One Night for Love

Montague. I have to discover who I really am. I thought I was discovering the answer after I came here to London, but today it feels as far away as ever.'

'You are Lily.' He tried to smile back at her.

She nodded and her eyes brightened with tears.

'How long?' he asked her.

She shook her head.

He could not press her on the point, he realized. She did not need one more burden to carry. And he knew the question to be unanswerable.

He had begun to believe that there was a future for them after all. He had been on the brink of putting the matter to the test at Vauxhall. He hated to remember that night, which had started with such magical promise. Now he would have to wait an indefinite length of time again with no certainties to make the wait easy.

He reached out both hands for hers, and she set her own in them.

'You will like him, Lily,' he said. 'You will even love him, I daresay. He is a good man and he is your father. Go then and find yourself. And be happy. Promise me?'

She was biting on her upper lip, he could see.

He squeezed her hands and raised them one at a time to his lips. 'I am not overfond of London,' he said. 'I shall be glad to return to Newbury for the summer. I daresay I will go tomorrow or the next day. Perhaps, if you think it appropriate, you will write me a letter there?'

'I cannot… write well enough,' she said.

'But you will.' He smiled at her. 'And you will be able to read my reply too.'

'Will I?' she asked him. 'Sometimes I wish—oh, how I wish I were Lily Doyle again and you were Major Lord Newbury and Papa…'

'But we are not,' he said sadly. 'I want you to know something, though, Lily. Not so that you will have one more burden to shoulder, but so that you will know that some things are unchanged and unchangeable. I loved you when I married you. I love you today. I will love you with my dying breath. I have loved you and will love you during every moment between those time spans.'

'Oh. But it is not the right moment,' she said, her eyes clouding with some emotion he was unable to enter into. Poor Lily. So much had happened to her recently and she had borne it all with dignity and integrity.

'I will not prolong this visit,' he told her. 'I will take my leave, Lily. Make my excuses to Elizabeth?'

She nodded.

They clung to each other's hands for a few moments longer. But she was correct. It was not the right time. If she came back to him—when she came back to him—there must be no other need in her except to be with him for the rest of their lives.

He withdrew his hands gently, keeping the smile in his eyes, and left her without another word.

He was halfway back to Kilbourne House, striding unseeing along the streets, before he remembered that he had driven his curricle to Elizabeth's.

 

PART V

A Wedding

 

Chapter 25

Lily gazed eagerly from the carriage window, not even trying to appear properly genteel. The village of Upper Newbury looked so very familiar. There was the inn, where she had descended from the stagecoach, and the steep lane leading down to the lower village. And there—

'Oh, may the carriage be stopped?' she asked.

The Duke of Portfrey, from his seat opposite, rapped on the front panel, and the carriage drew to an abrupt halt. Lily had the window down in a trice despite the coolness of the day and leaned her head through it.

'Mrs. Fundy,' she called. 'How are you? And how are the children? Oh, the baby has grown.'

While the duke and Elizabeth exchanged glances of silent amusement, Mrs. Fundy, who had been gawking at the grand carriage with its ducal crest, smiled broadly, looked suddenly flustered, and bobbed a curtsy.

'We are all very well, thank you, my lady,' she said. 'It is good to see you back again.'

'Oh, and it is good to be back again,' Lily said. 'I shall call on you one day if I may.'

She beamed at Mrs. Fundy while the carriage lurched into motion again. She was not coming home, she reminded herself. Newbury Abbey was not home. Oh, but she felt as if it were. She had come to love Rutland Park, as her father had predicted she would. She had come to love him too, as she had been determined to do, though it had not proved difficult at all. She had even enjoyed their extended visit to Nuttall Grange, where she had won the affection of her bedridden grandpapa and of her two aunts who were not really aunts at all—Bessie Doyle and her mama's sister. She had even come to feel happy and settled and at peace with herself and the world. She had not once, since leaving London, dreamed the nightmare.

But Newbury Abbey, though she had not seen either the park or the house yet, felt like home.

'Oh, look!' she exclaimed in awe after the carriage had turned through the gates and was proceeding along the driveway through the forest. The trees were all glorious shades of reds and yellows and browns. A few of the leaves had fallen already and lay in a colorful carpet along the drive. 'Have you ever seen anything more splendid than England in autumn, Father? Have you, Elizabeth?'

'No,' her father said.