One Night for Love (47 page)

He reached out both hands for hers, and she set her own in them.

“You will like him, Lily,” he said. “You will even love him, I daresay. He is a good man and he is your father. Go then and find yourself. And be happy. Promise me?”

She was biting on her upper lip, he could see.

He squeezed her hands and raised them one at a time to his lips. “I am not overfond of London,” he said. “I shall
be glad to return to Newbury for the summer. I daresay I will go tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps, if you think it appropriate, you will write me a letter there?”

“I cannot … write well enough,” she said.

“But you will.” He smiled at her. “And you will be able to read my reply too.”

“Will I?” she asked him. “Sometimes I wish—oh,
how
I wish I were Lily Doyle again and you were Major Lord Newbury and Papa …”

“But we are not,” he said sadly. “I want you to know something, though, Lily. Not so that you will have one more burden to shoulder, but so that you will know that some things are unchanged and unchangeable. I loved you when I married you. I love you today. I will love you with my dying breath. I have loved you and will love you during every moment between those time spans.”

“Oh. But it is not the right moment,” she said, her eyes clouding with some emotion he was unable to enter into. Poor Lily. So much had happened to her recently and she had borne it all with dignity and integrity.

“I will not prolong this visit,” he told her. “I will take my leave, Lily. Make my excuses to Elizabeth?”

She nodded.

They clung to each other’s hands for a few moments longer. But she was correct. It was not the right time. If she came back to him—
when
she came back to him—there must be no other need in her except to be with him for the rest of their lives.

He withdrew his hands gently, keeping the smile in his eyes, and left her without another word.

He was halfway back to Kilbourne House, striding unseeing along the streets, before he remembered that he had driven his curricle to Elizabeth’s.

  
PART V
  
A Wedding

  
25
  

L
ily gazed eagerly from the carriage window, not even trying to appear properly genteel. The village of Upper Newbury looked so very familiar. There was the inn, where she had descended from the stagecoach, and the steep lane leading down to the lower village. And there—

“Oh,
may
the carriage be stopped?” she asked.

The Duke of Portfrey, from his seat opposite, rapped on the front panel, and the carriage drew to an abrupt halt. Lily had the window down in a trice despite the coolness of the day and leaned her head through it.

“Mrs. Fundy,” she called. “How are you? And how are the children? Oh, the baby
has
grown.”

While the duke and Elizabeth exchanged glances of silent amusement, Mrs. Fundy, who had been gawking at the grand carriage with its ducal crest, smiled broadly, looked suddenly flustered, and bobbed a curtsy.

“We are all very well, thank you, my lady,” she said. “It is good to see you back again.”

“Oh, and it is good to
be
back again,” Lily said. “I shall call on you one day if I may.”

She beamed at Mrs. Fundy while the carriage lurched into motion again. She was not coming home, she reminded herself. Newbury Abbey was not home. Oh, but she
felt
as if it were. She had come to love Rutland Park, as her father had predicted she would. She had come to love him too, as she had been determined to do, though it had not proved difficult at all. She had even enjoyed their extended visit to Nuttall Grange, where she had won the
affection of her bedridden grandpapa and of her two aunts who were not really aunts at all—Bessie Doyle and her mama’s sister. She had even come to feel happy and settled and at peace with herself and the world. She had not once, since leaving London, dreamed the nightmare.

But Newbury Abbey, though she had not seen either the park or the house yet, felt like home.

“Oh, look!” she exclaimed in awe after the carriage had turned through the gates and was proceeding along the driveway through the forest. The trees were all glorious shades of reds and yellows and browns. A few of the leaves had fallen already and lay in a colorful carpet along the drive. “Have you ever seen anything more splendid than England in autumn, Father? Have you, Elizabeth?”

“No,” her father said.

“Only England in the springtime,” Elizabeth said. “And that is not
more
splendid, I declare, only
as
splendid.”

It had been springtime when Lily had come here first. It was autumn now—October. How much had happened in the months between, Lily thought. She could remember trudging along this driveway at night, her bag clutched in her hand …

She had written to him at the beginning of September, as he had asked her to do. She had asked Elizabeth if it was unexceptionable to do so—for her to write to a single gentleman. Elizabeth had answered, with a twinkle in her eye, that it was really not the thing at all. But Father, who had also been present at the time, had reminded them all that she was Lily and was quite adept at stretching every rule almost to the breaking point without ever doing anything shockingly improper—that was her chief charm, he had added with the smiling indulgence that had surprised her about him at first. And so she had written—with laborious care and round, childish handwriting. She was working on her penmanship but it was going to take time.

She was happy with her father, she had written. She was happy with Elizabeth’s company. She had been to Nuttall Grange and met her grandfather. She had put flowers on her mother’s grave. She hoped Lady Kilbourne was well and Lauren and Gwendoline too. She hoped he was well. She was his obedient servant.

He had written back to invite her and her father to come as guests to Newbury Abbey for the celebration of his mother’s fiftieth birthday in October. Elizabeth had already made arrangements to attend.

And so here they were. They were merely guests. But it felt like a homecoming. And Lily, looking suddenly with shining eyes at her father as the house came into view, saw that he understood and was a little saddened, though he smiled at her.

“Father.” She leaned forward impulsively and took his hand. “Thank you for agreeing that we might come. I do love you so.”

He patted her hand with his free one. “Lily,” he said, “you are one-and-twenty, my dear. Shockingly old to be still at home with your father. I do not expect to have you all to myself for much longer.”

But that was far too explicit a thing to say. She sat back, her smile fading a little. She would take nothing for granted. Several months had passed. A great deal had changed in her life and might have changed in his also. He had invited them out of courtesy. Doubtless there were to be many other guests too. She would not set great store by the fact that he had invited
her
.

If she told herself those foolish things often enough, perhaps she would come to believe them in the end.

Their carriage had been spotted. The great double doors opened as it approached, and people spilled out of the house—Gwendoline, Joseph, the countess, and … 
him
.

It was the marquess who opened the carriage door and
set down the steps. The duke was out almost before they had been lowered and turned to hand Elizabeth down. The countess came forward to hug her. Everyone was trying to talk at once.

Then someone leaned inside the carriage and reached out a hand toward Lily—and they might as easily have been alone. Everything else faded from sight and sound. He was gazing at her with shining eyes and tightly compressed lips. She was beaming foolishly back at him.

“Lily,” he said.

“Yes.” And suddenly she knew that all her anxieties had been very foolish indeed. “Hello, Neville.”

She set her hand in his.

There were a number of guests already at the house even though the birthday party was still one day away. Dinner was a crowded and noisy affair. His mother, Neville was pleased to note, had seated Portfrey at her right hand, Lily at her left. They were far distant from his place at the head of the table. Apart from those moments on the terrace during the afternoon, there had been scarcely a chance to exchange a word with her.

He did not really mind. He was content for the moment to observe, to watch her, to note the changes a few months had wrought in her. He remembered Elizabeth telling him at one time that new knowledge and skills did not change a person but merely added to what was already there. It was true of Lily. She was fashionable and poised and animated. Gone was the terrible sense of inadequacy that had tongue-tied her in genteel company—in female company, at least—when she was last at Newbury Abbey. She talked as much as anyone and more than many. She smiled and laughed.

But she was still Lily. She was Lily as she had been created to be—but free now to find joy in any company and in any surroundings.

He caught snippets of her conversation for the simple reason that she seemed somehow to be the focus of attention with everyone and there was often near silence along the length of the table as everyone leaned forward to hear her—when Joseph asked her how her reading skills were coming along, for example.