Lily

by Patricia Gaffney

  First she went stiff, then limp and lifeless in his arms. “Lily?” Her shoulders shook; he thought she was crying. “Darling,” he breathed, and drew away to see her. She wasn’t crying, she was laughing. But there was an edge of something, an ironic weariness in the sound of her laughter that disturbed him.

  “You’re the magistrate?” she said weakly.

  “For the district. So you’re safe, love.”

  “Safe. Oh, Dev.” She leaned back, and her smile was steeped in regret.

  “Lily, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. Hold me.” She drew him close, and his warmth eased her, helped her to forget. They kissed. Afterward, he forgot to ask her what it was she’d wanted to tell him about herself. He wouldn’t think of it again for a long time.

  Eighteen

  FOR LILY, THE WEEKS that followed were a nerve-wracking combination of happiness and anxiety, euphoria and distress. The joy sprang from the fact that Devon was her lover, and the trepidation came from exactly the same source. Only at night were things clear and simple between them. Who she was to him, what he was to her—in each other’s arms, it was all a matter of indifference. They were lovers, and for those hours their hearts and minds and bodies were in harmony.

  But Lily was aware that he didn’t know what to do with her, how to place her in his life. Like him, she had no idea what her new role was. She’d told him she wanted no “arrangement”—but what else was it when she ate his food and slept in his bed, in exchange for nothing more than her body?

  When she’d been too ill to work, she could rationalize things into a prettier picture. But now there was nothing to prevent her from doing housework—nothing except Devon’s nearly violent refusal to allow it. So instead she busied herself with prodigious quantities of sewing and needlework, for him and his household and his numerous servants. But even that couldn’t alleviate her deep, persistent uneasiness. She was in limbo, taking her meals in her room, rarely going out, engaged in her endless mending. On the rare occasions when she saw him during the day, she never knew how to greet him. He was invariably cordial, and yet ever so slightly reserved. His reticence hurt, and made her more determined than ever to keep out of his way … until night fell and he came to her again and made her his.

  Once she thought of moving back into her attic room with Lowdy. His reaction was predictable: he forbade it, refused even to discuss it. But what game were they playing? Lily was not accustomed to self-delusion. The fact that he did not repeat his offer of hard cash in return for her favors did not alter the facts of the case. She knew what a “kept woman” was. She was not accustomed to hypocrisy, either. If things continued as they were, she would either have to leave Darkstone or accept the fact that although she’d once refused, with fine indignation, to be his mistress, a mistress was exactly what she had become.

  What was the solution? Sometimes she imagined that everything would be all right if only she could tell him the truth about herself. She was shrewd enough to recognize that his reluctance to involve himself with her was partly because he believed she came from the servant class. Women in that category—women like Maura—were venal and heartless, an unconscious, unreasoning part of him still believed, and they used men as tools for pulling themselves out of one class and into the next. But would it really change anything if she were to tell him she was educated, genteel, poor but respectable—that once she’d employed servants herself? She suspected not. Devon’s distrust went deeper, extended to women in general; the more intensely his emotions were engaged, the faster he ran from them.

  Besides, she couldn’t tell him. He was the magistrate! What an unamusing joke. There was every likelihood that she was still wanted for theft and assault, and she’d fallen in love with a man who, if he knew it, would be duty-bound to arrest her. She hadn’t realized that God’s sense of humor was quite so ironic.

  So there was nothing to do but wait. Perhaps a letter would come soon from Cousin Soames, saying that all was forgiven. Or perhaps Devon would fall in love with her. Perhaps one or both of these things would happen before his distrust returned and destroyed the fragile bond they were sharing, or before her own sense of shame forced her to leave him.

  One day in August, when the warm wind slammed a light but unremitting rain sideways against the house, she heard a clatter of hooves and the jangle of harness in the gravel drive below her window. Carriages were infrequent at Darkstone; occasionally Francis Morgan arrived in one, but hardly anyone else did. Because she’d been sitting for hours, Lily got up from her chair, laid aside her sewing, and went to the window to see who it was.

