One Night for Love

something for me. I could have begun a new life. I stayed here instead, hoping that she would die. And even after I decided later that I would go after all, I changed my mind. I was afraid to go lest I—miss something here. But Lily, who had far less to go to than I and far more to leave behind, went away to make a new life for herself rather than cling to what was not satisfactory for her at the time. I do not have that sort of courage.'

'You are tired,' Gwendoline said briskly, 'and a little dispirited. Everything will look better in the morning.'

'But there is one thing I do have the courage to do,' Lauren said, getting to her feet. She stretched up with great care to remove a costly porcelain shepherdess from the mantel and held it in her hands, smiling at it. 'Oh, yes, indeed I do.'

She dashed the ornament onto the hearth, where it smashed into a thousand pieces.

***

The main celebrations for the countess's birthday party were to occur during the evening, but with so many house guests at Newbury Abbey, even tea was a crowded, noisy affair. It was a raw, autumn day outside. Everyone was quite happy to be indoors.

Except Elizabeth. Oh, she was delighted to be home again, to see all her relatives again, to join in a family celebration. And she was more than delighted to see that what she had hoped for since the spring was about to happen. Although the occasion was nominally Clara's birthday, everyone understood quite clearly that there was something far more significant than that afoot. The sort of love that Neville and Lily obviously shared was rare and wonderful to behold.

It gladdened the unselfish part of Elizabeth's heart.

And saddened the selfish part.

She would no longer be needed, either by Lily or by—or by Lily's father.

She withdrew quietly from the drawing room sooner than most of the other guests, fetched a warm cloak and bonnet and gloves from her rooms, and stepped outside for a solitary stroll to the rock garden. It looked rather bleak and colorless at this time of the year, she found. She remembered coming here on the day of Lily's first arrival at Newbury Abbey, the day that was to have seen Neville and Lauren's nuptials. Lyndon had questioned Lily closely on that occasion, and she, Elizabeth, had chided him, not knowing that even then he had suspected the truth. Such a long time ago…

'Is company permitted?' a voice asked from behind her. 'Or would you prefer to be alone?'

He had come after her. She turned to smile at him. She wished she had the strength to tell him that yes, indeed she did prefer to be alone, but it would have been a lie. She had the rest of a lifetime in which to be alone. There was no point in beginning before it was necessary.

'Lyndon,' she said as he walked closer to her, 'does it make you just a little sad? You have had so little time with her.' She had watched the transformation of her friend since his discovery of Lily with amazement and gladness—and an unwilling chill at her heart.

'That she is going to desert me for Kilbourne?' he said. 'Yes, a little. The past few months have been the happiest of my life. Shall we take the rhododendron walk? Or will you be too cold?'

She shook her head. But he did not offer his arm, she noticed, perhaps because she clasped her hands so determinedly behind her. She had never felt awkward with him. She felt awkward now.

'But there is also a certain feeling of satisfaction,' he said. 'Lily will be happy—if she accepts him. But I feel little doubt that it will happen. Neither does the countess or anyone else here at Newbury for that matter. There is a certain satisfaction, Elizabeth, in the knowledge that finally I will be able to proceed with my own life.'

'When you wept at Frances's grave last summer,' she said, 'as Lily did too, you were finally able to accept that she had gone, were you not? You must have loved her very dearly.'

'Yes, I did,' he said. 'A long, long time ago. I used to think of remarrying, you know, and fathering a son and bringing him up as my heir. And then I used to imagine discovering Frances's child and my own—and finding that it was a son. I pictured the enmity and bitterness that would develop between those two brothers—both children of my own loins but only one of them able to be my heir.'

There was more beauty on the hill path than there had been in the garden. The leaves were multicolored above their heads and beneath their feet. The year was not yet quite dead.

'It is not too late, Lyndon,' she forced herself to say, her heart cold and heavy, in tune with the chill breeze that blew in their faces. 'To father a son and heir, I mean. You are not so very old, after all. And you are extremely eligible. If you were to marry a young woman, you might yet have several more children. You might have a family to comfort you for Lily's absence.'

'It is what you would advise then, my friend?' he asked her.

'Yes,' she said, hoping that her voice was as cool and as firm as she intended it to be.

She had always loved the way the path had been constructed to bring one above the level of the treetops at its highest point so that one suddenly had a vast view over the abbey and the park to the sea in the distance. She concentrated her mind on the beauty of her surroundings while the silence stretched between them. They had stopped walking, she realized.

'Do you consider yourself young, Elizabeth?' he asked her at last.

Something lurched inside her. She gazed ahead to the leaden gray sea, refusing to pay attention to the fact that he was unclasping her hands from her back and taking one of them in his own.

'Not young enough,' she said. 'I am not young enough, Lyndon. I am six-and-thirty. I have remained single from choice, you know. I have always chosen not to marry where I cannot love. But now I am too old.'

'Do you love me?' he asked her.

He was not himself looking at the view, which seemed absurd in light of the fact that they had walked all this way in order to do so. He was turned toward her and looking at her. It was not a fair question that he had asked. Her heart pounded so hard that it threatened to rob her of breath.

'As a very dear friend,' she told him.

'Ah,' he said softly. 'That is a pity, Elizabeth. I might have said the same of my feelings for you until a few months ago. But no longer. There is little point in broaching the subject of marriage with you, then? You do not love