by Mary Balogh
She dreamed the nightmare twice during the first night at Newbury Abbey.
She rose when it was still dark, made up her bed, washed in cold water in the dressing room, and clothed herself in her old blue cotton dress. She had to get outside where she could breathe. She did not stop to pick up a bonnet or to pull on her old shoes. She had to feel the good earth beneath her feet. She had to feel the air against her face and in her hair. She met no one on her way downstairs or while she did battle with the heavy bolts on the front doors.
Eventually she was outside, where there was the merest suggestion of dawn in the eastern sky. She breathed in deep lungfuls of chilly air. She felt it raise goosebumps on her bare arms and begin to numb her feet. She was immediately calmed and set out for the beach.
She did not stop until she was at the water's edge. At the edge of the land, the edge of place and time. On the brink of infinity and eternity. The wind, blowing off the vast expanses of the unknown, was strong and salt and chill. It flattened her dress against her and sent her hair billowing out behind her. Her feet sank a little into spongy sand. Above her gulls wheeled and cried, like spirits already free of time and space. For a moment she envied them.
But only for a moment. She felt no real desire this morning to escape the bonds of her mortality. Her years with the army had taught her something about the infinite preciousness of the present moment. Life was such an uncertain, such a fleeting thing, so filled with troubles and horrors and miseries—and with wonder and beauty and mystery. Like all persons, she had known her share of troubles. An almost overwhelming abundance of them had begun for her just the day following both the unhappiest and happiest day of her life, when her father had died and Major Newbury had married her. But she had survived.
She had survived!
And now—now at this most precious of moments—she was free and surrounded by such elemental beauty that her chest and her throat ached with the pain of it all. And it seemed to her that the wind blew through her rather than around her, filling her with all the mysterious spirit of life itself.
How could she fail to reach out and accept such a gift?
How could she fail to let go of the suffocating shreds of her dream and of all the misgivings about her new life that had oppressed her yesterday?
At least it was life.
And at least it was new. Ever and always new. Every day.
Lily stretched her arms out to the sides, tipped her face up to the rising sun, and twirled twice about on the sand, overwhelmed by her fleeting glimpse into the very heart of the mystery.
She was alive.
She was!
Filled with new hope, new courage, new exuberance, she set off exploring, picking her way carefully with her bare feet over the rocks at the end of the beach, reveling in the increased seclusion offered by the high cliffs to her left and the ocean to her right. Though the seclusion did not last for long. As soon as she had rounded a bend in the headland, she could see little boats bobbing on the water ahead of her and small houses and other buildings huddled at the base of the cliffs. It must be the lower village, Lower Newbury, she realized, at the bottom of that steep hill she had seen beside the inn.
Lily smiled brightly and continued on her way. She could see people up and about in the village, early as the hour must still be. Ordinary folk, like herself.
***
Lily was feeling happy by the time her bare feet finally took her through the gates of Newbury Abbey and onto the long driveway. She had walked up the steep hill to Upper Newbury and across the green, raising a hand in greeting to the few people she had seen. All of them, after some hesitation, had returned her gesture.
It was amazing how a new day could restore one's spirits and one's courage.
But as she was walking past the smaller lane to her left, along which she and Neville had turned the day before on their way from the church, she could see that the path was not deserted. There were two ladies walking toward her along it, not far distant. Lily stopped and smiled. They were very smartly dressed young ladies, probably guests from the house, though she did not recognize either of them.
One of them was tall and slim and dark-haired. The other was smaller and fairer and limped slightly. Both were lovely. The sight of their immaculate elegance reminded Lily of how she must look in her shabby dress and bare feet, her hair loose and curly and tangled by the wind, her complexion doubtless rosy from the air and exercise. She hesitated, about to move on. These ladies were strangers, after all.
But then, with a lurching of her stomach, she recognized the taller of the two, though her face had been veiled the day before.
And they both recognized her. That was very clear. Both stopped walking. Both looked at her with widened eyes and identical expressions of dismay. Then the taller lady came closer.
"You are Lily," she said. Ah, she was very beautiful despite the paleness of her face and the dark shadows beneath her violet eyes.
"Yes." The other lady, Lily noticed, had stiffened with obvious hostility. "And you are Lauren. Major Newbury's bride."
"Major—?" Lauren nodded with understanding. "Ah, yes—Neville. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lily. This is Lady Gwendoline, Lady Muir, Neville's sister."
His sister. Her own sister-in-law. Lady Gwendoline glared at her with undisguised dislike and said nothing. She stayed where she was.
Lauren's face held no such expression. Or any other either. It was a pale mask.
"I am so very sorry for what happened yesterday," Lily said—oh, the inadequacy of words. "I truly am."
"Well." Lauren's eyes, she noticed, were not quite meeting her own. "Let us look on the bright side. Better yesterday than today or tomorrow. But are you out without a companion or maid, Lily? You ought not to be. Does Neville know?"
