be more accurate, Lily thought, to say that he was beaming at her. Despite the battered look of his face, he appeared very happy. She deliberately kept her own expression bright—not that it was all pretense. But a part of it was. She was stepping into the unknown again as she had done so many times, it seemed, during the past couple of years.
She remembered traveling down to Newbury Abbey from L
ondon and hoping that the long journey was almost ended. She remembered seeing Neville for the first time in almost a year and a half and experiencing, despite the difficulty of the circumstances, a feeling of final homecoming. But she had not been home. And she still was not. She wondered if she ever would be. Would the time ever come when she would feel at last that she had arrived, that she could settle in peace to live out the rest of her life?
Or was life always a journey along an unknown path?
“Kilbourne,” the duke said to her just before Elizabeth came back into the room, “asked me to inform you of his intention to call this afternoon, Lily—if you are willing to receive him.”
Killing another human being was not something one did with any relish, Neville thought during the night and the morning following the death of Calvin Dorsey. Certainly not in battle—one was too aware of the fact that the men one killed were no more evil or deserving of death than one was oneself. But not even when the man one killed was a murderer and had killed one’s wife’s mother and had tried on a number of occasions to kill her too. There had been a certain satisfaction, perhaps, in watching Dorsey take the bait of that carelessly abandoned pistol and in being given then little choice but to kill him—especially when Portfrey had won the argument about which of them was to punish Dorsey before he was turned over to the law. But certainly no relish.
Was there pleasure in having discovered the truth about Lily’s birth? In having learned that she outranked him? That he had nothing to offer her that she did not now have in overabudance herself? And was that how he had hoped to win Lily—with his position and his wealth and the hope that her own near destitution would force her back to him? Surely not. He wanted her to be his equal, to feel his equal. The fact that she had felt herself to be by far his inferior had wrecked any chance they might have had for happiness when she had come to Newbury.
He should be rejoicing, then, in this turn of events. Why was he not? It was because of Lily herself, he concluded finally. Poor Lily had suffered so much turmoil in the past year and a half. How could she sustain the loss of her very roots? Would he find her all broken up when he called at Elizabeth’s during the afternoon? Worse, would he find her still quite unlike her indomitable self, dazed and passive as she had been last evening?