Lady Gwendoline's silence became almost loud.
Lauren's face stretched for a moment into what might have been a smile.
"But I am keeping you," Lily said, her animation fading. "I really am sorry. You are very gracious. He—Major Newbury—told me last night that he was very fond of you. I do not wonder at it. I—Well, I am sorry." She was saying all the wrong things, of course. But were there right things to say? "Do you live at Newbury Abbey?"
"At the dower house," Lauren said, nodding in the direction of the trees opposite, through which Lily could see a house just visible when she turned her head to look. "With Gwen and the countess, her mother. Perhaps I will call upon you some time. Tomorrow maybe?"
"Yes." Lily smiled, vastly relived. "I should like that, please. I should like it very much. Will you come too… Gwendoline?" She looked uncertainly at her sister-in-law, who did not answer, but whose nostrils flared with what was clearly barely controlled anger.
Gwendoline loved her cousin, Lily thought. Her anger was understandable. She smiled fleetingly at them both before continuing on her way to the abbey. She felt considerably discomposed. Lauren was beautiful and dignified and far more gracious than she might have been expected to be. How could Neville not love her?
Some of the oppressive feeling of the day before weighed down on Lily again.
***
Lauren and Gwendoline stood gazing after her.
"Well!" Gwendoline expelled her breath audibly and came to stand beside her cousin as Lily moved out of earshot. "I have never been so affronted in my life. How dared she stop and talk to us—to you in particular."
"How dared she, Gwen?" Lauren gazed after the disappearing figure. "She is Neville's wife. She is your sister-in-law. She is the Countess of Kilbourne. Besides, I was the first to speak." She laughed, though there was no amusement in the sound. "She is very lovely."
"Lovely?" Gwendoline spoke with the utmost scorn. "She would put even a beggar to the blush. Is she deliberately trying to disgrace Neville, or does she simply not know any better? She has appeared in both villages for all to see, looking like that—no bonnet, no shoes, no—" She made a sound of exasperation. "Does she know nothing about how to behave?"
"But oh, Gwen," Lauren said so quietly that her cousin almost did not hear the words, "did you not see that she is vivid and original? Something quite out of the ordinary? The sort of woman who would draw a man's eyes and desires? Neville's, for example?"
Gwendoline looked incredulously at her cousin. "Are you mad?" she asked rhetorically. "She is disgusting. She is impossible. And you of all people should hate her, Lauren. You are not defending her, are you?"
Lauren laughed quietly again as she crossed the driveway and strode in the direction of the dower house. "I am merely trying to see her through Neville's eyes," she said. "I am trying to understand why he left me and told me not to wait and then met her and married her. Oh, Gwen, of course I hate her." For the first time her voice became impassioned though she did not raise it. "I feel the most intense hatred for her. I wish she were dead. I know I ought not to feel that way. I am horrified by my own feelings. I wish she were dead. And so I must try, you see—yes, I really must try to understand. It is not her fault after all, is it? I daresay Neville did not tell her about me any more than he told me about her. And what was there to tell anyway? He had told me not to wait. He was under no obligation to me. We were not betrothed. I must try to like her. I will try to like her."
Gwendoline limped along beside her, finding it difficult to keep up. "Well, I do not intend even to try," she said. "I will hate her enough for both of us. She has ruined your life and Neville's—though it is entirely his own fault—and you are the two people I love above all others. And do not tell me that Lily is not to blame. Of course she is not to blame and of course I am being unfair to her. But she is a loathsome creature for all that, and how can I not hate her when I see you so dreadfully unhappy?"
They had arrived at the house. But Lauren stopped before entering it. "We are going to have to teach her things," she said, her voice flat again as it had been the day before. "How to dress, how to behave, how to be a lady. I will call on her tomorrow, Gwen. I will try—to be kind to her."
"And we are going to try learning to play the harp and to balance halos on our heads too," Gwendoline said crossly, "so that we will be ready to become saints or angels when we die."
They both laughed.
"Please, Gwen," Lauren said, taking her cousin's arm in a tight grip, "help me not to hate her. Help me… Oh, how could Neville have married such a—such a wild fairy creature? What is the matter with me?"
Gwendoline did not answer. There was no reasonable answer to give.
Chapter 9
Lily felt suddenly almost as if she were returning to a prison. Her footsteps lagged as the house came into sight. But then they quickened again. She could see that Neville was outside on the terrace, three other gentlemen with him. For so long she had held him steadfastly in her memory and her dreams. But now he was real again. And he was watching her approach, his lips pursed, his eyes crinkled at the corners. They were all watching her approach. She had been right earlier, she thought. Things did look brighter this morning after all.
Neville bowed to her when she was close and reached out a hand for hers—and then kissed it.
"Good morning, Lily," he said.
"I have been down on the beach," she told him. "I wanted to watch the sun come up. And then I explored the rocks and found myself in the village." Her purpose and destination would explain her appearance.
"I know." He smiled at her. "I watched you go from my window."
The marquess with the long name bowed to her then. "I am awed into incoherence," he said, but he went on talking anyway. "None of the ladies of my acquaintance ever rise early enough to know that the sun even does anything as peculiar as rise in the morning."
"Then they miss one of the greatest joys of life," Lily assured him. "Please will you tell me your name again, sir? I only remember that it is long."
"Joseph," he said, and laughed, revealing himself to be a very good-looking gentleman indeed. "You are a cousin now, Lily, and do not need to get your tongue around Attingsborough."
"Joseph," she repeated. "I believe I can remember that."
"And James too," one of the other gentlemen said, bowing to her. "Another cousin, Lily. I have a wife, who is Sylvia, and a young son, Patrick. My mother is Nev's Aunt Julia, his father's sister. My father—"
"Devil take it, James." The fourth gentleman tossed his glance at the sky. "Lily's eyes are crossing and her head is spinning on her shoulders. Why do you not add for her edification that Nev's other paternal aunts are Mary and Elizabeth and that his uncle is the famous black sheep, the lost sheep, who embarked on a wedding journey more than twenty years ago and never returned? I am Ralph, Lily. Yes, another cousin. If you cannot recall my name the next time we meet, you are welcome to call me 'you.' "