One Night for Love (9 page)

Lily had never seen anything half so grand in her life—except perhaps the great hall she had glimpsed the evening before.

“I shall have food and drink brought up immediately,”

Neville said, striding across the room to pull on a tasseled strip of silk beside the bed, “and then I shall have hot water carried up to the dressing room for a bath. It should be possible to retrieve your bag, but for now I am sure a nightgown and a dressing gown can be found for you. You must sleep then, Lily. You look weary.”

Yes, she was tired, she supposed. But weariness had been a condition of her life for so long that she hardly recognized it for what it was. She knew she was hungry, though she was not at all sure she would be able to eat. His tone was brisk and formal. It was not at all the joyful homecoming she had imagined—or the horrified rejection she had feared. He knew what had happened to her, yet he had brought her to the house, to this grand apartment.

“Is this your room?” she asked him. She did not know. what to call him. “Neville” seemed too familiar, even though she was his wife. She would have felt comfortable calling him “sir,” but he was no longer an officer and she was no longer a part of his regiment. She could not bring herself to call him “my lord.” And so she called him nothing.

“It is the countess’s room,” he said. He nodded toward a door in the room she had not yet seen beyond. “You will find the dressing room through there.”

The countess? The countess would be his wife or his mother. He would hardly have put her in his mother’s room. That tall lady at the church was to have been his wife, his countess. But he had been unable to marry her because he was already married to herself, to Lily. That made her … the countess. Did it? She really had not thought of it before. She had been startled when her French captors had called her “my lady” and she had realized that she was Viscountess Newbury. But that had been a long, long time ago.

“It is to be my room?” she asked. “I am to stay, then?” She had never really thought beyond the end of the journey.
She had known deep down that an earl would surely rid himself of a sergeant’s daughter at the slightest excuse—and the Earl of Kilbourne would have an excuse that was hardly slight. But she had tried to focus on the fact that the Earl of Kilbourne was also Major Lord Newbury.
Her
Major Newbury, the man she had always admired, trusted, adored. Neville. Her husband. Her lover. Her love. But she knew, standing in the countess’s room, that she had never really expected a happily ever after. Only some sort of completion.

“Lily.” He stepped toward her, and she could see that he was as uncertain and bewildered as she. More so, perhaps. He had had no warning of what was to happen to him this morning. “Let us not look beyond the moment. You are alive. You are here. And you are in the countess’s room. To eat and to rest. Do both before we speak further.”

“Yes. All right.” Yes, she wanted oblivion more than anything else in this world. She did not know how to stay on her feet any longer, how to keep her eyes open, how to focus her mind on anything more than its need for sleep.

The door opened behind Lily and she turned to see a young girl in crisp black dress and white apron and mob cap, saucer-eyed and curtsying. Neville gave her instructions while Lily walked over to the window and gazed out with heavy-lidded eyes. He was ordering enough food to feed an army. And a hot bath—what an unbelievable luxury!

He came to stand behind her after the maid had left. “I will stay until the tray arrives,” he said. “I shall leave you alone then while you eat. There will be water and night clothes awaiting you in the dressing room by the time you have finished. Then you must lie down and sleep. I shall come back for you later. We will talk then.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, and immediately felt foolish.

She wondered suddenly if she had merely imagined that once upon a time, for one brief night, there had been a
glorious flowering of love—strangely mingled with deep grief for her father. Both emotions had been shared with this man, this stranger who was her husband. Love—or what sometimes went by the name of love—had been so very ugly since that night that it was hard to believe it ever could be beautiful. But it had been. Once. Once in her life. With him—with Major Lord Newbury. With Neville.

It had been the most beautiful experience of her life. All the love she had stored secretly in her heart since she first knew him had culminated in that night of carnal passion. And she had believed—she had
felt
—that it was a shared love, though she had learned since that men were capable of passion without feeling one iota of love. They could even murmur endearments.

Had she imagined that Neville had felt both that night? In her naivete had she imagined it—or in the need she had felt during the months following that night to believe that once, for one short night, she had loved a man who had loved her in return?

The tray arrived while she was lost in memory and was set down on an elegant little table. Neville drew back a chair, and when Lily went toward it, he seated her and pushed the chair closer. There really
was
enough food for an army. She looked hungrily at a couple of boiled eggs while he poured her a cup of tea.

“I will leave you in privacy now,” he said then, taking her right hand in both of his. “I can’t express to you how glad I am that you did not die, Lily. I am glad you survived everything else.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers before turning and leaving the room and closing the door quietly behind him.

Was
he glad? she wondered, staring after him. Apart from the fact that he was not a cruel man and would not wish for her death, was he
glad
? That she had survived, yes, perhaps. But that she had come back into his life to
complicate it? Was he glad that it had happened through some ghastly coincidence on his wedding day to another woman?

How could he possibly be glad? Especially knowing the truth of what had happened to her.