Lily felt an overwhelming need to push past the terrible awkwardness of the meeting and to say something that would lift the blank look from the other woman's face. What a shock she must have suffered. "Oh, I have had such a wonderful morning," she told Lauren. "I went down onto the beach to watch the sun rise and then crossed the rocks out of curiosity and came to the village below. Some of the fishermen were getting ready to take their boats out, and their wives were out helping them, and their children were running about, playing. I talked with several of the people and they were so kind to me. I had breakfast with Mrs. Fundy—do you know her?—and amused her children while she fed the baby. I do not know how she manages to look after four such young children and keep her house neat all at the same time, but she does. I have made friends with them all and have promised to go back as often as I may." She laughed. "They were all funny at first and wanted to curtsy and bow to me and call me 'my lady,' Can you imagine?"
Lady Gwendoline's silence became almost loud.
Lauren's face stretched for a moment into what might have been a smile.
"But I am keeping you," Lily said, her animation fading. "I really am sorry. You are very gracious. He—Major Newbury—told me last night that he was very fond of you. I do not wonder at it. I—Well, I am sorry." She was saying all the wrong things, of course. But were there right things to say? "Do you live at Newbury Abbey?"
"At the dower house," Lauren said, nodding in the direction of the trees opposite, through which Lily could see a house just visible when she turned her head to look. "With Gwen and the countess, her mother. Perhaps I will call upon you some time. Tomorrow maybe?"
"Yes." Lily smiled, vastly relived. "I should like that, please. I should like it very much. Will you come too… Gwendoline?" She looked uncertainly at her sister-in-law, who did not answer, but whose nostrils flared with what was clearly barely controlled anger.
Gwendoline loved her cousin, Lily thought. Her anger was understandable. She smiled fleetingly at them both before continuing on her way to the abbey. She felt considerably discomposed. Lauren was beautiful and dignified and far more gracious than she might have been expected to be. How could Neville not love her?
***
Lauren and Gwendoline stood gazing after her.
"Well!" Gwendoline expelled her breath audibly and came to stand beside her cousin as Lily moved out of earshot. "I have never been so affronted in my life. How dared she stop and talk to us—to you in particular."
"How dared she, Gwen?" Lauren gazed after the disappearing figure. "She is Neville's wife. She is your sister-in-law. She is the Countess of Kilbourne. Besides, I was the first to speak." She laughed, though there was no amusement in the sound. "She is very lovely."
"Lovely?" Gwendoline spoke with the utmost scorn. "She would put even a beggar to the blush. Is she deliberately trying to disgrace Neville, or does she simply not know any better? She has appeared in both villages for all to see, looking like that—no bonnet, no shoes, no—" She made a sound of exasperation. "Does she know nothing about how to behave?"
"But oh, Gwen," Lauren said so quietly that her cousin almost did not hear the words, "did you not see that she is vivid and original? Something quite out of the ordinary? The sort of woman who would draw a man's eyes and desires? Neville's, for example?"
Gwendoline looked incredulously at her cousin. "Are you mad?" she asked rhetorically. "She is disgusting. She is impossible. And you of all people should hate her, Lauren. You are not defending her, are you?"
Lauren laughed quietly again as she crossed the driveway and strode in the direction of the dower house. "I am merely trying to see her through Neville's eyes," she said. "I am trying to understand why he left me and told me not to wait and then met her and married her. Oh, Gwen, of course I hate her." For the first time her voice became impassioned though she did not raise it. "I feel the most intense hatred for her. I wish she were dead. I know I ought not to feel that way. I am horrified by my own feelings. I wish she were dead. And so I must try, you see—yes, I really must try to understand. It is not her fault after all, is it? I daresay Neville did not tell her about me any more than he told me about her. And what was there to tell anyway? He had told me not to wait. He was under no obligation to me. We were not betrothed. I must try to like her. I will try to like her."
Gwendoline limped along beside her, finding it difficult to keep up. "Well, I do not intend even to try," she said. "I will hate her enough for both of us. She has ruined your life and Neville's—though it is entirely his own fault—and you are the two people I love above all others. And do not tell me that Lily is not to blame. Of course she is not to blame and of course I am being unfair to her. But she is a loathsome creature for all that, and how can I not hate her when I see you so dreadfully unhappy?"
They had arrived at the house. But Lauren stopped before entering it. "We are going to have to teach her things," she said, her voice flat again as it had been the day before. "How to dress, how to behave, how to be a lady. I will call on her tomorrow, Gwen. I will try—to be kind to her."
"And we are going to try learning to play the harp and to balance halos on our heads too," Gwendoline said crossly, "so that we will be ready to become saints or angels when we die."
They both laughed.
"Please, Gwen," Lauren said, taking her cousin's arm in a tight grip, "help me not to hate her. Help me… Oh, how could Neville have married such a—such a wild fairy creature? What is the matter with me?"
Gwendoline did not answer. There was no reasonable answer to give.
Chapter 9
Lily felt suddenly almost as if she were returning to a prison. Her footsteps lagged as the house came into sight. But then they quickened again. She could see that Neville was outside on the terrace, three other gentlemen with him. For so long she had held him steadfastly in her memory and her dreams. But now he was real again. And he was watching her approach, his lips pursed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. They were all watching her approach. She had been right earlier, she thought. Things did look brighter this morning after all.
