by Mary Balogh
The countess was composed and gracious. She set herself to conversing with her neighbors at table on a variety of topics and showed no outer sign of the acute distress she was feeling. Private and personal concerns must wait. She was not the Countess of Kilbourne for nothing.
This was the scene that greeted Neville's eyes when he entered the ballroom. But the artificiality of it all became apparent when an immediate hush fell on the gathering and all eyes turned his way. He became horribly aware of the fact that he had not changed his clothes—he had not thought of doing so. He was a bridegroom without a bride. He stood where he was just inside the ballroom doors and clasped his hands at his back.
"I am delighted to see that the meal is proceeding," he said. He looked about him, meeting the eyes of friends and relatives, and noting without surprise that there was no sign of either Lauren or Gwen. "I shall not disturb you for long. But naturally I owe you all a little more explanation than I was able to give at the church this morning. Indeed, I cannot recall what I said there."
The Marquess of Attingsborough, who had risen from his seat, perhaps to indicate to Neville the empty chair at his side, sat down again without saying anything.
Neville had not planned the speech. He did not know quite how much or how little to tell. But there was really no point in withholding anything. His mother was staring at him with blank-faced dignity. His uncle at her side was frowning. There were several servants present, including Forbes, the butler. But the servants had a right to know too, Neville supposed. He would not wait to dismiss them before speaking.
"I married Lily Doyle a few hours after her father, my sergeant, was killed," he said. "I married her to fulfill a dying promise to him to give her the protection of my name and rank in the event that she was captured by the French. The following day the company I led was indeed ambushed. My… wife was killed, or so both I and the lieutenant who reported to me afterward believed. I was carried back behind British lines with a severe head wound. But Lily survived as a French captive." Her captivity by the Spanish partisans he had no intention of sharing with anyone. "She was treated honorably as my wife and finally released. She returned to England with Captain and Mrs. Harris and came on alone to Newbury Abbey to be reunited with me."
No one, it seemed to Neville, had moved a muscle since he had begun to speak. He wondered if any of those gathered here had seen Lily last night or knew that she had been turned away from the abbey with the offer of sixpence because she had been mistaken for a beggar. He wondered how many were telling themselves that she was in reality the Countess of Kilbourne. It needed to be said.
"I will be honored to present my wife, my countess, to you all later," he said. "But understandably this would be somewhat overwhelming to her at present. Many of you know… Lauren as a friend and relative. Most of you—all of you—will be imagining her pain today. It is my hope that you will lay none of the blame for her suffering at—at my wife's door. She is innocent of any intention to cause either disruption or pain. I—Well." There was really no more to say.
"Of course she is, Nev," the Marquess of Attingsborough said briskly, but he was the only one to break the silence.
"I beg that you will excuse me now," Neville said. "Enjoy the meal, please. Does anyone know where Lauren is?" He closed his eyes briefly.
"She is at the dower house with Gwendoline, Neville," Lady Elizabeth told him. The dower house was where they had lived with the countess ever since the betrothal last Christmas. "Neither of them would admit me when I stopped there on my way back from church. Perhaps—"
But Neville merely bowed to her and left the room. This was not the time for thought or consultation or common sense. He had to go with the momentum of the moment or collapse altogether.
***
Neville was on his way downstairs when his uncle's voice called to him from the landing above. He looked up to see not only the duke, but his mother too, and Elizabeth.
"A private word with you, Kilbourne," his uncle said with stiff formality. "You owe it to your mother."
Yes, he did, Neville thought wearily. Perhaps he ought to have spoken with her first, before making a public appearance and a public statement in the ballroom. He just did not know the proper etiquette for a situation like this. He was not amused by the grim humor of the thought. He turned with a curt nod and led the way down to the library. He crossed the room and stood looking down at the unlit coals in the fireplace until he heard the door close and turned to face them.
"I suppose it did not occur to you, Neville," his mother said, some of the usual gracious dignity gone from her manner to be replaced by bitterness, "to inform your own mother of a previous marriage? Or to inform Lauren? This morning's intense humiliation might have been avoided."
"Calm yourself, Clara," the Duke of Anburey said, patting her shoulder. "I doubt it could have been, though the whole thing might have been somewhat less of a shock to you if Neville had been more honest about the past."
"The marriage was very sudden and very brief," Neville said. "I thought her dead and… well, I decided to keep that brief interlude in my life to myself."
Because he had been ashamed to admit that he had married the unlettered daughter of a sergeant even if she was already dead? It was a nasty possibility and one he hoped was not true. But how could he have explained the impulse that had made him do it? How could he have described Lily to them? How could he have explained that sometimes a woman could be so very special that it simply did not matter who she was or—more important—who she was not? He would have given the bare facts and they would have been secretly glad, relieved,
that she had died before she could become an embarrassment to them.
"I have been able to think only of somehow handling the dreadful disaster of this morning," the countess said, sinking down into the nearest chair and raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips, "and of what is to become of poor Lauren. I have not been able to think beyond. Neville, tell me she is not as dreadful a creature as she appeared to be this morning. Tell me it is only the clothes…"
"You heard the boy say she is a sergeant's daughter, Clara," the duke reminded her, taking up his stand at the window, his back to the room. "I daresay that fact speaks for itself. Who was her mother, Neville?"
