One Night for Love b-1

by Mary Balogh

  "Thank you," she said. She smiled tremulously. "It does not need to be said, because there was no guilt, Neville. But I know you need to hear it. I forgive you for failing to protect me, for neglecting to come in search of me, for coming home to England and proceeding with your life. You are forgiven."

  He drew her head beneath his chin and massaged her scalp through her hair with light fingers. He gazed into the fire.

  Strange night, he thought. Almost like the first night they spent together, ugliness and grief on the one hand, love and bliss of physical passion on the other, weaving themselves into some fabric called life. Something that despite everything was worth living and fighting for. As long as there was love—that indefinable element that gave it all a meaning and a value deeper than words.

  It had been strangely right to confront the final painful barrier tonight of all nights. To recognize openly together that the path to this night and this cottage had been a long and a difficult one. But to understand that together they could ease each other's burdens and offer each other pardon and peace as well as love and passion.

  "Lily." He kissed her on the mouth. "Lily—"

  She pressed herself to him and clung tightly.

  It was a fierce loving, without foreplay, without any great gentleness. It was the yearning of two bodies to reach beyond desire, beyond pleasure, beyond simple sexual passion to the very core of love. And blessedly they found it there in the cottage beside the pool and the waterfall, their final cries wordless, their sated bodies tangled together on the hard floor among blankets and cloaks and other garments.

  They slept.

  ***

  Neville was still fast asleep and awkwardly tangled up in the blankets after Lily had risen to her feet, straightened her clothes, fluffed up her hair as best she could, and drawn on her cloak. She was tempted to leave him there, but the fire had died down and soon enough the cold would wake him anyway. She nudged him with one foot.

  He grunted.

  "Neville," she said, and watched, unsurprised, as he came fully awake and sat up all in one moment—he had been an army officer, after all. "Neville, in another few hours we are going to have to go back to the house and look fresh and tidy and innocent enough to face Father and your mother and everyone else. We are going to have to tell them our news and allow them to take everything else out of our hands. Are we going to waste these precious few hours?"

  He grinned and reached out an arm for her. "Now that you mention it—" he began.

  But she clucked her tongue. "I did think of bathing," she admitted, "but I suppose the water would be rather chilly."

  He grimaced.

  "So we will go walking on the beach instead," she told him. "No, running."

  "We will?" He stretched. "When we could be making love instead?"

  "We will go running on the beach," she said firmly. "In fact"—she grinned cheekily at him—"the last one to the rock and up to the very top of it is a shameful slug-a-bed."

  "A what?" he said, shouting with laughter.

  But she was gone, into the other room, out through the door, leaving it wide open, leaving behind her only an echo of answering laughter.

  Neville grimaced again, sighed, cast one longing look at the dying fire, chuckled, jumped to his feet, gathering his clothes about him as he did so, and went in pursuit.

  Chapter 27

  Lily had not judged the Duke of Portfrey quite correctly. He wanted a wedding for her at Rutland Park, it was true. She was his daughter, and he had finally found her and brought her home where she belonged. It was from home that he would give her away to the man who had won his blessing to be her husband.

  But he left the choice to the size of wedding to Lily herself. If she wanted the whole ton there, then he would coerce every last member to come. If, on the other hand, she preferred something more intimate, with only family and friends in attendance, then so be it.

  "The whole ton would not fit into the church," she told him. It was an ancient Norman church, set on a hill above the village, a narrow path winding upward through the churchyard to its arched doorway. It was not a large church.

  "They will be squeezed in," he assured her, "if it is what you wish."

  "Are you sure you would not mind," she asked him, "if I were to choose a wedding with just relatives and some friends?"

  "Not at all." He shook his head. "I know, Lily, that this wedding will take second place to your first. But I want it to be a precious second place. Something you will remember fondly for the rest of your life."

  She threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly. "It will be," she said. "It will be, Father. You will be there this time, and Elizabeth will be there, and all of Neville's family. Oh, it will not take second place, I promise you, but an equal place."

  "A smaller, more intimate wedding it will be then," he told her. "It is what I hoped you would choose, anyway."

