One of the older ladies—Lily had no memory of her name or relationship to the rest of the family—had clapped a hand to her mouth and muffled a sound of distress at the public mention of stays.
"Very silly indeed," Elizabeth agreed.
"Oh, but the women's dresses." Lily closed her eyes for a moment and felt herself almost back in the land she had loved—she could almost smell the heat and the spices. "Their saris. They did not need jewels to brighten those garments. But they wore glass bangles that jingled on their wrists and rings in their noses and red dots here"—she pressed a middle finger to her forehead above the bridge of her nose and drew a circle with it—"to show that they were married. Their men do not have to steal sly glances at their fingers, I daresay, as our men do, to see if they may freely pay court to them. All they have to do is look into their eyes."
"They have no excuse, then, to pretend that they did not know?" the young gentleman with the long name—the marquess—asked, his eyes twinkling. "It does not seem sporting somehow."
Several of the younger people laughed.
"Did you know," Lily asked, leaning forward slightly in her chair and looking eagerly about her, "that saris are really just very long strips of cloth that are draped to look like the most exquisite of dresses? There is no stitching, no tapes, no pins, no buttons. One of the women who was a friend of my mama taught me how to do it. I was so proud of myself the first time I tried donning one without help. I thought I looked like a princess. But when I had taken no more than three steps forward, it fell off and I was left standing there in my shift. I felt very foolish, I do assure you." She laughed merrily, as did the bulk of her audience.
"Goodness, child." That was the countess, who had laughed but who also looked somewhat embarrassed.
Lily smiled at her. "I believe I was six or seven years old at the time," she said. "And everyone thought it was very funny—everyone except me. I seem to recall that I burst into tears. Later I learned how to wear a sari properly. I believe I still remember how. There is no lovelier form of dress, I do assure you. And no lovelier country than India. Always when my mother and father told me stories, I pictured them happening there, in India, beyond the British camp. There, where life was brighter and more colorful and mysterious and romantic than life with the regiment ever was."
"If you had gone to school, Lily," the gentleman with the receding fair hair told her, "you would have been taught that every other country and every other people are inferior to Britain and the British." But his eyes laughed as he spoke.
"Perhaps it is as well that I did not go to school, then," Lily replied.
He winked at her.
"Indeed, Lily," Elizabeth said, "there is a school of experience in which those with intelligence and open, questioning minds and acute powers of observation may learn valuable lessons. It seems to me that you have been a diligent pupil."
Lily beamed at her. For a few minutes she had forgotten her ignorance and her inferiority to all these grand people. She had forgotten that she was frightened.
"But we have kept you talking too long and have caused your tea to grow cold," Elizabeth said. "Come. Let me empty out what remains and pour you a fresh cup."
One of the young ladies—the one with the red hair—was asked then to play the pianoforte in the adjoining music room, and several people followed her in there, leaving the double doors open. Neville took the seat beside Lily that had just been vacated.
"Bravo!" he said softly. "You have done very well."
But Lily was listening to the music. It enthralled her. How could so much rich and harmonious sound come from one instrument and be produced with just ten human fingers? How wonderful it must feel to be able to do that. She would give almost anything in the world, she thought suddenly, to be able to play the pianoforte—and to be able to read and to discuss bonnets and tragedy and to know the difference between Mozart and Beethoven.
She was so terribly, dreadfully ignorant.
Chapter 7
Neville stood on the marble steps outside the house watching Lily stroll in the direction of the rock garden with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey. He made no attempt to join them. Somehow, he realized, if Lily was to function as his countess, she was going to have to do so without his hovering over her at every moment, ready to rescue her whenever she seemed in distress—as he had been about to do at tea when she had admitted to being illiterate. He had felt everyone's shock and her embarrassment and had been instantly intent on taking her out of the way of more humiliation. But Elizabeth had come magnificently to her rescue with her questions about India, and Lily had been suddenly transformed into a warm and relaxed and knowledgeable student of the world. She had shocked a few of his aunts and cousins with her candid references to breeches and stays and such, it was true. But more than one or two of his relatives had seemed charmed by her.
Unfortunately his mother was not one of them. She had waited for Lily to leave and for all but an intimate few of the family to withdraw after tea.
"Neville," she had said, "I cannot imagine what you were thinking of. She is quite impossible. She has no conversation, no education, no accomplishments, no—no presence. And does she have nothing more suitable to wear for afternoon tea than that sad muslin garment?" But his mother was not one to wallow in a sense of defeat. She straightened her shoulders and changed her tone. "But there is little to be gained by lamenting the impossibility, is there? She must simply be made possible."
"I think her deuced pretty, Nev," Hal Wollston, his cousin, had said.
"You would, Hal." Lady Wilma Fawcitt, the Duke of Anburey's red-haired daughter, had sounded scornful. "As if pretty looks have anything to say to anything. I agree with Aunt Clara. She is impossible!"
"Perhaps," Neville had said with quiet emphasis, "you would care to remember, Wilma, that you are speaking of my wife."
She had tutted, but she had said no more.
His mother had got to her feet to leave the room. "I must return to the dower house and see what is to be done for poor Lauren," she had said. "But tomorrow I shall move back into the abbey, Neville. It is going to need a mistress, and clearly Lily will be quite unable to assume that role for some time to come. I shall undertake her training."
"We will discuss the matter some other time, Mama," he had said, "though I agree it would be best if you moved back here. I will not have Lily made unhappy, however. This is all very difficult for her. Far more difficult than for any of us."
He had left the room before anyone could say anything more and had come to stand on the steps. There were some days, he reflected, that were so unremarkable that a week afterward one could not recall a single thing that had happened in them. And then there were days that seemed packed full of a lifetime of experiences. This was definitely one such day.
He had written several letters after returning from the dower house and then checking on Lily, who had been fast asleep. He had sent the letters on their way. It would not be easy to be patient in awaiting the replies.
The fact was that for all his solicitude, for all his apparent calm, he simply was not sure Lily really was his wife.
They had married without a license and without the customary banns. The regimental chaplain had assured him that the wedding was quite legal, and he had drawn up the proper papers to which Neville had put his signature and Lily her mark and which had been witnessed by Harris and Rieder. But Parker-Rowe had been killed in that ambush the following day. Harris had reported that the belongings of the dead had been left with them in the pass.