One Night for Love b-1

by Mary Balogh

  She was partway down the hill when she heard the voices and laughter. At first she did not know exactly where they came from. But as she descended farther—more slowly and cautiously than before—she realized that they came from the pool at the foot of the waterfall. And then she saw them—Neville and Lily—bathing there. If her shocked eyes had not deceived her, she thought as she fled upward after the merest glimpse of them immersed in the water, they were both naked. They were laughing together like carefree children—or like lovers. She could still hear them, even though the sound of her own labored breathing almost drowned out the sound. And she could still see in her mind's eye the door of the cottage standing wide open, as if they had spent the night there.

  They were husband and wife, she told herself as her panicked footsteps took her hurrying back along the wood path toward the main gates and the dower house. Of course they were lovers. And of course they had every right…

  But Lauren realized something suddenly that froze her heart and almost froze her mind. She would never have been able to do that. She would never have been able to be—to be naked with him. And frolicking without any embarrassment. She would never have been able even to laugh with him like that—with all the carefreeness of two people whose happiness was enclosed in the moment spent together. They had laughed when they were children, of course, she and Gwen and Neville. They had surely laughed since then. But not like that.

  She would not have been able to satisfy him in the way Lily was clearly doing.

  It was a terrifying realization. The idea that she and Neville belonged together, that they were perfect for each other, that they loved each other, had been so much a part of the ordered conception of her world to which she had clung all her life that she was not sure she could live with any sanity if she had to relinquish the idea.

  She would not relinquish it. She did love him. More than Lily did. Lily could love him in that raw, physical way, perhaps, but Lily could not read or write or talk with him on topics that mattered to him. She could not run the abbey for him or entertain his friends or perform the hundred and one duties of his countess. She could not make him proud of her. She could not know him through and through as someone who had grown up with him could do or know unerringly what to do to secure his comfort and happiness.

  Lily could never be his soulmate.

  But Lily was Neville's wife.

  Lauren stopped abruptly on the path and drew her dark cloak tightly about herself for warmth. She was shivering despite her long walk.

  It was not fair.

  It was not right.

  How she hated Lily. And how frightened she was of the violence of her own emotions. As a lady she had practiced restraint and kindness and courtesy all her life. If she was good, she had thought as a child, everyone would love her. If she was a perfect lady, she had thought as she grew older, everyone would accept her and depend upon her and love her.

  Neville would depend upon her and love her. Finally she would truly belong.

  But he had gone away and married Lily. Lily! The exact antithesis of what she, Lauren, had always thought would win him in the end.

  She wished Lily was dead. She wished she was dead.

  She wished she would die.

  Lauren stood on the path for a long time, huddled inside her cloak, shivering with the unaccustomed vehemence of her own hatred.

  ***

  Lily returned to the abbey buoyed by fresh hope. She was not naive enough to imagine that all her problems would magically evaporate, but she felt that she had the strength, and that Neville had the patience, to face and overcome them one at a time.

  Dolly was in her dressing room waiting for her when she stepped into it. She looked her mistress over from head to toe and shook her head.

  "You will catch your death yet, my lady," she scolded. "Your hair is wet. And your feet are bare. I do not know what I will tell his lordship when you catch a chill."

  Lily laughed. "I have been with him, Dolly," she said.

  "Oh, my," Dolly said, momentarily confounded. "Here, let me help you out of your dress, my lady." She was always slightly shocked when she observed Lily doing something that she thought of as a maid's preserve—like taking off or putting on a garment.

  Lily chuckled again. "And his hair is wet too, Dolly." she said, "though I daresay his valet will not have the problem that you will have getting a comb through this bush. We were swimming."

  "Swimming?" Dolly's eyes widened in horror. "At this time of day? In May! You and his lordship? I always thought he was—" She remembered to whom she was speaking and turned to pick up the morning gown she had set out for her mistress.

