by Mary Balogh
"I will have you woken if there is any change," she promised. "He is tough, Lily. He will come through this."
Lily would have known very well that Elizabeth spoke the truth if he had been anyone but Neville. But she was too desperate for him to live to believe that he would.
She surprised herself by sleeping deeply and dreamlessly for four hours. When she rang for Dolly, her maid informed her that his grace, the Duke of Portfrey, begged a few minutes of her time in the drawing room before she returned to the sickroom.
Lily had very firmly pushed from her mind all thoughts of what had happened at Vauxhall. It was easier said than done, of course, but she had refused to dwell upon the terrifying mystery. She could not afford to do so now. She needed all her emotional strength for Neville. But the terror came rushing back when she learned that the duke was belowstairs—and with it the memory that he had suddenly appeared at Vauxhall between the time she and the others had left for their walk and the time of their return. And he had been wearing a long black opera cloak.
She went down to the drawing room anyway.
He came hurrying across the room toward her, both his hands outstretched. "Lily, my dear," he said. His handsome face was all frowning concern.
Lily leaned back against the door and clutched the doorknob with both hands behind her.
He dropped his hands and stopped a few feet away from her. "We were unable to catch him," he said. "I am so sorry. Did you see him, Lily? Did you have a good look at him? Can you remember anything in addition to the dark cloak and the pistol?"
"Was it you?" She was whispering.
He stared at her in seeming incomprehension. "What?" he said.
"Was it you who shot Neville?" She was speaking aloud now.
He said nothing for what seemed a long while. "Why would you think it was me?" he asked her.
"It was you on the rhodondendron walk," she said. "Was it you in the woods? And you who pushed the stone over the cliff and tried to kill me on the rocks below? Was it you who tried to run me down with your horse in Hyde Park? I know I was the target at Vauxhall, not Neville. Was it you?" Curiously she felt very calm. His face, she noticed, was drained of all color.
"Someone tried to kill you at Newbury?" he asked her. "And in Hyde Park?"
"I saw a figure on the rhododendron walk," she said, "standing still and looking for me—I was in a tree. And then I came down the path and there you were. Why do you want me dead?"
His hand was over his eyes, which he had closed. "There is only one explanation," he muttered. He opened his eyes and looked at her. "But how the devil am I going to prove it?" He blinked and looked at her with more awareness in his eyes. "Lily, it was not I. I swear it. I do not wish you any harm. On the contrary. If you but knew…" He shook his head. "I have no proof… of anything. Please believe that it was not I."
And suddenly her suspicions seemed ridiculous to her. She could not imagine why she had ever entertained them. But then the idea that someone wanted her dead was ridiculous too. And one could hardly expect a prospective murderer to confess to the victim he had stalked for well over a month.
"For your own peace of mind," he said, "please believe me. Oh, Lily, if you just knew how I love you."
She recoiled in horror and pressed herself against the door so that the knob to which she clung dug painfully into her back. What did he mean? He loved her? In what way? But there was only one way, surely. Yet he was old enough to be her father. And he was dangling after Elizabeth—was he not?
His grace ran the fingers of one hand through his silvering hair and blew out his breath from puffed cheeks. "Forgive me," he said. "I have never been so inept. Go up to Kilbourne, Lily, and ask Elizabeth to join me here, if you will. And do me the honor of trusting me, I beg you."
She did not answer him. She turned and opened the door and fled through it. She had every reason to distrust him—now more than ever. What had he meant by saying that he loved her? And yet, when he had asked her to trust him, she had felt inclined to do just that.
***
The room was dark when he opened his eyes. He was not sure if it was the same night as the one during which a bullet had been dug out of his shoulder. He rather thought it was not. He was feeling weak—and his shoulder was stiff and as sore as hell. He turned his head and winced from the pain. She was lying beside him, her head turned toward him, her eyes open.
"If I am dreaming," he said, smiling at her, "don't tell me."
"Your fever broke two hours ago," she said. "You have been sleeping. But you are awake now. Are you hungry?"
"Thirsty," he said.
She was wearing only a thin shift, he could see when she got out of bed and crossed the room to pour him a glass of water. She held it while he sat up. It took him awhile to do so—he had refused her help. But she set a bank of pillows behind him after he had taken the glass. He leaned gingerly back against them after he had finished drinking.
"Civilian life makes one soft, Lily," he said. "If this had happened in the Peninsula, I would have been back on the battlefield by now."
"I know," she said.
He patted the bed beside him and took one of her hands in his when she sat down. "I suppose," he said, "no one was caught."
She shook her head.
"You must not fear," he told her—not that he could really imagine Lily cowering with prolonged terror. "It was one of those senseless and random acts of violence that always seem to happen to other people. He was some sort of madman, or else something had happened on that night to give him a grudge against the world and we happened to be there in his line of fire. It will not happen again."
"It has happened before," she said.
He did not for a moment misunderstand her. He felt himself turn cold. He had not, he realized, believed his own explanation—except that he had nothing to offer in its place. Why would anyone wish to shoot at either him or Lily?
