One Night for Love

Lily sees beauty wherever she goes. While the men of the Ninety-fifth and the women who follow in its train curse the Iberian landscape, the weather, the endless marches, the dreary camps, the food, one another, Lily can always find something of beauty. But she is not resented for her eternal cheerfulness. She is a favorite with all who know her.

Until recently she has been a girl. She is a girl no longer.

Neville tosses the dregs of his tea onto the grass beside him and gets to his feet. He looks about, first at the company of men he has brought with him on a winter scouting expedition to make sure that the French are observing the unwritten truce of the season and are keeping behind their lines in Spain or else inside the border fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which the British forces will besiege as soon as spring comes.

He squints across to the hills opposite and down into the valley. All is quiet. He has not expected otherwise. If there had been any real danger, he would never have allowed Corporal Geary to bring his wife or Sergeant Doyle to bring his daughter. It is a routine mission and has been unexpectedly pleasant—this is normally the rainy season. Tomorrow they will return to base camp. But tonight they will camp where they are.

He can no longer resist. He strolls toward the promontory on which Lily sits and makes a show when he is standing beside her of shielding his eyes and sweeping his gaze over the valley again. She looks up and smiles. He is not quite sure when her looks and smiles started to make his heart skip a beat. He has tried to continue seeing her as the young daughter—the too-young daughter—of his sergeant. But he has been failing miserably of late. She is eighteen, after all.

'You have observed no French regiment tiptoeing stealthily along the valley floor, Lily?' he asks without looking down at her.

She laughs. 'Two of them actually, sir,' she says. 'One cavalry and one infantry. Was I supposed to have said something?'

'No, no.' He grins down at her, and there—it happens again. His heart turns over when he sees the eager delight in her face. 'It is not important. Not unless old Boney was with them.'

She laughs again. He wonders as he seats himself beside her, one leg stretched out, one arm draped over the raised knee of the other, if she knows the effect she has on men—on him. He is not by any means the only one who has noticed that she has become a woman.

'I suppose, Lily,' Neville says, 'you can see some beauty in this godforsaken place?'

'Oh, not godforsaken,' she says earnestly, as he knew she would. 'Even bare rocks have a certain majesty that inspires awe. But see?' She lifts one slender arm and points. 'There is grass. There are even a few trees. Nature cannot be repressed. It will burst through.'

'They are sorry apologies for trees.' He looks to where she is pointing. 'And the gardener at Newbury Abbey would consign that grass to the rubbish heap without a second thought.'

When she turns toward him and her eyes focus on his, he finds himself drawing a slow breath, half of him wanting to edge farther back away from her, the other half wanting to close the distance until…

'What is the garden like there?' she asks him, an unmistakable wistfulness in her voice. 'Papa says there is nothing so lovely as an English garden.'

'Green,' he says. 'A lush, vibrant green that cannot be adequately described in words, Lily. Grass and trees and flowers of every color and description. Masses of them. Especially roses. The air is heavy with their perfume in summer.'

He rarely feels nostalgia for home. Sometimes the realization makes him feel guilty. It is not that he does not love his mother and father. He does. But he was brought up to take over his father's role as earl one day, and he was brought up to marry Lauren, his stepcousin, who was raised at Newbury Abbey with him and was as dear to him as his sister Gwen was. The time came when he was stifled by his father's loving plans for him, desperate for a life of his own, for action, adventure, freedom…

He has hurt his parents by becoming a military man. He suspects he has done more than hurt Lauren, having informed her as tactfully as he could when he left that he would not promise to be back soon, that he would not expect her to wait for him.

'How I would love to see them and smell them.' Lily has closed her eyes and is inhaling slowly as if she actually can smell the roses at Newbury.

'You will one day.' Without thinking, he reaches out to draw free with one finger a strand of her hair that has blown into the corner of her mouth. Her skin is smooth—and warm. The hair is wet. He feels raw desire stab into his groin and withdraws the finger hastily.

She smiles at him. But then she does something Lily rarely does. She blushes and her eyes waver and then look away rather jerkily to the valley again.

She knows.

He is saddened by the thought. Lily has always been his friend, ever since Doyle became his sergeant four years ago. She has a lively mind and a delightful sense of humor and a natural refinement of manner despite the fact that she is illiterate. She has talked to him about her life, especially her years in India, where her mother died, and about people and experiences they have in common. She once argued with him when he found her on a battlefield after the fighting was over and scolded her for tending a wounded and dying French soldier. A man is simply a man, & person, she told him. She has always been uncowed by his rank even though, like her father and all the men, she calls him 'sir.' He knelt beside her and gave the Frenchman a drink from his own canteen.

But things have changed. Lily has grown up. And he desires her. She knows it. He will have to withdraw from the friendship because Lily is off limits to him as anything more than a friend. She is Sergeant Doyle's daughter, and he respects Doyle even though they are from different social classes. But besides that, Lily is an innocent, and it is his duty to protect her honor, not take it. And she too, of course, is of a different class from his own. Such things do matter in the real world, unfortunately. Rebel as he still is, he has nevertheless not broken with his own world and never will. He has too much of a sense of duty for that. He is a gentleman, an officer, a viscount, a future earl.

He can never be Lily's lover.

'Lily,' he asks, trying to cling to the friendship, to suppress the other, unwelcome feelings, 'what do you look forward to? What will you do with your life? What are your dreams?'

She cannot stay with her father forever. What does the future hold for her? Marriage