"But I wish I had some of your height," Lily said with a sigh. "Is there a ribbon anywhere, Dolly, with which to tie back my hair? I do believe I have lost all my hairpins."
"Oh, a ribbon will not be enough, my lady." Dolly sounded shocked. "Not to go down to tea. You sit down on the stool now—here, I will move the bag to this chair—and I will dress your hair for you. You need not worry that I will make a mess of it. I dressed Lady Gwendoline's hair sometimes before she moved to the dower house, and I even patched up Lady Elizabeth's hair last night when some of it fell down during the ball and her own maid was nowhere to be found. She said I done a nice job. I want to be a lady's maid all the time instead of just a chambermaid. That's what my big ambition is, my lady. You got lovely hair."
Lily sat. "I do not know what you can do with it, though, Dolly," she said dubiously. "It curls hopelessly and is like a bush. It is more than usually unruly today because I washed it. Oh, how novel—I have never had anyone do my hair for me."
Dolly laughed. "What funny jokes you make, my lady," she said. "There are some I know as would kill for the curl in your hair. Look how it piles nice and stays high without falling like a loaf of bread when the oven door is opened too soon. And ooh, look, my lady, how it twists into ringlets without any rags or curling tongs, I would kill for this hair."
Lily looked at the developing style in the looking glass, her eyes wide with astonishment. "How extraordinarily clever you are," she said. "You have amazing skill, Dolly. I would not have thought it possible for my hair to look tame."
Dolly flushed with pleasure and pushed the final pin into place. She picked up a small hand mirror from the dressing table and held it up at various angles behind Lily so that she could see the back of her head and the sides.
"That will do for tea, my lady," she said. "For this evening we will need something more special. I will think of what to do. I hope your own maid does not arrive too soon, though I ought not to say so, ought I?" She was fluffing the short puffed sleeves of Lily's dress as she talked, watching the effect in the looking glass. "There you are, my lady. You are ready whenever his lordship comes."
It was not a comforting prospect. He was going to take her to tea. What did that mean exactly? But there was no time for reflection. Almost immediately there was a tap on one of the three doors of the dressing room and Dolly went to answer it—she seemed to know unerringly which one to open. Lily got to her feet.
He had changed out of his pale wedding clothes. He looked more familiar wearing a dark-green coat, though it was far more carefully tailored and form-fitting than his Rifleman's jacket had been. He looked her over quickly from head to toe and bowed to her.
"You are looking better," he said. "I trust you slept well?"
"Yes, thank you, sir," she said, and grimaced. She must remember not to call him that.
"You were fast asleep when I looked in on you earlier," he told her. "You are looking very pretty."
"Thanks to Dolly," she said, smiling at the maid. "She ironed my dress and tamed my hair. Was that not kind of her?"
"Indeed." He raised his eyebrows. "You may leave us… Dolly."
"Yes, my lord." The maid curtsied deeply without raising her eyes to him and scurried from the room.
Well, Lily could understand that reaction. She had seen soldiers leave his presence in similar fashion—though they had not curtsied, of course—after he had turned his eyes on them. His men had always worshiped him—and been terrified of his displeasure. Lily had never felt the terror.
"My name is Neville, Lily," he said. "You may use it, if you please. I am going to take you to the drawing room for tea. You must not mind. Several of my guests have already left so the numbers will not be quite overwhelming. They are mostly members of my family. I will stay close to you. Just be yourself."
But some of those grand people she had seen last night and this morning would be there, gathered in the drawing room? And he was going to take her there to join them? How could she possibly meet them? What would she say? Or do? And what would they think of her? Not very much, she guessed. She had lived most of her life with the army and was well aware of the huge gap that had separated the men—her father included—from the officers. And here she was, an earl's wife, making her first appearance at his home on the very day he was to have married someone else—a lady from his own class, she did not doubt. It would be difficult to imagine a less desirable situation.
But all her life Lily had been led into difficult situations, none of them of her own choosing. She had grown up with an army at war. She had adjusted to all sorts of places and situations and people. She had even lived through seven months of what many women would have considered a fate worse than death.
And so she stepped forward and took Neville's offered arm without showing any of her inward qualms, and they stepped out into the wide corridor she remembered from earlier. They descended one of the grand curved staircases. She looked down over the banister to the marble, tiled hall below and up to the gilded, windowed dome above. She had that feeling again of being dwarfed, overwhelmed.
"I expected a large cottage," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your home," she said. "I expected a large cottage in a large garden."
"Did you, Lily?" He looked gravely down at her. "And you found this instead? I am sorry."
"I thought only kings lived in houses like this," she said, and felt very foolish indeed, especially when his eyes crinkled at the corners and she realized she had said something to amuse him.
Then they were approaching two huge double doors and one of those liveried footmen waited to open them. He was the footman she'd encountered last evening, Lily saw. She could even remember what the superior servant had called him. Her life with the army had made her skilled in remembering faces and the names that went with them. She smiled warmly.
"How do you do, Mr. Jones?" she asked.
The footman looked startled, blushed noticeably beneath his white wig, bobbed his head, and opened the doors. Lily glanced upward to see that Neville's eyes were crinkled at the corners again. He was also pursing his lips to keep from laughing.
But she had no chance to consider the matter further because as soon as they stepped inside the drawing room, she was assaulted by so many impressions at once that she was struck quite dumb and breathless. There was the hugeness and magnificence of the room itself—four of her imagined cottages would surely have fit inside it with ease. But more daunting than the room was the number of people who occupied it. Was it possible that any of the wedding guests had already left for home? Everyone was dressed with somewhat less magnificence than either last evening or this morning, but even so Lily suddenly realized that her own prized muslin dress was quite ordinary and her wonderful coiffure very plain. Not to mention her shoes!
Neville took her, in the hush that followed their entrance, toward an older lady of regal bearing and attractively graying dark hair. She was seated, a delicate saucer in one hand, a cup in the other. She looked as if she had frozen in position. Her eyebrows were arched finely upward.
"Mama," Neville said, bowing to her, "may I present Lily, my wife? This is my mother, Lily, the Countess of Kilbourne." He drew breath audibly and spoke more quietly. "Pardon me—the dowager Countess of Kilbourne."
She was the lady who had stood up at the front of the church during the morning and spoken his name, Lily realized. She was his mother—she set down her cup and saucer and got to her feet. She was tall.