"Someone has shot at you before?" It was too bizarre even to think about.
She shook her head. "Not shot," she said, and proceeded to tell him about the distant glimpse she had had on the rhododendron walk of a figure in a black cloak and the feeling she had had in the woods that she had spotted someone in a cloak again. She told him about the stone falling from the cliff as she had been scrambling on the rocks below. She told him about her near encounter with death in Hyde Park.
"Someone wants me dead," she said.
"Why?" He frowned. He wished he did not feel so damnably weak. He wished his brain was not working so sluggishly.
She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.
Someone wanted Lily dead and had almost got his wish on three separate occasions—once at Newbury.
He reached for her suddenly, hardly even noticing the screaming pain in his shoulder. He brought her down half across him and wrapped his arms about her, her head cradled on his left shoulder.
"No," he said, almost as if by his very will he could protect her, "it is not going to happen, Lily. I swear it is not. I failed once to save you. It will not happen again."
"You must forget about that ambush in Portugal," she said, her hand smoothing over the side of his face. "You saved my life at Vauxhall. The slate is wiped clean."
"No one is going to harm you," he said. "My word on it." Ridiculous word of a man who had not even known that her life had been threatened and almost lost on his own property.
She kissed the underside of his jaw. "You must rest again," she said, "or the fever will come back."
"Lie down with me, then," he said. "I do not want to let you out of my sight."
She came around the bed and lay down beside him beneath the covers. "Rest," she said. "I should not have said anything until you were strong again."
He took her hand in his and turned his head to look at her. "Let me make love to you?"
She hesitated, but she shook her head. "No," she said. "Not yet, Neville. It is not the right time."
She was calling him Neville again
, he noticed. And although she had said no, she had added not yet. He closed his eyes and smiled. Where the devil would he have found the energy if she had said yes?
"Besides," she said, "you are still too weak."
"Grrr," he said without opening his eyes.
She laughed softly.
She must have used up a great deal of energy nursing him. And for all her calm manner, she must have been exhausted by anxiety. She was fast asleep within minutes.
Neville lay beside her, staring upward. Someone wanted Lily dead. It made no sense. Why? What possible motive could anyone have? Who could possibly have any reason to resent her? Try as he would, he could think only of Lauren or Gwen. And the sort of resentment either of them might feel was certainly not the stuff from which murder came. Besides, they were far away, Gwen at Newbury, Lauren at her grandfather's. She had decided to go there quite on the spur of the moment soon after his departure for London, his mother had written, but had refused company for the journey.
Who else?
There was no one else.
What did Lily have that anyone could want, then? Lily had nothing. Her locket was the only thing of any value that she possessed, and no one would want to kill her for the sake of a gold locket when almost every mansion in Mayfair must be loaded down with far costlier jewels. Besides, until the evening of Vauxhall, she had not worn the locket since the Peninsula. There might have been money for her in Doyle's pack, but it would not have been a sum for which to kill. Besides, whatever it was had been burned.
His mind for some reason stuck on that idea. Perhaps because there were no other ideas.
Was it likely that Bessie Doyle would have burned the contents of that pack without sifting through them first? If there had been anything of value, would she not have kept it? Had she kept something apart from the bag itself? She seemed a woman of open enough honesty, though. He had not been given the impression that she was hiding anything—he still did not believe it.
She had been away from home when the pack arrived. Presumably her husband had received it. He had died in an accident before she returned home, leaving the pack and its contents spilled all over the floor in one corner of the cottage.
Almost as if he—or someone else—had been searching for something.
Without understanding the reason, Neville felt chilled and uneasy.
Sergeant Doyle had been trying to tell him something before his death. Something he ought to have told Lily and someone else. Something about the pack he had left back at the base. He had repeatedly told Lily that there was something inside it for her. Was it possible that William Doyle had found whatever it was?
And had been killed as a result?
But there was no way now of discovering the answers.
This was ridiculous, Neville thought impatiently. He would be writing Gothic novels before he was finished. But then the idea of three attempts being made on Lily's life was ridiculous too.
And then a memory popped into his head as if from nowhere—a detail he had not paid much attention to at the time. A letter had come, Bessie Doyle had told him, informing them of Sergeant Doyle's death. And William, who could not read, had taken the letter to the vicar to read to him. If the pack itself had contained a letter or a package with some writing, would he have taken that too to the vicar?
This was ridiculous stuff, Neville thought again.
Someone wanted Lily dead. Nothing was more senseless than that. But somehow, somewhere, there must be a reason for it.
He knew then what he was going to have to do.
He closed his hand more protectively about Lily's.
He was going to save her. If it cost him his life, if it cost him her, he would save her from terror and death. He would not stop looking until he found and destroyed whatever—or whoever—was threatening her.
