One Night for Love

by Mary Balogh

  They were still watched avidly wherever they appeared together. Joseph had told him that drawing room conversation was thriving on the topic. There were even said to be two items relating to them recorded in the betting book at White’s Club. There were gentlemen who had placed their bets on the likelihood or otherwise of his marrying Lily again within the year. And there were others—or possibly the same ones—who had bet on the possibility of his marrying Lauren within the same time frame.

  Joseph was privately amused by the whole business. Publicly he considered it all a crashing bore—there was no one better able to show ennui than the Marquess of Attingsborough.

  But Neville intended to throw caution to the wind during the Vauxhall evening. He intended to take full advantage of the setting. While he had reserved a private box and invited guests and made it his own party, he nevertheless planned to spend some time alone with Lily. He had been wooing her very gently and cautiously for almost two weeks. He intended to woo her in earnest at Vauxhall. He was not without hope of success. He remembered the afternoon at the jeweler’s and Gunter’s almost with bated breath. She had been relaxed and happy on that afternoon—happy to be with him.

  He prayed for good weather.

  And his prayers were granted. The day had been hot and sunny, if a little windy. The wind dropped as evening fell to create conditions that could not have been more favorable for Vauxhall if Neville had had the ordering of them.

  They crossed the River Thames by boat—the slower but by far more picturesque way of approaching Vauxhall Gardens. Neville took a seat in the boat beside Lily while Elizabeth sat in front of them—Portfrey, who had been out of town for a few days, had been expected back today but had not yet put in an appearance. Joseph was sitting behind, flirting discreetly with Lady Selina Rawlings, his current lady love and present for the evening under Elizabeth’s chaperonage. Captain Harris and his wife were seated in the stern of the boat. Colored lights from the gardens shivered across the water. Darkness had all but fallen.

  “Well, Lily?” Neville bent his head closer to hers so that he could see her expression.

  “It is magic,” she said.

  And it was too—magic to weave its spell about the two of them and not release them until the night was over, and perhaps not even then.

  He took Lily on one arm, Elizabeth on the other as they entered Vauxhall Gardens and made their way to the box he had reserved, in an area with all the other boxes and the place where the orchestra members were tuning their instruments. It was one of the nights when there was to be dancing.

  “Have you danced beneath the stars before, Lily?” he asked her after he had seated everyone in the box and ordered food and drinks.

  “Of course I have,” she said. “Do you not remember all the dancing we used to do?”

  In the army? Yes, there had been a great deal of it. The officers had had dances of their own, better organized, more formal, not nearly as enjoyable, Neville had always thought, as the ones that took place about the campfires or in some rude barn. He had used to stand and watch sometimes. He had never dampened the spirits of his men by trying to join in and claim a partner when there were not nearly enough women to go around.

  “Yes, I do.” He smiled at her. “But have you waltzed beneath the stars? Do you know the steps of the waltz?”

  “I am not allowed to dance it,” she told him. “I have to be approved by one of the patronesses of Almack’s first—though I daresay that will never happen.”

  He moved his head a little closer and spoke for her ears only. “But this is not a formal ball, Lily. The rules do not apply here. Tonight you will waltz—with me.”

  Her eyes told him that she wanted to do so. And her eyes told him other things too. There was a certain depth of yearning in them—he was sure he did not mistake the expression.

  And then he noticed her locket.

  “Is this the first time you have worn it?” he asked, touching it briefly.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Is this the special occasion, then, Lily?” He looked up into her eyes.

  “Yes, Neville.”

  Strange, he thought, how his name on her lips became the most intimate of endearments.

  There was no more chance for personal discourse for a while. The food and drink had arrived, the orchestra had begun playing, and conversation became general.

  When the dancing began, Neville led Elizabeth out onto the dancing area and then Mrs. Harris. But the third dance was a waltz, and the time for general socializing was at an end. The time for romance had begun.

  “You cannot know,” Lily said, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other in his as the orchestra started to play, “how I have longed to waltz—perhaps because I thought I never would.”

  “With me, Lily?” he murmured. “Have you dreamed of waltzing with me?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. With you.”

  He did not attempt to converse after that. There was a time for words and there was a time for simply experiencing. The air was cool and the moon and stars above them were bright. But nature at Vauxhall was in happy communion with the man-made beauty of the sounds of the orchestra and the colors of the lanterns nodding gently in the trees.

  And there was the woman in his arms, small and shapely and dainty, and smiling into his eyes through the whole dance without embarrassment and without any pretense of indifference.

  “Well?” he asked when the waltz was almost at an end. “Is it as wicked a dance as it is said to be, Lily?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Wickeder.”

  He laughed softly and she joined him.

  “Come walking?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “We must take everyone with us,” he said, leading her back to the box. “But with a little ingenuity, Lily, I believe we can lose them before we have gone too far.”

  She did not voice any objection.

  She had not been mistaken. Oh, she had not. He had married her out of a sense of obligation. He had treated her with kindness after her arrival in England because he was a kind man. He had made love to her because he would make the best of any situation in which he found himself. He had offered for her again even after he knew they were not legally married because he had felt obligated, honor-bound to do so. There had been some love too, of course—he had said so, and she had not doubted him.

