One Night for Love (35 page)

This situation, he supposed, really must be the sensation of the year. Perhaps of the decade. Deuce take it, but he should not have agreed to this. This was all wrong.

“Damn Elizabeth,” he said, still muttering.

“My dear Nev,” the marquess said languidly, “it was for just such occasions as this that the quizzing glass was invented.” He had his own to his eye and was haughtily surveying the gathering through it.

“So that I might see my embarrassment magnified?” Neville asked, clasping his hands at his back and forcing himself to look around. For a whole month he had craved even a single sight of Lily, and yet now he found that he was afraid of seeing her—afraid of seeing her paralyzed by the embarrassment that even he was finding almost intolerable.

“To your far left, Nev,” his cousin said.

Portfrey was immediately visible, and beside him, Elizabeth. There was a cluster of people making up their group—almost exclusively male, though there appeared to be a female somewhere in their midst.
Lily
? Being subjected to
a mob? Neville felt himself turn cold in much the way he had always done during battle if he saw one of his men beset by a multiple number of the enemy.

The mob had obviously not noticed him. Everyone else had. Everyone else watched him avidly—though he guessed he would not have caught a single one of them at it if he had turned his head to look—as he strode across the ballroom in the direction of the crowd.

“Steady, Nev,” the marquess said from the vicinity of his right shoulder. “You look as if you are about to lay about you with both fists. It would not be good
ton
, old chap. The scene would be lapped up, of course, with all the enthusiasm of a cat for cream and would make you notorious for a decade or so. But it would do the same for Lily, you see.”

Elizabeth saw them coming and smiled graciously. “Joseph? Neville?” she said. “How delightful to see you both.”

Good manners took over. Neville bowed, as did his cousin. They exchanged bows with the Duke of Portfrey, who had also turned to greet them.

“You left your mother well, I trust, Neville?” Elizabeth asked. “And Gwendoline and Lauren too?”

“All three,” Neville assured her. “They all send their regards.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Have you met Miss Doyle? May I present you?”

The gall of the woman, Neville thought. She was enjoying herself. The mob, he was aware, had fallen quieter. Several of them had melted away. And then stupidly, he was afraid to turn his head. It was physically difficult to do so. But he did it—rather jerkily.

He forgot that he was being observed by half the
ton
—and that she was too.

She was all in white—all delicate simplicity. She looked
like an angel. She wore a high-waisted, square-necked, short-sleeved satin gown with a netted tunic, and white fan and slippers and long gloves. Even the ribbon threaded through her hair was white—
her hair
! It had been cut short and curled softly about her face, making it look more heart-shaped, making her blues eyes look larger. She looked dainty and innocent and exquisitely alluring.

Lily. Ah, dear God, Lily! He had missed her every minute of every hour since she had left. But he had not realized quite how painfully until he saw her again.

“May I present the Marquess of Attingsborough and the Earl of Kilbourne to you, Lily?” Elizabeth said. “Miss Doyle, gentlemen.”

What farce was this? Neville wondered, not taking his eyes from her face. Her own eyes had widened at the sight of him and become fixed on him and she flushed—she had not been warned that he was to be here, then. But she did not lose her composure. Instead, she curtsied prettily.

“My lord,” she said, first to Joseph and then to him.

He found himself bowing formally, becoming an actor in the farce. “Miss Doyle?”

He had never called her that, he realized. He had always liked her and always respected her as Sergeant Doyle’s daughter, but he had always called her just Lily, as he would surely not have done if she had been the daughter of a fellow officer. He had always treated her, then, as less than a lady. Had he?

“Yes,” she was saying in response to some question Joseph had asked her. “Very much, thank you, my lord. Everyone has been most obliging and I have danced all three sets so far. His grace was kind enough to lead me into the first.”

How was she different—apart from her hair, which looked very pretty indeed, though Neville felt that he would mourn the loss of the wild mane once he had been
given a chance to think about it. She was different in another way—oh, in a thousand other ways. She had always been graceful. But tonight she seemed
elegantly
graceful. There was something too about her speech. It had always been correct—she had never spoken with a vulgar accent. But tonight there was a suggestion of refinement to her voice. The main difference, though, he realized without having to give the matter a great deal of thought, was that she did not look lost or bewildered as she had always looked at Newbury Abbey. She looked poised, at her ease. She looked as if she belonged here.

“Will you dance with me … Miss Doyle?” he asked abruptly. The sets were forming, he could see.

“I am sorry, my lord,” she informed him. “I have already promised this set to Mr. Farnhope.”

And sure enough, there was Freddie Farnhope, hovering and looking uncomfortable but determined to stand his ground.

“Perhaps the next,” Neville said.

“Thank you,” she said, placing her hand on Farnhope’s outstretched wrist—where had she learned to do that? “That would be pleasant, my lord.”

My lord
. It was the first time she had called him that. She was being formal and impersonal, as he had been with her. As if they had just met for the first time. Could Lily dance a quadrille? But it was clear to him from the first measure of music that she could. She danced it with competence and even grace—and with an endearing look of concentration on her face. As if, he thought, she had only recently learned the steps—as was doubtless the case.

Elizabeth and Lily, he understood then, had not been idle during their month in London.

