One Night for Love

Lily was determined to cling to the lightheartedness with which she had started the day. After breakfast, when she knew that the ladies as usual would proceed to the morning room to write letters and converse and sit at their embroidery, she went down to the kitchen and helped knead the bread and chop some vegetables while she joined happily in the conversation—the servants, she was glad to find, were becoming accustomed to her appearances and were losing their awkwardness with her. Indeed, the cook even spoke sharply to her after a while.

'Haven't you finished those carrots yet?' she asked briskly. 'You have been doing too much talk—' And then she realized to whom she was talking, as did everyone else in the kitchen. Everyone froze.

'Oh, dear,' Lily said, laughing. 'You are quite right, Mrs. Lockhart. I shall not say another word until the carrots are all chopped.'

She laughed gaily again after a whole minute of awkward silence had passed, broken only by the sound of her knife against the chopping board.

'At least,' she said, 'I do not have to fear that Mrs. Ailsham will sack me, do I?'

Everyone laughed, perhaps a little too heartily, but then relaxed again. Lily finished the carrots and sat with a cup of tea and the crisp, warm crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread before reluctantly going back upstairs. But she brightened again when her mother-in-law asked if she would like to join her in making a few calls in the village after luncheon and in delivering a couple of baskets to the lower village—one to an elderly man who had been indisposed, and one to a fisherman's wife who was in childbed.

But the delivery of the baskets, Lily discovered later while they were sitting in the parlor of the Misses Taylor, drinking the inevitable cup of tea, was to be done by proxy. The coachman was to carry them down the hill and take them to the relevant cottages.

'Oh, no,' Lily protested, jumping to her feet. 'I will take them.'

'My dear Lady Kilbourne,' Miss Amelia said, 'what a very kind thought.'

'But the hill is too steep for the carriage, Lady Kilbourne,' Miss Taylor pointed out.

'Oh, I shall walk.' Lily smiled dazzlingly. She had not been down to Lower Newbury since that morning when she had climbed across the rocks to it. She welcomed the chance to return there.

'Lily, my dear.' The dowager countess smiled at her and shook her head. 'It is quite unnecessary for you to go in person. It will not be expected.'

'But I wish to go,' Lily assured her.

And so after they had left the Misses Taylors' genteel cottage a few minutes later, the dowager proceeded to the vicarage while Lily tripped lightly down the steep hill, one large basket on her arm. The coachman, who had the other, had wanted to carry both, but she had insisted on taking her share of the load. And she would not allow him to walk a few paces behind her. She walked beside him and soon had him talking about his family—he had married one of the chambermaids the year before and they had an infant son.

Mrs. Gish, who had given birth to her seventh child the day before after a long and difficult labor, was attempting to keep her house and her young family in order with the assistance of an elderly neighbor. Lily soon had the main room swept out, the table cleared and wiped, a pile of dirty dishes washed and dried, and one infant knee cleansed of its bloody scrape and bandaged with a clean rag.

Elderly Mr. Howells, who was sitting outside his grandson's cottage, smoking a pipe and looking melancholy, was in dire need of a pair of ears willing to listen to his lengthy reminiscences about his days as a fisherman—and a smuggler. Oh, yes, he assured an interested Lily, they had their fair share of smuggling at Lower Newbury, they did. Why, he could remember…

'My lady,' the coachman said eventually after a deferential clearing of his throat—he had been standing some distance away—'her ladyship has sent a servant from the vicarage…'

'Oh, goodness gracious me,' Lily said, leaping to her feet. 'She will be waiting to return to the abbey.'

The dowager countess was indeed waiting—and had been for almost two hours. She was gracious about it in front of the vicar and his wife. Indeed she was gracious about it in the carriage on the way home too.

'Lily, my dear,' she said, laying one gloved hand over her daughter-in-law's, 'it is like having a breath of fresh air wafted over us to discover your concern for Neville's poorer tenants. And your smiles and your charm are making you friends wherever you go. We have all grown remarkably fond of you.'

'But?' Lily said, turning her head away to look out through the window. 'But I am an embarrassment to you all?'

'Oh, my dear.' The dowager patted her hand. 'No, not that. I daresay you have as much to teach us as we have to teach you. But we do have a great deal to teach you, Lily. You are Neville's wife, and he is clearly fond of you. I am glad of that, for I am fond of him, you know. But you are also his countess.'

'And I am also the daughter of a common soldier,' Lily said, some bitterness creeping into her voice. 'I am also someone who knows nothing about life in England or in a settled home. And absolutely nothing at all about the life of a lady or of a countess.'

'It is never too late to learn,' her mother-in-law said briskly but not unkindly.

'While everyone watches my every move to find fault with me?' Lily asked. 'Oh, but that is unfair, I know. Everyone has been kind. You have been kind. I will try. I really will. But I am not sure I can—give up myself.'

'My dear Lily.' The dowager sounded genuinely concerned. 'No one expects you to give up yourself, as you put it.'

'But the part of me that is myself wants to be in Lower Newbury mingling with the fisherfolk,' Lily said. 'That is where I feel comfortable. That is where I belong. Am I to learn to nod graciously to those people and not speak to them or show personal concern for them or hold their babies?'

'Lily.' Her mother-in-law could seem to think of nothing more to say.