by Mary Balogh
"Perhaps Elizabeth will persuade her to change her mind," Neville said hopefully. "What will I do if she fails? I promised Lily's father I would look after her. I made her vows. I—Well, all this has little to do with promises and vows. I—You would not understand, Joe."
"Being an inanimate block who has never rumbled into love and dreamed that he has found that one and only love he would never tumble out of again?" his cousin said ruefully. "Your feelings for her are pretty obvious, Nev, and look pretty enduring to me. I have envied you. We have all fallen a little under Lily's spell."
But Elizabeth stepped into the room at that moment, and they both scrambled to their feet. She looked significantly at their glasses but made no comment.
"Well?" Neville's hands had formed into tight fists at his sides.
"Lily will be coming to London with me in the morning, Neville," she said. "She has accepted employment with me. As my companion."
" What? " Neville could only stare at her incredulously.
The marquess cleared his throat and shuffled his feet awkwardly.
"It is what she has chosen," Elizabeth said calmly. "It will be a respectable position for her, Neville."
"Did you even try to persuade her to stay and marry me?" he asked her. But her expression gave him his answer without the need of words. All his pent-up anxieties exploded in anger. "You did not, did you? You had no intention of doing so. You deliberately misled me. Do you too want to take her out of the way, Elizabeth, so that the stage will be cleared here for a resumption of things as they were? Nothing can be as it was. Lily is my wife. I love her. Can no one understand that fact just because she is not a lady? She is lady enough for me. She is my lady. I am going to go up there now and—"
"No, Neville," she said quietly before he could take more than one purposeful step in the direction of the door. "No, my dear. It would be the wrong thing to do. Wrong for you. Wrong for Lily."
"And you know what is right for us?" Neville's eyes blazed at her. "You, Elizabeth? The spinster aunt? What do you know of love?"
"Watch it, Nev, old boy," Joseph said quietly.
Neville raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. "I am sorry," he said. "Oh, the devil. Forgive me, Elizabeth. I am so sorry."
"I would be worried," she said, quite unruffled, "if you did not react to all this with passion, Neville. But listen to me, please. This may very well prove to be the best thing that could have happened for both of you. You love her—I do not even need to ask if it is so. But you must admit that your marriage stood every chance of turning into a dismally unhappy one. Perhaps the next time you offer Lily marriage there will be more than just love and obligation to bring you together."
"The next time?" His eyebrows snapped together while the marquess strolled to one of the bookcases and examined the spines of the books on a level with his eyes.
"You were never the man to give up without a fight what you most wanted in life, Neville," she said. "And I seriously doubt there is anything you have wanted more than you want Lily. Are you really planning to give her up so easily?"
He gazed at her for several silent moments. His emotions were still raw. He could still not contemplate the prospect of Lily's leaving him on the morrow. He had not really considered the possibility of getting her back once she had left Newbury Abbey. Either she married him now, he had thought, or he would be forced to live all the rest of his life without her.
"When?"
"That is not for me to say," she told him, shaking her head. "Perhaps never. Certainly not within a month at the soonest."
"One month."
"Not one day sooner," she told him. "But we are to make an early start in the morning. I am going to bed. Good night, Neville. Good night, Joseph."
There was silence in the library after she had left, Neville staring at the door, Joseph continuing to peruse the books on the shelf without picking one up.
"It would be a foolish hope," Neville said eventually. "It would, Joe. Would it not?"
"Oh, devil take it." His cousin sighed audibly. "Who can predict female behavior, Nev? Not I, old chap. But I have always had the highest respect for Elizabeth."
"Promise me something," Neville said.
"Anything, Nev." The marquess turned from the bookcase and looked broodingly across the room at his cousin.
"Keep an eye on her," Neville said. "If she shows signs of being desperately unhappy—"
"The devil, Nev," the marquess said. "If she is unhappy? The point is, old chap, that she is free and that she will continue to make her own choices. But I will call on Elizabeth a few times. And I will ride beside her carriage all the way to London, which will be a considerable trial to my nerves since my father's carriage will be close by too and travel with my mother and Wilma is never a comfortable business. I'll see that Lily gets safe to London, though. My honor on it."
"Thank you."
"And who knows?" Joseph spoke cheerfully and crossed the room again to clap a friendly hand on Neville's shoulder. "Perhaps Elizabeth is right and Lily will see more clearly what she is missing once she is away from you. Elizabeth knows more about the workings of the female mind than I do. Are you going to get foxed or shall we call it a night and turn in?"
"I don't think I could get drunk if I tried, Joe," Neville told him. "But thanks for the thought."
"What are friends for?" the marquess asked him.
***
Neville went to bed buoyed with some faint hope. He even slept in snatches. But in the morning he could hear only the echo of Elizabeth's words perhaps never, and the sound of them drowned out hope.
They were all leaving together—Aunt Sadie and Uncle Webster with Wilma, Joe on horseback, Elizabeth with Lily. The terrace was crowded with people saying and hugging their farewells—even Gwen and Lauren had come up from the dower house for the purpose. Lily had her share of hugs, Neville noticed as he took his leave of everyone else; neither Lauren nor Gwen was dry-eyed after saying good-bye to her. She was wearing the pretty blue carriage dress that had recently been made for her—he had been very much afraid that she would refuse to take any of her new clothes.
