One Night for Love

'Forgive me,' she said at last. 'I did not mean an insult. Ah, I did not mean to hurt you. Neville? I did not. But I must go. Surely you understand that. I cannot stay. I promise. I will wait until tomorrow.'

***

Sir Samuel Wollston and Lady Mary had come the five miles to Newbury Abbey with their four sons in order to dine one more time with the family members who were planning to leave the following day. Lauren and Gwendoline had come from the dower house. The Duke and Duchess of Anburey, Joseph and Wilma, the dowager countess, and Elizabeth were with them in the drawing room when Neville entered and made Lily's excuses. She had a headache, he told them all.

'The poor dear,' Aunt Mary said. 'I am a martyr to the migraines myself and know how she must suffer.'

'It is a dashed shame, Nev,' Hal Wollston said. 'I was looking forward to seeing Lily again. She is a good sport.'

'I am sorry, Neville,' Lauren told him. 'Will you give her my best wishes for her recovery when you see her later?'

Neville bowed to her.

'She was very sensible not to come down if she has a headache,' Elizabeth said.

The dowager was not quite so kind. She spoke in a quiet aside to Neville. 'This is the sort of family event,' she said, 'at which it is important that your countess appear at your side, Neville. Are these headaches to become regular occurrences? I wonder. Lily does not strike me as the type of woman to suffer from nervous indispositions.'

'She has a headache, Mama,' he said firmly, 'and is to be excused.'

The truth could not be kept from them for long, of course. It might have been if Lily had fallen in with his plans as he had fully expected her to do. Indeed, his mind could still not quite grasp the reality of the fact that he was not married to Lily and was not going to be. That he had no claim on her. That she was leaving him. That he would not see her again after tomorrow.

Yet there had been last night…

But there was an evening to be lived through. At first he intended to live out to the end of it the charade he had begun with the announcement of Lily's illness. Everyone else appeared to be in a cheerful mood, perhaps because of the presence of several young people. Even young Derek Wollston, who was only fifteen years old, had been allowed to dine with the adults. But Neville changed his mind. There were going to be enough letters of explanation to write as it was. This evening offered the perfect opportunity to break the news to at least a number of those most nearly concerned.

And so when his mother gave the signal after the last cover had been removed from the table for the ladies to adjourn to the drawing room and leave the gentlemen to their port, he spoke up.

'I beg that you will stay for a while, Mama,' he said, raising his voice so that it could be heard the length of the table. 'And all the ladies, please. I have something to say.'

His mother sat down again with a smile and all eyes turned his way. He toyed for a moment with the one spoon left on the table before him. He had not planned what he would say. He had always considered rehearsed speeches an abomination. He raised his eyes and looked about at the various members of his family. Most were looking at him with polite interest—perhaps they expected a speech of farewell to those who were leaving. A few smiled. Joseph winked. Elizabeth looked at him alertly, as if she read something in his countenance that the others had not yet seen there.

'Lily does not have a headache,' he said.

The silence took on a note of decided discomfort. Uncle Samuel cleared his throat. Aunt Sadie fingered her pearls.

'She discovered this afternoon,' he said, 'that she is not my wife. Not legally, at least.'

The silence first became tense and then was lost as everyone, it appeared, tried to question him at once. Neville held up a hand and they all stopped as abruptly as they had started.

'I suspected that it might be so on the day she arrived here,' he said, and he proceeded to give them the same explanation he had given Lily earlier. It was not enough that the marriage ceremony really had occurred and that a properly ordained minister had conducted it. It was not enough that he and Lily had made vows to each other and that one of the witnesses was still alive to attest to the fact. There were formalities to be observed before a marriage was valid in the eyes of church and state. And those formalities had not been completed in their case because the Reverend Parker-Rowe had died and the papers had been lost. One of the witnesses had died at Ciudad Rodrigo a month later.

'So Lily is not your wife,' the Duke of Anburey said redundantly when Neville had finished speaking. 'You never were married to her.'

'I say!' Hal exclaimed, sounding dismayed.

'Lily is not the Countess of Kilbourne after all,' Aunt Mary said, shaking her head and looking somewhat dazed. 'I do not wonder that she has the migraines, the poor dear. You still have the title, Clara.'

Most of those gathered about the table had something to add—except the countess, who stared at him in silence, and Joseph, who looked at him with knitted brows, and Lauren, who gazed expressionlessly down at the table.

'But, Neville.' Elizabeth had leaned forward, and as often happened when she spoke, everyone stopped to listen. 'You are surely intending to satisfy the proprieties by marrying Lily again, are you not?'

All eyes turned Neville's way. He tried to smile and failed miserably. 'She will not have me,' he said. 'She has refused me and will not be moved.'

' What ? ' The countess spoke for the first time.

'I planned to leave for London with her tomorrow morning, Mama,' he told her. 'We would have married quietly there by special license and no one but the two of us would have been any the wiser. But she will not do it. She will not marry me.'

Unexpectedly Elizabeth smiled as she sat back in her chair. 'No, she would not,' she said more to herself than