One Night for Love

The French are clever. At least this particular company is. They have evaded detection by the advance British party. They allow the front of the British line to march through the pass and emerge on the other side before they attack the weak center.

Neville whips around at the sound of the first volley of shots from the hills. It seems to him that the world slows and his vision becomes a dark tunnel through which he observes Lily in the middle of the pass, throwing up her hands and tipping backward out of sight amid the smoke and the milling bodies of his trapped men.

She has been hit.

He calls her name.

'L-i-l-y!L-I-L-Y!'

Instinctively he acts like the officer he is, drawing his sword, bellowing out orders, fighting his way back into the killing field of the pass. Back to Lily.

Lieutenant Harris meanwhile has led his men from the rear up onto the hill. Within minutes the French are put at least to temporary flight. But during those minutes Neville has reached the middle of the pass and found Lily, who has blood on her chest. More blood than was on her father's yesterday.

She is dead.

He looks down at her slain body and falls to his knees beside her, his duty forgotten. His arms reach for her.

Lily. My love. My life. So briefly my life. For one night.

Only one night for love.

Lily!

He feels no pain from the bullet that grazes his head. The world blacks out for him as he falls senseless across Lily's dead body.

 

PART III

An Impossible Dream

 

Chapter 4

They did not proceed up the driveway as Lily had expected. They turned just inside the gates and were soon walking along an unpaved, wooded path. Neville neither spoke to her nor looked at her. His grip on her hand was painful. She had to half run to keep up with his long strides.

He was dazed, she knew, not quite conscious of where he was going or with whom. She did not try to break the silence.

In truth she was hardly less in shock herself. He had been about to get married. He had thought her dead—she knew that from Captain Harris. But it had been less than two years ago. He had been about to marry again. So soon after.

Lily had caught sight of his bride when she had burst into the church in a panic. She was tall and elegant and beautiful in white satin and lace. His bride. Someone from his own world. Someone whom perhaps he loved.

And then Lily had hurried past his bride and into the nave of the church. It had been like last night, like stepping into a different universe. But worse than last night. The church had been filled with splendidly, richly clad ladies and gentlemen, and they had all been looking back at her. She had felt their eyes on her even as her own had focused on the man who stood at the front of the church like a prince of fairy tales.

He was clothed in pale blue and silver and white. Lily had scarcely recognized him. The height, the breadth of shoulder, the strong, muscular physique were the same.

But this man was the Earl of Kilbourne, a remote English aristocrat. The man she remembered was Major Lord Newbury, a rugged officer with the Ninety-fifth Rifles.

Her husband.

The Major Newbury she remembered—Neville, as he had become to her on that last day—had always been careless of his appearance and impossibly attractive in his green and black regimentals, which were often shabby, often dusty or mud-spattered. His blond hair had always been close cropped. Today he was all immaculate elegance.

And he had been about to marry that beautiful woman from his own world.

He had thought Lily dead. He had forgotten about her. He had never spoken of her— that had been clear from everyone's reaction in the church. He had perhaps been ashamed to do so. Or she had meant so little to him that he had not thought to do so. His marriage to her had been contracted in haste because he had felt he owed it to her father. It had been dismissed as an incident not worth talking about.

Today was his wedding day—to someone else.

And she had come to put a stop to it.

'Lily.' He spoke suddenly and his hand tightened even more painfully about hers. 'It really is you. You really are alive.' He was still looking straight ahead. His pace had not slackened.

'Yes.' She stopped herself only just in time from apologizing, as she had done in the church. It would be so much better for him if she had died. Not that he was an unkind man. Never that. But—

'You were dead,' he said, and she realized suddenly that the path was a short route to the beach where she had spent the night. They had left the trees behind them and were descending the hillside, brushing through the ferns at reckless speed. 'I saw you die, Lily. I saw you dead with a bullet through your heart. Harris reported to me afterward that you had died. You and eleven others.'

'The bullet missed my heart,' she told him. 'I recovered.'