***
They make love in near silence since there undoubtedly are listeners enough eager to hear grunts of pleasure, cries of pain. And they make love slowly so as not to cause any undue shaking of the tent's flimsy structure. And they make love fully clothed except in essential places, and covered by their two cloaks so that they will not be chilled by the December night.
She is innocent and ignorant.
He is eager and experienced and desperate to give her pleasure, terrified of giving her pain.
He kisses her, touches her with gentle, exploring, worshipful hands, first through her clothing, then beneath it, feathering touches over her warm, silken flesh, cupping her small, firm breasts, teasing his thumb across their stiffening crests, sliding gentle, caressing fingers down into the moist heat between her thighs, touching, parting, arousing.
She holds him. She does no caressing of her own. She makes no sound except for quickened breathing. But he knows that she is one with his desire. He knows that even in this she is finding beauty.
"Lily…"
She opens to him at the prodding of his knees and wraps herself about him at the bidding of her own instincts. She croons soft endearments to him—mostly his own name—as he mounts her, surprising himself with his own sobs as he does so. She is small and tight and very virgin. The barrier seems unbreakable and he knows he is hurting her. And then it is gone and he eases inward to his full length. Into soft, wet heat and the involuntary contraction of her muscles.
She speaks to him in a soft whisper against his ear.
"I always knew," she tells him, "that this would be the most beautiful moment of my life. This. With you. But I never expected it to happen."
Ah, Lily. I never knew.
"My sweet life," he tells her. "Ah, my dear love."
But he can no longer think only of not hurting his bride. His desire, his need, pulses like a drumbeat through every blood vessel in his body and focuses as exquisite pain in his groin and the part of himself that is sheathed in her. He withdraws to the brink of her and presses deep again, hears her gasp of surprise and surely of pleasure too, and withdraws and presses deep.
He holds the rhythm steady for as long as he is able both for her sake and his own, resisting the urge to release into pleasure too soon, before she can learn that intimacy consists of more than simple penetration.
She lies relaxed beneath him. Not out of distaste or shock or passive submission. He would know. Even if she were not making quiet sounds of satisfaction to the rhythm, he would know. She is enjoying what is happening. He finds her mouth with his own and it is warm, open, responsive.
"My love," he tells her. "This is what happens. Ah, you are beautiful, Lily. So very beautiful."
He can hold back no longer. He slows the rhythm, pressing deeper, pausing longer. He is enclosed by her, engulfed by her, part of her. Lily. My love. My wife. Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, heart of my heart.
He withdraws and delves deep again. Deeper. Beyond barriers. Beyond time or place. He releases deep into the eternity that is himself and Lily united.
He hears her whisper his name.
They have only a few miles to go before reaching the base camp. But there is a narrow pass to be negotiated before they get there. There can be no real danger of any French force being this far in front of its winter lines, but Neville is cautious. He sends men ahead to scout the hills. He arranges the line of his company so that he has the most dangerous position in front while Lieutenant Harris is at the rear and the rawest of his men as well as the chaplain and the two women are in the middle.
Lily is quiet today though no longer dazed. The reality of her father's death has begun to sink in. She has begun to grieve. But she made love with him for a second time in the early-morning darkness before he got up, and she twined her arms about his neck and told him that she loved him, that she had always loved him from the first moment she saw him, perhaps even before that, before her birth, before time and creation. He had laughed softly and told her that he adored her.
She is wearing a package on a cord about her neck. In the package is a copy of their marriage papers—the other copy will be duly registered by Parker-Rowe when they return to camp. Lily's package is a final precaution. Anyone opening it will see that she is the wife of a British officer and will treat her with the appropriate chivalry.
The French are clever. At least this particular company is. They have evaded detection by the advance British party. They allow the front of the British line to march through the pass and emerge on the other side before they attack the weak center.
Neville whips around at the sound of the first volley of shots from the hills. It seems to him that the world slows and his vision becomes a dark tunnel through which he observes Lily in the middle of the pass, throwing up her hands and tipping backward out of sight amid the smoke and the milling bodies of his trapped men.
She has been hit.
He calls her name.
"L-i-l-y!L-I-L-Y!"
Instinctively he acts like the officer he is, drawing his sword, bellowing out orders, fighting his way back into the killing field of the pass. Back to Lily.
Lieutenant Harris meanwhile has led his men from the rear up onto the hill. Within minutes the French are put at least to temporary flight. But during those minutes Neville has reached the middle of the pass and found Lily, who has blood on her chest. More blood than was on her father's yesterday.
She is dead.
He looks down at her slain body and falls to his knees beside her, his duty forgotten. His arms reach for her.
Lily. My love. My life. So briefly my life. For one night.
Only one night for love.
Lily!
He feels no pain from the bullet that grazes his head. The world blacks out for him as he falls senseless across Lily's dead body.
PART III
An Impossible Dream
Chapter 4
They did not proceed up the driveway as Lily had expected. They turned just inside the gates and were soon walking along an unpaved, wooded path. Neville neither spoke to her nor looked at her. His grip on her hand was painful. She had to half run to keep up with his long strides.
He was dazed, she knew, not quite conscious of where he was going or with whom. She did not try to break the silence.
In truth she was hardly less in shock herself. He had been about to get married. He had thought her dead—she knew that from Captain Harris. But it had been less than two years ago. He had been about to marry again. So soon after.
Lily had caught sight of his bride when she had burst into the church in a panic. She was tall and elegant and beautiful in white satin and lace. His bride. Someone from his own world. Someone whom perhaps he loved.
And then Lily had hurried past his bride and into the nave of the church. It had been like last night, like stepping into a different universe. But worse than last night. The church had been filled with splendidly, richly clad ladies and gentlemen, and they had all been looking back at her. She had felt their eyes on her even as her own had focused on the man who stood at the front of the church like a prince of fairy tales.
He was clothed in pale blue and silver and white. Lily had scarcely recognized him. The height, the breadth of shoulder, the strong, muscular physique were the same.
But this man was the Earl of Kilbourne, a remote English aristocrat. The man she remembered was Major Lord Newbury, a rugged officer with the Ninety-fifth Rifles.
Her husband.
The Major Newbury she remembered—Neville, as he had become to her on that last day—had always been careless of his appearance and impossibly attractive in his green and black regimentals, which were often shabby, often dusty or mud-spattered. His blond hair had always been close cropped. Today he was all immaculate elegance.