by Mary Balogh
“Oh, Lauren, of course it would!” Gwendoline cried.
“No.” Lauren shook her head. “You must have felt this evening what everyone else was feeling, Gwen. The air fairly crackled with the tension of their passion for each other. They were meant for each other. There was never that between Neville and me.”
“Perhaps—” Gwendoline began, but Lauren was gazing into the fire again and something in her face silenced her cousin.
“I saw them once, you know,” Lauren said, “when I ought not to have done so. They were down at the pool together, early one morning. They were bathing and laughing and entirely happy. The door of the cottage was open—they had spent the night together there. That is what love should be like, Gwen. It is what you had with Lord Muir.”
Gwendoline’s hands tightened about the arms of her chair and she drew a sharp breath, but she said nothing.
“It is the sort of love I will never know,” Lauren said.
“Of course you will,” Gwendoline assured her. “You are young and lovely and—”
“And incapable of passion,” Lauren said. “Have you noted the contrast between Lily and me, Gwen? After the—the wedding, I could have left here. I could have gone home with Grandpapa. I daresay he would have done something for me. I could have begun a new life. I stayed here instead, hoping that she would die. And even after I decided later that I would go after all, I changed my mind. I was afraid to go lest I—miss something here. But Lily, who had far less to go to than I and far more to leave behind, went away to make a new life for herself rather than cling to what was not satisfactory for her at the time. I do not have that sort of courage.”
“You are tired,” Gwendoline said briskly, “and a little dispirited. Everything will look better in the morning.”
“But there is one thing I do have the courage to do,” Lauren said, getting to her feet. She stretched up with great care to remove a costly porcelain shepherdess from the mantel and held it in her hands, smiling at it. “Oh, yes, indeed I do.”
She dashed the ornament onto the hearth, where it smashed into a thousand pieces.
The main celebrations for the countess’s birthday party were to occur during the evening, but with so many house guests at Newbury Abbey, even tea was a crowded, noisy affair. It was a raw, autumn day outside. Everyone was quite happy to be indoors.
Except Elizabeth. Oh, she was delighted to be home again, to see all her relatives again, to join in a family celebration. And she was more than delighted to see that what she had hoped for since the spring was about to happen. Although the occasion was nominally Clara’s birthday, everyone understood quite clearly that there was something far more significant than that afoot. The sort of love that Neville and Lily obviously shared was rare and wonderful to behold.
It gladdened the unselfish part of Elizabeth’s heart.
And saddened the selfish part.
She would no longer be needed, either by Lily or by—or by Lily’s father.
She withdrew quietly from the drawing room sooner than most of the other guests, fetched a warm cloak and bonnet and gloves from her rooms, and stepped outside for a solitary stroll to the rock garden. It looked rather bleak and colorless at this time of the year, she found. She remembered coming here on the day of Lily’s first arrival at Newbury Abbey, the day that was to have seen Neville and Lauren’s nuptials. Lyndon had questioned Lily closely on that occasion, and she, Elizabeth, had chided him, not knowing that even then he had suspected the truth. Such a long time ago …
“Is company permitted?” a voice asked from behind her. “Or would you prefer to be alone?”
He had come after her. She turned to smile at him. She wished she had the strength to tell him that yes, indeed she did prefer to be alone, but it would have been a lie. She had the rest of a lifetime in which to be alone. There was no point in beginning before it was necessary.
“Lyndon,” she said as he walked closer to her, “does it make you just a little sad? You have had so little time with her.” She had watched the transformation of her friend since his discovery of Lily with amazement and gladness—and an unwilling chill at her heart.
“That she is going to desert me for Kilbourne?” he said. “Yes, a little. The past few months have been the happiest of my life. Shall we take the rhododendron walk? Or will you be too cold?”
She shook her head. But he did not offer his arm, she noticed, perhaps because she clasped her hands so determinedly behind her. She had never felt awkward with him. She felt awkward now.
“But there is also a certain feeling of satisfaction,” he said. “Lily will be happy—if she accepts him. But I feel little doubt that it will happen. Neither does the countess or anyone else here at Newbury for that matter. There is a certain satisfaction, Elizabeth, in the knowledge that finally I will be able to proceed with my own life.”
“When you wept at Frances’s grave last summer,” she said, “as Lily did too, you were finally able to accept that she had gone, were you not? You must have loved her very dearly.”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “A long, long time ago. I used to think of remarrying, you know, and fathering a son and bringing him up as my heir. And then I used to imagine discovering Frances’s child and my own—and finding that it was a son. I pictured the enmity and bitterness that would develop between those two brothers—both children of my own loins but only one of them able to be my heir.”
There was more beauty on the hill path than there had been in the garden. The leaves were multicolored above their heads and beneath their feet. The year was not yet quite dead.
