One Night for Love

by Mary Balogh

  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

  The 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.

  Two or three of his acquaintances had teased him with threats of matchmaking mamas setting their caps at him once more—their interest had waned a number of years ago as his age and his indifference to feminine wiles and lures had gradually outweighed the attractions of his rank and wealth and enduring good looks.

  “They would be better served to keep their caps firmly tied beneath their chins,” his grace replied with languid good humor. But good nature deserted him when Mr. Calvin Dorsey wandered up to him after Neville had led Elizabeth away to the refreshment room. The duke ignored him and engaged in a casual perusal of the room through his quizzing glass. Dorsey was his dead wife’s first cousin and heir to her father, Baron Onslow. His grace had never liked him, neither had his wife.

  “Portfrey? Your servant,” Mr. Dorsey said pleasantly, sketching a careless bow. “I arrived late. But can gossip possibly have the right of it? Did the Duke of Portfrey lead the sergeant’s daughter into the opening set at the grandest squeeze of the Season?” He shook his head, chuckling. “The lengths to which some men are prepared to go in order to curry favor with their mistr—” But he cut himself off with one finger to his lips. “With their particular friends.”

  “Congratulations, Dorsey,” his grace said without deigning to look at his companion. “You still have a talent for avoiding by half a word having a glove slapped in your face.”

  Mr. Dorsey chuckled good humoredly and said nothing more for a while as he watched the patterns of the dance unfold. He was of an age with the duke, but time had been somewhat less kind to him. His once-auburn hair had grayed and thinned and he looked by far the older of the two. But he was a man of good humor and a certain charm. There were not many people to whom he spoke with a deliberately barbed tongue. The Duke of Portfrey was one of those few.

  “I have been told that you called at Nuttall Grange a couple of weeks ago,” he said after a while.

  “Have you?” His grace bowed to a buxom dowager with gorgeously nodding hair plumes who passed in front of them.

  “A little out of the way of anywhere of any importance to you, was it not?” Mr. Dorsey asked.

  For the first time the duke turned his glass on his companion before lowering it and regarding him with the naked eye.

  “I may not pay my respects to my father-in-law without being quizzed by his nephew?” he asked.

  “You upset him,” Mr. Dorsey said. “He is in poor health and it is my business to see that he is kept quiet.”

  “Since you have been waiting for twenty years with barely concealed impatience to succeed to Onslow’s title and fortune,” his grace said with brutal bluntness, “I would have thought it more in your interest to encourage me to, ah, upset him, Dorsey. But you need not fear—or hope. I merely sent up my card as a courtesy since I was in the neighborhood. I neither expected nor wished to be received. There was never any love lost between Onslow’s family and my own even before Frances and I defied both with our secret marriage. There was even less after her death and my return from the West Indies.”

  “Since we are into plain speaking,” Mr. Dorsey said, “you might oblige me by explaining why you were snooping around at the Grange when my uncle was too ill to send you packing.”

  “Snooping?” His grace had his glass to his eye again. “Taking tea with the housekeeper is snooping, Dorsey? Dear me, the English language must have different meanings in Leicestershire than anywhere else I have ever been.”

  “What did you want with Mrs. Ruffles?” Mr. Dorsey demanded.

  “My dear fellow,” the duke said faintly. “I wished to know—I felt a burning desire to discover, in fact—how many sets of bed linen she keeps in the linen closet.”

  Mr. Dorsey flushed with annoyance. “I do not like your levity, Portfrey,” he said. “And I would warn you to stay away from my uncle in future if you know what is good for you.”

  “Oh, I certainly know what is good for me,” his grace said, the languidness back in his voice. “You will excuse me, Dorsey? A pleasure to converse with one of my wife’s relatives again. It has been a long time, has it not, given the fact that we rather pointedly ignored each other at Newbury Abbey a month or so ago. One can only hope it will be at least as long again before the next time.” And he strolled away to exchange civilities with the dowager who had passed them a few minutes before.

  What Mrs. Ruffles had been able to do was answer the Duke of Portfrey’s questions rather satisfactorily. She had had to think very carefully because the events about which he inquired were twenty years and more in the past. But yes, there had been a Beatrice employed at the Grange. The housekeeper particularly remembered, now she thought about it, because the girl had been dismissed for impertinence, though not to Miss Frances, if she recalled correctly. Why had she thought it might have been Frances, the duke asked. Well, Mrs. Ruffles told him, remembering clearly then, because Beatrice had been Miss Frances’s personal maid and Miss Frances had been fond of her and very annoyed with her cousin. The housekeeper had frowned in thought, Yes, that was it. It was Mr. Dorsey to whom Beatrice had been insolent, though she did not remember, probably had never known, exactly what the girl had said to him or done.

  Beatrice had left Nuttall Grange a year or more—oh yes, surely more—before Miss Frances’s death, Mrs. Ruffles believed. She did not know where the maid had gone. But she had a sister still living in the village, she had added almost as an afterthought.

  His grace had called upon the sister, who, once she had recovered from the flusters and the almost incoherent babble that had succeeded them, had been able to inform him that Beatrice had gone away to stay with t
heir aunt and had then married Private Thomas Doyle of the army, whose father had been head groom at Mr. Craddock’s estate of Leavenscourt six miles away. The Doyles had gone to India, where Beatrice had died years ago. She thought Thomas Doyle must be dead by now too. She had never heard of his coming back. Not that he would go to Leavenscourt anyway, she supposed. His dad and his brother were both dead, she had heard.

  She had not heard of there having been any children born to Beatrice and Thomas.

  She knew nothing of Lily Doyle, whom the Duke of Portfrey now watched intently as she danced a quadrille at the Ashton ball with Freddie Farnhope.

  Lily was in a daze. She smiled and even conversed. She danced the intricate, newly learned steps without faltering. She coped with all the frightening, dizzying newness of being at a ton ball and of being a full participant. It had not taken her long to realize that she was not merely the anonymous companion of Lady Elizabeth Wyatt, but that everyone knew exactly who she was and had probably known even before her arrival. It had not taken her long, either, to realize that she was not going to be treated with hostility but with an indulgent, avid curiosity.

  It was all a challenge, she realized, that Elizabeth had deliberately set her in the belief that she would rise to the occasion. She had not disappointed either Elizabeth or herself, she believed. She had remembered everything she had been taught, and somehow it had all worked. If she had not felt exactly at her ease, she had at least felt in command of herself.

  Until she had turned her head to meet yet another gentleman who had applied to Elizabeth for an introduction—and had found herself looking at Neville.

  She had been in a daze since. She was not even sure she remembered quite what had happened. He had bowed; she had curtsied. He had called her Miss Doyle—had he? He had never called her that before. And it had been a formal bow. He had not been smiling. She had remembered—she believed she had—to call him “my lord.”