Who was his intended bride? Lily wondered. She was beautiful Lily had not had a good look at her, and her face had been covered by the veil of her bonnet, but she had given an impression of grace and elegance and beauty. Did he love her? Did she love him? Were they perfect for each other? Had they been minutes away from a happily ever after?

But such thoughts were pointless. And it was impossible to think when every thought was like a leaden weight pressing down on her eyelids. Lily picked up the cup of tea and sipped the warm liquid. She closed her eyes in sheer bliss.

If only, she thought, she had been able to recover her father’s pack after she had returned to Lisbon. But far too much time had elapsed. It had probably been sent back to England, she was told eventually, to some surviving relative, unless it had been simply lost or destroyed. Papa had had a father and brother living somewhere—was it in Leicestershire? Lily did not know for sure, and she had never met them. Her father had been estranged from them. But he had told her over and over again as she grew up that if he were to die suddenly she must take his pack to a senior officer and have him look at the package inside. It was her key to a secure future, he had always said, just as the gold locket she had always worn was her talisman.

She supposed her father had been saving some of his wages for her all his life. She had no idea how much money there might have been in the packet. It probably would not have been enough to last long, but it might at least have got her back to England and into some decent
employment. If she had been able to find it, she need not have come here to Newbury Abbey. Though she would have done so anyway. The only thought that had sustained her through her two captivities had been the thought of
him
and the hope of seeing him again. She had not really thought of the impossibility of it all until recently, after her arrival in England. And especially last evening, when she had seen and then entered his home and his world.

She was his wife—but she was also by strict definition an adulteress.

If she had found the pack and the money, she would have had an alternative now …

But just as she had finished eating one of the eggs and was biting into her second piece of toast, Lily closed her eyes tightly and fought a wave of panic. Her locket! It was in her missing bag. She had not worn it for a long time, as the chain had broken when Manuel ripped it from her neck. But by some miracle he had returned it to her when he released her. She had not let it out of her possession since—until this morning.

Would Neville find her bag? She would have rushed out herself in search of it, but she did not know that she would be able to find her way out of the house. And she might meet people on her way. No, she would have to trust him to find it for her.

But the thought of losing the last link with her father brought on a wave of nausea, and she could eat no more.

She got to her feet and crossed to the dressing room door, swaying with exhaustion as she did so. She turned the ornate handle gingerly.

  
5
  

T
he Countess of Kilbourne had taken charge of a very embarrassing situation, having recovered somewhat from her shock at the church. The house guests would be coming for breakfast. She had given directions that it was to be served in the ballroom, as planned. As many obvious signs as possible that it had been intended as a
wedding
breakfast were to be removed—the white bows and the wedding cake, for example.

The ballroom was by no means full, but it was full enough for all that. Several of the guests, the countess included, had changed out of their wedding finery and wore clothes more suited to early afternoon. Despite what they might have talked about in and outside the church and during their return to the abbey, good manners prevailed at breakfast. Polite conversation was the order of the day. Any stranger wandering into the ballroom would scarcely have guessed that the meal in progress was to have been a wedding breakfast but the wedding itself had met with catastrophic disaster—or that both family members and guests were close to bursting with curiosity to know more.

The countess was composed and gracious. She set herself to conversing with her neighbors at table on a variety of topics and showed no outer sign of the acute distress she was feeling. Private and personal concerns must wait. She was not the Countess of Kilbourne for nothing.

This was the scene that greeted Neville’s eyes when he entered the ballroom. But the artificiality of it all became apparent when an immediate hush fell on the gathering
and all eyes turned his way. He became horribly aware of the fact that he had not changed
his
clothes—he had not thought of doing so. He was a bridegroom without a bride. He stood where he was just inside the ballroom doors and clasped his hands at his back.

“I am delighted to see that the meal is proceeding,” he said. He looked about him, meeting the eyes of friends and relatives, and noting without surprise that there was no sign of either Lauren or Gwen. “I shall not disturb you for long. But naturally I owe you all a little more explanation than I was able to give at the church this morning. Indeed, I cannot recall what I said there.”

The Marquess of Attingsborough, who had risen from his seat, perhaps to indicate to Neville the empty chair at his side, sat down again without saying anything.

Neville had not planned the speech. He did not know quite how much or how little to tell. But there was really no point in withholding anything. His mother was staring at him with blank-faced dignity. His uncle at her side was frowning. There were several servants present, including Forbes, the butler. But the servants had a right to know too, Neville supposed. He would not wait to dismiss them before speaking.

“I married Lily Doyle a few hours after her father, my sergeant, was killed,” he said. “I married her to fulfill a dying promise to him to give her the protection of my name and rank in the event that she was captured by the French. The following day the company I led was indeed ambushed. My … wife was killed, or so both I and the lieutenant who reported to me afterward believed. I was carried back behind British lines with a severe head wound. But Lily survived as a French captive.” Her captivity by the Spanish partisans he had no intention of sharing with anyone. “She was treated honorably as my wife and finally released. She returned to England with Captain
and Mrs. Harris and came on alone to Newbury Abbey to be reunited with me.”