by Mary Balogh
Then they talked about a certain theater in London and had differing opinions on whether its audiences preferred comedies or tragedies. Lily found herself remembering with pleased nostalgia the farces the soldiers had sometimes put on for the merriment of the regiment.
"What do you think, Lily?" one gentleman asked, a pleasant-faced youngish man with receding fair hair. Was he a relative or one of the friends?
"I do not know," Lily replied.
They talked about a concert several of them had attended in London a few weeks before. The Duchess of Anburey thought Mozart the greatest musical genius ever to have lived. A portly, florid-faced gentleman disagreed and put forward the claims of Beethoven. There were firm supporters of both sides.
"What do you think, Lily?" the duchess asked.
"I do not know," Lily said, not having heard of either gentleman.
She began to wonder if they asked her opinion deliberately, knowing that she knew nothing, that she was almost as ignorant now as she had been on the day she was born. But perhaps not. They did not appear to be looking at her with malicious intent.
They were discussing books, the gentlemen speaking in favor of political and philosophical treatises, some of the ladies defending the novel as a legitimate art form.
"Which novels have you read, Lily?" an extremely elegantly dressed and coiffed young lady asked.
"I cannot read," Lily admitted.
Everyone looked suddenly embarrassed on her behalf. There was an awkward little silence that no one seemed in a hurry to fill. Lily had always wanted to read. Her parents had told her stories when she was a child, and she had always thought it would be wonderful to be able to pick up a book and escape into those magical worlds of the imagination whenever she wished—or acquire knowledge of matters on which she was ignorant. She was so very ignorant. But there had never been the chance to go to school, and her father, who had been able to read a very little and to write his name, had always declared himself incompetent to teach her himself.
Neville half bent over her from behind her chair. He was going to rescue her and take her from the room, she thought in some relief. But before he could do so, the lady behind the tea tray spoke up—Elizabeth. She was very beautiful, Lily had noticed earlier, though she was not young. She had a grace and elegance that Lily envied and a face full of character and hair as blond as Neville's. She was his aunt.
"I daresay Lily is a living book," she said, smiling kindly. "I have never been able to travel beyond these shores, Lily, because the wretched wars have been raging for almost the whole of my adult life. I would dearly love to travel and see all the countries and cultures I have only been able to read about. You must have seen several. Where have you been?"
"To India," Lily said. "To Spain and Portugal. And now England."
"India!" Elizabeth exclaimed, gazing admiringly at Lily. "Men come home from such places, you know, and tell us about this battle and that skirmish. How fortunate we are to have a woman who can tell us more interesting and important things. Do talk about India. No, that is too broad a question and will doubtless tie your tongue in knots. What about the people, Lily? Are they very different from us in any essential ways? Tell us about the women. How do they dress? What do they do? What are they like?"
"I loved India," Lily said, memory bringing an instant glow to her face and a light to her eyes. "And the people were so very sensible. Far more so than our own people."
"How so?" one of the young gentlemen asked her.
"They dressed so sensibly," Lily said. "Both men and women wore light, loose clothes for the heat. The men did not have to wear tight coats buttoned to the throat all day long and leather stocks to choke their windpipes and tight breeches and high leather boots to burn their legs and feet off. Not that it was the fault of our poor soldiers—they were merely following orders. But so often they looked like boiled beets."
There was a burst of laughter—mainly from the gentlemen. Most of the ladies looked rather shocked, though a few of the younger ones tittered. Elizabeth smiled.
"And the women were not foolish enough to wear stays," Lily added. "I daresay our women would not have had the vapors so frequently if they had followed the example of the Indian women. Women can be very silly—and all in the name of fashion."
One of the older ladies—Lily had no memory of her name or relationship to the rest of the family—had clapped a hand to her mouth and muffled a sound of distress at the public mention of stays.
"Very silly indeed," Elizabeth agreed.
"Oh, but the women's dresses." Lily closed her eyes for a moment and felt herself almost back in the land she had loved—she could almost smell the heat and the spices. "Their saris. They did not need jewels to brighten those garments. But they wore glass bangles that jingled on their wrists and rings in their noses and red dots here"—she pressed a middle finger to her forehead above the bridge of her nose and drew a circle with it—"to show that they were married. Their men do not have to steal sly glances at their fingers, I daresay, as our men do, to see if they may freely pay court to them. All they have to do is look into their eyes."
"They have no excuse, then, to pretend that they did not know?" the young gentleman with the long name—the marquess—asked, his eyes twinkling. "It does not seem sporting somehow."
Several of the younger people laughed.
"Did you know," Lily asked, leaning forward slightly in her chair and looking eagerly about her, "that saris are really just very long strips of cloth that are draped to look like the most exquisite of dresses? There is no stitching, no tapes, no pins, no buttons. One of the women who was a friend of my mama taught me how to do it. I was so proud of myself the first time I tried donning one without help. I thought I looked like a princess. But when I had taken no more than three steps forward, it fell off and I was left standing there in my shift. I felt very foolish, I do assure you." She laughed merrily, as did the bulk of her audience.