  It was not as small or as intimate as his own wedding to Elizabeth, though, which took place at Rutland at the beginning of November, with only Lily and the duke's steward in attendance. And yet nothing, he said afterward, could possibly have made the day happier for him or his bride.

  Elizabeth, always beautiful, elegant, dignified, serene, glowed with a new happiness that put the bloom of youth back into her cheeks. She threw herself with eager energy into the plans for the wedding of her stepdaughter and her favorite nephew.

  ***

  And so on a crisp, frosty, sunny morning in December, Neville waited before the altar of the church in Rutland for his bride to make her appearance. The church was not quite full, but everyone who was important in his life and Lily's was there, with the exception of Lauren, who had insisted despite all their protests on staying at home. His mother was there, sitting in the front pew with his uncle and aunt, the Duke and Duchess of Anburey. Elizabeth, the Duchess of Portfrey, was there in the pew across the aisle from them. All the uncles and aunts and cousins were there. Captain and Mrs. Harris had come as well as a number of Portfrey's relatives. Baron Onslow had got up from his sickbed in Leicestershire in order to attend his granddaughter's wedding.

  And Joseph, Marquess of Attingsborough, was at Neville's side as his best man.

  There was a stirring of movement at the back of the church and a brief glimpse of Gwen as she stooped to straighten the hem of the bride's gown. The bride herself stayed tantalizingly out of sight.

  But not for long. Portfrey stepped into view, immaculate in black and silver and white, and then the bride herself stepped up beside him and took his arm. The bride, in a white gown of classically simple design that shimmered in the dim light of the church interior, her short blond curls entwined with tiny white flowers and green leaves.

  There was a sigh of satisfaction from those gathered in the pews.

  But Neville did not see a bride dressed with elegance and taste and at vast expense. He saw Lily. Lily in her faded blue cotton dress, draped in on old army cloak that was still voluminous even though she had cut it down to size. Lily with bare feet despite the December chill, and unfettered hair in a wild mane down her back to her waist.

  His bride.

  His love.

  His life.

  He watched her coming toward him, her blue eyes steady on his and looking deep into him. And he knew in that moment that she was not seeing a bridegroom in wine velvet coat with silver brocaded waistcoat and gray knee breeches and crisp white linen. He knew she was seeing on officer of the Ninety-fifth, shabby and dusty in his green and black regimentals, his boots unpolished, his hair cropped short.

  She smiled at him and he realized that he was smiling back. Portfrey was placing her hand in his and turning to take his seat beside Elizabeth.

  Neville was back in the church at Rutland Park with his elegantly, expensively dressed bride. His beautiful Lily. Beautiful in her wildness, beautiful in her elegance.

  "Dearly beloved, we are gathered…"

  He turned his attention to the service that would j
oin them together in the eyes of church and state, just as that service in the hills of central Portugal had joined them forever in their own hearts.

  ***

  Cold air met them when they stepped out of the church. But it was the coldness of a perfect winter's day, the sort of coldness that whipped color into cheeks and a sparkle into eyes and energy into muscles.

  Lily laughed. "Oh, dear," she said.

  She really had not noticed as they had walked up the aisle after signing the church register, smiling to right and to left at relatives and friends, who beamed back at them, that a significant number of the congregation, especially its younger members, had disappeared. It was obvious now. There they were on either side of the winding churchyard path, their hands loaded with ammunition.

  Neville was laughing too. "Where the devil," he asked irreverently, "did they come by all those live flowers in December?"

  "Father's hothouses," Lily guessed. "But they are no longer flowers. They are petals."

  Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All in the clutches of cousins who waited gleefully to pelt the bride and groom with them.

  "Well," Neville said, eyeing the open carriage that was to take them back to the house for the wedding breakfast, "we must not disappoint them and walk sedately as if we did not mind being covered with debris, Lily. We had better run for it."

  He grasped her hand tightly, and laughing gaily they ran the gauntlet down the winding path while the cousins cheered and whooped and had the air raining multicolored petals on their hair and their bridal clothes.

