by Mary Balogh
"Lily," Neville said, extending his arm for hers, "the sets are forming. Shall we join one?"
For a few moments she had forgotten him. But the sets were indeed forming, and she had agreed to spend all of half an hour in his company. It was not an enticing thought. The prospect of half an hour with him when there must be a whole lifetime and a whole eternity beyond it without him was a mortal agony to her.
She raised her hand, hoping it was not trembling quite noticeably, and set it, as she had been taught to do, on the cuff of his black evening coat. She felt his strength and his warmth. She smelled his familiar cologne. And she well-nigh forgot her surroundings and lost her awareness that this was the moment for which the gathered members of the beau monde must have waited ever since he entered the ballroom. She wanted to grip his wrist tightly and turn in to his body and burrow safely and warmly there. She wanted to sob out her grief and her loneliness.
A moment later she was horrified both by the wave of forgetfulness and by her own weakness. A month had passed, a month of hard work and fun. A month of living and preparing herself to live an independent and productive life. She had set a whole month between herself and him. A mighty bulwark, she had thought. But one sight of him, one touch, and everything had come crashing down again. The pain, she was sure, was worse than it had ever been.
She took her place in the line of ladies facing the line of gentlemen. She smiled—and he smiled back at her.
***
Elizabeth was still tight-lipped. She was looking about her for some friend whom she might join. The Duke of Portfrey gazed at her coldly.
"Take my arm," he commanded. "We will go to the refreshment room."
"I have just come from there," she said. "And I do not answer to that tone, your grace."
He sighed audibly. "Elizabeth," he said, "will you please accompany me to the refreshment room? It will be quieter there. Experience has taught me that a quarrel that is not resolved in the immediate aftermath of a heated moment is likely never to be resolved."
"Perhaps," she said, "it would be as well if this one never were."
"Do you mean that?" he asked her, the coldness all gone from his voice.
She looked at him—a long, measuring look—and then took his arm.
"Do you know Dorsey well?" he asked her as they walked.
"Scarcely at all," she admitted. "I do not believe we exchanged more than a dozen words at Newbury this spring. I was surprised when he applied to me for a formal introduction to Lily since he had seen her there. But it was hardly an unusual request this evening, and I knew of no reason to decline his request. Is there one?"
"He forced his attentions on Frances—my wife," he said. "Unwelcome attentions even after he knew that they were so. Is that reason enough?"
"Oh, heavens!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I am so sorry, Lyndon. I will not excuse him by saying that it was all of twenty or more years ago and he must have been young and headstrong. To you the offense must seem very fresh."
"He was desperate to marry her," he said. "Apart from the title, everything of Onslow's is unentailed, including Nuttall Grange. He had willed it all to Frances. When she would not accept Dorsey, he tried to—to force her into matrimony. It was one reason for our rushing into a secret marriage the day before I was to leave for the Netherlands with my regiment. There was the family feud, which made it difficult for us to marry openly. We both thought that when I returned we would be better able to persuade both families that our attachment had been of a long enough duration that it must be accepted. We were young—though both of age—and foolish. But at least the fact of our marriage could have been her trump card against Dorsey's insistence."
He had never before spoken of his wife, Elizabeth thought as they entered the refreshment room, which was deserted apart from a couple of servants who were doing something at a sideboard, their backs to the room. She had never liked to ask about his marriage.
"I can understand," she said, "why you dislike him so. He may, of course, have changed in twenty years, and there can certainly be nothing about Lily to attract his greed. But I will discourage any future attempt he may make to extend his acquaintance with her."
"Thank you," he said. "Keep her from him, Elizabeth."
She frowned suddenly and regarded him closely, her head tipped to one side. She did not care for the feelings she was experiencing. Jealousy? "What is your particular interest in Lily?" she asked him.
He did not answer in words. He did what he had never done before despite a close acquaintance of several years. He leaned toward her and kissed her fiercely on the lips.
"This must be the supper dance," he said, "the reason this room is so empty. Shall we go early to the dining room?"
Elizabeth fought to set her thoughts into working order as she took his arm. She felt, she thought with self-mockery, like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom who had just experienced her first kiss—all breathless and weak-kneed and eager for more. And hopelessly in love, of course. She was usually well disciplined enough to disguise that fact even from herself.
***
It was a slow and stately country dance in which they engaged. Since the patterns had them several times dancing about each other or joining hands, there were opportunities for some conversation. But Neville availed himself of none of them, and Lily for her part made no attempt to talk to him, though she smiled all the time they danced. Short snatches of conversation could deal with only trivial topics. Besides, any conversation under such circumstances might have been overheard. They danced in silence.
He knew they were watched. He knew that every look and gesture, every touch and word would be noted and commented upon tomorrow in many drawing rooms and that significance would be read into every detail. He found that he did not care.
