One Night for Love

He stopped when they reached the valley floor and looked toward the waterfall, which knifed downward in a spectacular ribbon of bright foam over a fern-clad cliff to the pool below and the stream that flowed to the sea. The tiny thatched cottage that Lily had noticed the night before overlooked the pool. There was a pathway leading to its door, though there was no sign that the house was inhabited.

He turned in the opposite direction and strode toward the beach, taking her with him. Lily, who was feeling overwarm at the length and speed of their walk, pulled loose the ribbons of her bonnet with her free hand and let it fall to the sand behind her. She had lost hairpins during the night. The few that remained were not sufficient to the task of keeping her mane of curly, unruly hair confined on her head. It fell about her shoulders and down her back. She shook her head and allowed the breeze to blow it back from her face.

'Lily,' he said, looking down at her for the first time since they had left the church. 'Lily. Lily.'

They were walking, not along the hard level sand of the beach, but down it. They stopped at the water's edge. If only they were still separated by the ocean's expanse, Lily thought. If only she had stayed in Portugal. It would have been better for both their sakes.

He would have married the other woman.

She would not have known that he had forgotten her so soon, that she had meant so little to him.

'You are alive.' He had dropped her hand at last, but he turned to her now, gazed into her face with searching eyes, and lifted one hand. He hesitated before touching his fingertips to her cheek. 'Lily. Oh, my dear, you are alive!'

'Yes.' She had reached her journey's end. Or perhaps merely the beginning of another. He stood there in all the splendor of the Earl of Kilbourne.

***

Neville realized suddenly that he was standing on the beach, at the water's edge. He had no idea why he had come here of all places. Except that the house would soon be filled with guests again. And this was where he always came to be alone. To think.

But he was not alone now. Lily was with him. He was touching her. She was warm and alive. She was small and thin and pretty and shabby, her long hair blowing wildly in the wind.

She was—oh, God, she was Lily.

'Lily,' he asked, and he squinted out to sea, though he did not really see either the water or the infinity beyond it, 'what happened?'

He had been carried off unconscious from that pass. Lieutenant Harris had told him in the hospital that Lily and eleven of the men, including the chaplain, the Reverend Parker-Rowe, had died. But the company had been forced to make their escape carrying only their packs and their wounded with them. They had had to leave the dead and their belongings for the returning French to plunder and bury.

Guilt had gnawed at Neville in the year and a half since then. He had failed to protect his men from harm. He had failed Sergeant Doyle. He had failed Lily—his wife.

'They took me to Ciudad Rodrigo,' she said, 'and a surgeon dug the bullet out of me. It missed my heart by a whisker, he told me—it was the word he used. He spoke English. A few of them did. They were kind to me.'

'Were they?' He turned his head and looked sharply down at her. 'They found your papers, Lily? They treated you well? With respect?'

'Oh, yes,' she said, looking up at him. He remembered then the large, guileless eyes as blue as a summer sky. They had not changed. 'They were very kind. They called me 'my lady.' ' She smiled fleetingly.

Relief made him feel slightly weak at the knees. The shock was beginning to wear off, he realized. He should be married now and on his way back to the abbey for breakfast—with Lauren, his wife. Instead he was standing on the beach in his wedding finery with—his wife. He felt a renewed wave of dizziness.

'They kept you in captivity and treated you well?' he said. 'When and where did they release you, Lily? Why was I not informed? Or did you escape?'

Her gaze lowered to his chin. 'They were attacked soon after we left Ciudad Rodrigo,' she said. 'By Spanish partisans. I was taken captive.'

He felt further relief. He even smiled. 'Then you were safe,' he said. 'The partisans are our allies. They escorted you back to the regiment? But that must have been months ago, Lily. Why did no one notify me?'

She was turning, he noticed, to look back up the beach toward the valley. Her hair blew forward over her shoulders, hiding her face from his gaze.

'They knew I was English,' she said. 'But they would not believe I was a prisoner. I was not confined, you see. And they would not believe that I was an officer's wife. I was not dressed like one. They thought I was with the French as a—as a concubine.'

He felt as if his heart had performed a complete somersault in his chest. He opened his mouth to speak, but he could scarcely get the words out.

'But your papers, Lily…'

'The French had taken them and not returned them to me,' she said.

He closed his eyes tightly and kept them closed. The Spanish partisans were notorious for the savagery with which they treated their French captives. How would they have treated a French concubine, even if she was English? How had she escaped horrible torture and execution?

He knew how.

He gasped air into his lungs. 'You were with them… for a long time?' he asked. He did not wait for her answer. 'Lily, did they…'

Had all of Doyle's worst fears been realized? And his own? But he did not need to hear the answer. It was pitifully obvious. There was no other possible answer.

'Yes,' she said softly.

Silence stretched before she continued speaking. Somewhere a seagull was crying, and it was easy to imagine