  It wasn’t Francis Morgan. This carriage bore the Darkwell arms on its lacquered black door, and yet she’d never seen it before. A footman in livery jumped from the boot, opened the door, and pulled down the step. A lady descended. She was tall, thin, past middle age; she was looking down, minding her step, but when she achieved the ground safely and turned back to wait for her companion, Lily saw her face. She’d never seen her before, and yet she knew without a doubt who she was. Devon’s mother.

  That meant the small, graceful, brown-haired lady stepping down after her was Alice Fairfax. Lady Alice, of Fairfax House. Where, Lily clearly remembered Lady Alice’s maid confiding, there might be a wedding “one day soon, between your master and my mistress.”

  The two women disappeared from view. Lily pressed her cheek to the window and let the damp chill of the glass seep inside her. Once before she’d felt jealousy. She observed its sure, razor-sharp return now helplessly, despising herself, unable to stop it. Alice Fairfax was not really beautiful; Lily could console herself with that. But she was regal as a queen, every inch a lady, and she would make Devon Darkwell a perfect wife.

  Shuddering slightly, Lily left the window to sit on the edge of the bed. A little later she lay down and pulled the covers up, fully dressed. Misery, black and heavy, permeated her like a dank, filthy fog. Time passed. It had been a dark day, and her clock had run down; she had no idea what time it was when she heard footsteps in the corridor and feminine voices. Doors closed; silence drifted back. Lily sat up. Good God, were they staying? On this floor? A few doors down the hall?

  She got up and began to pace. When it grew too dark to see, she lit candles. Every sound made her go tense, straining to interpret it. A girl brought her a cold supper on a tray, and it was only by an act of will that she refrained from pumping her for information. The night dragged on. Occasionally she heard laughter coming from downstairs. Her nerves stretched tighter. She bathed, put on her nightgown. Lying in bed in the dark, stiff-limbed and wide-eyed, she felt such contempt for herself that she wanted to disappear. Wretchedness made her body feel wooden, foreign, not even human. Much later, she heard steps again on the stairs, in the hall, and presently the murmur of quiet good nights. She waited. Breathless, motionless. Transfixed with anxiety.

  He didn’t come. For the first time since the night on the Spider, Devon didn’t come to her.

  The moon climbed halfway across her window, paused, and sank back into the blackness. The silence was absolute: she couldn’t even hear the sea. She rose—to pace her room again, she thought. But before she knew it she was in the hall, bare feet soundless on the cool floor, stealing toward Devon’s room. Without knocking, she opened the door and slipped inside.

  He’d heard nothing, but he knew she was there. He sat up. She was only a white blur against the door, pale and insubstantial as a ghost. They watched each other across the dark breadth of the room for endless minutes. The longer it went on, the surer he grew that something irretrievable was slipping through his fingers. But he could not speak. Did not know the words.

  “Poor Dev,” she said, and her voice sounded low and disembodied. “You don’t know what to do with me, do you? How awkward this must be for you—your fiancée and your mistress under your roof at the same time. It must make you—” He spat out an oath and leapt from the bed, and the rest of the words stuck in her throat. Some part of
her noted that he still had his clothes on, and she took a particle of comfort from it: at least he hadn’t been fast asleep.

  “What is it you want from me, Lily?” he demanded, looming over her.

  The rawness in his voice made her wonder, incredulously, if he could be in as much pain as she. It gave her the courage to touch him, a light hand on his chest. “I want you to love me.”

  All the fight went out of him. He gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. “I do. God help me. As much as I can.”

  She hated the qualification, and the reluctance, the agonized unwillingness of his tone, as if uttering the words had cut his throat. She whispered, “Will you marry me?” with no idea where the courage, or the insanity, came from to ask him such a question. She felt his body stiffen, and fought an immediate premonition of defeat. He drew away slowly. She was thankful for the darkness that hid her face. “Just say no. For God’s sake, spare me your kindness.”

  “Listen to—”

  “No!” She pushed at him violently. “You won’t because I was your housemaid. That’s part of it, isn’t it? What would I have to be before you would marry me? How much money would it take?”

  “Lily, for—”

  “What if I were a seamstress? What if I made hats? No? It’s a lady or nothing for you, isn’t it?”

