"With all due respect, your grace," the Reverend Beckford said, "this wedding may not proceed when his lordship has just acknowledged this woman as his wife."
"I married Lily Doyle in Portugal," Neville said, never taking his eyes from the beggar woman. The shushing voices became more insistent and a hush so total that it was almost loud fell again on the congregation. "I watched her die less than twenty-four hours later. I reached her side no more than a few minutes after that. I stood over her dead body—you were dead, Lily. And then I was shot in the head."
Everyone knew that for over a month before his return to England Neville had lain in a hospital in Lisbon, suffering from a head wound sustained during an ambush among the hills of central Portugal when he had been leading a winter scouting party. Amnesia and persistent dizziness and headaches had prevented his return to his regiment even after the wound itself had healed. And then news of his father's death had reached him and brought him home.
But no one had heard of any marriage.
Until now.
And clearly the woman he had married was not dead.
Someone in the church had already realized the full implications of the fact. There was a strangled cry from the back of the church, and those who looked back saw Lauren standing there, her face as pale now as the veil that covered it, her hands clawing at the sides of her gown and sweeping up the train behind it before she turned and fled, followed closely by Gwendoline. The church doors opened and then closed again rather noisily.
"I am sorry," Lily said. "I am so very sorry. I was not dead."
"Neville!" Lady Kilbourne was clinging with both gloved hands to the back of the pew.
Sound swelled again.
But Neville held up both hands, palm out.
"I beg your pardon, all of you," he said, "but clearly this is not a matter for public airing. Not yet at least. I hope to offer a full explanation before the day is out. In the meantime, it is obvious that there is to be no wedding here this morning. I invite you all to return to the abbey for breakfast."
He lowered his arms and strode down the aisle, his right hand reaching out toward Lily. His eyes were on hers.
"Lily?" he said. "Come."
His hand closed on hers and clamped hard about it. He scarcely broke stride, but continued on his way toward the outer door, Lily at his side.
***
Neville threw the doors wide, and they stepped out into blinding sunshine and were met by a sea of faces and a chorus of excited, curious voices.
He ignored them. Indeed, he did not even see or hear them. He strode down the churchyard path, through the gateway, between crowds of people who opened a way for him by hastily stepping back upon one another, and around to the gates into the park of Newbury Abbey.
He said nothing to the woman at his side. He could not yet trust the reality of what had happened, of what was happening, even though he held tightly to the apparition and could feel her small hand in his own.
He was remembering…
PART II
Memory: One Night for Love
Chapter 3
Lily Doyle is sitting alone on a small rocky promontory jutting out over a deep valley high in the barren hills of central Portugal. It is December and chilly.
She is wrapped in a shabby old army cloak that she has cut down to size. But it cannot hide the fact that she has been transformed over the past year or so from a lithe, coltish girl into a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. Her dark-blond hair waves loose down her back to below her waist. The wind is blowing it out behind her and hopelessly tangling it. Her slender arms, covered by the sleeves of her faded blue cotton dress, clasp her updrawn knees. Her feet, despite the cold, are bare. How can she feel the earth, how can she feel life, she once explained, if she is always shod?
Neville Wyatt, Major Lord Newbury, is reclining at his ease on the ground some distance behind her, a tin mug of hot tea cupped in both hands. He is watching her. He cannot see her face, but he can imagine its expression as she gazes down over the valley below, up at the cloud-dotted sky and the lone bird wheeling there. It will be dreamy, serene. No, those descriptions are too passive. There will be a glow in her face, a light in her eyes.
Lily sees beauty wherever she goes. While the men of the Ninety-fifth and the women who follow in its train curse the Iberian landscape, the weather, the endless marches, the dreary camps, the food, one another, Lily can always find something of beauty. But she is not resented for her eternal cheerfulness. She is a favorite with all who know her.
Until recently she has been a girl. She is a girl no longer.
Neville tosses the dregs of his tea onto the grass beside him and gets to his feet. He looks about, first at the company of men he has brought with him on a winter scouting expedition to make sure that the French are observing the unwritten truce of the season and are keeping behind their lines in Spain or else inside the border fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which the British forces will besiege as soon as spring comes.
He squints across to the hills opposite and down into the valley. All is quiet. He has not expected otherwise. If there had been any real danger, he would never have allowed Corporal Geary to bring his wife or Sergeant Doyle to bring his daughter. It is a routine mission and has been unexpectedly pleasant—this is normally the rainy season. Tomorrow they will return to base camp. But tonight they will camp where they are.
He can no longer resist. He strolls toward the promontory on which Lily sits and makes a show when he is standing beside her of shielding his eyes and sweeping his gaze over the valley again. She looks up and smiles. He is not quite sure when her looks and smiles started to make his heart skip a beat. He has tried to continue seeing her as the young daughter—the too-young daughter—of his sergeant. But he has been failing miserably of late. She is eighteen, after all.
"You have observed no French regiment tiptoeing stealthily along the valley floor, Lily?" he asks without looking down at her.
She laughs. "Two of them actually, sir," she says. "One cavalry and one infantry. Was I supposed to have said something?"
"No, no." He grins down at her, and there—it happens again. His heart turns over when he sees the eager delight in her face. "It is not important. Not unless old Boney was with them."
She laughs again. He wonders as he seats himself beside her, one leg stretched out, one arm draped over the raised knee of the other, if she knows the effect she has on men—on him. He is not by any means the only one who has noticed that she has become a woman.
"I suppose, Lily," Neville says, "you can see some beauty in this godforsaken place?"
"Oh, not godforsaken," she says earnestly, as he knew she would. "Even bare rocks have a certain majesty that inspires awe. But see?" She lifts one slender arm and points. "There is grass. There are even a few trees. Nature cannot be repressed. It will burst through."
"They are sorry apologies for trees." He looks to where she is pointing. "And the gardener at Newbury Abbey would consign that grass to the rubbish heap without a second thought."
When she turns toward him and her eyes focus on his, he finds himself drawing a slow breath, half of him wanting to edge farther back away from her, the other half wanting to close the distance until…
"What is the garden like there?" she asks him, an unmistakable wistfulness in her voice. "Papa says there is nothing so lovely as an English garden."