One Night for Love

a wedding breakfast were to be removed—the white bows and the wedding cake, for example.

The ballroom was by no means full, but it was full enough for all that. Several of the guests, the countess included, had changed out of their wedding finery and wore clothes more suited to early afternoon. Despite what they might have talked about in and outside the church and during their return to the abbey, good manners prevailed at breakfast. Polite conversation was the order of the day. Any stranger wandering into the ballroom would scarcely have guessed that the meal in progress was to have been a wedding breakfast but the wedding itself had met with catastrophic disaster—or that both family members and guests were close to bursting with curiosity to know more.

The countess was composed and gracious. She set herself to conversing with her neighbors at table on a variety of topics and showed no outer sign of the acute distress she was feeling. Private and personal concerns must wait. She was not the Countess of Kilbourne for nothing.

This was the scene that greeted Neville's eyes when he entered the ballroom. But the artificiality of it all became apparent when an immediate hush fell on the gathering and all eyes turned his way. He became horribly aware of the fact that he had not changed his clothes—he had not thought of doing so. He was a bridegroom without a bride. He stood where he was just inside the ballroom doors and clasped his hands at his back.

'I am delighted to see that the meal is proceeding,' he said. He looked about him, meeting the eyes of friends and relatives, and noting without surprise that there was no sign of either Lauren or Gwen. 'I shall not disturb you for long. But naturally I owe you all a little more explanation than I was able to give at the church this morning. Indeed, I cannot recall what I said there.'

The Marquess of Attingsborough, who had risen from his seat, perhaps to indicate to Neville the empty chair at his side, sat down again without saying anything.

Neville had not planned the speech. He did not know quite how much or how little to tell. But there was really no point in withholding anything. His mother was staring at him with blank-faced dignity. His uncle at her side was frowning. There were several servants present, including Forbes, the butler. But the servants had a right to know too, Neville supposed. He would not wait to dismiss them before speaking.

'I married Lily Doyle a few hours after her father, my sergeant, was killed,' he said. 'I married her to fulfill a dying promise to him to give her the protection of my name and rank in the event that she was captured by the French. The following day the company I led was indeed ambushed. My… wife was killed, or so both I and the lieutenant who reported to me afterward believed. I was carried back behind British lines with a severe head wound. But Lily survived as a French captive.' Her captivity by the Spanish partisans he had no intention of sharing with anyone. 'She was treated honorably as my wife and finally released. She returned to England with Captain and Mrs. Harris and came on alone to Newbury Abbey to be reunited with me.'

No one, it seemed to Neville, had moved a muscle since he had begun to speak. He wondered if any of those gathered here had seen Lily last night or knew that she had been turned away from the abbey with the offer of sixpence because she had been mistaken for a beggar. He wondered how many were telling themselves that she was in reality the Countess of Kilbourne. It needed to be said.

'I will be honored to present my wife, my countess, to you all later,' he said. 'But understandably this would be somewhat overwhelming to her at present. Many of you know… Lauren as a friend and relative. Most of you—all of you—will be imagining her pain today. It is my hope that you will lay none of the blame for her suffering at—at my wife's door. She is innocent of any intention to cause either disruption or pain. I—Well.' There was really no more to say.

'Of course she is, Nev,' the Marquess of Attingsborough said briskly, but he was the only one to break the silence.

'I beg that you will excuse me now,' Neville said. 'Enjoy the meal, please. Does anyone know where Lauren is?' He closed his eyes briefly.

'She is at the dower house with Gwendoline, Neville,' Lady Elizabeth told him. The dower house was where they had lived with the countess ever since the betrothal last Christmas. 'Neither of them would admit me when I stopped there on my way back from church. Perhaps—'

But Neville merely bowed to her and left the room. This was not the time for thought or consultation or common sense. He had to go with the momentum of the moment or collapse altogether.

***

Neville was on his way downstairs when his uncle's voice called to him from the landing above. He looked up to see not only the duke, but his mother too, and Elizabeth.

'A private word with you, Kilbourne,' his uncle said with stiff formality. 'You owe it to your mother.'

Yes, he did, Neville thought wearily. Perhaps he ought to have spoken with her first, before making a public appearance and a public statement in the ballroom. He just did not know the proper etiquette for a situation like this. He was not amused by the grim humor of the thought. He turned with a curt nod and led the way down to the library. He crossed the room and stood looking down at the unlit coals in the fireplace until he heard the door close and turned to face them.

'I suppose it did not occur to you, Neville,' his mother said, some of the usual gracious dignity gone from her manner to be replaced by bitterness, 'to inform your own mother of a previous marriage? Or to inform Lauren? This morning's intense humiliation might have been avoided.'

'Calm yourself, Clara,' the Duke of Anburey said, patting her shoulder. 'I doubt it could have been, though the whole thing might have been somewhat less of a shock to you if Neville had been more honest about the past.'

'The marriage was very sudden and very brief,' Neville said. 'I thought her dead and… well, I decided to keep that brief interlude in my life to myself.'

Because he had been ashamed to admit that he had married the unlettered daughter of a sergeant even if she was already dead? It was a nasty possibility and one he hoped was not true. But how could he have explained the impulse that had made him do it? How could he have described Lily to them? How could he have explained that sometimes a woman could be so very special that it simply did not matter who she was or —more important—who she was not? He would have given the bare facts and they would have been secretly glad, relieved,

that she had died before she could become an embarrassment to them.

'I have been able to think only of somehow handling the dreadful disaster of this morning,' the countess said, sinking down into the nearest chair and raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips, 'and of what is to become of poor Lauren. I have not been able to think beyond. Neville, tell me she is not as dreadful a creature as she appeared