Chapter 23
Lily was feeling depressed. Neville had made a quick recovery after coming out of his fever, as might have been expected of a seasoned soldier, and had returned to Kilbourne House two days later. He had called the day after that, but only briefly to announce that he was leaving town for a few days. He had not explained either where he was going or when he expected to return—if he ever did. His manner had been abrupt and impersonal, though he had taken Lily's hands in his when he took his leave. Elizabeth had been in the room too.
"Lily," he had said, "you will promise me, if you please, not to leave this house alone and not to leave any room in a house other than this without company."
He had waited for her answer. It had not seemed an appropriate moment to assert her independence. Anyway, she would have done as he suggested even if he had not asked it of her.
"I promise."
He had squeezed her hands, hesitated a moment, and then said more. "When you do leave this house," he had told her, "you may sense that you are being watched and followed. You must not be alarmed even though you will be right. There will be more than one of them—watching out for your safety."
Her eyes had widened, but she had not argued. It was no longer possible to persuade herself that she had been imagining any of the attacks on her life. And he had earned the right—with a bullet in his shoulder—to show an active concern for her safety.
She had nodded again and he had left after squeezing her hands once more and bending toward her to place one light kiss on her cheek.
Since then she had gone driving in the park twice at the fashionable hour with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, and she had been to one private dinner at the Duke of Anburey's and one select soiree at the home of one of Elizabeth's friends—a lady with a reputation as a bluestocking. And her lessons had resumed.
She had thrown herself into her studies with a frenzy of energy and determination. At last she seemed to have passed a frustrating plateau and could see progress again in almost all skills except embroidery.
But she was depressed. No progress had been made in apprehending the man who had tried on three separate occasions to kill her. She had kept quiet about her own groundless suspicions. There were no clues, no leads. But in the meantime she felt as if she lived in a cage. She could go nowhere alone even though the weather had been uniformly glorious and the early mornings had beckoned her with an almost irresistible invitation. And even when she was from home she felt the presence of her guards.
Her nerves were feeling frayed. Elizabeth had mentioned quite casually that she was glad to have learned that Lauren was going to her grandfather's in Yorkshire. A change of scene would be good for her.
When had she left?
"Did Gwendoline go with her?" Lily had asked.
But Lauren had intended going alone. Had she really gone to Yorkshire? Lily could not help asking herself. But it was absurd. Lauren, though she rode, was not the type to gallop astride across the open stretches of Hyde Park. And one could not somehow imagine her aiming and firing a pistol. Or thrusting a rock from its moorings on top of a cliff. But even so…
Worst of all, Neville was gone—just at the time when Lily had thought there was a new courtship between them and he was on the verge of declaring himself. She tried not to think about him. She had a life to live. But that life was so very dreary at present. She looked forward to the evening party Elizabeth had been planning for several weeks. It was expected to be a large gathering. Lily's fame had reached new heights after the incident at Vauxhall. Besides, invitations to Elizabeth's select parties were always coveted.
Lily dressed carefully for the occasion. She intended to enjoy herself and to acquit herself well. She was to be in the nature of a hostess since she lived here, and that was an entirely new venture for her.
"What do you think, Dolly?" she asked her maid before going downstairs. "Am I beautiful or am I beautiful?" She pirouetted, her arms held gracefully to the sides.
"Well, I don't know as how either word would describe you exactly, my lady," Dolly said, her head tipped to one side, one finger against her chin—Dolly had never stopped addressing her as i
f she were a countess. "If you was to ask me—which you are doing—I would say you look beautiful."
They both laughed, tickled at the sorry joke.
"You always look lovely in white," Dolly continued. "And lots of ladies would kill for all that fine lace. You need some jewelry, though."
"Shall I wear the diamonds or the rubies?"
They chuckled together again, and Lily fetched her locket from the drawer beside her bed. She had not worn it since Vauxhall—that very special occasion that had gone all awry. But she would not be superstitious. She touched a hand to it after Dolly had clasped it about her neck. Oh yes, he had been right, she thought, closing her eyes briefly. The locket made her papa seem closer and reminded her of her mama. But most of all it made her think of him taking her to the jeweler's to have the chain mended so that she could wear it again.
"He will come back, my lady," Dolly said.
Lily looked at her, startled. Her maid was nodding sagely.
"Gracious," Lily lied, "I was not even thinking of him, Dolly."
"Then how do you know which him I was talking about?" Dolly asked saucily, and went off into peals of laughter again.
Lily was still smiling as she went downstairs. The guests began arriving almost immediately, and she had no time for further thought or brooding. She concentrated on her posture and smiles, on listening and on saying the right things. It was not so very difficult after all, she was finding, to mingle with the ton. And most people were kind to her.
She was in the book room about an hour later with Elizabeth, the Marquess of Attingsborough, and two other gentlemen. Mr. Wylie had asked her in the drawing room if she had taken out a subscription to any of the libraries, and the marquess had informed him that Miss Doyle could not read but they would not hold that against her as she was certainly one of the loveliest young ladies in town. Lily had been unwise enough to protest indignantly that indeed she could read.
Joseph had grinned at her. "People who tell fibs, you know, Lily," he had said, "go straight to hell when they die."