The realization hurt in a strange way. He had carried on with his life at Newbury out of necessity, but he had pictured Elizabeth carrying on with hers while Lily hovered unhappily
and awkwardly in the background. All month he had been contriving ways of persuading her to come back to him, ways of making life at Newbury Abbey less daunting to her. Or, failing that, he had been trying to think of what kind of life and environment would suit a young woman who had lived a sort of nomadic existence away from England all her life. He had been determined to settle her happily somewhere. He had dreamed of being her savior, of setting her own happiness above his own, of doing what was right for her.

But all the time Elizabeth and Lily between them had been doing what he had never once considered—indeed, he had resisted his mother’s attempts to do so. They had been making her into a
lady
.

Surely she could not be happy, he thought, gazing at her sadly as she danced. Could she? Where was Lily, that happy, dreamy little fairy creature whom he had used to watch in the Peninsula with such a lifting of his spirits long before he fell in love with her? The nymph with the long hair and bare feet who had sat on the rock in Portugal, watching a bird wheeling overhead and dreaming of being borne on the wind? The bewitching woman who had stood in beauty beside the pool at the foot of the waterfall, telling him that she was not just watching the scene but
was
it?

She had become the dainty, elegant, alluring lady who was dancing the quadrille at a
ton
ball in London, smiling at Freddie Farnhope and concentrating on her steps.

“By Jove, Elizabeth,” Joseph was saying, using his quizzing glass again, “she has turned into a rare beauty.”

“Only to eyes attuned to ballroom beauties, Joe,” Neville said, more to himself than to his cousin. “She always has been a rare beauty.”

“Neville,” Elizabeth said, “you may escort me to the refreshment room, if you please.”

He offered her his arm and led her back toward the doors.

“Louisa must be very gratified,” she said as soon as they had moved to the relative quietness of the landing beyond the ballroom. “Her ball is even more of a squeeze than it usually is. Or perhaps it is just that most people have been crowding the ballroom itself instead of wandering off to the card room or the salon as they usually do.”

“Elizabeth,” he asked, “why are you doing this? Why are you trying to change Lily? I liked her just as she was.”

“Then you are being selfish,” she said. “Yes, the refreshment room is this way. I need a glass of lemonade.”

“Selfish?” He frowned.

“Of course,” she said. “Perhaps Lily was not happy with herself just the way she was. But there is no question of my
changing
her, Neville. When one learns, one adds knowledge and accomplishments to what one already is. One enriches one’s life. One grows. One does not change in fundamentals. I liked Lily as she was too. I like her as she is. She is still Lily and always will be.”

“She hated being at Newbury Abbey,” he said, “even though everyone tried to be kind to her. Even Mama was kind after she had recovered from the shock. She was quite prepared to take some of the burdens of being my countess off Lily’s shoulders. But Lily hated it anyway—you knew that. She must hate this. I will not have her unhappy, Elizabeth, or bullied into doing what she does not want to do or into being who she does not want to be. I will settle her somewhere—in some country village, I believe—where she can live her own quiet life.”

“Perhaps it is what she will choose eventually,” Elizabeth said. “But perhaps not. Perhaps she will choose employment of some kind—even possibly as my permanent companion. Or perhaps she will marry despite her lack of fortune. There are any number of gentlemen this evening who appear fascinated by her.”

“She will not marry,” he said between his teeth. “She is
my wife.
”

“And you will challenge to pistols at dawn any man who feels inclined to dispute that fact,” she said cheerfully as they entered the refreshment room. “Lemonade, if you please, Neville.”

She was smiling when he came back to her, glass in hand.

“Thank you,” she said before sipping her drink and resuming their conversation. “The point is, Neville, that Lily is twenty years old. In two months time she will be of age. Perhaps you should begin to consider not what you wish for her future but what
she
wishes.”

“I want her to be
happy
,” he said. “I wish you had known her in the Peninsula, Elizabeth. Despite the conditions of her life she was the happiest, most serene person I have ever known. I want to give back to her that life of simple pleasures.”

“But you cannot,” she said. “Even apart from the fact that you have no say in what she does, a great deal has happened to her since those days—the death of her father, marriage to you, captivity, arrival in England, all that has happened since. She cannot go back. Allow her to go forward and find her own way.”

“Her own way,” he said with more bitterness than he had intended. “Without me.”

“Her own way,” she repeated. “With or without you, Neville. Ah. We are about to be joined by Hannah Quisley and George Carson.”

Neville turned with a polite smile.

  
19
  

T
he Duke of Portfrey was not in the habit of gracing fashionable ballrooms during the Season. He was not by any means a hermit, but balls, he was fond of remarking to his friends, were for young sprigs in search of wives or flirts. At the age of two-and-forty he was not interested in such public pursuits—besides there was Elizabeth, with whom he certainly had a relationship though its exact nature had never been defined.

But he was in attendance at the Ashton ball because of a peculiar fascination with Lily—and because Elizabeth had asked for his escort and it would not have occurred to him to deny her when she made so few demands on him. He had danced the first set with Lily, the second with Elizabeth—and had then been compelled to add an edge of frost to his habitually impeccable manners in order to dissuade his hostess from presenting him to a whole host of other young ladies she was sure would be delightful dancing partners.