She danced lightly and gracefully. She held herself proudly and elegantly. She looked as if she had always belonged in such surroundings. She was a beauty, a diamond of the first water. He could not—he would not—take his eyes from her.
He had come to London with hopes, albeit anxious ones. He had expected to find her miserable. He had hoped to be able to gather her—both figuratively and literally, perhaps—into his arms and assure her that he would protect her for the rest of his life even if she would not marry him. But she looked as if she belonged in Lady Ashton's ballroom. She looked poised and relaxed.
He felt almost as if he were seeing her for the first time. She had recovered the weight she had lost before coming to Newbury, weight she had never regained there. She was still small and slender, but she was all pleasing, enticing curves now. There were no traces left of the coltish, carefree girl he remembered so well. And none either of the beautiful, rather gaunt woman who had stepped into the church at Newbury. She looked now—
There were no words adequate to the task. She was femininity personified. No, too tame. She was everything he had ever wanted, could even want. Not just a companion, a wife, a soulmate. She was everything his body craved. She was—she was woman.
If this were only a waltz, he thought, he would maneuver her close to the French windows, twirl her through them, dance her into the shadows beyond the candlelight, and kiss both her and himself senseless.
It was not a waltz. They danced toward each other, moved about each other back to back, and returned to their respective lines without once touching, though he felt her body heat curl about him like a warm blanket. She held the smile she had worn from the start, but her eyes surely smoldered with an answering awareness to his own.
Thank God it was not a waltz. Her eyes merely smiled.
Honor dictated that he not even try to take advantage of her without her full and free consent.
Ah, Lily.
It was the supper dance, Neville realized as the set drew to an end, and she clearly knew what that meant. She took his arm without protest and allowed him to lead her into the dining room, where he was fortunate enough to procure them two places at a table slightly apart from any other gue
sts. He seated her and brought her a plate of food and a cup of tea.
"Lily," he asked her, taking the seat beside her and resisting the impulse to take her hand in his, "how are you?"
"I am very well, I thank you, my lord," she said. Her eyes, which had smiled into his throughout the dance, were focused somewhere in the region of his chin.
"You look lovely," he told her. "But I could weep for your hair."
That drew her eyes to his, and he saw the old Lily in the amusement that lit them. "Dolly did weep, the silly girl," she said, "until I promised that I would still need her services. She used to spend hours on my hair. She is still always busy, though. I no longer iron my own clothes or do any alterations or mending."
"Or make your own bed or help peel potatoes or chop onions?" he asked her.
"Or those things," she agreed. "Ladies do not do such things."
"Unless they choose to," he said, smiling.
"They are too busy with other things," she told him.
"Are they, Lily?" he asked her. "Such as?"
But she would not tell him what had kept her so busy during the past month—apart from having her hair cut and learning to dance and behave like a lady. She changed the subject.
"I thank you for repaying the money I borrowed from Captain Harris, my lord," she said, "even though you were under no obligation to do so. I have called on them a number of times. Elizabeth said she would willingly spare me to visit them."
"Is she a hard taskmaster in general, then?" he asked.
"Of course not," she said. "Would I offend you, my lord, if I offered to repay what you sent to Captain Harris as soon as I am able?"
"I would be offended, Lily," he said. He added a further truth. "I would be hurt, my dear."
She nodded. "Yes," she said. "I thought you would. So I will not insist."
"Thank you," he said.
She had been toying with her food, he noticed. But then he had not even touched his own.
"May I call upon you, Lily?" he asked her. "Tomorrow afternoon?"
"Why?" Her eyes looked fully into his again. He was jolted by the question. Was she going to say no?
"I have something for you," he said. "Something in the nature of a gift."
"I may not accept gifts from you, my lord," she said.
"This is different," he assured her. "It is not personal. It is something you will certainly accept and delight in. May I bring it myself and put it into your hands? Please?"
Her eyes brightened for a moment with what might have been tears, but she looked down before he could be sure. "Very well, then," she said, "if Elizabeth will permit your call. You must remember, my lord, that I am her paid companion."
"I will apply to her for permission," he said. And after all he could not resist the self-indulgence of possessing himself of one of her hands and raising it briefly to his lips. "Lily, my dear…"
Her eyelids came down faster this time, but not before he was quite sure of the tears she hid from him. He forced himself to stop what he had been about to say. Even if her feelings were still engaged, he knew she would not easily capitulate to his wooing. Love, or lack of love, had had little if anything to do with her rejection of him. If they could not find a common world in which to live together, and if they could not live somehow as equals, she would reject him even if he asked her weekly for the next fifty years.
But her feelings were still engaged. He was certain of it. It was both a painful and an encouraging discovery. At least there was something still to hope for, something to live for.
Chapter 20
Lily had reached a frustrating point in her education. At first everything had been bewildering and exhausting but really rather easy—and definitely exciting. Every day there had been something new to learn, and every day she had been able to see her progress. Within the month, she had thought, she would know everything—or at least she would have a thorough grasp of the basic skills that would enable her to know as much as she would ever wish to know.