  He reached for her shoulder and gave her a rough shake, as angry now as she.

  “How many thousands of pounds a year, Dev? Twenty, thirty?”

  “God damn it, Lily!”

  “What if I were a governess?” She was shouting now. “You’d never marry me then, would you? Because even if you loved me, I’d be too much like your dead wife, your beloved Maura, the woman who made you this way! But I’m not like her, Devon, I’m me, I’m Lily, and I—”

  He shoved her backwards. She hit the door hard with her shoulders. The noise was much worse than the pain, but his violence stunned both of them. He whirled and walked to the window, to put time and distance between them as much as to tell her, without words, that she was safe from him.

  “You don’t understand. It’s not that I want to hurt you. Lily, if I could—” The latch clicked and he spun around. She was gone. His breath left his body, as if he’d been punched in the gut. The closing of her bedroom door sounded across the silence, soft and final. He waited interminable seconds, and then he heard it: the turning of the key in the lock.

  “No more business this evening,” Lady Elizabeth Darkwell decreed. “Alice and I are leaving early in the morning, and after that you two can talk about ticketings and the price of ore all you like. Until then you have to be sociable.”

  “Yes, Mother,” mumbled Clay, flashing a dry smile at his brother.

  “Yes, but what is a ticketing?” Lady Alice wondered. “Just tell me that, Dev, and then you can go back to being sociable. Or start, rather.”

  “It’s an auction. Representatives of the copper companies bid on the parcels of ore that the mine agents come to sell. The man with the biggest parcel for sale acts as the chairman. This time our mine has the most ore, and—”

  “And Dev thinks I’m too stupid to be the chairman.”

  “Clay, for—”

  “Excuse me, too inexperienced.”

  Devon shook his head, exasperated. “Well, you’ve only been to one ticketing in your life, am I right? They’re tricky, that’s all I’m saying, and Francis has been attending them for years. The price of copper is down, it was sixty-one pounds a ton last month, and sometimes there are strategies that can be worked to keep it from plunging deeper. You and Francis—”

  “Devon.”

  He halted sheepishly. “Right. Sorry, Mother. I’ll ring for the tea.” He did so, then applied himself to the task of being sociable. Clay’s antipathy to Francis Morgan went deeper than petty jealousy, he knew, and he still didn’t understand its source. Devon had known Francis for ten years; they’d been at Oxford together and had stayed in touch afterward when Devon had gone back to Cornwall, Francis to Lancashire. When Devon decided to reopen the mine and needed someone to manage it for him, he’d though of Francis because he was talented and competent. He was also poor, and not succeeding very quickly with his tiny law practice in Manchester. It had seemed to be the perfect solution for both of them. And Francis had done well, justified Devon’s faith in him; lately there had even been vague, preliminary talk of a partnership in the mine. But now, with Clay in the picture, such plans no longer seemed appropriate.

  Alice was speaking to him, showing him two serpentine rings she’d bought in Mullion. Where was Lily now? Devon wondered. She would be in her room, no doubt, probably hunched over some damnable piece of mending. He hadn’t seen her since last night, but she’d rarely been out of his thoughts. “Poor Dev” she’d called him. Alice put one of the rings in his hand and pointed out the long red striations. They bent over the stone together, faces almost touching, and he caught a faint breath of her rose-scented perfume. Lily never wore perfume. But sometimes she smelled like flowers. Her hair was so many subtle shades of red, alive and luminous. Magical. He loved her mouth. The delicate, self-conscious shapes it made when she spoke fascinated him. She had a way of looking at him through her lashes when she smiled, lips curving up at the fragile corners, sweet, not coy, and completely charming. And when she cried, her nose got red and her gray-green eyes swam, and it always broke his heart. Had he made her cry last night? He’d listened, lying in his bed, afraid that he might hear her. But the sleepless night passed, and he’d heard nothing but the creaking of the house. Lily, he thought. What am I going to do with you? He felt a prickling sensation on the back of his neck. When he looked up, she was standing in front of him, handing Alice a cup of tea.

