by Mary Balogh
"Not at all." He was gazing broodingly at the door through which Lily had disappeared. "She is very beautiful. Even now. When Kilbourne has spent money on clothes and jewels for her and has brought her into fashion…" He did not complete the thought—he did not need to do so.
Elizabeth said nothing. She was never able to explain even to herself the nature of her relationship with the Duke of Portfrey. They had been friends for several years. There was an ease and a closeness between them that was rare for a single man and a single woman. And yet there was a distance too. Perhaps it was a distance that was inevitable when they were of different genders but were not also lovers.
Elizabeth had sometimes asked herself whether she would become his lover if he ever suggested it. But he never had. Neither had he asked her to be his wife. She was glad of that fact. Although she had lived through her youth and her twenties in the hope that she would meet a man for whom she could care enough to marry him, she was no longer sure she was willing to give up the independence she prized.
But sometimes she thought she would like the experience of being loved—physically loved—by the handsome Duke of Portfrey.
He had been married as a very young man—briefly and tragically. He had been a military officer at the time and a younger son who had not expected ever to succeed to his father's ducal title. He had married secretly before going off with his regiment, first to the Netherlands and then to the West Indies, leaving his bride behind and his marriage undisclosed. She had died before his return. Although it had been years and years ago, Elizabeth often felt that he had never quite recovered from the experience—never forgiven himself, perhaps, for leaving her, for not being with her when she died in a carriage accident, for not being there for her funeral.
It was almost, Elizabeth felt, as if he had never quite accepted her death or let her go—though he never spoke of her. He was a moody man whom she never felt she fully understood. Perhaps, she admitted, that was his fascination.
And now he seemed fascinated with Lily, a young woman whom he had just described—quite accurately—as beautiful. And Elizabeth herself was six-and-thirty. Well. She smiled ruefully.
"Shall we go indoors too?" she suggested. "The breeze is becoming chilly."
He offered her his arm.
***
Lily tried to re-create in her mind the dream she had held there for longer than a year. How very foolish it seemed now in retrospect. She had pictured herself arriving at that large cottage set in its pretty English garden—her father had always said that English gardens were prettier than any other gardens on earth—and seeing the delight in Neville's face as he opened the door and found her standing on his doorsill. He would enfold her in his arms and squeeze all the breath out of her, and then she would tell him her story and he would forgive her the part that needed forgiveness and they would live happily ever after. She would have a home, a permanent place where she belonged and that she could make her own. In her dream there had been no other people—just Neville and herself. Lily sighed as she opened one of the long windows of her bedchamber and breathed in the cool night air. Had she ever really believed in the dream? Probably not. She was not so naive as to imagine that life could ever be that simple. All her life she had been aware of the insurmountable social gap between the officers and the men—and their women. And her marriage to Neville had been so very sudden and so very brief. But the dream had sustained her through many hardships. And it was better sometimes to have an unrealistic dream, she thought, than to have only the cold truth of reality.
She was the Countess of Kilbourne, mistress of all this—unless he decided after all to divorce her, though she did not think he would. The whole situation was absurd. It was impossible. Teatime had been a nightmare. Dinner had been worse. She had not known what food or drink to accept from the footmen, which knives and forks and spoons to use with which courses. If Neville had not touched her hand almost at the start and murmured to her that she should copy what he did, and if Elizabeth had not caught her eye from across the table, winked, and picked up the utensils that would be needed for the course then being served, she would have disgraced herself utterly.
And in the drawing room afterward there had been all that conversation again. It might have been wonderful indeed to have listened to it if she could have been been invisible, if other people for one reason or another had not tried to draw her in. She had revealed more and more of her ignorance every time she opened her mouth.
She had worn her green muslin again though Dolly had done new things to her hair. Everyone else had changed and made her feel plainer and dowdier than ever. She hated being made aware of such things. What she wore had never particularly mattered before. Clothes had simply been for warmth or coolness or basic decency. But here clothes said something about status.
This was to be her life, she thought, moving from the window toward the bed. She reached down to pull up the sides of her nightgown so that she would not trip over the hem. But she stopped and smiled at her bare toes. Dolly had sat in her dressing room for much of the evening, removing the frill from the bottom, shortening the gown, and sewing the frill back on. How very kind she was when Lily was perfectly capable of doing it for herself. But when she had said so, Dolly had laughed and called her funny again and they had both laughed for no reason at all. The maid had unpacked her bag, she had explained, and noticed that there was no nightgown within. She could not have her ladyship tripping over the frill and breaking her neck.
There was a knock on the dressing room door. Was Dolly still up? Did that girl take no time for herself?
"Come in," Lily called.
But it was not Dolly. It was Neville, looking very handsome in a long brocaded blue dressing gown. Lily remembered him saying that he had looked in on her earlier in the day while she was sleeping. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, remembering her wedding night. But almost simultaneously she recalled with a stabbing of pain that this was to have been his wedding night with someone else.
"Lily," he asked her, "do you have everything you need?"
She nodded.
"Are you… all right?" He looked searchingly at her.
