One Night for Love (2 page)

“Her sudden appearance is going to come as a dreadful shock,” Mrs. Harris said. “Oh, foolish girl to have refused to delay even a few days while you wrote a letter. How will she
manage
, Gordon? She is so small and so frail and so—so
innocent
. I fear for her.”

“For as long as I have known Lily,” Captain Harris replied, “she has looked much the same, though admittedly she is thinner than she used to be. The appearance of fragility and innocence are largely illusory, though. We know that she has been through a great deal that would severely test the roughest and toughest of my men. But she must have experienced worse things that we can only imagine.”

“I prefer not even to try,” his wife said fervently.

“She has survived, Maisie,” he reminded her, “with her pride and her courage intact. And her sweetness too—she seems not to have been embittered. Despite everything there still appears to be more than a touch of innocence about her.”

“What will he do when she arrives?” she asked as they began to walk back to their hotel for breakfast. “Oh dear, he really ought to have been warned.”

Newbury Abbey, the country seat and principal estate of the Earl of Kilbourne in Dorsetshire, was an imposing mansion in a large, carefully tended park that included a secluded, fern-laden valley and a private golden beach. Beyond the gates of the park, Upper Newbury was a picturesque village of thatched, whitewashed houses clustered about a green with the tall-spired Church of All Souls and an inn with its taproom belowstairs and its assembly room and guest rooms abovestairs. The village of Lower Newbury, a fishing community built about the sheltered cove on which fishing boats bobbed at rest when not in use, was connected to the upper village by a steep lane, lined with houses and a few shops.

The inhabitants of both villages and the surrounding countryside were, on the whole, content with the quiet obscurity of their lives. But, when all was said and done, they were only human. They liked a spot of excitement as well as the next man or woman. Newbury Abbey supplied it on occasion.

The last grand spectacle had been the funeral of the old earl more than a year before. The new earl, his son, had been in Portugal at the time with Lord Wellington’s armies and had been unable to return in time for the somber event.
He had sold his commission and come home later to take up his responsibilities.

And now—in early May of 1813—the people of the Newburys were about to experience something far more joyful, far more splendid than a funeral. Neville Wyatt, the new Earl of Kilbourne, a young man of seven-and-twenty years, was to be married to his cousin by marriage, who had been brought up at the abbey with him and his sister, Lady Gwendoline. His father, the late earl, and Baron Galton, the bride’s maternal grandfather, had planned the match many years before.

It was a popular match. There could be no more handsome couple, the villagers were generally agreed, than the Earl of Kilbourne and Miss Lauren Edgeworth. His lordship had gone away to the wars—much against his father’s wishes, it had been rumored—as a tall, slender, blond, and handsome boy. He had returned six years later improved almost beyond recognition. He was broad where a man should be broad, slim where a man should be slim, and fit and strong and rugged. Even the scar of an old saber wound that slashed his face from right temple to chin, only narrowly missing both his eye and the corner of his mouth, seemed somehow to enhance rather than mar his good looks. As for Miss Edgeworth, she was tall and slim and elegant and as pretty as any picture with her dark shiny curls and eyes that some described as smoky and others as violet, though all were agreed that they were uncommonly lovely. And she had waited patiently for her earl to an almost dangerously advanced age—she was all of four-and-twenty.

It was all very proper and very romantic, everyone agreed.

For two days a steady stream of grand carriages had passed through the village and been duly gawked at by the more vulgar and peered at from behind parlor curtains by
the more genteel. Half the quality of England was coming for the occasion, it was said, and more titled persons than some of them had known existed in all of England, Scotland, and Wales combined. Rumor had it—though it was surely more fact than rumor since it had come directly from the first cousin of the brother-in-law of the aunt of one of the kitchen maids at Newbury—that there was not a bedchamber at the abbey that was not to be filled with guests. And that was a prodigious number of rooms.

A number of local families had received invitations—to the wedding itself and the breakfast that would follow it at the abbey, and to the grand ball that was to take place on the evening prior to the wedding. Indeed, no one could remember more elaborate plans. Even the humbler folk were not doomed to being mere spectators. While the wedding guests were partaking of their breakfast, the villagers would be enjoying a sumptuous repast of their own, to be served inside the inn at the earl’s behest and expense. There was to be dancing afterward about the maypole on the green.

The wedding eve was a time of heightened activity in the village. Tantalizing aromas of cooking wafted from the inn all day long in promise of the next day’s feast. Some of the women set the tables in the assembly room while their men hung colored streamers from the maypole and children tried them out and were scolded for tangling them and getting under everyone’s feet. Miss Taylor, spinster daughter of a former vicar, and her younger sister, Miss Amelia, helped the vicar’s wife decorate the church with white bows and spring flowers while the vicar set new candles in the holders and dreamed of the glory the morrow would bring him.

