One Night for Love

'What do you think, Lily?' the duchess asked.

'I do not know,' Lily said, not having heard of either gentleman.

She began to wonder if they asked her opinion deliberately, knowing that she knew nothing, that she was almost as ignorant now as she had been on the day she was born. But perhaps not. They did not appear to be looking at her with malicious intent.

They were discussing books, the gentlemen speaking in favor of political and philosophical treatises, some of the ladies defending the novel as a legitimate art form.

'Which novels have you read, Lily?' an extremely elegantly dressed and coiffed young lady asked.

'I cannot read,' Lily admitted.

Everyone looked suddenly embarrassed on her behalf. There was an awkward little silence that no one seemed in a hurry to fill. Lily had always wanted to read. Her parents had told her stories when she was a child, and she had always thought it would be wonderful to be able to pick up a book and escape into those magical worlds of the imagination whenever she wished—or acquire knowledge of matters on which she was ignorant. She was so very ignorant. But there had never been the chance to go to school, and her father, who had been able to read a very little and to write his name, had always declared himself incompetent to teach her himself.

Neville half bent over her from behind her chair. He was going to rescue her and take her from the room, she thought in some relief. But before he could do so, the lady behind the tea tray spoke up—Elizabeth. She was very beautiful, Lily had noticed earlier, though she was not young. She had a grace and elegance that Lily envied and a face full of character and hair as blond as Neville's. She was his aunt.

'I daresay Lily is a living book,' she said, smiling kindly. 'I have never been able to travel beyond these shores, Lily, because the wretched wars have been raging for almost the whole of my adult life. I would dearly love to travel and see all the countries and cultures I have only been able to read about. You must have seen several. Where have you been?'

'To India,' Lily said. 'To Spain and Portugal. And now England.'

'India!' Elizabeth exclaimed, gazing admiringly at Lily. 'Men come home from such places, you know, and tell us about this battle and that skirmish. How fortunate we are to have a woman who can tell us more interesting and important things. Do talk about India. No, that is too broad a question and will doubtless tie your tongue in knots. What about the people, Lily? Are they very different from us in any essential ways? Tell us about the women. How do they dress? What do they do? What are they like?'

'I loved India,' Lily said, memory bringing an instant glow to her face and a light to her eyes. 'And the people were so very sensible. Far more so than our own people.'

'How so?' one of the young gentlemen asked her.

'They dressed so sensibly,' Lily said. 'Both men and women wore light, loose clothes for the heat. The men did not have to wear tight coats buttoned to the throat all day long and leather stocks to choke their windpipes and tight breeches and high leather boots to burn their legs and feet off. Not that it was the fault of our poor soldiers— they were merely following orders. But so often they looked like boiled beets.'

There was a burst of laughter—mainly from the gentlemen. Most of the ladies looked rather shocked, though a few of the younger ones tittered. Elizabeth smiled.

'And the women were not foolish enough to wear stays,' Lily added. 'I daresay our women would not have had the vapors so frequently if they had followed the example of the Indian women. Women can be very silly—and all in the name of fashion.'

One of the older ladies—Lily had no memory of her name or relationship to the rest of the family—had clapped a hand to her mouth and muffled a sound of distress at the public mention of stays.

'Very silly indeed,' Elizabeth agreed.

'Oh, but the women's dresses.' Lily closed her eyes for a moment and felt herself almost back in the land she had loved—she could almost smell the heat and the spices. 'Their saris. They did not need jewels to brighten those garments. But they wore glass bangles that jingled on their wrists and rings in their noses and red dots here'—she pressed a middle finger to her forehead above the bridge of her nose and drew a circle with it—'to show that they were married. Their men do not have to steal sly glances at their fingers, I daresay, as our men do, to see if they may freely pay court to them. All they have to do is look into their eyes.'

'They have no excuse, then, to pretend that they did not know?' the young gentleman with the long name—the marquess—asked, his eyes twinkling. 'It does not seem sporting somehow.'

Several of the younger people laughed.

'Did you know,' Lily asked, leaning forward slightly in her chair and looking eagerly about her, 'that saris are really just very long strips of cloth that are draped to look like the most exquisite of dresses? There is no stitching, no tapes, no pins, no buttons. One of the women who was a friend of my mama taught me how to do it. I was so proud of myself the first time I tried donning one without help. I thought I looked like a princess. But when I had taken no more than three steps forward, it fell off and I was left standing there in my shift. I felt very foolish, I do assure you.' She laughed merrily, as did the bulk of her audience.

'Goodness, child.' That was the countess, who had laughed but who also looked somewhat embarrassed.

Lily smiled at her. 'I believe I was six or seven years old at the time,' she said. 'And everyone thought it was very funny—everyone except me. I seem to recall that I burst into tears. Later I learned how to wear a sari properly. I believe I still remember how. There is no lovelier form of dress, I do assure you. And no lovelier country than India. Always when my mother and father told me stories, I pictured them happening there, in India, beyond the British camp. There, where life was brighter and more colorful and mysterious and romantic than life with the regiment ever was.'

'If you had gone to school, Lily,' the gentleman with the receding fair hair told her, 'you would have been taught that every other country and every other people are inferior to Britain and the British.' But his eyes laughed as he spoke.