"Goodness, child." That was the countess, who had laughed but who also looked somewhat embarrassed.
Lily smiled at her. "I believe I was six or seven years old at the time," she said. "And everyone thought it was very funny—everyone except me. I seem to recall that I burst into tears. Later I learned how to wear a sari properly. I believe I still remember how. There is no lovelier form of dress, I do assure you. And no lovelier country than India. Always when my mother and father told me stories, I pictured them happening there, in India, beyond the British camp. There, where life was brighter and more colorful and mysterious and romantic than life with the regiment ever was."
"If you had gone to school, Lily," the gentleman with the receding fair hair told her, "you would have been taught that every other country and every other people are inferior to Britain and the British." But his eyes laughed as he spoke.
"Perhaps it is as well that I did not go to school, then," Lily replied.
He winked at her.
"Indeed, Lily," Elizabeth said, "there is a school of experience in which those with intelligence and open, questioning minds and acute powers of observation may learn valuable lessons. It seems to me that you have been a diligent pupil."
Lily beamed at her. For a few minutes she had forgotten her ignorance and her inferiority to all these grand people. She had forgotten that she was frightened.
"But we have kept you talking too long and have caused your tea to grow cold," Elizabeth said. "Come. Let me empty out what remains and pour you a fresh cup."
One of the young ladies—the one with the red hair—was asked then to play the pianoforte in the adjoining music room, and several people followed her in there, leaving the double doors open. Neville took the seat beside Lily that had just been vacated.
"Bravo!" he said softly. "You have done very well."
But Lily was listening to the music. It enthralled her. How could so much rich and harmonious sound come from one instrument and be produced with just ten human fingers? How wonderful it must feel to be able to d
o that. She would give almost anything in the world, she thought suddenly, to be able to play the pianoforte—and to be able to read and to discuss bonnets and tragedy and to know the difference between Mozart and Beethoven.
She was so terribly, dreadfully ignorant.
Chapter 7
Neville stood on the marble steps outside the house watching Lily stroll in the direction of the rock garden with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey. He made no attempt to join them. Somehow, he realized, if Lily was to function as his countess, she was going to have to do so without his hovering over her at every moment, ready to rescue her whenever she seemed in distress—as he had been about to do at tea when she had admitted to being illiterate. He had felt everyone's shock and her embarrassment and had been instantly intent on taking her out of the way of more humiliation. But Elizabeth had come magnificently to her rescue with her questions about India, and Lily had been suddenly transformed into a warm and relaxed and knowledgeable student of the world. She had shocked a few of his aunts and cousins with her candid references to breeches and stays and such, it was true. But more than one or two of his relatives had seemed charmed by her.
Unfortunately his mother was not one of them. She had waited for Lily to leave and for all but an intimate few of the family to withdraw after tea.
"Neville," she had said, "I cannot imagine what you were thinking of. She is quite impossible. She has no conversation, no education, no accomplishments, no—no presence. And does she have nothing more suitable to wear for afternoon tea than that sad muslin garment?" But his mother was not one to wallow in a sense of defeat. She straightened her shoulders and changed her tone. "But there is little to be gained by lamenting the impossibility, is there? She must simply be made possible."
"I think her deuced pretty, Nev," Hal Wollston, his cousin, had said.
"You would, Hal." Lady Wilma Fawcitt, the Duke of Anburey's red-haired daughter, had sounded scornful. "As if pretty looks have anything to say to anything. I agree with Aunt Clara. She is impossible!"
"Perhaps," Neville had said with quiet emphasis, "you would care to remember, Wilma, that you are speaking of my wife."
She had tutted, but she had said no more.
His mother had got to her feet to leave the room. "I must return to the dower house and see what is to be done for poor Lauren," she had said. "But tomorrow I shall move back into the abbey, Neville. It is going to need a mistress, and clearly Lily will be quite unable to assume that role for some time to come. I shall undertake her training."
"We will discuss the matter some other time, Mama," he had said, "though I agree it would be best if you moved back here. I will not have Lily made unhappy, however. This is all very difficult for her. Far more difficult than for any of us."
He had left the room before anyone could say anything more and had come to stand on the steps. There were some days, he reflected, that were so unremarkable that a week afterward one could not recall a single thing that had happened in them. And then there were days that seemed packed full of a lifetime of experiences. This was definitely one such day.
He had written several letters after returning from the dower house and then checking on Lily, who had been fast asleep. He had sent the letters on their way. It would not be easy to be patient in awaiting the replies.
The fact was that for all his solicitude, for all his apparent calm, he simply was not sure Lily really was his wife.
They had married without a license and without the customary banns. The regimental chaplain had assured him that the wedding was quite legal, and he had drawn up the proper papers to which Neville had put his signature and Lily her mark and which had been witnessed by Harris and Rieder. But Parker-Rowe had been killed in that ambush the following day. Harris had reported that the belongings of the dead had been left with them in the pass.
That would seem to mean that the marriage had never been registered. Was it therefore not a marriage at all? Was it void? Neville supposed that his mind must have touched upon the possibility before today. But he had never pursued the question. It had been unimportant. Lily had been dead.