  The ring dropped from his fingers and fell to the carpet with a soft thud. He was too stunned to move. Silent and graceful, Lily stooped to pick it up. For an instant she seemed to examine it in her hand. Then she offered it to him. His fingers went out automatically and she dropped the ring in his palm, careful not to touch him. Their eyes met. But her expression was shuttered; he couldn’t read it.

  “I say, are you taking tea, Devon?” his mother repeated.

  “No,” he got out.

  “Clay?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Devon watched, impotent anger blossoming slowly, as Lily took another cup and saucer from his mother and carried them across the drawing room to Clay. She wore her old gray dimity dress and tired apron, her hair tucked up into her dingy cap. Clay looked uncomfortable; he tried to catch her eye as she handed him his tea, but she curtsied prettily—mockingly, Devon thought—and turned away immediately. Alice was in the middle of some animated story; Devon barely heard Lily murmur to his mother, “Will there be anything else, m’lady?” Elizabeth said no, Lily made another shallow curtsey, and a second later she was gone from the room.

  “Jimmy was flabbergasted and said to Justine—in front of all of us, Devon, even your mother—that he hoped never to hear such talk from his own wife ever again, and if he did he’d feel no remorse in beating her for it. As if he ever would. Jimmy Lynch, can you imagine? And her such a perfect lamb! Wasn’t it droll?” she asked Elizabeth, chuckling in her easy, good-humored way.

  “Very droll,” murmured her ladyship. But she was distracted as she gazed back and forth between her sons, her eyes speculative. Clay was scowling down into his teacup; Devon had never taken his eyes from the door since the pretty, pale-cheeked parlormaid had glided through it. “Justine sends her regards to both of you, by the way,” she mentioned. “You remember her, don’t you, Dev? Clay, I know you do. A pretty girl, yellow hair; we all though she’d marry Tom Wren, and then Jimmy—

  “Excuse me.” Without looking at any of them, Devon strode toward the door.

  “Dev? Is something wrong?”

  He paused in the threshold. “No, Mother, I—” What? “I’ve remembered something I have to tell Cobb. I’ll only be a moment.” Three pairs of startled eyes watched him go.r />
  She wasn’t in the kitchen. The scullery maid looked terrified but swore she hadn’t seen her. An instinct sent him sprinting down the L-shaped corridor, past the new housekeeper’s room, and up the sagging stone steps to the empty courtyard at the side of the house. He spied her beside the garden shed, leaning against the wall, facing away from him. His boots were silent on the spongy ground; she didn’t hear him until he was a dozen feet away. Even then she didn’t turn. He reached her in four more strides. His fury had propelled him this far; he hung onto it as he made a grab for her shoulder and spun her around.

  But her face defeated him. All the bitter words died on his lips when she threw up her hands—too late—to cover her tear-wet cheeks and swimming, anguished eyes. When she tried to turn away again, he held on. “A mistake,” she sobbed, “I should never—” But she broke off because she was crying too hard, and put her face in her hands. What could he do but hold her?

  She tried again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did it, I was angry, hurt, I though if I—”

  “Hush, it doesn’t matter.” It didn’t anymore.

  “She’s so perfect—I’ve only made it worse—now that I’ve seen her—” She dissolved again into helpless weeping. Her fists were clenched against his shirtfront, to hold herself away from his comfort.

  It took him a minute to realize she meant Alice. She’d spoken of her last night too. “Lily, Alice is not my fiancée. She never was.”

  “No,” she choked, “but she will be.”

  “No, she—”

  “Or someone like her. Someone; someday. It’s true, you know it.” She beat against his chest once and twisted out of his grasp. I have to go away, Dev. I can t bear this.”

  He grabbed her back, acting on reflex, his hands no longer gentle. “No, you’re not leaving. Don’t make me angry, Lily, don’t say stupid things.”

  He pulled her close, his hard arms circling her completely. She let him. This pain was excruciating, but to go away would be a hundred times worse. How could she give him up? Never to hold him again—how could she relinquish such terrible sweetness? Cowardly, maybe, but she couldn’t leave him—not yet. It would be like cutting out her own heart.