One Night for Love

'I had them polished, my lady,' Dolly said. 'But you need new ones, if you was to ask me.'

'I do not believe I need to ask,' Lily said as she dressed quickly. She was feeling curiously lighthearted. 'One day soon I am going to take a step forward and my shoes are going to decide to remain where they are, and that will be the end of them.'

Lily could not remember laughing with such merriment for a long, long time—until now as she did so yet again with Dolly.

'You have a pretty figure, my lady,' Dolly said, looking critically at her when she was dressed. 'Small and dainty, not all arms and legs and elbows like me. You will dress up nice when all your trunks have arrived.'

'But I wish I had some of your height,' Lily said with a sigh. 'Is there a ribbon anywhere, Dolly, with which to tie back my hair? I do believe I have lost all my hairpins.'

'Oh, a ribbon will not be enough, my lady.' Dolly sounded shocked. 'Not to go down to tea. You sit down on the stool now—here, I will move the bag to this chair—and I will dress your hair for you. You need not worry that I will make a mess of it. I dressed Lady Gwendoline's hair sometimes before she moved to the dower house, and I even patched up Lady Elizabeth's hair last night when some of it fell down during the ball and her own maid was nowhere to be found. She said I done a nice job. I want to be a lady's maid all the time instead of just a chambermaid. That's what my big ambition is, my lady. You got lovely hair.'

Lily sat. 'I do not know what you can do with it, though, Dolly,' she said dubiously. 'It curls hopelessly and is like a bush. It is more than usually unruly today because I washed it. Oh, how novel—I have never had anyone do my hair for me.'

Dolly laughed. 'What funny jokes you make, my lady,' she said. 'There are some I know as would kill for the curl in your hair. Look how it piles nice and stays high without falling like a loaf of bread when the oven door is opened too soon. And ooh, look, my lady, how it twists into ringlets without any rags or curling tongs, I would kill for this hair.'

Lily looked at the developing style in the looking glass, her eyes wide with astonishment. 'How extraordinarily clever you are,' she said. 'You have amazing skill, Dolly. I would not have thought it possible for my hair to look tame.'

Dolly flushed with pleasure and pushed the final pin into place. She picked up a small hand mirror from the dressing table and held it up at various angles behind Lily so that she could see the back of her head and the sides.

'That will do for tea, my lady,' she said. 'For this evening we will need something more special. I will think of what to do. I hope your own maid does not arrive too soon, though I ought not to say so, ought I?' She was fluffing the short puffed sleeves of Lily's dress as she talked, watching the effect in the looking glass. 'There you are, my lady. You are ready whenever his lordship comes.'

It was not a comforting prospect. He was going to take her to tea. What did that mean exactly? But there was no time for reflection. Almost immediately there was a tap on one of the three doors of the dressing room and Dolly went to answer it—she seemed to know unerringly which one to open. Lily got to her feet.

He had changed out of his pale wedding clothes. He looked more familiar wearing a dark-green coat, though it was far more carefully tailored and form-fitting than his Rifleman's jacket had been. He looked her over quickly from head to toe and bowed to her.

'You are looking better,' he said. 'I trust you slept well?'

'Yes, thank you, sir,' she said, and grimaced. She must remember not to call him that.

'You were fast asleep when I looked in on you earlier,' he told her. 'You are looking very pretty.'

'Thanks to Dolly,' she said, smiling at the maid. 'She ironed my dress and tamed my hair. Was that not kind of her?'

'Indeed.' He raised his eyebrows. 'You may leave us… Dolly.'

'Yes, my lord.' The maid curtsied deeply without raising her eyes to him and scurried from the room.

Well, Lily could understand that reaction. She had seen soldiers leave his presence in similar fashion—though they had not curtsied, of course—after he had turned his eyes on them. His men had always worshiped him—and been terrified of his displeasure. Lily had never felt the terror.

'My name is Neville, Lily,' he said. 'You may use it, if you please. I am going to take you to the drawing room for tea. You must not mind. Several of my guests have already left so the numbers will not be quite overwhelming. They are mostly members of my family. I will stay close to you. Just be yourself.'

But some of those grand people she had seen last night and this morning would be there, gathered in the drawing room? And he was going to take her there to join them? How could she possibly meet them? What would she say? Or do? And what would they think of her? Not very much, she guessed. She had lived most of her life with the army and was well aware of the huge gap that had separated the men—her father included—from the officers. And here she was, an earl's wife, making her first appearance at his home on the very day he was to have married someone else—a lady from his own class, she did not doubt. It would be difficult to imagine a less desirable situation.

But all her life Lily had been led into difficult situations, none of them of her own choosing. She had grown up with an army at war. She had adjusted to all sorts of places and situations and people. She had even lived through seven months of what many women would have considered a fate worse than death.

And so she stepped forward and took Neville's offered arm without showing any of her inward qualms, and they stepped out into the wide corridor she remembered from earlier. They descended one of the grand curved staircases. She looked down over the banister to the marble, tiled hall below and up to the gilded, windowed dome above. She had that feeling again of being dwarfed, overwhelmed.

'I expected a large cottage,' she said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Your home,' she said. 'I expected a large cottage in a large garden.'