"I did not know Mrs. Doyle," Neville replied. "She died in India when Lily was very young. There is no blue blood there, though, Uncle, if that is what you are asking. Lily is a commoner. But she is also my wife. She has my name and my protection."
"Yes, yes, that is all very well, Neville." His mother spoke impatiently. "But… Oh dear, I cannot think straight. How could you do this to us? How could you do it to yourself'? Surely your upbringing and education meant more to you than to—to marry a woman who looks for all the world like a vulgar beggar and is indeed a product of the lower classes." She stood up abruptly and swayed noticeably on her feet. "I have guests I am neglecting."
"Poor Lily," Elizabeth said, speaking for the first time. She was Neville's aunt, his father's sister, but she was only nine years his senior and he had never called her aunt. She was unmarried, not because she had never had offers, but because she had declared long ago that she would never marry unless she could find the gentleman who could convince her that the loss of her independence was preferable to keeping it—and she did not expect that ever to happen. She was beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished—and no one quite knew whether the Duke of Portfrey was more friend or beau to her. "We are forgetting her distress in a selfish concern for our own. Where is she, Neville?"
"Yes, where is she?" his mother repeated, her voice unusually petulant. "Not here, I suppose. There is not a single spare room at the abbey."
"There is one unoccupied room, Mama," Neville said stiffly. "She is in the countess's room—where she belongs. I left her there to have a meal and a bath and a sleep. I have given instructions that she is to be left undisturbed until I go up for her."
His mother closed her eyes and pressed the ha
ndkerchief to her lips again. The countess's room, formerly hers, was part of the suite of rooms that included the earl's bedchamber—Neville's own. He could almost see her coming to grips with the reality of the fact that Lily belonged there.
"Yes," Elizabeth said. "I am sure it is best for her to rest for a while. I look forward to making her acquaintance, Neville."
It was like Elizabeth, he thought, to be gracious, to take a situation as it was and somehow make something bearable of it.
"Thank you," he said.
His mother had pulled herself together again. "You will bring her down to tea later this afternoon, Neville," she told him. "There is no point in keeping her hidden, is there? I will meet her at the same time as the rest of the family. We will all behave as we ought toward your—your wife, you may rest assured."
Neville bowed to his mother. "I would expect no less of you, Mama," he said. "But excuse me now. I must go and see Lauren."
"You will be fortunate if she does not throw things at your head, Neville," Elizabeth warned him.
He nodded. "Nevertheless," he told her.
He left the house a couple of minutes later and set out on foot in the direction of the dower house, which was close to the gates into the park, set back from the driveway in the seclusion of the trees and its own private garden. He was well on his way before he realized that he was still wearing his wedding finery. But he would not go back to change. Perhaps he would never regain his courage if he did that.
He was about to face, he realized, one of the most difficult encounters of his life.
Lauren was not inside the dower house. She was out behind it, sitting on the tree swing, idly propelling herself back and forth with one foot. She was staring unseeingly at the ground ahead of her. Gwendoline was seated on the grass to one side of the swing. Both of them were still dressed for the wedding.
He would rather be anywhere else on earth, Neville thought just before his sister spotted him. They were two of the dearest people on earth to him, and he had done this to them. And there was no comfort to bring. Only a totally inadequate explanation.
Gwendoline jumped to her feet at sight of him and glared. "I hate you, Neville," she cried. "If you have come here to make her unhappier still, you may go away again—now! What do you mean by it? That is what you can explain to me. What did you mean by saying that dreadful woman is your wife?" She burst into noisy, undignified tears and turned her face sharply away.
Lauren had stopped swinging, but she did not turn around.
"Lauren?" Neville said. "Lauren, my dear?" He still did not know what he could say to her.
Her voice was steady when she spoke, but it was without tone too. "It is quite all right," she said. "It is perfectly all right. It was just a convenient arrangement after all, was it not, our marrying? Because we grew up together and were fond of each other and it was what Uncle and Grandpapa had always wanted. And you did tell me not to wait when you went away. You were quite fair and honest with me. You were not betrothed to me or even promised to me. You were quite free to marry her. I do not blame you at all."
He was appalled. He would have far preferred to have her rush at him, teeth bared, fingers curled into claws.
"Lauren," he said, "let me explain, if I may."
"There is nothing to explain," Gwendoline said angrily, having mastered her tears. "Is she or is she not your wife, Neville? That is all that matters. But you would not have lied in church for all to hear. She is your wife."
"Yes," Neville said.
"I hate her!" Gwendoline cried. "Shabby, ugly, low creature."
But Lauren would not participate. "We do not know her, Gwen," she said. "Yes, Neville. Tell me. Tell us. There must be a perfectly good explanation, I am sure. Once I understand, I will be able to accept it. Everything will be perfectly all right."
