One Night for Love

of his cloak.

'Thank you,' she said. She smiled tremulously. 'It does not need to be said, because there was no guilt, Neville. But I know you need to hear it. I forgive you for failing to protect me, for neglecting to come in search of me, for coming home to England and proceeding with your life. You are forgiven.'

He drew her head beneath his chin and massaged her scalp through her hair with light fingers. He gazed into the fire.

Strange night, he thought. Almost like the first night they spent together, ugliness and grief on the one hand, love and bliss of physical passion on the other, weaving themselves into some fabric called life. Something that despite everything was worth living and fighting for. As long as there was love—that indefinable element that gave it all a meaning and a value deeper than words.

It had been strangely right to confront the final painful barrier tonight of all nights. To recognize openly together that the path to this night and this cottage had been a long and a difficult one. But to understand that together they could ease each other's burdens and offer each other pardon and peace as well as love and passion.

'Lily.' He kissed her on the mouth. 'Lily—'

She pressed herself to him and clung tightly.

It was a fierce loving, without foreplay, without any great gentleness. It was the yearning of two bodies to reach beyond desire, beyond pleasure, beyond simple sexual passion to the very core of love. And blessedly they found it there in the cottage beside the pool and the waterfall, their final cries wordless, their sated bodies tangled together on the hard floor among blankets and cloaks and other garments.

They slept.

***

Neville was still fast asleep and awkwardly tangled up in the blankets after Lily had risen to her feet, straightened her clothes, fluffed up her hair as best she could, and drawn on her cloak. She was tempted to leave him there, but the fire had died down and soon enough the cold would wake him anyway. She nudged him with one foot.

He grunted.

'Neville,' she said, and watched, unsurprised, as he came fully awake and sat up all in one moment—he had been an army officer, after all. 'Neville, in another few hours we are going to have to go back to the house and look fresh and tidy and innocent enough to face Father and your mother and everyone else. We are going to have to tell them our news and allow them to take everything else out of our hands. Are we going to waste these precious few hours?'

He grinned and reached out an arm for her. 'Now that you mention it—' he began.

But she clucked her tongue. 'I did think of bathing,' she admitted, 'but I suppose the water would be rather chilly.'

He grimaced.

'So we will go walking on the beach instead,' she told him. 'No, running.'

'We will?' He stretched. 'When we could be making love instead?'

'We will go running on the beach,' she said firmly. 'In fact'—she grinned cheekily at him—'the last one to the rock and up to the very top of it is a shameful slug-a-bed.'

'A what?' he said, shouting with laughter.

But she was gone, into the other room, out through the door, leaving it wide open, leaving behind her only an echo of answering laughter.

Neville grimaced again, sighed, cast one longing look at the dying fire, chuckled, jumped to his feet, gathering his clothes about him as he did so, and went in pursuit.

Chapter 27

Lily had not judged the Duke of Portfrey quite correctly. He wanted a wedding for her at Rutland Park, it was true. She was his daughter, and he had finally found her and brought her home where she belonged. It was from home that he would give her away to the man who had won his blessing to be her husband.

But he left the choice to the size of wedding to Lily herself. If she wanted the whole ton there, then he would coerce every last member to come. If, on the other hand, she preferred something more intimate, with only family and friends in attendance, then so be it.

'The whole ton would not fit into the church,' she told him. It was an ancient Norman church, set on a hill above the village, a narrow path winding upward through the churchyard to its arched doorway. It was not a large church.

'They will be squeezed in,' he assured her, 'if it is what you wish.'

'Are you sure you would not mind,' she asked him, 'if I were to choose a wedding with just relatives and some friends?'

'Not at all.' He shook his head. 'I know, Lily, that this wedding will take second place to your first. But I want it to be a precious second place. Something you will remember fondly for the rest of your life.'

She threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly. 'It will be,' she said. 'It will be, Father. You will be there this time, and Elizabeth will be there, and all of Neville's family. Oh, it will not take second place, I promise you, but an equal place.'

'A smaller, more intimate wedding it will be then,' he told her. 'It is what I hoped you would choose, anyway.'

It was not as small or as intimate as his own wedding to Elizabeth, though, which took place at Rutland at the beginning of November, with only Lily and the duke's steward in attendance. And yet nothing, he said afterward, could possibly have made the day happier for him or his bride.

Elizabeth, always beautiful, elegant, dignified, serene, glowed with a new happiness that put the bloom of youth back into her cheeks. She threw herself with eager energy into the plans for the wedding of her stepdaughter