But inevitably the time came when the lessons became repetitious and tedious, when progress seemed slow and sometimes nonexistent, when it seemed to her that she would never achieve anything resembling even a tolerably basic education.
She had learned all the letters of the alphabet—she could recognize them in both their upper and lower cases, and she could write them all. She could decipher a number of words, particularly those that looked the way they sounded and those that occurred in almost every sentence. Sometimes she persuaded herself that she could read, but whenever she picked up a book from a shelf in Elizabeth's book room, she found that every page was still a mystery to her. The few words she could read did not enable her to master the meaning of the whole, and the slowness with which she read even what she could decipher killed interest and continuity of meaning. When she picked up an invitation from the desk one day and discovered that the appearance of the writing was so different from what she had been taught from books that she could scarcely recognize a single letter, she felt close to despair.
Sheer stubbornness kept her going. She would not admit defeat. She even insisted upon sitting at her lessons all through the morning following the ball even though it had been almost dawn when they arrived home and Elizabeth had suggested sending a note to stop the tutor from coming.
And she sat at her music lesson immediately after luncheon. The pianoforte was proving equally frustrating. At first it had been wonderful just to be able to depress the keys and learn their names. She had felt that she had somehow begun to unravel the mystery of music. It had been exhilarating to learn scales, to practice playing them smoothly and with the correct fingering and the fingers correctly arched, her spine and her feet and her head held just so. It had been sheer magic to play an actual melody with her right hand and to be able to tell herself that she could play the pianoforte. But then had come the demon of the left hand, which played something simultaneously with the right hand but different from it. How could she divide her attention between the two and play both correctly? It was akin to the old game the army children had used to laugh over—of trying to rub one's stomach and pat one's head both at the same time.
But she persevered. She would learn to play. She would never be a great musician. She probably would never be good enough even to play to a drawing room audience, as most ladies seemed able to do. But she was determined to be able to play correctly and somewhat musically for her own satisfaction.
She had been playing the same Bach finger exercise over and over for half an hour. Every time her teacher stopped her to point out an error or commented adversely on what she had done when she played through it without interruption she felt ready to indulge in a tantrum, to hurl the music and some abuse at his head, to declare that she never wanted to touch a pianoforte keyboard ever again, to yell that she just did not care. But every time she listened and tried one more time. She recognized her tiredness—not only had the night been short, but she had lain awake thinking about him—and her anxiety. He was to call later. He had a gift for her. How could she see him again without crumbling, without showing him how very weak she was?
But she played on. And finally she succeeded in playing, not only without interruption, but with what she considered more competence than ever before. She lowered her hands to her lap when she was finished and waited for the verdict.
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed.
Her head whipped back over her shoulder. He was standing in the open doorway of the drawing room with Elizabeth, looking both astonished and pleased.
"This is what you have been doing with your time, Lily?" he asked.
She got to her feet and curtsied to him. If there had been a deep black hole at her feet, she would gladly have jumped into it. She had been caught practicing an exercise that a five-year-old would surely be able to play with twice the competence. She glanced reproachfully at Elizabeth.
"I believe, Mr. Stanwick," Elizabeth said to the music teacher, "Miss Doyle will agree to releas
e you early today. Lily?"
Lily nodded. "Yes," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Stanwick."
Elizabeth went, quite unnecessarily, to see him on his way, and did not come back immediately.
"That sounded very pretty," Neville said.
"It was a very elementary exercise," she said, "which I played indifferently well, my lord."
"Yes," he agreed gravely, "it was and you did."
And so he had taken argument away from her as a weapon. She felt indignant then. Had he paid her a compliment only to withdraw it?
"And all within one month," he continued. "It is an extraordinary achievement, Lily. And you have learned how to mingle with high society with grace and ease—as well as how to dance. What else have you been doing?"
"I have been learning to read and write," she said, lifting her chin. "I can do neither even indifferently well—yet."
He smiled at her. "I remember your saying—it was at the cottage," he said, "that you thought it must be the most wonderful feeling in the world to be able to read and write. I missed my cue then. It was no idle dream, was it? I thought all you needed was freedom and the soothing balm of wild nature."
She half turned from him and sat down on the edge of the pianoforte bench. She did not want to be reminded of the cottage. Those memories were her greatest weakness.
"How is Lauren?" she asked—had she asked him that last night?
"Well," he said.
She was examining the backs of her hands. "Are you—is there to be a summer wedding?" she asked without ever intending to.
"Between Lauren and me?" he said. "No, Lily."
She had not realized how much she had feared it until she heard his answer, though of course he had not said there would not be an autumn wedding or a winter one or…
"Why not?" she asked him.
"Because I am already married," he said quietly.