She was in shock, of course. In denial. Trying to convince herself that what had happened was not so disastrous after all but merely something bewildering that would be perfectly acceptable once she understood. The exquisitely scalloped and embroidered train of her wedding gown, Neville noticed, was trailing in the dust.
It was so typical of Lauren to react rationally rather than emotionally, even when there was no rational way to act. She had always been thus, always the good one among the three of them, the one to think of consequences, the one to be concerned about upsetting the adults. Her story partly explained her, of course. She had come to Newbury Abbey at the age of three when her mother, the widowed Viscountess Whitleaf, married the late earl's younger brother. She had stayed at the abbey when the newlyweds left on a wedding trip—from which they had never returned. There had been letters and a few parcels from various parts of the world for a number of years and then nothing. Not even word of their deaths.
Lauren's paternal relatives had made no move to take her back. Indeed, when she had written to them on her eighteenth birthday, she had had a curt response from the viscount's secretary to the effect that her acquaintance was not something his lordship sought. Lauren, Neville suspected, had never quite trusted her lovableness. And now there were these circumstances to confirm her in her low opinion of herself.
"I do not want to understand," Gwendoline said crossly. "And how can you sit there, Lauren, sounding so calm and forbearing and forgiving? You should be scratching Neville's eyes out." She began to sob again.
"Neville?" Lauren said, motionless once more. "I need to understand. Tell me about—about L-Lily."
"Lily!" Gwendoline said scornfully. "I hate that name. It is despicable."
"She was a sergeant's daughter," Neville explained. "She grew up with the regiment, living with it, moving about with it. She always did her share of the work and she was everyone's friend. The toughest of the men and the roughest of the women loved her. But she was her own person. There was something dreamlike, fairylike about her—I do not know quite how to describe that quality in her. She had been untouched by the ugliness of the life by which she was surrounded. She was eighteen when I—when I married her." He went on to give brief details of the circumstances of their marriage.
"And you loved her too," Lauren added when he had finished.
For her sake he wished he could deny it. Not that it would make any difference to essentials. He said nothing.
"That is no excuse," Gwendoline said. "You were not eighteen, Neville. You were a man. You should have known better. You should have had more of a sense of duty to your family and position than to marry a sergeant's daughter for such a stupid reason. Marriage is for life."
"I will have to learn to love her too," Lauren said as if Gwendoline had not spoken. "I am sure it will be possible. If you love her, Neville, then I…" But her words trailed away. She set the swing in motion with one foot.
Neville wondered if it would help her if he strode all the way to the swing, hauled her off it by both shoulders, and shook her soundly. But he remembered his own shock of a few hours before. He had walked all the way from the church to the water's edge on the beach without knowing he had even moved from the altar. He could not take the alternative to shaking her of lifting her off the swing into the sheltering comfort of his arms.
"Lauren," he said, "I am so very sorry, my dear. I wish there were more to say, something to comfort you, something to make you feel less… abandoned. I could say all sorts of meaningless things to assure you that eventually this will be in the past and… But they would not comfort now and would be presumptuous in me. Know, though, that you are loved by this family, which is yours as much as it is mine or Gwen's." Pompous, empty words despite their truth. He did not believe he had ever felt more helpless in his life.
"But nothing is ever going to be the same" Gwendoline cried. "When Vernon died and I came home a widow and then Papa died, I thought the world was at an end. But then you came back and we three were together again and I could see that you would marry Lauren and… But now everything is ended, shattered beyond repair."
Neville ran a hand through his hair
. Lauren swung gently.
Gwendoline had married for love while he was away in the Peninsula. He had never met Viscount Muir. But it had been a short, tragic marriage, over in two years. First Gwen had had a dreadful riding accident that had caused a miscarriage and left her with a permanent limp after her broken leg had healed, and then just a year later, Muir had died in a fall through a broken banister from the balcony of his own home to the marble hall below. Gwen had fled to the familiar comfort of home rather than remain at her husband's house.
"And how I despise my own selfishness," Gwendoline said when no one responded to her words. "I am thinking of my own unhappiness when it is nothing to poor Lauren's. Oh, what a brute I am." She gathered up her skirts and dashed toward the house, avoiding Neville's outstretched arm as she passed him.
"Poor Gwen," Lauren said. "She wanted so very much to go back in time after Lord Muir's death, Neville. She wanted life to be as it was when we were children, and it seemed to her that her dream was coming true. But we can never go back. Only forward. We cannot go back to yesterday or early this morning. There is Lily now."
"Yes."
"I have been selfish too," she told him. "I have been preoccupied by my own disappointment. But you must be so very happy, Neville, even though in your kindness you are sad for me and have taken time to come and talk with me. Lily is alive and she has come to you. How wonderful for you."
"Lauren," he said softly. "My dear, don't do this. Please don't."
"You want me to tell you how much I hate her, then?" she said. "How much I wish she had died and stayed dead? How much I wish even now that she would die? You want me to tell you how much I resent your going away after telling me not to wait and then marrying a sergeant's daughter on mere impulse? You want me to tell you how much I hate you for not telling me? For caring so little for me that you did not mention the fact that this would be your second marriage? For causing me such humiliation this morning?"