He turned to her last, and he was aware of everyone else moving tactfully away, giving them a modicum of privacy. He took her gloved right hand in both of his and looked into her eyes. They were huge and calm and clear of the tears that were flowing free among the others.
He reached for something to say to her but could think of nothing. She stared mutely at him. He raised her hand to his lips and kept it there for several moments while he closed his eyes. But when he looked back into her face, there was still nothing to say. No, that was not right. There was everything in the world to say but no words with which to say any of it. And so he said nothing.
Until she did.
"Neville." There was almost no sound, but her lips unmistakably formed his name.
Ah, God! How he had longed to hear her say his name again. She had spoken it yesterday afternoon. She was saying it now. But he felt as if his heart had been pierced by a sharp dagger.
"Lily," he whispered, his head bent close to hers. "Stay. Change your mind. Stay with me. We can make it work."
But she was shaking her head slowly.
"We cannot," she said. "We cannot. Th-that night. I am glad there was that night."
"Lily—"
But she tore her hand from his grasp and hurried toward the open door of Elizabeth's carriage. He watched in wretched despair as a footman handed her inside.
She took her seat beside Elizabeth and stared blankly at the cushions of the seat opposite. The footman put up the steps and closed the door. The carriage jerked slightly on its springs and was in motion.
Neville swallowed once, twice. He fought panic, the urge to lunge forward, to tear open the door, to drag her out into his arms and refuse ever to let her go.
He raised a hand in farewell, but she did not look back.
Perhaps never. The words echoed and reechoed in his brain.
Ah
, my love. Once dreams were shattered, there could be no assurance that they could ever be pieced together and dreamed again.
PART IV
The Education of a Lady
Chapter 17
"Amuse me, Lily," her new employer commanded her after the first hour of near silence and raw pain had passed, "and answer some questions. You must answer truthfully—that is the one cardinal rule of what-ifs."
Lily turned a determinedly smiling face to her. She still did not know how she could possibly be a competent companion to Elizabeth, but she would try her very best.
"If you had the freedom and the means to do any one thing in the world you wished to do," Elizabeth asked, "what would it be?"
Go back to Neville. But that would be a nonsensical answer. She had the freedom to go back. He had begged her to stay. But going back to him would mean going back to Newbury Abbey too and all it involved. Lily thought hard. But the answer to the question, she found eventually, should have been obvious to her from the first moment.
"I would learn to read and write," she said. "Is that two things?"
"We will consider it one," Elizabeth said, clapping her hands. "What a delightful answer. I can see that you are not going to be a disappointment, Lily. Now something else. Perhaps we will gather five wishes altogether. Proceed."
Yes, there were other things to dream of, Lily thought. Nothing sufficient to replace the dream she had lost, of course, but perhaps enough to give life some purpose. These new dreams would probably prove unattainable, but then that was the nature of dreams. It was their very attraction. But probably was the all-important word. It allowed for hope.
"I would learn to play the pianoforte," she said with conviction, "and to know all there is to know about music."
"Now that is definitely more than one thing," Elizabeth protested, laughing. "But since I have made the rules of the game, I will allow its essential unity. Next?"
Lily glanced at Elizabeth, who looked both lovely and elegant in carriage clothes that were coordinated in colors of brown, bronze, and cream, and that were perfectly suited to her age and rank and figure and coloring.
"I would learn how to dress correctly and elegantly and perhaps even fashionably," she said.
"But you already look all those things in that particular ensemble, Lily," Elizabeth told her. "Pale blue is certainly a good color for you."
"You chose everything I am wearing," Lily reminded her, "except my shift and my shoes. I could do nothing alone—I would have no idea. To me a garment has always been something that is comfortable and decent and warm in winter or cool in summer."
"Very well, then." Elizabeth smiled. "It is number three. And numbers four and five? Do you have no wish to travel or to acquire expensive possessions?"
"I have traveled all my life," Lily said. "I have dreamed of staying in one place long enough for it to feel like home. And possessions…" She shrugged. What else would she choose to make this list complete? She would read and write and learn about music. She would play the pianoforte and dress well and elegantly. She would…
"I would like to be able to figure," Lily said. "Not just on my fingers or in my head, but—oh, but as Mrs. Ailsham and the countess do in the household books. They showed them to me one morning. They could both make sense of what was written there and they could use the figures to know what had been happening at the abbey and to plan what would happen. I wish I could do that. I wish I could keep books and know how to run something as big and important as Newbury Abbey."
"And your last wish, Lily?"
"I have always been comfortable with other people," she said after thinking for a while longer. "All kinds of people, even the officers when they were a part of the regiment. But I do not feel comfortable with your kind of people. I would like to learn… how to behave, how to converse, how to do what is expected of me. I would like to learn the manners of your class. Not because I aspire to belong to it, but because—oh, I do not know quite why. Because I admire you, perhaps. Because I respect the countess."
