One Night for Love

Was the Countess of Kilbourne planning to return her place of residence to the dower house? Miss Amelia Taylor wished to know. She asked only because it would not be at all the thing for her and her sister to call at the abbey one day to find only his lordship in residence. She blushed at the very idea.

Was his lordship still planning a journey to the Lakes this year? Sir Cuthbert Leigh wondered. His cousin's inlaws had just returned from there and pronounced it a remarkably picturesque and genteel destination.

His lordship must be finding Newbury Abbey rather large and lonely with his sister and his cousin no longer living there, Mrs. Cannadine informed him.

Had his lordship quite recovered from his little upset? Mrs. Beckford, the vicar's wife, asked him in the sort of hushed, sympathetic tones her husband used at deathbeds. She and the reverend were hoping—the hope was accompanied by an arch look that ill became her—that everything would soon be put to rights again.

It was not just the neighbors. The countess too urged a return to the original plan.

'I liked Lily, Neville,' she assured him when they were breakfasting together a week after Lily had left. 'Despite myself I liked her. She has a sweet, unaffected charm. I was prepared to give her my affection and support for the rest of my life. And I know you were fond of her and have found the past week difficult. You are my son and I know that about you—and my heart has ached for you.'

'But?' He smiled at her rather ruefully.

'But she is not your wife,' she reminded him, 'and does not wish to be. Lauren has been intended for you from infancy. You know each other well; you have a real fondness for each other; you have an equality of mind and education. She would fit into my role here without any painful period of adjustment. She would give stability to your life and children to the nursery. I long for grandchildren, Neville. You would not understand, perhaps, the disappointment I felt when Gwendoline miscarried as a result of her accident—as well as grief for her. But I stray from the main point. You had decided to marry Lauren. You were happy with the decision. You were literally at the altar awaiting her. Put the turmoil of the past few weeks behind you and pick up the threads of your life where you left them off. For everyone's sake.'

He reached across the table and took one of her hands in both his own. 'I am truly sorry, Mama,' he said. 'But no.' He tried to think of an explanation that would make sense to her, but he knew that none would. And he could not bare his heart even to his mother. 'Let us all give it time,' he added lamely.

It seemed that his life these days was made up of waiting, giving himself time. He waited longer than a week for an answer to the letter he had written to regimental headquarters the morning of Lily's departure. But at last it came—he had half expected the problem to be far more difficult, if not impossible, to solve. He had not posted the letter but had sent it, with specific verbal instructions, with his valet, who had once been his batman, a burly, rather morose man who had always served his master's interests well by refusing to budge an inch in the course of duty. The answer gave Neville something to do—and an excuse for leaving the abbey, which had become oppressive to him.

He might have sent another messenger to make further inquiries. But he chose instead to go in person to Leavenscourt in Leicestershire, where Thomas Doyle's belongings had been sent after their return to England. Doyle's father was a groom at the manor of Leavenscourt.

It was a long journey through weather that had turned wet and blustery and chilly. Neville was forced to travel in a closed carriage, something he always found tedious in the extreme. And he expected to find nothing at the end of the journey. But at least, he thought as he kicked his heels in the taproom of the rickety apology for an inn the weather had forced him to put up at one night—at least he was doing something. Newbury had become abhorrent to him, and so much there reminded him of Lily. He had even made the mistake of spending one night at the cottage, lying where they had lain on the bed, filled with such a vast emptiness that he had not even been able to force himself to move, to get out of there.

Leavenscourt was a small but prosperous-looking property. He looked about him with some curiosity as he approached the house. This was where Doyle had grown up? The family was not in residence and his appearance threw the housekeeper into consternation. She stared at him when he explained that he had come to speak with Mr. Doyle, one of the grooms, father of the late Sergeant Thomas Doyle of the Ninety-fifth. She even forgot to keep bobbing curtsies.

Henry Doyle, it seemed, had been dead these four years and more.

Neville felt a door slamming in his face. 'I understand,' he said, 'that the regiment returned Sergeant Doyle's belongings here after his death more than eighteen months ago. Would you know anything about those, ma'am?'

'Oh.' She curtsied. 'I daresay they were given to William Doyle, my lord. Henry Doyle's son, that is.'

Ah. 'And where may I find William Doyle?' he asked.

'He is dead, my lord,' she told him. 'He died about a year ago in a nasty accident, my lord.'

'I am sorry to hear it,' Neville said. And he was too. Two men who would have been perhaps Lily's only surviving relatives were both dead. 'Would you know, ma'am, what happened to his belongings?'

'I daresay Bessie Doyle has them, my lord,' she said. 'She is William's widow. She still lives in the cottage. She has two growing lads and the master was too kind of heart to turn them out. She takes in laundry.'

Lily's aunt—and her cousins.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'you would direct me to the cottage, ma'am.'

The housekeeper, considerably flustered again, assured his lordship that she could have Bessie summoned to the house, but he declined her offer and was given the directions he needed.

Bessie Doyle was a stout, florid-faced woman of middle years. She kept an untidy home, though it looked clean enough. She greeted the sight of a fashionably dressed earl on her doorstep with an assessing head-to-toe glance and hands firmly planted on ample hips.

'If it is laundry you has for me,' she told him, 'you have come to the right place. Though I do not answer for fancy boots like them there after they have tramped through the mud. You had better wipe your feet if you intends to come inside.'

Neville grinned at her. The tail of the army was full of Bessie Doyles, strong, capable, practical women who