  But now it was love pure and simple. There was no obligation left. She had freed him, and since then she had made a life for herself and learned the skills that would help her to live independently of anyone’s charity and earn her own living.

  He was wooing her now—simply because he loved her.

  She would no longer entertain even a vestige of doubt. And she would no longer erect obstacles between them that just did not need to be there. She might never be his equal in the eyes of the world, but she knew now that she could live in his world with some comfort and with a good deal of self-respect. The thought of Newbury Abbey no longer filled her with despair.

  She was going to allow it to happen.

  And so when they strolled along the tree-lined, lantern-lighted avenue with the marquess and Lady Selina, she made no protest at the almost comical maneuverings of both gentlemen to arrange matters that the two couples part company. Neither did Lady Selina.

  “You see, Lily,” Neville said after the two of them had turned down one of the narrower, darker, quieter paths, “there are these areas that were made for lovers.”

  “Yes,” she said. “How wonderfully convenient.”

  “And they were made narrow enough,” he said, “that two people must walk single file or else with their arms about each other.”

  “We cannot talk if we walk single file,” she said, smiling at the darkness ahead.

  “Precisely.” He set an arm about her shoulders and drew her close to his side. There was nowhere to put her arm then except about his waist. And then she found that her head was most comfortable agai
nst his shoulder.

  There was a strange feeling of seclusion even while the sounds of the orchestra and of voices shouting and laughing were still quite audible. There was an occasional lantern in a tree, but in the main the path was lighted by moonlight. If it was romance she had been hoping for, Lily thought, then she had surely found it in abundance.

  Their footsteps inevitably lagged when they had walked a distance along the path, and then they stopped altogether. He turned her, and she found her back resting comfortably against the broad trunk of a tree.

  “Lily,” he said, bracketing her head with his hands pressed against the trunk, “you must say no now, my dear, if you want this to go no farther.”

  She reached up one hand and traced his facial scar with one fingertip. “I am not saying no,” she whispered to him.

  He kissed her, touching her at first only with his mouth. It was a kiss of love, she thought before setting her hands on his shoulders and then sliding her arms about his neck. There could be no other motive on either side. Just love. She parted her lips and kissed him back with love.

  He lifted his head as his arms came about her and arched her in against him. She could scarcely see his face with the moonlight behind him, but she thought he was smiling.

  “This,” he said, his lips brushing hers as he spoke, “was meant to be, Lily, from the very first moment.”

  She did not ask to what first moment he referred—the moment they had first met? The moment she had walked into the church at Newbury? The first moment of time at the dawn of the world? Perhaps he meant all those moments. And he was right. This had always been meant to be.

  He kissed her mouth, her eyes, her temples. He feathered kisses along her jaw to her chin. He kissed her throat. And he kissed her mouth again, murmuring endearments.

  The sense of romance faded. She could feel the familiar hard planes of his body pressed against her own. She could smell his cologne and the male essence of him. She could taste the wine he had drunk earlier on his lips and his tongue, inside his mouth. She could hear his breath quicken and could feel his growingly urgent desire pressing against her abdomen. Her own body responded—had done since the first touch of his lips. There was a throbbing ache in her womb and down along her inner thighs as she pressed herself to him in a blind urge to be close—closer. Neville. She wanted him. She wanted him there. Here. Now.

  But suddenly he lifted his head and his arms about her stiffened. He held his head in a listening attitude. Even in the darkness she could see the frown on his face.

  Lily was never sure afterward if she heard a sound herself—a sound other than the distant noise of revelry. But certainly she was suddenly awash in that terrible dread again as he turned away from her to gaze into the trees at the other side of the path. She was not even sure afterward if she saw anything. She was not quite sure she had seen a figure in a dark cloak with a pointed pistol. Everything happened too fast.

  Neville suddenly spun back toward her and whisked her around behind the tree, his own body between her and danger. The sound seemed to come after. The bullet had missed her, she thought as he pressed her painfully against the other side of the tree, his back against her, shielding her. But the noise of it still rang in her ears.

  She felt suffocated. His hands were spread behind him, on either side of her body. She could scarcely breathe. Even so she welcomed the shield he had provided for her. Without it, she would disintegrate into mindless terror.

  She could hear him breathing in heavy gasps that she knew he was trying to silence so that he would not betray their whereabouts. And she knew that she was an impediment to him. Without the necessity of protecting her, he could move, go in search of their assailant instead of waiting for him to find them.

  It seemed that they stood there in unbearable tension for five minutes, even ten—probably, she thought afterward, it had been no longer than a minute or two. And then there was the sound of laughter fairly close and drawing closer and she knew with knee-weakening relief that someone was coming along the path—more than one person, in fact.

  Actually it was four. As they came up to the tree and then passed it, Neville took her firmly by the hand and drew her out onto the path. They walked down it behind the two couples, who were so merrily foxed that they did not appear to notice that their numbers had been swelled.

  “I am taking you back to Elizabeth,” Neville said, setting one arm about her when they reached the main avenue. “And then I am going back to find the bast—” He cut off the word in time. He was breathing noisily.