Elizabeth said nothing for a while. "I am not sure I should consider your wishes as five, Lily," she said at last. "Really they are all one—the desire for knowledge and the education of a lady. One might add painting and needlework and dancing and the knowledge of languages, perhaps, but they would really be included in one or other of the five things for which you have wished. Do you paint or dance or know any languages other than English? I know that you can darn and mend but not embroider."
"I can speak Hindi and Spanish," Lily said. "We used to dance country dances. I have never painted."
But their conversation was interrupted at that point by the carriage's turning into the cobbled yard of a posting inn for a change of horses. It was amazing to Lily to realize that after the first hour her mind had been pleasantly occupied. She had been almost enjoying herself. And it was all Elizabeth's doing—she had set herself to take her companion's mind off the wretched misery of that parting.
The Duke of Anburey had bespoken a private parlor at the inn, and the six of them dined together. Lady Wilma was ecstatic at the prospect of going at last to London, where the Season would already be in progress. Her conversation was all of balls and routs and theaters and court presentations and Vauxhall and Almack's. It was dizzying to Lily, who forced herself to eat at least a small meal and made no attempt to participate in anything that was being said even when Joseph suggested that the discomforts of their journey were probably nothing compared with those of the sort of traveling she had done in the Peninsula. She smiled vaguely at him even as she realized that, like Elizabeth, he was trying to divert her mind from what weighed it down like a ton of lead.
She kept wondering what he was doing at that precise moment.
Elizabeth resumed their interrupted conversation after Joseph had handed them back into the carriage and they were on their way again.
"Well, Lily," she said, patting her briskly on the knee, "I can see that the next month or two with you are going to be interesting indeed. Did I use the word fun yesterday? The coming months are certainly going to be fun—yes, it is quite the right word. We, my dear, with the help of all the best instructors I can hire, are going to transform you into a lady, with a lady's education and accomplishments—all within a month or two or ten. Obviously some things will take longer than others. What do you say?"
Lily said nothing for several moments. They had been playing a game of what-if, had they not? "No," she said, frowning. "Oh, no. Teachers would have to be paid salaries."
"And the best teachers would have to be paid high salaries." Elizabeth was smiling. "Lily, my dear, I am almost indecently wealthy."
"But you cannot spend any of it on me," Lily said, aghast. "I am your servant."
"Well, yes," Elizabeth agreed. "For your pride's sake I will concede that point, Lily. But servants, you know, have to earn their salaries. And how do they do that? By obeying their employers, by catering to their every whim. I am one of the most fortunate of women, you know, for any number of reasons. But having everything—almost everything—one could possibly need can have its disadvantages, especially when one is a woman. There is a certain boredom with which to contend. I cannot tell you when I last had fun. Overseeing your education will be that, Lily. You must not deny me, not when you have confessed that it is what you want more than almost anything else in this world."
It had not been a game, Lily realized suddenly. And she had not been hired to serve—at least, not in any conventional sense. Elizabeth had intended this all along. She had intended to amuse herself and delight Lily by making a lady out of her.
It would be impossible.
It would not!
It would be glorious and wonderful. She could learn to read. She would be able to read books. She would be able to fill a room with music—with her very own fingers. She would be able… Oh, there were too many dazzling possibilities crowding her mind.
There was a new dream.
"What are you thi
nking?" Elizabeth asked.
"I will be able—when I leave you, that is," Lily said, "to find employment as a shop assistant or perhaps even as—as a governess." It was a dizzying prospect. She would acquire knowledge and then she would be able to pass it on to others.
"Of course," Elizabeth said. "Or perhaps you will marry, Lily. I intend to take you with me to meet the ton before the Season is over. It is one of the duties of a companion, you know. But you will be more than a companion—you will be a friend and a participant in the social functions we will attend."
Lily sat back in her seat. "Oh, no," she said. "No, no, that would be impossible. I am not a lady."
"Very true," Elizabeth agreed. "And the beau monde is very high in the instep about such matters as birth and connections. Behaving like a lady does not, with the highest sticklers, make one into a lady. But there are exceptions to most rules. Remember if you will, Lily, how famous you are. Your story—your arrival in the middle of Neville and Lauren's wedding, his announcement that you were the wife he had long thought dead, his account of your wedding and apparent death—will still be the sensation of London. The rest of the story—the discovery that your marriage is not valid after all, your refusal to make it valid by going through another nuptial service with the Earl of Kilbourne—will set the ton on its ears. They will be in a frenzy to meet you, even to catch a glimpse of you. When it is known that you are living with me, invitations will pour in. But we will keep everyone waiting for a while. When you do appear, Lily, you will take London by storm. In addition to the story, you see, there are your natural beauty and grace and charm. And by the time you appear, we will have added the refinement of genteel manners and fashionable appearance. I daresay you could marry a duke if you wished—and if there were a suitable one available." She laughed softly. She was clearly enjoying herself.
"I cannot ever marry," Lily said, ignoring the rest of the frightening—and undeniably exciting—picture Elizabeth had just painted for her. She smoothed her hands over the gloves that lay in her lap.