The next morning would see the convergence of all the illustrious guests and their carriages on the upper village. And there would be the earl to admire in his wedding finery, and the bride in hers. And—bliss of all blisses—there would
be the newly married couple to cheer as they emerged from the church doors with the church bells pealing out the glad tidings that there was a new young countess for the abbey. And then the feasting and frolicking would begin.

Everyone kept a wary eye on the western horizon, from which direction most weather approached. But there was nothing ominous to see. Today was a clear, sunny, really quite warm day. There was no sign of clouds building in the west. Tomorrow looked to be a fair day—as was only right and proper. Nothing was to be allowed to spoil the day.

No one thought to look east.

The stagecoach from London set Lily down outside the inn in the village of Upper Newbury. It was certainly a pretty place, she thought, breathing in the cool, slightly salty evening air and feeling somewhat restored despite her weariness and the stiffness of her limbs. It all looked very English to her—very pretty and very peaceful and rather alien.

But the dusk of evening was falling already and she still might have a way to go on foot. She had neither the time nor the energy to explore. Besides, her heart had begun thumping in her chest, making her slightly breathless. She had realized that she was very close now—at last. But the closer she came, the more uncertain she was of her welcome and of the wisdom of having made this journey at all—except that there had seemed to be no real alternative.

Lily turned and walked into the inn.

“Is Newbury Abbey far?” she asked the innkeeper, ignoring the near silence that fell over the taproom as she entered it. The room was full to overflowing with men, who all appeared to be in a festive mood, but Lily was not unaccustomed to such situations. Large numbers of men did not embarrass or frighten her.

“Two miles if it is anything to you,” the innkeeper said, leaning massive elbows on the counter and looking her up and down with open curiosity.

“In which direction?” she asked.

“Past the church and through the gates,” he said, pointing, “and follow the driveway.”

“Thank you,” Lily said politely, and turned away.

“If I was you, my pretty wench,” a man seated at one of the tables called to her, not unkindly, “I would knock on the vicarage door. Next to the church this side. They will give you a crust and a mug of water.”

“If you cares to sit down between me and Mitch ’ere,” someone else called with rough jocularity, “I’ll see that you ’as your crust and a mug of cider to go with it, my lovely.”

A hearty guffaw of laughter greeted his words as well as a few whistles and the sound of tables being pounded with the flat of the hand.

Lily smiled, unoffended. She was accustomed to rough men and rough ways. They rarely meant any harm or even any great disrespect.

“Thank you,” she said, “but not tonight.”

She stepped outside. Two miles. And it was very nearly dark. But she could not wait until morning. Where would she stay? She had enough money to buy herself a glass of lemonade and perhaps a small loaf of bread, but not enough to buy lodging for the night. Besides, she was very close.

Only
two miles.

The ballroom at Newbury Abbey, magnificent even when empty, was laden with yellow, orange, and white flowers from the gardens and hothouses and decked with white satin ribbons and bows. It was ablaze with the lights of hundreds of candles set into the crystal chandeliers overhead
and by their myriad reflections in the long mirrors that covered two facing walls. It was crowded with the cream of the
ton
as well as with members of the local gentry, all dressed in their finest for the wedding eve ball. Satins and silks shimmered and lace and white linen glowed. Costly gems glittered. The most expensive of perfumes vied with the scents of a thousand flowers. Voices were raised in an effort to be heard above others and above the strains of the music, provided by an entire orchestra.

Beyond the ballroom, guests strolled on the wide landing and ascended or descended the twin curved staircases to the domed and pillared great hall below. They strolled outdoors—on the balcony beyond the ballroom, on the terrace before the house, about the stone fountain below the terrace, along the graveled walks of the rock and flower garden to the east of the house. Colored lanterns had been strung about the fountain and hung from trees though the moonlight would have offered illumination even without them.

It was a perfect May evening. One could only hope, as several of the guests did aloud to Lauren and Neville as they passed along the receiving line, that tomorrow would be half as lovely a day.

“Tomorrow will be
twice
as lovely,” Neville replied each time, smiling warmly at his betrothed, “even if the wind howls and the rain pours and the thunder rolls.”

Lauren’s smile was unmistakably radiant. It seemed strange to Neville as he led her eventually into the first set of country dances that he had ever hesitated about making her his bride, that he had kept her waiting for six years while he worked off the restless rebellion of youth as an officer with the Ninety-fifth Rifles. He had advised her not to wait, of course—he had been far too fond of her to keep her dangling when he had been quite uncertain of his intentions toward her. But she
had
waited. He was glad of it now, humbled by
her patience and fidelity. There was a lightness about their impending marriage. And his affection for her had not dimmed. It had grown along with his admiration for her character and his appreciation of her beauty.