  "Sensible?" Lily laughed once more. "He probably was, Dolly, until I came here to corrupt him. We have been swimming together in the pool—last night and again this morning. It was wonderful." She allowed Dolly to slip the dress over her head and turned obediently to have it buttoned up the back. "I believe I am going to swim every day of my life from now on. What do you think the dowager countess will say?"

  Dolly met her eyes in the looking glass as Lily sat down to have her hair dressed and they dissolved into laughter.

  Dolly thought of something else after she had picked up Lily's brush and considered where to start the daunting task of taming her hair. "Why is it that your underthings were not wet, my lady?" she asked.

  But she understood the answer even as she spoke and blushed rosily. They both laughed merrily again.

  "All I can say," Dolly said, brushing vigorously, "is that it is a very good thing no one came along to see the two of you."

  They both snorted with glee.

  Lily was determined to cling to the lightheartedness with which she had started the day. After breakfast, when she knew that the ladies as usual would proceed to the morning room to write letters and converse and sit at their embroidery, she went down to the kitchen and helped knead the bread and chop some vegetables while she joined happily in the conversation—the servants, she was glad to find, were becoming accustomed to her appearances and were losing their awkwardness with her. Indeed, the cook even spoke sharply to her after a while.

  "Haven't you finished those carrots yet?" she asked briskly. "You have been doing too much talk—" And then she realized to whom she was talking, as did everyone else in the kitchen. Everyone froze.

  "Oh, dear," Lily said, laughing. "You are quite right, Mrs. Lockhart. I shall not say another word until the carrots are all chopped."

  She laughed gaily again after a whole minute of awkward silence had passed, broken only by the sound of her knife against the chopping board.

  "At least," she said, "I do not have to fear that Mrs. Ailsham will sack me, do I?"

  Everyone laughed, perhaps a little too heartily, but then relaxed again. Lily finished the carrots and sat with a cup of tea and the crisp, warm crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread before reluctantly going back upstairs. But she brightened again when her mother-in-law asked if she would like to join her in making a few calls in the village after luncheon and in delivering a couple of baskets to the lower village—one to an elderly man who had been indisposed, and one to a fisherman's wife who was in childbed.

  But the delivery of the baskets, Lily discovered later while they were sitting in the parlor of the Misses Taylor, drinking the inevitable cup of tea, was to be done by proxy. The coachman was to carry them down the hill and take them to the relevant cottages.

  "Oh, no," Lily protested, jumping to her feet. "I will take them."

  "My dear Lady Kilbourne," Miss Amelia said, "what a very kind thought."

  "But the hill is too steep for the carriage, Lady Kilbourne," Miss Taylor pointed out.

  "Oh, I shall walk." Lily smiled dazzlingly. She had not been down to Lower Newbury since that morning when she had climbed across the rocks to it. She welcomed the chance to return there.

  "Lily, my dear." The dowager countess smiled at her and shook her head. "It is quite unnecessary for you to go in person. It will
not be expected."

  "But I wish to go," Lily assured her.

  And so after they had left the Misses Taylors' genteel cottage a few minutes later, the dowager proceeded to the vicarage while Lily tripped lightly down the steep hill, one large basket on her arm. The coachman, who had the other, had wanted to carry both, but she had insisted on taking her share of the load. And she would not allow him to walk a few paces behind her. She walked beside him and soon had him talking about his family—he had married one of the chambermaids the year before and they had an infant son.

  Mrs. Gish, who had given birth to her seventh child the day before after a long and difficult labor, was attempting to keep her house and her young family in order with the assistance of an elderly neighbor. Lily soon had the main room swept out, the table cleared and wiped, a pile of dirty dishes washed and dried, and one infant knee cleansed of its bloody scrape and bandaged with a clean rag.