  But Lily, setting an arm firmly about his waist, fearing that she would collapse, suddenly became aware of something—something warm and wet and sticky.

  “You have been hit,” she said. And then in utter panic: “Neville, you have been shot!”

  “It is nothing,” he said through teeth she knew he had gritted together. And he increased their pace.

  But as they approached the box, he released his hold on her and half pushed her into a startled Elizabeth, who was standing outside the box with the Duke of Portfrey.

  “Take her,” Neville said harshly. “Get her out of here. Take her home.”

  And he collapsed on the ground at their feet.

  22

  When Neville came to himself, he was lying facedown on a bed that was not his own. His arms were spread to the sides and someone was hanging on tightly to each of his wrists. He was naked, he realized, at least from the waist up. And his right shoulder was hurting like a thousand devils.

  He knew from past experience what was happening.

  “The devil!” It was Joseph’s voice—he was hanging on to the right wrist with a grip of steel. “You could not have slept a few minutes longer, Nev? Enjoyed dreamland and all that?”

  “You can let go your infernal grip on me,” Neville said. “I am not going to struggle. Who is the sawbones?”

  “Dr. Nightingale is my personal physician, Neville.” Elizabeth’s voice, as he might have expected, was cool and sensible—no hysterics from her. “The bullet is still in your shoulder.”

  And Dr. Nightingale had already made a pass at removing it. That was what had brought him to, Neville realized, taking a firm grip on the edges of the mattress. He opened his eyes at the same moment. His head was turned to the left—it was Lily who was clinging to his left wrist.

  “Get out of here,” he told her.

  “No.”

  “Wives are supposed to obey their husbands,” he said.

  “You are not my husband.”

  “And of course,” he said, “you have seen far worse than this on the battlefield. This is nothing at all to you. Foolish of me to try to protect you from a massive fit of the vapors.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  The physician, far less deft at such a task than the army surgeons, came at him again then, trying to probe gently and causing prolonged and excruciating agony. Neville kept his eyes on Lily’s until the pain threatened to get beyond him, and then he clenched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth hard.

  “Ah,” Dr. Nightingale said at last, a note of satisfaction in the sound.

  “Got it!” Joseph sounded breathless, as if he had just run a mile with a wild bull in hot pursuit. “It is out, Nev.”

  “And no damage to the bone or sinews from what I can see,” the doctor added. “We will have you patched up in no time, my lord.”

  The pain did not subside to any substantial degree. He felt submerged in it, peering out at reality from a long distance within it. But he knew as he opened his eyes again that Lily’s hand had gone from his wrist and was somehow clasped in his own—crushed in his own. For a few moments longer his hand seemed locked in place, but gradually he relaxed it and set hers free. He saw with a curious detachment from deep inside himself that her fingers appeared white and tightly welded together, that for a short while she could neither move nor separate them. It was amazing he had not broken all of them, but she had not made a sound.

  She t
urned away and then back again and he felt a cool, damp cloth against his hot face.

  Joe was talking—Neville did not know what about. The doctor was still busy with his shoulder and apparently Elizabeth was assisting him. Neville watched Lily as she worked quietly and efficiently, as she had always done after a battle or skirmish, dipping the cloth, squeezing out the excess water, pressing it lightly to his face or his neck. He made a cocoon of his pain and hid deep inside it.

  “Was he caught?” he asked finally. He had suddenly remembered being at Vauxhall, kissing Lily in one of the darker alleys, considering the very indiscreet act of moving her back father into the trees so that they could take their embrace farther, and then recognizing the strange prickling feeling along his spine as the type of sixth-sense warning of danger he had developed during his years as an officer. He had heard the snapping of a twig, perhaps, without even realizing it. He remembered seeing a cloaked figure lurking in the trees at the other side of the path, aiming a pistol at them. He remembered leaping sideways to shield Lily and taking the bullet that would surely have killed her. “Did someone catch the bastard?” He remembered Elizabeth’s and Lily’s presence too late.

  “Harris and Portfrey went charging off in pursuit,” the marquess said, “as did a small army of other men, Nev. I would wager Vauxhall emptied out faster of ladies and everyone else than in its whole history. I doubt anyone found the gunman, though. A man in a dark cloak, Lily said. There were probably fifty men there to answer the description, Portfrey and myself among them.”

  “You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, Neville,” Elizabeth said coolly. “There, Dr. Nightingale is finished. Perhaps you would see him on his way, Lily, while Joseph and I get Neville out of the rest of his clothes and into a nightshirt.”

  “No,” Lily said, “I am staying.”

  “Lily, my dear—”

  “I am staying,” she said.

  Neville gathered that it was Elizabeth who saw the physician out. For him there followed a nightmarish few minutes—which felt more like a few hours—while Lily and his cousin undressed him and somehow got him, wounded shoulder and all, inside someone’s nightshirt, and hauled him off the bed so that the towels on which he had been lying could be removed and the bedclothes properly turned back. Then there was all the difficulty of lying down again. He had suffered his share of wounds during his war years. Every time he found that he had not quite remembered the full extent of the physical agony.