“It is not too late, Lyndon,” she forced herself to say, her heart cold and heavy, in tune with the chill breeze that blew in their faces. “To father a son and heir, I mean. You are not so very old, after all. And you are extremely eligible. If you were to marry a young woman, you might yet have several more children. You might have a family to comfort you for Lily’s absence.”
“It is what you would advise then, my friend?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, hoping that her voice was as cool and as firm as she intended it to be.
She had always loved the way the path had been constructed to bring one above the level of the treetops at its highest point so that one suddenly had a vast view over the abbey and the park to the sea in the distance. She concentrated her mind on the beauty of her surroundings while the silence stretched between them. They had stopped walking, she realized.
“Do you consider yourself young, Elizabeth?” he asked her at last.
Something lurched inside her. She gazed ahead to the leaden gray sea, refusing to pay attention to the fact that he was unclasping her hands from her back and taking one of them in his own.
“Not young enough,” she said. “I am not young enough, Lyndon. I am six-and-thirty. I have remained single from choice, you know. I have always chosen not to marry where I cannot love. But now I am too old.”
“Do you love me?” he asked her.
He was not himself looking at the view, which seemed absurd in light of the fact that they had walked all this way in order to do so. He was turned toward her and looking at her. It was not a fair question that he had asked. Her heart pounded so hard that it threatened to rob her of breath.
“As a very dear friend,” she told him.
“Ah,” he said softly. “That is a pity, Elizabeth. I might have said the same of my feelings for you until a few months ago. But no longer. There is little point in broaching the subject of marriage with you, then? You do not love me as you would wish to love a husband?”
“Lyndon,” she whispered, “it is too late for me to bear you a son.”
“Is it?” he asked her, lifting her hand to his lips and holding it there after pulling back her glove. “But you are only six-and-thirty, my dear.”
He was laughing. Oh, not out loud, but there was laughter in his voice, wretched man. She tried to draw her hand away, but his own closed more tightly about it.
“I owe something to myself,” he told her. “I owe it to myself to marry where I love, Elizabeth. I love you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh,” she said—and could think of nothing else to say for several moments while he turned her hand and found her bare wrist with his lips. “You will regret this in a few days’ time after everything is settled with Lily and you realize you will soon be free to do whatever you wish with your life. You will be relieved that I have said no.”
“Are you saying no, then, my dear?” He sounded suddenly sad, the laughter all gone from his voice. “Will you look at me now and tell me that it is because you do not love me and choose rather to live the rest of your life alone than with me? Into my eyes, if you please.”
She turned her head and looked at his chin—and then into his very blue eyes. Ah, could such a look be intended for her? The sort of look with which Neville regarded Lily and which she had so envied? But the Duke of Portfrey was looking unwaveringly into her eyes.
“Promise me you will never regret it.” Hope and terror all mingled together were doing painful and peculiar things to her insides. “Promise me you will not be sorry in a year’s time or two years’ time if there are no children. Promise me—”
He kissed her hard.
“I have never known you to babble nonsense before today, Elizabeth,” he said well over a minute later.
“Lyndon.” She blinked her eyes to clear her vision. Somehow her hands had found their way to his shoulders. “Oh, Lyndon, are you quite, quite s—”
He kissed her again, open-mouthed this time, and pressed his tongue past her startled lips and teeth right into her mouth. It was such a shockingly intimate embrace that she lost both her breath and her knees and was forced to lock her arms about his neck and cling for dear life. And then she kissed him back, touching his tongue with her own, sucking on it, listening with exhultation to the soft murmurs of appreciation with which he responded.
He was smiling when he lifted his head again. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I interrupted you. What were you saying?”
“I have the feeling,” she said severely, “that you will not allow me to complete any sentence you do not wish to hear.”
“You learn fast,” he said, rubbing his nose against hers and then trailing soft kisses across one cheek to her ear before nibbling on her earlobe and startling a cry of pure pleasure from her. “But then you are an intelligent woman. You must understand now how I intend to enforce wifely obedience.”
“I never realized how absurd you can be,” she said. “Or how unscrupulous. Lyndon?”
“Mmm?” He feathered kisses along her jaw toward her chin.
“I do love you, you know,” she said, closing her eyes. “As a dear friend and so very much more than just that. If I marry you, I will try my very hardest to give you a son.”
He threw back his head and laughed aloud before hugging her very tightly to him. “Will you indeed?” he said. “Those are provocative words, my dear—very provocative. I will test your resolve on our wedding night, I promise you, and every night following it. Perhaps on the occasional morning or afternoon too. When, Elizabeth? Soon? Sooner? By special license? I have no patience with banns, have you? I am forty-two years old. You are six-and-thirty. I want us to spend every day, every moment, of the rest of our lives together.”
“We are not so very old,” she protested.
“Certainly not too old,” he agreed, kissing her on the lips again. He grinned. “Let us see what those children decide to do during the next day or two, shall we? I shall certainly insist upon a proper wedding at Rutland for my beloved Lily—nowhere else will do. But I would dearly like her to have a stepmother to help me organize it.”
