The calls had to be returned. It was common courtesy, the dowager explained, to acknowledge those who had shown such civility. But when the barouche was passing through the village one afternoon on its way to Lady Leigh's, Lily spied Mrs. Fundy and impulsively called to the coachman to stop. She asked Mrs. Fundy how she did, and how her husband and her children did. They were not rhetorical questions. She listened with interest to the answers and reached out her arms for the Fundy baby so that she could hug him and kiss him—even though Mrs. Fundy warned her that he needed his nappy changed and did not smell too sweet. But when the barouche was on its way again and Lily turned a brightly smiling face toward her mother-in-law, she found that she had incurred yet another gentle lecture. One might nod graciously to certain people, but it was quite unnecessary to engage them in conversation.
"Certain people," Lily understood, were those of the lower classes. Of her own class.
Lily escaped out of doors whenever she could. It was not very difficult to do, especially after the house guests had left Newbury. By the end of the week everyone except the Duke and Duchess of Anburey, their daughter, Wilma, Joseph, Elizabeth, and the Duke of Portfrey had returned to their own homes—and the others planned to leave for London within a few days. Lily usually succeeded in leaving the house and returning undetected—she had not forgotten that side door and the servants' stairs by which she had approached her room on the first day.
She explored the whole park—in sunshine and in rain. There was a great deal of the latter in the second half of the week, but adverse weather conditions never deterred Lily. She loved the beach best—though she developed the habit of approaching it with her head averted from the valley and the cottage. She loved also the cultivated lawns and gardens before the house, the dense woods that lay between them and the village and through which the winding driveway passed, and the hill behind the house with its carefully landscaped walk that formed roughly a horseshoe shape from just beyond the rock garden up over the hill to emerge in the rose arbor behind the stables. It was called the rhododendron walk.
She climbed it late one afternoon after returning from the tedious visit to Lady Leigh's. She had changed into her old dress and let down her hair, though the chilliness of the day forced her to wear a cloak and shoes. But the climb and the view from the top and the sense of solitude she acquired up there were well worth the discomfort of the weather. She could see the sea and the beach and the cove from where she stood. If she turned, she could see fields and common grazing land stretching away into the distance.
It was not hard, she thought, closing her eyes, to feel a certain sense of belonging. This was England, which her father had so loved, and it was her new home. If only, she thought wistfully, Neville merely owned one of the cottages in the lower village and went out fishing every day with the other men. If only…
But there was no point in if onlys. She looked about her for somewhere to sit so that she could relax and let the beauty of the scene seep into her bones and her soul. And then she spotted the perfect place. It was a good thing Miranda was no longer there to be under her bad influence, she thought ruefully as she climbed the tree, her dress hitched about her knees. A couple of minutes later she was perched on the branch that had looked so perfect from below. Her eyes had not deceived her. It was a broad and sturdy branch. She could wedge her back against the trunk and stretch out her legs and feel perfectly safe.
Now… If she could just let go of everything, even thought, and become a part of the beauty and peace of her surroundings. She drew several deep breaths, smelling leaves and bark and earth and the salt of the sea air. But the old skills would just not work for her this afternoon. She felt lonely. Neville had been very gentle with her since that dreadful scene at the cottage. Very gentle and courteous—and very remote. He seemed to go out of his way to avoid being alone with her. Perhaps he did not want to frighten her again.
He had misunderstood what had happened. He had thought she was afraid of him, afraid that he would force himself on her against her will. It had not been that at all. She had been afraid that there would be more than just the kiss, and she had been afraid to find out what it would be like. She had been afraid that the one sustaining dream of the last year and a half would be destroyed for all time and there would be nothing with which to replace it. What if it had proved no different with him than it had been with Manuel? What if it had left her feeling like a thing, an inanimate object, which had been used to bring him physical relief? She knew it would have been different. Memory told her so. And he had been warm and gentle and had smelled clean and musky. She had felt a surge of intense longing.
But what if it had turned out to be ugly?
There were birds singing, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Yet almost all of them were invisible among the branches of the trees—as perhaps she was. But she was not singing. She set her head back against the trunk of the tree and closed her eyes.
There had been another element to her fear, one she did not want to admit. She had been afraid that it would be ugly for him—that she would be ugly for him. She had been afraid that he would find her spoiled, contaminated. She had been with Manuel for seven months. By some miracle she had never conceived—maybe she was barren. But perhaps Neville would have remembered if she had allowed him inside her body that she had belonged, however unwillingly, to another man. And perhaps it would have made a difference. Perhaps despite himself he would have felt disgust.
She would have known. And she would have found the knowledge unbearable.
She would have found herself unbearable. She could remember after her release, during the long walk back to Lisbon, bathing in a stream and finding suddenly that she could not bring herself to climb out of the water or to stop scrubbing at herself with her folded chemise—scrubbing and scrubbing until she became hysterical. She had felt dirtier than she had ever felt, but she had been unable to wash away the dirt because it had been beneath her skin.
It had not happened again, but she had understood after she'd finally coaxed herself out of the water and lay shivering and frightened on the bank that perhaps she would never feel clean again. It was a secret fear she had learned to live with. But if he should ever come to share the feeling, she would no longer be able to do so.
She should have spoken her fears in the cottage, she thought. She should have told him exactly how she felt. She should have told him about Manuel, about her long trek to Lisbon, about her dreams, her fears, her nightmares—no, there was only one of those. She should have told him. But she had been unable to.
That, perhaps, had been the worst thing of all. How could they ever grow close again if they did not share everything that was themselves?
Lily, opening her eyes to gaze sightlessly out over the roof of the abbey to the sea in the distance, became aware suddenly of a slight movement to her left. Someone was coming up the path from the direction of the rock garden. Or rather someone was standing off there in the distance close to a tree trunk, scanning the path ahead with one hand shading his eyes. Or hers. It was impossible to tell who it was, but it was someone tallish, wearing a dark cloak. Perhaps it was Neville, come looking for her. Her heart leapt with gladness. Perhaps they could talk after all in a secluded place like this. And he would not care that she had climbed a tree. She waved an arm even as she realized that it was not he. There was something about the way the figure stood that was unfamiliar.