  Elderly Mr. Howells, who was sitting outside his grandson's cottage, smoking a pipe and looking melancholy, was in dire need of a pair of ears willing to listen to his lengthy reminiscences about his days as a fisherman—and a smuggler. Oh, yes, he assured an interested Lily, they had their fair share of smuggling at Lower Newbury, they did. Why, he could remember…

  "My lady," the coachman said eventually after a deferential clearing of his throat—he had been standing some distance away—"her ladyship has sent a servant from the vicarage…"

  "Oh, goodness gracious me," Lily said, leaping to her feet. "She will be waiting to return to the abbey."

  The dowager countess was indeed waiting—and had been for almost two hours. She was gracious about it in front of the vicar and his wife. Indeed she was gracious about it in the carriage on the way home too.

  "Lily, my dear," she said, laying one gloved hand over her daughter-in-law's, "it is like having a breath of fresh air wafted over us to discover your concern for Neville's poorer tenants. And your smiles and your charm are making you friends wherever you go. We have all grown remarkably fond of you."

  "But?" Lily said, turning her head away to look out through the window. "But I am an embarrassment to you all?"

  "Oh, my dear." The dowager patted her hand. "No, not that. I daresay you have as much to teach us as we have to teach you. But we do have a great deal to teach you, Lily. You are Neville's wife, and he is clearly fond of you. I am glad of that, for I am fond of him, you know. But you are also his countess."

  "And I am also the daughter of a common soldier," Lily said, some bitterness creeping into her voice. "I am also someone who knows nothing about life in England or in a settled home. And absolutely nothing at all about the life of a lady or of a countess."

  "It is never too late to learn," her mother-in-law said briskly but not unkindly.

  "While everyone watches my every move to find fault with me?" Lily asked. "Oh, but that is unfair, I know. Everyone has been kind. You have been kind. I will try. I really will. But I am not sure I can—give up myself."

  "My dear Lily." The dowager sounded genuinely concerned. "No one expects you to give up yourself, as you put it."

  "But the part of me that is myself wants to be in Lower Newbury mingling with the fisherfolk," Lily said. "That is where I feel comfortable. That is where I belong. Am I to learn to nod graciously to those people and not speak to them or show personal concern for them or hold their babies?"

  "Lily." Her mother-in-law could seem to think of nothing more to say.

  "I will try," Lily said again after a minute or two of silence. "I am not sure I can ever be the person you want me to be. I am not sure I want to stop being myself. And I cannot see how I can be both. But I promise I will try."

  "That is all we can ask of you," the dowager said, patting her hand once more.

  But Lily, as she raced upstairs to her own apartment after their return to the house, felt like a dismal, hopeless failure who would bring nothing but ridicule upon Neville if she continued as she was.

  It had been a happy day for Lily—wondrously happy. With memories of last night and this morning fresh in both her mind and her body and the hope that perhaps he would come to her again tonight, she had lived the day the way she had wished to live it—just as he had told her she might—and she had been happy. But only because she had turned away from reality. The reality was that she was not one of the servants at the abbey—she was the countess. And she was not one of the fisherfolk—they were her husband's tenants. She had avoided the people with whom she ought to have spent the day if she were a good countess. She had made no real effort to learn to be the countess she was in name.

  But she was incorrigible, it seemed. Instead of ringing for Dolly and changing into another dress and going down to tea to try somehow to make amends, Lily almost tore off her pretty sprigged muslin dress as soon as she had reached her dressing room, dragged on her old cotton, grabbed her old shawl, and scurried down the back stairs to the side door. She half ran down the lawn and slipped and slid down the hill, grabbing at giant ferns to steady herself. She did not even glance at the valley—she did not want to spoil the memories in her present state of agitation—but ran out onto the beach and along it, her face turned up to the sky, her arms stretched out to the sides so that she would feel the full resistance of the wind.

  She grew calm again after a few minutes. She could adjust, she told herself. It would take effort, but she could do it if she tried. She had spent most of her life adjusting to constantly changing circumstances. She forced herself to think about the greatest adjustment of all she had had to make. She had learned docility and obedience—she had even learned the Spanish language—as means to survival. If she could do that, she could certainly learn to be a lady and a countess.