But now she was alive and at Newbury Abbey. He had acknowledged her as his wife and his countess. Lauren had been made to suffer. All their lives had been turned upside down. But perhaps there was no legality to the marriage. He had written to Harris—now Captain Harris, it seemed—and to several civil and ecclesiastical authorities to try to find out.
What if he and Lily were not legally married after all?
Should he mention his doubts to her now before he knew the answer? Should he mention them to anyone else? The question had been weighing on his mind ever since it had struck him as he stood on the beach with her, gazing out across the sea. But he had decided to keep his doubts to himself until he had the answer. He was not sure it would make a great deal of difference anyway. He had married Lily in good faith. He had made vows to her that he had had every intention of keeping. He had consummated the marriage with her.
And he had loved her.
But he could not rid his mind of the image of Lauren, swinging gently back and forth on the tree swing in her wedding gown, listless and quietly accepting of her disappointment—and surely about to explode with the anger she had told him was pointless. A bride rejected and humiliated.
This was the devil of a coil, he thought. He felt weighed down by guilt even though common sense told him that he could not possibly have foreseen the day's events.
***
Lily was thankful to be out of doors again—away from that great daunting mansion and the bewildering crowds of people.
Elizabeth had suggested a stroll to the rock garden, which was strangely named as it had far more flowers and ornamental trees than rocks. Graveled walkways meandered through it and a few well-placed wrought-iron seats allowed the stroller to sit and appreciate the cultivated beauty. Lily was more accustomed to wild beauty, but a garden lovingly created and tended by gardeners had its charm, she decided.
Elizabeth walked with her arm drawn through the Duke of Portfrey's. Lily had to be told his name again, but she had noticed him in the drawing room, partly because he was a very distinguished-looking gentleman. She guessed his age to be about forty, but he was still handsome. He was not very tall, but his slim, proud bearing made him appear taller than he was. He had prominent, aristocratic features and dark hair, which had turned silver at the temples. Mainly, though, she had noticed him because he had watched her more intently than anyone else had. He had scarcely taken his eyes off her, in fact. There had been a strange expression on his face—almost of puzzlement.
He asked some pointed questions as they walked.
"Who was your father, Lily?" he asked.
"Sergeant Thomas Doyle of the Ninety-fifth, sir," she told him.
"And where did he live before he took the king's shilling?" he asked.
"I think Leicestershire, sir."
"Ah," he said. "And where exactly in Leicestershire?"
"I do not know, sir." Papa had never talked a great deal about his past. Something he had once said, though, had led Lily to believe that he had left home and joined the army because he had been unhappy.
"And his family?" the duke asked. "What do you know of them?"
"Very little, sir," she replied. "Papa had a father and a brother, I believe."
"But you never visited them?"
"No, sir." She shook her head.
"And your mother," he asked her. "Who was she?"
"Her name was Beatrice, sir," she said. "She died in India when I was seven years old. She had a fever."
"And her maiden name, Lily?"
Elizabeth laughed. "Are you planning to write a biography, Lyndon?" she asked. "Pray do not feel obliged to answer, Lily. We are all curious about you because you have suddenly been presented to us as Neville's wife and your life has been so fascinatingly different from our own. You must forgive us if we seem almost ill-bred in our inquisitiveness."
The duke
asked no more questions, Lily was relieved to discover. She found his blue eyes rather disconcerting. He gave the impression of being able to see right into another person's mind.
"Do you know the names of all these flowers?" she asked Elizabeth. "They are very lovely. But they are different from flowers I know."
They sat on one of the seats while Elizabeth named every flower and tree and Lily set herself to memorizing their names—lupins, hollyhocks, wallflowers, lilies, irises, sweet briar, lilacs, cherry trees, pear trees. Would she ever remember them all? The Duke of Portfrey strolled along the paths while they talked, though he did pause for a while at the lower end of the rock garden to gaze back at Lily.
***
Lady Elizabeth stood beside the fountain watching Lily return to the house. She looked small and rather lost, but she had declined Elizabeth's offer to accompany her to her room. She thought she could remember the way, she had said.
"She has courage," Elizabeth said more to herself than to the Duke of Portfrey, who was standing behind her.
"I must thank you, Elizabeth," he said stiffly. "for pointing out how ill-bred and excessively inquisitive my questions were."
She swung around to face him. "Oh, dear," she said, smiling ruefully, "I have offended you."
"Not at all." He made her a slight bow. "I am sure you were quite right."
"Poor child," she said. "One feels she is a child, though if Neville married her well over a year ago she cannot be so very young, can she? She is so small and looks so fragile, yet she has lived in India and Portugal and Spain with the armies. That cannot have been easy. And she was a captive of the French for almost a year. What is your particular interest in her?"
The duke lifted his brows. "Have you not just stated it?" he asked her. "She is a curiosity. And she has appeared at a moment that could not have been better chosen if it had been done for deliberate effect."
"But you surely do not believe that it was?" she said, laughing.