“Are you indeed?” Marianne looked either impressed or startled, or some mixture of the two, and for her to show any particular expression in company was a feat. “How are you faring there?”
“I’ve barely begun,” Lily admitted, looking over at her husband again, this time with all the glumness her situation afforded her.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“Nothing is happening.”
“Well,” Gemma scoffed without much concern, “that follows, doesn’t it? Nothing ever happens in the beginning, else you are doing the thing backward.”
Lily turned to look at her fair-haired friend, frowning a little. “Explain that, if you please.”
Gemma seemed surprised by the request. “The beginning is awkwardness and planting seeds. True moments of satisfaction there are few and far between, simply because there isn’t a leg for any of them to stand upon. You are breaching the walls that have been put up, perhaps for a lifetime, and that is no simple task. You may feel as though you are not making any sort of progress or are even moving backward.”
“Yes,” Lily whispered, though she truly could not say that she knew much of this for certain. A few days at attempting to be accommodating, open, and more affable hadn’t given her anything to find encouragement in, or to think herself particularly successful. But the decision to try and alter things had given her the sense that she was working toward something, even if there were no rewards to be seen as yet.
In that respect, she could comprehend Gemma’s meaning.
“What do you mean by nothing?” Marianne retorted, completely disregarding anything Gemma had said. “I arranged for the two of you to dance together when we were all with the Whitlocks at their home. The pair of you were a charming picture of a couple.”
“And then I played for Kate so she might dance,” Lily reminded her. “That was part of a plan Granger and I had set up to avoid dancing. I had thought we might have conversation while I played, or that he might stand too close, or that I might be rendered a little bit breathless, but none of those things happened.”
Gemma heaved a heavy, dramatic sigh. “Your romantic expectations are too high and too specific, my dear. I doubt you’ve ever been truly rendered breathless by Granger, so why should he start doing so now?”
That wasn’t fair. Granger could be very charming when he chose, and there was no reason for Lily to not become breathless because of it. She had not done so before, but surely now that they were married, it would have a greater effect.
Marianne gave her a pointed look, her rich blue silks reflecting the color of her eyes perfectly. “Do you feel anything when he stares at you?”
“Surprised, more than anything.” Lily laughed at her own answer, which prompted her friends to do so, though they likely would not have had her reaction been otherwise. “I have never known what to feel when he looks at me, and he doesn’t stare that often. Nothing has ever come of it, so it means nothing.”
“Then that is where the problem lies,” her friend insisted. “You must feel things for your husband.”
Lily bit back several sounds of derision. “He would have to do something in order for me to feel something.”
“Lily Granger, is that cynicism I hear from your lips?”
“Yes, Gemma, I do believe it is.”
Her friends looked at each other wide-eyed before returning their attention to her.
She blushed at the direct attention. “Is it so wrong for me to want the sort of marriages that the two of you share with your husbands?”
“No,” Gemma insisted firmly.
“Of course not,” Marianne said at the same time.
Neither of them said anything further.
Lily looked between them. “But?” she prodded.
They glanced at each other, an understanding of sorts passing from one to the other. Marianne sighed and gave Lily a pitying look. “You cannot force such things, Lily. It would be much easier if you could, but I imagine that would impact the quality of the emotions involved. It will not happen on a schedule, nor when you demand.”
“I don’t want to force it,” Lily protested, the attempt halfhearted at best, as she was almost positive that she did want to force something, if only to bring about something to adjust the way things were between her and her husband.
She looked at the man in question now, still surrounded by people without being the focus of any of them. He was not at the center of anyone’s attention, nor of the group as a whole, but he was taking an active part in the conversations at hand, which seemed a small miracle. He peered up from the discussion, his eyes clashing with hers again, and this time, her heart did lurch, careening to the right and slamming against her ribs somehow.
Why had it done that? What had changed to make her feel more now than she had only seconds ago?
“I want him to look at me,” she admitted to her friends with a raw honesty that ripped at her chest, keeping her eyes on him. “I want him to take pleasure in looking at me. And I want to prefer no sight more than his presence.”
“Well, staring at him like this will give you a fine start,” Gemma encouraged, a light giggle in her voice. “But perhaps smile as you do so? At the moment, you seem to be almost haunted.”
That broke the spell Lily felt holding her attention on Thomas, and she looked at Gemma, aghast by the comment. “Haunted?” she repeated. “I was only looking!”
Marianne sighed in an almost irritated huff. “Yes, but if you do not wish your emotions to be on display, you must learn to wear a mask. Looking at the object of our emotions will always reveal more of ourselves than we would like. On occasion, that works to our advantage in the end. When it does not…”
“Wear a mask,” Lily finished, her lips barely moving. She shook her