  The tide was on its way out. The rocks that connected the beach with the cove of Lower Newbury were half exposed. Lily clambered up onto them. Not that she had any intention of going all the way to the village again even if she could, but she needed to use up more energy than a walk or run along the beach would require. And there was a greater sense of wildness and solitude on the rocks, with the sea to one side, an almost sheer cliff wall to the other. She stood still after a while and turned her head to gaze out to sea.

  But as she did so, she heard something that was neither the ocean nor the wind nor the gulls. Something unidentifiable that nevertheless almost froze her in place while panic crawled up her spine. She looked sharply to either side of her, but there was nothing. No one. She could see a good distance in both directions.

  But the feeling would not go away. What was it she had heard, the crunching of stones?

  She looked up.

  Everything happened within so few seconds that it would have been difficult afterward to give a clear account—even with a clear head. Lily's was far from clear. She saw someone standing at the top of the cliff above her—a figure in a dark cloak. And then the figure turned into a large rock, hurtling down upon her. She twisted away from it, in toward the cliff face, and it crashed onto the very spot where she had been standing—a huge boulder that would without any doubt at all have killed her.

  She stood with her back pressed to the cliff face, her hands flat against it on either side of her, clawing for something to grip on to. And she stared at the rock that would have been her death, her heart hammering in her throat and her ears, robbing her of breath and of rationality.

  It had been an accident, she told herself with her first coherent thought. The stone had become dislodged through the erosion of time—that was what she had heard—and had fallen. The rocks about her, she saw when she looked, were dotted with similar boulders that must at some time have fallen from above.

  No, it was not an accident. The stone had been pushed—by someone in a dark cloak. By the Duke of Portfrey? That was ridiculous. By Lauren? Ridiculous! Of course there had not been anyone up there. In that fraction of time she had seen danger to herself in the falling stone and had translated it into the danger she had been imagining ever since
that afternoon up on the rhododendron walk.

  But there had been someone there!

  Was he there now, standing above her, waiting to see if he had succeeded in killing her? Or she?

  Why would anyone want to kill her?

  Was the would-be killer even now coming down the hill path into the valley to circle around onto the rocks and see for himself if he had succeeded? Or she?

  Lily was mindless with panic again. If she moved a muscle, she thought, she would disintegrate. But if she did not move, she might stand here forever. If she did not move, she could be in no way mistress of her own fate. Memories came flooding back of similar moments during that long, terrifying walk through Spain and Portugal. Several times she had almost lost all nerve, imagining partisans behind every rock, imagining them not believing her story.

  She stepped away from the cliff face on shaky legs and drew a slow breath. She looked upward. There was no one there—of course. There was no one down on the beach either—at least not yet. She was tempted to make her way in the opposite direction and hope that the tide was out far enough that she could reach the village and the company of other people. But she would not run from her fear. She would never conquer it if she did that. She clambered carefully back over the rocks to the beach. There was no one there. There was no one in the valley either, or on the hillside.

  There was no one at all, she told herself firmly as she climbed resolutely upward. When she reached the top, she forced herself to take the wood path a short distance until she thought she must be close to the spot, and then she made her way through the trees until she came to the open land that ended with the cliff edge. Yes, she was in roughly the right place, though she did not approach the edge to make sure. There was no one there and no sign that anyone had been there.

  All she had seen was a rock.

  She was satisfied with the explanation until she drew closer to the abbey. Panic returned as the security of its walls drew nearer. Perhaps, she thought, she would have rushed through the front doors, demanded to know where Neville was, and gone hurtling into the safety of his arms if she had not remembered how she was dressed. But she did remember and so she went around to the side entrance and climbed the back stairs to her room. She washed and changed with hands that gradually grew steady again.