One Night for Love (5 page)

Neville threw the doors wide, and they stepped out into blinding sunshine and were met by a sea of faces and a chorus of excited, curious voices.

He ignored them. Indeed, he did not even see or hear them. He strode down the churchyard path, through the
gateway, between crowds of people who opened a way for him by hastily stepping back upon one another, and around to the gates into the park of Newbury Abbey.

He said nothing to the woman at his side. He could not yet trust the reality of what had happened, of what was happening, even though he held tightly to the apparition and could
feel
her small hand in his own.

He was remembering …

  
PART II
  
Memory: One Night for Love

  
3
  

L
ily Doyle is sitting alone on a small rocky promontory jutting out over a deep valley high in the barren hills of central Portugal. It is December and chilly.

She is wrapped in a shabby old army cloak that she has cut down to size. But it cannot hide the fact that she has been transformed over the past year or so from a lithe, coltish girl into a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. Her dark-blond hair waves loose down her back to below her waist. The wind is blowing it out behind her and hopelessly tangling it. Her slender arms, covered by the sleeves of her faded blue cotton dress, clasp her updrawn knees. Her feet, despite the cold, are bare. How can she feel the earth, how can she feel
life
, she once explained, if she is always shod?

Neville Wyatt, Major Lord Newbury, is reclining at his ease on the ground some distance behind her, a tin mug of hot tea cupped in both hands. He is watching her. He cannot see her face, but he can imagine its expression as she gazes down over the valley below, up at the cloud-dotted sky and the lone bird wheeling there. It will be dreamy, serene. No, those descriptions are too passive. There will be a glow in her face, a light in her eyes.

Lily sees beauty wherever she goes. While the men of the Ninety-fifth and the women who follow in its train curse the Iberian landscape, the weather, the endless marches, the dreary camps, the food, one another, Lily can always find something of beauty. But she is not resented for her eternal cheerfulness. She is a favorite with all who know her.

Until recently she has been a girl. She is a girl no longer.

Neville tosses the dregs of his tea onto the grass beside him and gets to his feet. He looks about, first at the company of men he has brought with him on a winter scouting expedition to make sure that the French are observing the unwritten truce of the season and are keeping behind their lines in Spain or else inside the border fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which the British forces will besiege as soon as spring conies.

He squints across to the hills opposite and down into the valley. All is quiet. He has not expected otherwise. If there had been any real danger, he would never have allowed Corporal Geary to bring his wife or Sergeant Doyle to bring his daughter. It is a routine mission and has been unexpectedly pleasant—this is normally the rainy season. Tomorrow they will return to base camp. But tonight they will camp where they are.

He can no longer resist. He strolls toward the promontory on which Lily sits and makes a show when he is standing beside her of shielding his eyes and sweeping his gaze over the valley again. She looks up and smiles. He is not quite sure when her looks and smiles started to make his heart skip a beat. He has tried to continue seeing her as the young daughter—the too-young daughter—of his sergeant. But he has been failing miserably of late. She is eighteen, after all.

“You have observed no French regiment tiptoeing stealthily along the valley floor, Lily?” he asks without looking down at her.

She laughs. “Two of them actually, sir,” she says. “One cavalry and one infantry. Was I supposed to have
said
something?”

“No, no.” He grins down at her, and there—it happens again. His heart turns over when he sees the eager delight
in her face. “It is not important. Not unless old Boney was with them.”

She laughs again. He wonders as he seats himself beside her, one leg stretched out, one arm draped over the raised knee of the other, if she knows the effect she has on men—on him. He is not by any means the only one who has noticed that she has become a woman.

“I suppose, Lily,” Neville says, “you can see some beauty in this godforsaken place?”

“Oh, not godforsaken,” she says earnestly, as he knew she would. “Even bare rocks have a certain majesty that inspires awe. But see?” She lifts one slender arm and points. “There is grass. There are even a few trees. Nature cannot be repressed. It
will
burst through.”

“They are sorry apologies for trees.” He looks to where she is pointing. “And the gardener at Newbury Abbey would consign that grass to the rubbish heap without a second thought.”

When she turns toward him and her eyes focus on his, he finds himself drawing a slow breath, half of him wanting to edge farther back away from her, the other half wanting to close the distance until …

“What is the garden
like
there?” she asks him, an unmistakable wistfulness in her voice. “Papa says there is nothing so lovely as an English garden.”

“Green,” he says. “A lush, vibrant green that cannot be adequately described in words, Lily. Grass and trees and flowers of every color and description. Masses of them. Especially roses. The air is heavy with their perfume in summer.”

He rarely feels nostalgia for home. Sometimes the realization makes him feel guilty. It is not that he does not love his mother and father. He does. But he was brought up to take over his father’s role as earl one day, and he was brought up to marry Lauren, his stepcousin, who was
raised at Newbury Abbey with him and was as dear to him as his sister Gwen was. The time came when he was stifled by his father’s loving plans for him, desperate for a life of his own, for action, adventure, freedom …

He has hurt his parents by becoming a military man. He suspects he has done more than hurt Lauren, having informed her as tactfully as he could when he left that he would not promise to be back soon, that he would not expect her to wait for him.

“How I would love to see them and smell them.” Lily has closed her eyes and is inhaling slowly as if she actually can smell the roses at Newbury.

“You will one day.” Without thinking, he reaches out to draw free with one finger a strand of her hair that has blown into the corner of her mouth. Her skin is smooth—and warm. The hair is wet. He feels raw desire stab into his groin and withdraws the finger hastily.

She smiles at him. But then she does something Lily rarely does. She; blushes and her eyes waver and then look away rather jerkily to the valley again.

She knows.

He is saddened by the thought. Lily has always been his friend, ever since Doyle became his sergeant four years ago. She has a lively mind and a delightful sense of humor and a natural refinement of manner despite the fact that she is illiterate. She has talked to him about her life, especially her years in India, where her mother died, and about people and experiences they have in common. She once argued with him when he found her on a battlefield after the fighting was over and scolded her for tending a wounded and dying French soldier. A man is simply a man,
a person
, she told him. She has always been uncowed by his rank even though, like her father and all the men, she calls him “sir.” He knelt beside her and gave the Frenchman a drink from his own canteen.

But things have changed. Lily has grown up. And he
desires her. She knows it. He will have to withdraw from the friendship because Lily is off limits to him as anything more than a friend. She is Sergeant Doyle’s daughter, and he respects Doyle even though they are from different social classes. But besides that, Lily is an innocent, and it is his duty to protect her honor, not take it. And she too, of course, is of a different class from his own. Such things do matter in the real world, unfortunately. Rebel as he still is, he has nevertheless not broken with his own world and never will. He has too much of a sense of duty for that. He is a gentleman, an officer, a viscount, a future earl.

He can never be Lily’s lover.

“Lily,” he asks, trying to cling to the friendship, to suppress the other, unwelcome feelings, “what do you look forward to? What will you do with your life? What are your dreams?”

She cannot stay with her father forever. What
does
the future hold for her? Marriage to a soldier chosen carefully for her by her father? No. He wishes he has not thought it.

She does not immediately answer. But when he turns his head to look at her again, he sees that she is gazing upward and that her wonderful dreamy smile is lighting her face again.

“Do you see that bird, sir?” He turns his head and glances at it. “I want to be like that. Soaring high. Strong. Free. Borne by the wind and friend of the sky. I do not know what will become of me. One day you will be gone, and one day …”

But her words trail off and her smile fades and what she has just said hangs in the air before them like a tangible thing.