It was notright.
How she hated Lily. And how frightened she was of the violence of her own emotions. As a lady she had practiced restraint and kindness and courtesy all her life. If she was good, she had thought as a child, everyone would love her. If she was a perfect lady, she had thought as she grew older, everyone would accept her and depend upon her and love her.
Neville would depend upon her and love her. Finally she would trulybelong.
But he had gone away and married Lily.Lily! The exact antithesis of what she, Lauren, had always thought would win him in the end.
She wished Lily was dead. Shewishedshe was dead.
She wished she woulddie.
Lauren stood on the path for a long time, huddled inside her cloak, shivering with the unaccustomed vehemence of her own hatred.
Lily returned to the abbey buoyed by fresh hope. She was not naive enough to imagine that all her problems would magically evaporate, but she felt that she had the strength, and that Neville had the patience, to face and overcome them one at a time.
Dolly was in her dressing room waiting for her when she stepped into it. She looked her mistress over from head to toe and shook her head.
“You will catch your death yet, my lady,” she scolded. “Your hair is wet. And your feet are bare. I do not know what I will tell his lordship when you catch a chill.”
Lily laughed. “I have been with him, Dolly,” she said.
“Oh, my,” Dolly said, momentarily confounded. “Here, let me help you out of your dress, my lady.” She was always slightly shocked when she observed Lily doing something that she thought of as a maid’s preserve—like taking off or putting on a garment.
Lily chuckled again. “And his hair is wet too, Dolly,” she said, “though I daresay his valet will not have the problem that you will have getting a comb through this bush. We were swimming.”
“Swimming?” Dolly’s eyes widened in horror. “At this time of day? InMay? You and his lordship? I always thought he was—” She remembered to whom she was speaking and turned to pick up the morning gown she had set out for her mistress.
“Sensible?” Lily laughed once more. “He probablywas, Dolly, until I came here to corrupt him. We have been swimming together in the pool—last night and again this morning. It was wonderful.” She allowed Dolly to slip the dress over her head and turned obediently to have it buttoned up the back. “I believe I am going to swim every day of my life from now on. What do you think the dowager countess will say?”
Dolly met her eyes in the looking glass as Lily sat down to have her hair dressed and they dissolved into laughter.
Dolly thought of something else after she had picked up Lily’s brush and considered where to start the daunting task of taming her hair. “Why is it that your underthings were not wet, my lady?” she asked.
But she understood the answer even as she spoke and blushed rosily. They both laughed merrily again.
“All I can say,” Dolly said, brushing vigorously, “is that it is a very good thing no one came along to see the two of you.”
They both snorted with glee.
Lily was determined to cling to the lightheartedness with which she had started the day. After breakfast, when she knew that the ladies as usual would proceed to the morning room to write letters and converse and sit at their embroidery, she went down to the kitchen and helped knead the bread and chop some vegetables while she joined happily in the conversation—the servants, she was glad to find, were becoming accustomed to her appearances and were losing their awkwardness with her. Indeed, the cook even spoke sharply to her after a while.
“Haven’t you finished those carrots yet?” she asked briskly. “You have been doing too much talk—” And then she realized to whomshewas talking, as did everyone else in the kitchen. Everyone froze.
“Oh, dear,” Lily said, laughing. “You are quite right, Mrs. Lockhart. I shall not say another word until the carrots are all chopped.”
She laughed gaily again after a whole minute of awkward silence had passed, broken only by the sound of her knife against the chopping board.
“At least,” she said, “I do not have to fear that Mrs. Ailsham willsackme, do I?”
Everyone laughed, perhaps a little too heartily, but then relaxed again. Lily finished the carrots and sat with a cup of tea and the crisp, warm crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread before reluctantly going back upstairs. But she brightened again when her mother-in-law asked if she would like to join her in making a few calls in the village after luncheon and in delivering a couple of baskets to the lower village—one to an elderly man who had been indisposed, and one to a fisherman’s wife who was in childbed.
But the delivery of the baskets, Lily discovered later while they were sitting in the parlor of the Misses Taylor, drinking the inevitable cup of tea, was to be done by proxy. The coachman was to carry them down the hill and take them to the relevant cottages.
“Oh, no,” Lily protested, jumping to her feet. “I will take them.”
“My dear Lady Kilbourne,” Miss Amelia said, “what a very kind thought.”
“But the hill is too steep for the carriage, Lady Kilbourne,” Miss Taylor pointed out.
