Neville awaited their arrival with the deepest dread.
But when they came, the moment was almost anticlimactic. They had chosen not to be announced, but entered the room together as soon as a footman had opened the doors, just as they would have done on any other occasion before Lily's arrival. They were both looking their most elegant. Gwen was not smiling. Lauren was—brightly and graciously. And she looked about her, meeting everyone's eyes, apparently perfectly at her ease.
The moment must have cost her enormous effort, Neville guessed as he jumped to his feet and hurried toward them.
"Lauren," he said, resisting the impulse to take both her hands in his. He bowed to her instead. "How are you? Gwen?"
"Hello, Neville." Lauren smiled at him and held out her hands to him. "We came to pay our formal respects to your wife, did we not, Gwen? But not to be presented to her. We met her yesterday morning when we were all out for a walk and our paths crossed. Oh, there you are, Lily." She turned away from Neville with a warm smile and held out her hands again. "Looking—tamed." She laughed. "What a very pretty dress. Primrose suits your coloring." She took Lily's hands in hers and leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
It was a stellar performance. But surely it was a performance? She went on to greet everyone else with ease and affection before seating herself beside Lily on a love seat.
The contrast between the two of them—between his wife and the woman who had so nearly become his wife two mornings before—could scarcely be more marked. Lily, small, pretty, quiet, slightly flustered when anyone addressed a remark her way, reclining back on the seat, drinking all her tea down without once setting her cup back in its saucer before it was empty, quite without the "presence" his mother considered so important in a countess. Lauren, tall and beautiful and elegant, perfectly at her ease, sitting with erect but graceful posture, her back not touching the love seat, sipping from her cup and setting it down again in its saucer with all the appreciation of a true lady for fine possessions.
It was almost, Neville thought, as if she had seated herself deliberately beside Lily, knowing how the contrasts would be observed and interpreted. But it was an unkind thought. Lauren had never been an unkind woman. But then, of course, she had never found herself in such a situation before.
Gwen was behaving far more as he would have expected the rejected bride to behave. Although she was perfectly well bred, she pointedly ignored both Lily and himself after the first stiff acknowledgment. She confined her conversation to a group of cousins.
Neville had half expected—and more than half hoped—that Lauren would leave Newbury during the morning with her grandfather and Mr. Calvin Dorsey, who had offered the elderly gentleman quiet comfort since the day of the aborted wedding and had been kind enough to offer his company for the first day of the baron's journey home to Yorkshire. But Lauren had not gone with them. Newbury, after all, had been her home for most of her life. And perhaps, Neville thought, it was important to her not to run away but to stay and face the new conditions of her life.
She was doing magnificently well. Perhaps he should feel relieved—he was relieved. But he could not help remembering how Lauren as a child used to prattle happily about what she would do when her mama came home—until she stopped completely one day, never to mention her mother again. And how when she was older she had talked eagerly of writing to her father's family and becoming reacquainted with them and perhaps going to spend a few months with them—until she had stopped talking about them altogether after she had had a reply to her letter. Just the silence on both topics. No loss of cheerfulness. Just total silence.
No stranger appearing in the drawing room now would guess that Lauren had been a bride two mornings before—his bride—or that her hopes had been abruptly and cruelly dashed.
Lauren, he thought uneasily, reminded him somewhat of a keg of gunpowder, quite harmless in appearance but awaiting the spark that would ignite it.
Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was just not that much passion in Lauren.
But part of him wished she had raged at him when he had called on her two mornings before. And part of him wished she had stormed into the drawing room this afternoon and made a noisy and scandalous scene.
Pauline Bray, James's sister, finally made a suggestion that broke up the strangely tense normality of the gathering in the drawing room.
"I do believe I am going to take a walk," she announced. "Look. The sun has come out, and the grass must have had sufficient time to dry after last night's rain. Would anyone care to join me?"
It seemed that almost everyone would. The cousins took up the suggestion with some enthusiasm, and even some of the older relatives expressed their willingness to taste the air. There was a brief argument over whether to take the rhododendron walk over the hill behind the house or to go down onto the beach. The beach won even though Wilma protested that sea air was ruinous on the complexion and that sand got everywhere about one's person no matter how carefully one trod.
Before a large party of them set out, the plans had become more elaborate, and urgent directions had been sent belowstairs for a picnic tea to be sent down onto the beach later even though they had just drunk tea in the drawing room.
Neville was glad of the diversion, both for his own sake and for Lily's. She had been confined to the house for a day and a half, and he knew that she was feeling bewildered and oppressed though she had not complained. Lauren's visit in particular must have put a severe strain on her.
But any thought he had to taking her on his arm and leading her, perhaps, a little away from the larger group was squashed even before they left the house. Lauren had not left her side. She took Lily's arm with a smile.
"You and I will walk together, Lily," she said. "We will become better acquainted."
Chapter 10
They walked sedately across the terrace and down the lawn. They walked sedately down the steep hillside and sedately along the beach. They walked farther along it than Lily had walked before, past a huge rock that towered above them as they passed beneath it.
Lily was wearing her old shoes though apparently some new pairs were being made for her by the village cobbler. But she was wearing a new primrose dress and pelisse—Mrs. and Miss Holyoake must have worked very hard indeed to complete them within a day—and the plain straw bonnet she had picked out from the supply they had brought to the abbey with them. In the absence of a milliner in the village, Elizabeth had explained, Mrs. Holyoake had undertaken to keep a select supply on hand.
The wide brim of the bonnet shielded Lily's face from the sun, which shone clear of the scudding clouds most of the time. Lauren's parasol, which she insisted on sharing, prevented even a stray ray of sunlight from finding her face. They must be very careful of their complexions, Lauren explained, especially now that summer was almost upon them. She had noted that Lily's face was unfortunately bronzed, probably a casualty of the voyage home from Portugal. But she must not despair—the color would fade if she carried a parasol with her whenever she was out of doors. Lauren would lend her one.
Wilma would not walk too close to the water's edge as the salt from the sea would make her skin rough and coarsen her hair. And they must stroll very slowly across the sand for fear of getting some of it inside their shoes. When they reached a sheltered spot suitable for the picnic tea and servants had arrived with blankets and baskets, the gentlemen were set the task—by Wilma—of building what amounted to a tent with the blankets so that they would be shielded from the wind and the ruinous airs off the sea. When they sat down, they could not see the water—or even the sand.