She nodded again.
"It has been a difficult day for you," he said. "Perhaps tomorrow will be easier."
"Do you love her?" she couldn't help but blurt out. She stared at him, wishing she could recall the words, wishing she could stop herself from feeling hurt that the answer might be yes. All the time she had been with Manuel and the partisans, clinging to the hope of one day returning to the man who had married her, he had been courting another woman, perhaps falling in love with her. All the time she had been making her difficult journey, with only the thought of reaching him sustaining her, he had been planning a marriage with someone else.
He clasped his hands at his back and regarded her gravely. "We grew up together," he said. "She lived here at the abbey with us. Her mother is married to my uncle, my father's brother, but Lauren was the child of a previous marriage. We were intended for each other from infancy. I have always been very fond of her. After my return from the Peninsula a marriage between us seemed the logical step to take."
"You were promised to someone else when you married me?" she asked him.
"No," he said. "Not really. I was rebelling against my lot in life. Even we privileged aristocrats do that, Lily. I had advised her not to wait for me."
"Was I part of your rebellion, then?" she asked him, realizing that there could surely not be a more magnificent snub to his former life, to his parents, than marrying a sergeant's daughter.
"No, Lily." He was frowning at her. "No, you were not. I married you because there was a need to do so, because I had made a promise to your father. And because I wanted to."
Yes. It was true. She must not start to believe that there had been any cynicism in his choice of her. He had married her because he was a kind and honorable man. And because he had wanted to. What did that mean?
"Bu
t all the time you remained fond of her," she said.
"Yes, Lily."
It had not escaped her notice that he had not really answered her original question. Did he love the woman called Lauren? Did he realize now what a dreadful mistake he had made in marrying her even though he had wanted to in a moment of impulse?
"And today you would have married her," she said.
"Yes." He had not looked away from her. "I have known her all my life, Lily. She waited for me. My father died and I returned to my responsibilities here. One of my duties was to marry so that the abbey would have a countess. And to beget children, in particular an heir. My life of rebellion was over. And you were dead."
"You told no one about me." It was not a question. She turned and touched the silky brocade of the bed hangings. So heavy and so rich. So alien to anything she had ever known in her life. She wished she had remained in Portugal. She did not know what she would have done there, but she wished she had not come back. Perhaps she could have clung to part of the dream…
"Lily," he said as if he was reading her thoughts, "I mourned you deep in the privacy of my own heart. I am not sorry you survived. I am not, my dear. How could I be?"
No, he was a kind man. He had always treated her with gentleness and courtesy, even when she had been a girl and must sometimes have seemed an irrelevance at best, a nuisance at worst. Of course he would never wish her dead even though her survival had set an obstacle in the smooth path of his future.
"It was not because I did not care that I never mentioned you here," he said. "It was not because I did not care about you that I was to marry Lauren this morning, only a year and a half after your—your death. Please believe me."
She did. Yes, he had cared. Enough to marry her. Enough to murmur those endearments to her on their wedding night. Enough to mourn her. But if he had died, she thought, she would have mourned him for the rest of her life. She would never, could never… But how could she know for sure? Who was she to judge? Meanwhile there was an obstacle even more insuperable than the fact that he was the Earl of Kilbourne while she was the former Lily Doyle.
"I—" She swallowed. "You know what happened to me in Spain, do you not? You did understand this morning?"
She could feel him staring at her for a long time as her hands played with the braided fringe of the curtain. "Was it one man, Lily?" he asked. "Or many?"
"One." Manuel, the leader. Small, wiry, darkly handsome Manuel, who ruled his band of partisans through daring and charisma and occasional intimidation. "I have not been true to you."
"It was rape," he said harshly.
"I—I never fought," she told him. "I said no a number of times and was quite determined to—to die rather than submit, but when it came to the point I did not fight." It was a burden on her conscience that she had not fought her captor more strenuously.
"Look at me, Lily," he said in the quiet, authoritative voice of the major she had known. She looked unwillingly into his eyes. "Why did you not fight?"
"There were the French prisoners," she began. Her breath was coming in short gasps as she tried not to remember what had happened to them. "Because I was afraid. So afraid. Because I was a coward."
"Lily." He was still using the same voice. His eyes were looking very directly into hers, making it impossible for her to look away. He was her commanding officer again suddenly, not her husband. "It was rape. You were not a coward. It is a soldier's duty to survive any way he can in captivity—and you were a soldier's daughter and a soldier's wife. There is no question of cowardice. It was rape. It was not adultery. Adultery demands consent."
Neville sounded so certain, so sure of what he was saying. Could it possibly be true? She was not a coward? Not an adulteress?
"Let me hold you," he said softly. He was using a different voice now. "You look so very lonely, Lily."
A woman come home to a world that was alien to her and to a husband who had been about to marry someone else. How abject was it possible to feel? Would she never have herself back again, the serene, confident, happy self she remembered, the self who had somehow got lost after her one night of love?