“Ah,” she cried, “now we come to the real point of all this. Now we come to the truth of why you are going to such pains to persuade me—”
He kissed her long and hard.
26
Newbury Abbey, Lily had discovered, looked much the same and yet so very different. She had been oppressed by it, dwarfed by it, overwhelmed by it when she had last been here. Now she could admire its magnificence and love the light elegance of its design. Now it felt like home. Because it was his home, and surely would be hers too.
During the day and a half since her arrival she had talked with everyone and enjoyed everyone’s company—including that of the kitchen staff with whom she had taken coffee at midmorning while she peeled potatoes. She had been in Neville’s company too, though she had not been alone with him even once. The most private they had been was that minute—no, not even so long—when he had leaned into her father’s carriage.
It did not matter. There was a way of being alone with someone even in the midst of crowds. She had grown up surrounded by a regiment of soldiers and its women and children and had learned that lesson early.
They conversed with each other—in company with others. They looked at each other and smiled at each other—in full view of everyone else. But all the time there was really just the two of them, and the shared understanding that at last the time was right. That at last she was home to stay. For the rest of their lives. Lily was sure she was not wrong.
It had not yet been spoken in words, for although the time was right, the exact, perfect moment had not yet arrived. And they would not rush it—it was as if they had a tacit agreement on that. They had waited a long time; they had endured a great deal. The moment of their final commitment would reveal itself. They would not try to force it.
The carpet in the drawing room was rolled back during the evening so that there could be dancing for the countess’s birthday party. Lady Wollston, Neville’s Aunt Mary, took her place at the pianoforte. Neville danced with his mother and then with Gwendoline, who liked to dance despite her injured leg. He danced with Elizabeth and Miranda.
And of course he danced with Lily—the last dance of the evening, a waltz.
“I am selfish, you see, Lily,” he told her with a smile. “If it were a country set, I would have to relinquish you to other partners with every new pattern of the dance. With a waltz, I have you all to myself.”
Lily laughed. She had danced with her father, with Joseph, with Ralph, with Hal. She had thoroughly enjoyed the evening. But only because she had known that finally, at last, she would dance with Neville.
“I knew it would be a waltz,” she told him.
“Lily.” He leaned his head a little closer. “You are a single woman, daughter of a duke, bound by all the proprieties that apply to a lady of the beau monde.”
Lily’s eyes danced with merriment.
“I have already spoken with Portfrey and have won his consent,” he said. “I could speak with you formally in the library tomorrow. Your father or Elizabeth would bring you there and then tactfully leave us alone together for fifteen minutes. No longer than fifteen—it would be improper.”
“Or?” Lily laughed again. “I hear an alternative in your voice and see it in your face. If the prospect of fifteen minutes alone in the library makes you wince, as it does me, what then?”
He grinned at her. “Portfrey would challenge me to pistols at dawn for even thinking it,” he said.
“Neville.” She leaned a little closer. Their proximity would have scandalized the beau monde at a ton ball. But they were among family, who watched them with affectionate indulgence while pretending not to watch at all. “What is the alternative to the library? Oh. Shall I say it? You mean the valley, don’t you? And the waterfall and pool. The cottage.”
He nodded and smiled slowly.
“Tomorrow morning?” she asked. “No, that would not provoke a challenge from any irate father. You mean tonight, don’t you?”
His smile lingered, as did her own. But they were gazing deep into each other’s eyes, performing the steps of the waltz almost without realizing that they still danced. And Lily, feeling a t
ightening in her breasts and a weakening in her knees, knew that the moment had found itself. The perfect moment. He spoke again only when the music came to an end.
“You will go there with me, Lily?”
“Of course,” she said.
“After everyone has settled for the night? I will knock on your door.”
“I will be ready.”
Yes, Lily thought as she made her way to her room a short while later, having hugged the countess, Elizabeth, and her father, and said a decorous good night to Neville. Yes, it was entirely right that they go to the cottage. Tonight. She was a lady now, daughter of a duke, and she was single, and she was bound by all the rules by which polite society regulated itself. But deeper than those realities was the fact that she was Lily, that in her heart she was married and had been for almost two years, that she was bound by something far stronger than mere man-made rules.
An almost full moon beamed down from a clear, star-studded sky. It was autumn and it was cold. But Lily, her hand clasped in Neville’s, saw and felt only the beauty of this moment to which they had come. They hurried past the stables, down over the lawn, through the trees, through the ferns, down the steep slope to the valley. They did not speak even when they were far enough from the house not to disturb anyone with the sound of their voices. There was no need of speech. Something far deeper than words pulsed between them as they went.
They turned up the valley together at last, making their way toward the waterfall and the pool and the cottage. It was there they had lived through another moment—a tantalizingly brief moment—of total, utter happiness before being torn apart by a series of events that did not need to be remembered just now. They were back where they had been happy together. And where they would be happy again.
They were back where they belonged.
