"I cannot ever marry," Lily said, ignoring the rest of the frightening—and undeniably exciting—picture Elizabeth had just painted for her. She smoothed her hands over the gloves that lay in her lap.
"Why not?" The question was quietly asked, but it demanded an answer.
Lily was quiet for a long time. Because I am already married. Because I love him. Because I have lain with him and given him, not only my body, but all that is myself. Because… Because, because.
"I cannot," she said at last. "You must know the reason."
"Yes, my dear." Elizabeth reached along the seat and squeezed one of her hands. "It would be trite for me to assure you that time will heal. I have never experienced anything nearly as intense as what you have suffered and are suffering, and so I cannot know for sure that such wounds as yours will ever heal. But you are a woman of great fortitude and strength of character, Lily. I am sure I am correct in that judgment. You will live, my dear. You will not merely drag on an existence. I will give you the benefit of my resources and connections, but I will not be doing anything of substance for you. You will do that for yourself. I have every confidence in you."
Lily was not sure it was well placed. Her spirits, which the game-turned-reality had sent soaring with the excitement of new dreams, were flagging again. With every passing hedgerow and milepost more distance was being set between her and him, and it was a distance that could never again be closed. She was not sure at that precise moment that she wanted even to drag on an existence, let alone make the effort to live.
"Thank you," she said.
"Tell me." Elizabeth spoke again after they had traveled some distance in silence. "What happened to you, Lily, during all those months when Neville thought you dead?"
Lily swallowed. "The truth?" she said.
"It has occurred to me," Elizabeth said, "that the French would have informed the British if they had held an officer's wife captive for any length of time. They might have made a very favorable exchange with one or more of their own officers held by the British. That is not what happened, is it?"
"No," Lily said.
"Lily," Elizabeth said before she could say more, "although I believe you are not going to allow me to forget that you are my employee, I would have you know that you will always be at liberty to guard your privacy from me. You are under no compulsion to tell me anything. But you grew up among men, my dear. Perhaps you have not known the joy of having a friend of your own sex, one who can share your perspective on events and experience."
Lily told her everything, all the painful, sordid, humiliating details she had withheld from Neville that day in the cottage, her head back against the cushions, her eyes closed. By the time she had finished, her hand was in Elizabeth's firm clasp again. Her touch was strangely comforting—a woman's touch signifying a woman's sympathy. Elizabeth would understand what it would be like to be a captive, to have one's freedom taken away, and then, as a final indignity, to have one's very body invaded and used for the pleasure of one's captor. Another woman would understand the monumental inner battle that had had to be waged every single day and night to cling to that something at the core of herself that was herself, that gave her identity and dignity. That something that even a rapist—even, perhaps, a murderer—could not take away from her.
"Thank you," they said simultaneously after a short silence. They both laughed, though not with amusement.
"You know, Lily," Elizabeth told her, "men have the ridiculous notion that one must maintain a stiff upper lip through all the worst disasters of their lives. Women are not so foolish. It is quite all right to cry, my dear."
Lily cried. She sobbed until she thought the pain must tear her in two. She wept, her face in Elizabeth's lap while the older woman smoothed a hand over her hair and murmured nonsense that Lily did not even hear.
Finally Lily straightened up, dried her eyes, blew her nose, and apologized for the damp patch on Elizabeth's skirt. She laughed shakily. "You will think twice," she said, "before inviting me to cry again."
"Does Neville know?" Elizabeth asked.
"The basic facts," Lily said. "Not the details."
"Ah," Elizabeth said. "Good girl. Now. Let us look ahead, shall we, and plan? Lily, my dear, we are going to have fun, fun, fun."
They both laughed again.
***
Neville waited for one month.
He tried to resume his normal life. Except that normal life since his return from the Peninsular Wars had included his very close friendship with his sister and his cousin and his gradual, inevitable courtship of Lauren.
The friendship was strained. He did not want to deceive Lauren into believing that he might resume his courtship of her—and she clearly did not wish to give the impression that she expected it. Gwen was just plain uncomfortable. As Lauren herself had said at dinner the evening before Lily's departure, nothing would ever be the same again.
Yet obviously it was expected that he and Lauren would marry. Neighbors who called at the abbey on any flimsy excuse and who issued more than usually frequent invitations to dinners, card parties, informal dances, and picnics were too well bred to mention the subject openly, but there were all sorts of covert and ingenious ways of hinting and of digging for information.
Might they expect the return of Baron Galton, Miss Edgeworth's grandpapa, to Newbury any time soon? Lady Leigh asked one day. Such a distinguished gentleman!
Was the Countess of Kilbourne planning to return her place of residence to the dower house? Miss Amelia Taylor wished to know. She asked only because it would not be at all the thing for her and her sister to call at the abbey one day to find only his lordship in residence. She blushed at the very idea.
Was his lordship still planning a journey to the Lakes this year? Sir Cuthbert Leigh wondered. His cousin's inlaws had just returned from there and pronounced it a remarkably picturesque and genteel destination.
His lordship must be finding Newbury Abbey rather large and lonely with his sister and his cousin no longer living there, Mrs. Cannadine informed him.
Had his lordship quite recovered from his little upset? Mrs. Beckford, the vicar's wife, asked him in the sort of hushed, sympathetic tones her husband used at deathbeds. She and the reverend were hoping—the hope was accompanied by an arch look that ill became her—that everything would soon be put to rights again.
It was not just the neighbors. The countess too urged a return to the original plan.