She hunched her shoulders and looked down at her hands. When he came to stand in front of her and took her upper arms in his hands and drew her against him, she relaxed for a while, turning her head to rest against his shoulder, feeling the warmth and the strength of him all along her body. She allowed herself the luxury of feeling safe, of feeling cherished, of feeling that she had come home. He smelled good—of musk and soap and pure masculinity.
Yet she felt like someone who has arrived at the end of the rainbow only to find that there is nothing there after all—no pot of gold, not even the shreds of the rainbow itself. Just… nothing. And no more faith in rainbows. Only the core of herself with which to build a new identity, a new life.
She drew back from him before she could get lost in a dependency that would just not do.
"It would have been better for us both," she said, "if I had died."
"No, Lily." He spoke sharply.
"Can you tell me," she asked him, "that it has not once crossed your mind in the past year and a half that it was better so?"
She paused only briefly, but it did not escape her notice that he did not rush in with any denial.
"I think," she said, "if I had lived—if you had known I lived—you would not have brought me here. You would have found some excuse to keep me far away. You would have been kind about it. You would have explained that it was for my own good, and you would have been right. But you would not have brought me here."
"Lily." He had walked to one of the windows and was standing staring out into the darkness. "You cannot know that. I cannot know it. I do not know what would have happened. You were my wife. You were—dear to me."
Ah, she was dear to him. Not the love of his heart he had called her that night? Lily smiled bleakly and sat on the side of the bed, her arms hugging herself against the chill of the evening.
"I believe," she said, "this is an impossibility. To say I am out of place here is so obvious that it is laughable. She is not out of place, is she? Lauren? She has been brought up to all this and to being your wife and your countess. Instead she has been made miserable, your future is in ruins, and I… Well."
"Lily." He had come back to her, stooped down on his haunches before her, and taken both her hands in his. "Nothing is impossible. Listen to yourself. Is this Lily Doyle speaking? Lily Doyle, who marched the length and breadth of the Peninsula, undaunted by the heat of summer, the bitter cold of winter, the dangers of battle and ambush, the discomforts and diseases of camp? Lily Doyle, who always had a smile and a cheerful word for everyone? Who saw beauty in the dreariest surroundings? There is nothing impossible that you of all people cannot make possible. And I will help you. We freely joined our lives together on that hillside in Portugal. We must soldier on, Lily. We have no alternative. I am not sure I would even wish for one."
She did not know if she could resurrect that old Lily. But she warmed to his faith in her.
"Perhaps," she said, smiling wanly, "I am just tired and dispirited. Perhaps everything will look brighter in the morning. It has been a difficult day for both of us. Thank you for your kindness. You really have been kind."
"You would rather be alone?" he asked her. "I will stay and hold you through the night if you need the comfort, Lily. I will not press other attentions on you."
It was tempting. It would be so very easy to relax permanently into his kindness and his strength and become as abject in a way as she had been with Manuel. But somehow if she was going to find a way to cope with this new, frightening, impossible life, she must not give in to a need for the comfort of his arms—especially when she did not want more than that from him.
"I would rather be alone," she said.
He squeezed her hands before releasing them and getting to his feet. "Good night, then," he said. "If you should need me, tonight or any other night, my dressing room adjoins
yours and my bedchamber is beyond that. If you need anything else, the bell pull is beside your bed. Your maid will answer it."
"Thank you," she said. "Good night."
She wondered suddenly how his intended bride—Lauren—was feeling tonight. Did she love him? Lily felt genuinely sorry for her, caught in a situation in which she was entirely innocent and totally helpless. This was to have been her wedding night, but Lily was in the countess's room instead of her.
Everything was so very wrong.
Chapter 8
Lily had slept too much during the daytime. She dozed fitfully through the night, and two separate times she was awakened by the same dream—the old nightmare. It was always exactly the same in every detail.
Manuel was on top of her while she lay beneath him, and then she opened her eyes to see him—Major Newbury, Neville—standing in the doorway of the hut, watching. There was that look on his face that she had seen there sometimes immediately after battle, a hard, cold, battle-mad, almost inhuman look, and his white-knuckled hand was on the hilt of his sword. He was about to kill Manuel and rescue her. Hope soared painfully as she tried to lie still so as not to alert Manuel.
The dream always proceeded the same way. After standing there, white-faced and immobile for endless moments, he turned away and disappeared, and precious minutes were lost to her while Manuel took his pleasure of her.
In the dream she was free to run after Neville as soon as Manuel was finished with her, but her legs were always too weak to carry her at any speed and the air was too thick to move through. She had no voice with which to call to him, and she could never see where he had gone, which direction he had taken. There was always mist swirling about and panic immobilizing her. And then—the crudest part of the dream—the mist suddenly cleared and there he was, only a few steps away, standing still, his back to her.
In the dream she always stopped too at that moment, afraid to proceed, afraid to reach out to him, afraid of what would be in his eyes if he turned. It was the most dreaded moment of the dream and almost its final moment, when she touched the terrifying depths of despair. For during that second of indecision, the mist swirled again and he disappeared, not to be seen again.