Neville bowed to her when she was close and reached out a hand for hers—and then kissed it.
"Good morning, Lily," he said.
"I have been down on the beach," she told him. "I wanted to watch the sun come up. And then I explored the rocks and found myself in the village." Her purpose and destination would explain her appearance.
"I know." He smiled at her. "I watched you go from my window."
The marquess with the long name bowed to her then. "I am awed into incoherence," he said, but he went on talking anyway. "None of the ladies of my acquaintance ever rise early enough to know that the sun even does anything as peculiar as rise in the morning."
"Then they miss one of the greatest joys of life," Lily assured him. "Please will you tell me your name again, sir? I only remember that it is long."
"Joseph," he said, and laughed, revealing himself to be a very good-looking gentleman indeed. "You are a cousin now, Lily, and do not need to get your tongue around Attingsborough."
"Joseph," she repeated. "I believe I can remember that."
"And James too," one of the other gentlemen said, bowing to her. "Another cousin, Lily. I have a wife, who is Sylvia, and a young son, Patrick. My mother is Nev's Aunt Julia, his father's sister. My father—"
"Devil take it, James." The fourth gentleman tossed his glance at the sky. "Lily's eyes are crossing and her head is spinning on her shoulders. Why do you not add for her edification that Nev's other paternal aunts are Mary and Elizabeth and that his uncle is the famous black sheep, the lost sheep, who embarked on a wedding journey more than twenty years ago and never returned? I am Ralph, Lily. Yes, another cousin. If you cannot recall my name the next time we meet, you are welcome to call me 'you.' "
"Thank you," she said, laughing. It was definitely easier this morning. Maybe everything would be easier. But then she had always been comfortable in the company of men, perhaps because she had grown up surrounded by so many of them.
"The exercise has whipped the most lovely roses into your cheeks, Lily," the marquess said. "But however have you managed to walk so far in bare feet?" He was observing them through his quizzing glass.
"Oh." She glanced down at them. "It is so much more comfortable than walking in shoes. If you were to take off your boots and walk in the grass, Joseph, you would discover that I am right."
"Dear me," he commented.
"But you will not do it," she said, smiling sunnily at him. "I know. There were some men in the Peninsula who never removed their boots—ever. I swear they went to bed with them on. Sometimes I wondered if they had feet at all, or if their legs ended just below the knee. They would not wish to admit to such a deformity, of course. Just imagine how short they would have been—and men set great store by their height. They hate to have to look up to other men and feel perfectly shamed to have to look up to a woman."
The gentlemen were all laughing. Lily joined them.
"Good Lord," Joseph said, using his quizzing glass now to look down at his own boots, "my secret is out. When I stopped growing at four foot ten, Lily, I had Hoby make me boots—tall boots. So that I could look down on the world from a lofty height."
"He even dances in them, Lily," Ralph said. "You would not wish to risk your toes by tripping a measure with Joe."
"If you knock on them," James added, "they ring hollow."
"This conversation," Lily declared gleefully, "has become absurd. But despite your teasing, I have felt the grass and the dew beneath my feet this morning and the sand between my toes. And I have seen the sun rise over the sea. England is a lovely country, as my papa always said it was."
Neville smiled at her. "You are right, Lily," he said. He offered her his arm. "Let me escort you to your room and summon Dolly to help you tidy up. My mother has come up from the dower house and is awaiting you in the morning room with several of the other ladies."
He did not sound in any way annoyed. He did not utter one word of reproach either then or after they had left the company of his cousins. And
yet Lily had not missed the detail about several of the ladies.
"Are the others out enjoying the morning?" she asked.
"They are still in bed or in their boudoirs. Ladies generally do not, ah, enjoy the morning until their maids have dressed and coiffed them and they have breakfasted, Lily." He smiled down at her as they climbed the grand staircase.
"Oh," she said. Maids—she had not thought of ringing for Dolly when she got up. Besides, she would not have wished to wake the girl so early. And she had no dress suitable for Newbury Abbey except her green muslin, and she had doubts even about that. She might at least, she supposed, have tied back her hair and worn her shoes. "I did not think. I ought not to have gone out as I am, ought I? How embarrassed you must have been when I came back and all your cousins were out there to see me. I am so sorry."
"No, no." He covered her hand on his arm with his free one. "That was not my meaning. I was not scolding, for heaven's sake. This is your home, Lily. You must do here whatever you wish."
Lily fell silent, remembering how very elegantly Lauren had been dressed. She had been wearing a bonnet and even gloves. She would not have gone dancing off in bare feet and with her hair down her back to watch the sun rise over the sea. She would not have embarrassed him out on the terrace.
***
Neville took Lily down to the morning room after she had washed and put on stockings and her old shoes and Dolly had dressed her hair in a simple knot at the back of her head with two neat braids wound about it. Dolly had advised against wearing the green muslin as her ladyship would need something into which to change for the afternoon, and so the old cotton would have to do.
Neville stayed with her in the morning room for a short while though there was no other gentleman present, but then he was summoned away to speak with his steward.