  "Sanctuary," Neville said, still laughing when they reached the carriage. He handed Lily inside and reached out to wrap about her shoulders the white, fur-trimmed cloak that awaited her there. "Uh-oh."

  Lily snuggled into her petal-lined cloak while Neville stood up in the carriage and shook one fist at the merry wedding guests. They were all there now, sober adults as well as riotous youngsters. The countess had been weeping, Lily saw, and she stretched out a hand to her mother-in-law and kissed her when she came closer. She kissed Elizabeth, who was also dewy-eyed, and hugged her father, who was pretending that the cold had set his eyes to watering.

  Neville, still standing in the carriage, was hurling a shower of coins in the direction of a large group of villagers gathered to observe the spectacle. The children among them shrieked and scampered to pick up the treasure.

  And then the carriage was in motion, and both Lily and Neville became aware that it was dragging a whole arsenal of ribbons and bows and bells behind it.

  "One would think," Neville said, settling beside Lily, "that the cousins had nothing better to do with their time."

  "You have a petal on your nose," she said, laughing gleefully and reaching out to remove it.

  But he captured her hand as soon as she had done so and carried it to his lips. His own laughter had faded. She gazed into his eyes, her own glowing.

  "Lily," he said. "My wife. My countess."

  "Yes." She opened her hand to cup his cheek. They had turned a bend in the country lane that would take them back to the house. Church and wedding guests and villagers had disappeared from sight. "I have changed identity so many times in the past two years that I have not known quite who I am or who I ought to be."

  "I know." He set his hand over the back of hers. "And now you have found yourself at last? Who are you, Lily?"

  "I am Lily Doyle," she said, "and Lady Frances Lilian Montague. And Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne. I am all three."

  "You sound confused still," he said wistfully.

  But she shook her head and smiled at him, all her happiness shining from her eyes.

  "I am all the persons I have ever been," she said, "and all the experiences I have ever lived. I do not have to make choices. I do not have to deny one identity in order to claim another. I am who I am. I am Lily." Her smile became gay. "Also known as your wife."

  He turned his head, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to her wrist. "Yes," he said. "That is exactly who you are. You are Lily. The woman I love. I do love you, Lily."

  "I know." She bent her head closer to his. "You loved me enough to let me go in order that I might find myself."

  "And you have come back to me."

  "Yes," she said. "Because I did not have to, Neville. Because I could come freely and offer myself freely. And because I love you. I always have. From the first moment I saw you talking to Papa. You were my hero then. You became my friend after that. And then my love. And now you are even more than that. You are the person I can meet as an equal and love as an equal."

  "Have I told you," he asked her, smiling slowly at her, "what a beautiful bride you make, Lily?"

  "Oh," she said, "you have Elizabeth to thank for that. She is the one who convinced me that this gown was the one and that I would look better with just flowers in my hair than with a bonnet and veil."

  "I meant," he said, "in your blue cotton dress with your army cloak and nothing in your hair at all. Not even a hairpin."

  "Oh." She bit her lip. "What a lovely thing to say. And you were never more handsome than in your well-worn regimentals. Neville, how fortunate we are to have two such wedding days to remember."

  "Uh-oh," he said suddenly. He was looking ahead along the lane while Lily was still looking into his face. She turned her head sharply.

  "Oh, dear," she said.

  Every servant from Rutland Park, she would swear, from the butler on down to the lowliest undergardener, was out on the terrace. They were neatly lined up in order of rank to greet the newlyweds. They were also—every last one of them—armed to the teeth with flower petals.

  Neville set an arm about Lily's shoulders and bent his head to look into her face. She gazed back at him. Their lovely interlude of privacy was over, it seemed. At least for now.

  "Until tonight, my love," he said.

  "Yes," she said wistfully. "Until tonight."

  They turned laughing faces toward the servants and the floral ambush awaiting them.

  Table of Contents

  PART I

  PART II

  PART III

  PART IV

  PART V

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 5c7fa150-d8b2-41fe-9728-6e1ea835d54e

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  Document creation date: 1.4.2011

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  Document authors :

  Mary Balogh

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