“Oh, I shall walk.” Lily smiled dazzlingly. She had not been down to Lower Newbury since that morning when she had climbed across the rocks to it. She welcomed the chance to return there.
“Lily, my dear.” The dowager countess smiled at her and shook her head. “It is quite unnecessary for you to go in person. It will not be expected.”
“But Iwishto go,” Lily assured her.
And so after they had left the Misses Taylors’ genteel cottage a few minutes later, the dowager proceeded to the vicarage while Lily tripped lightly down the steep hill, one large basket on her arm. The coachman, who had the other, had wanted to carry both, but she had insisted on taking her share of the load. And she would not allow him to walk a few paces behind her. She walked beside him and soon had him talking about his family—he had married one of the chambermaids the year before and they had an infant son.
Mrs. Gish, who had given birth to her seventh child the day before after a long and difficult labor, was attempting to keep her house and her young family in order with the assistance of an elderly neighbor. Lily soon had the main room swept out, the table cleared and wiped, a pile of dirty dishes washed and dried, and one infant knee cleansed of its bloody scrape and bandaged with a clean rag.
Elderly Mr. Howells, who was sitting outside his grandson’s cottage, smoking a pipe and looking melancholy, was in dire need of a pair of ears willing to listen to his lengthy reminiscences about his days as a fisherman—and a smuggler. Oh, yes, he assured an interested Lily, they had their fair share of smuggling at Lower Newbury, they did. Why, he could remember…
“My lady,” the coachman said eventually after a deferential clearing of his throat—he had been standing some distance away—“her ladyship has sent a servant from the vicarage…”
“Oh, goodness gracious me,” Lily said, leaping to her feet. “She will be waiting to return to the abbey.”
The dowager countess was indeed waiting—and had been for almost two hours. She was gracious about it in front of the vicar and his wife. Indeed she was gracious about it in the carriage on the way home too.
“Lily, my dear,” she said, laying one gloved hand over her daughter-in-law’s, “it is like having a breath of fresh air wafted over us to discover your concern for Neville’s poorer tenants. And your smiles and your charm are making you friends wherever you go. We have all grown remarkably fond of you.”
“But?” Lily said, turning her head away to look out through the window. “But I am an embarrassment to you all?”
“Oh, my dear.” The dowager patted her hand. “No, not that. I daresay you have as much to teach us as we have to teach you. But wedohave a great deal to teach you, Lily. You are Neville’s wife, and he is clearly fond of you. I am glad of that, for I am fond of him, you know. But you are also hiscountess.”
“And I am also the daughter of a common soldier,” Lily said, some bitterness creeping into her voice. “I am also someone who knows nothing about life in England or in a settled home. And absolutely nothing at all about the life of a lady or of a countess.”
“It is never too late to learn,” her mother-in-law said briskly but not unkindly.
“While everyone watches my every move to find fault with me?” Lily asked. “Oh, but that is unfair, I know. Everyone has been kind.Youhave been kind. I will try. I really will. But I am not sure I can—give up myself.”
“My dear Lily.” The dowager sounded genuinely concerned. “No one expects you to give up yourself, as you put it.”
“But the part of me that is myself wants to be in Lower Newbury mingling with the fisherfolk,” Lily said. “That is where I feel comfortable. That is where I belong. Am I to learn to nod graciously to those people and not speak to them or show personal concern for them or hold their babies?”
“Lily.” Her mother-in-law could seem to think of nothing more to say.
“I will try,” Lily said again after a minute or two of silence. “I am not sure I can ever be the person you want me to be. I am not sure I want to stop being myself. And I cannot see how I can be both. But I promise I will try.”
“That is all we can ask of you,” the dowager said, patting her hand once more.
But Lily, as she raced upstairs to her own apartment after their return to the house, felt like a dismal, hopeless failure who would bring nothing but ridicule upon Neville if she continued as she was.
It had been a happy day for Lily—wondrously happy. With memories of last night and this morning fresh in both her mind and her body and the hope that perhaps he would come to her again tonight, she had lived the day the way she had wished to live it—just as he had told her she might—and she had been happy. But only because she had turned away from reality. The reality was that she was not one of the servants at the abbey—she was the countess. And she was not one of the fisherfolk—they were her husband’s tenants. She had avoided the people with whom she ought to have spent the day if she were a good countess. She had made no real effort to learn to be the countess she was in name.
But she was incorrigible, it seemed. Instead of ringing for Dolly and changing into another dress and going down to tea to try somehow to make amends, Lily almost tore off her pretty sprigged muslin dress as soon as she had reached her dressing room, dragged on her old cotton, grabbed her old shawl, and scurried down the back stairs to the side door. She half ran down the lawn and slipped and slid down the hill, grabbing at giant ferns to steady herself. She did not even glance at the valley—she did not want to spoil the memories in her present state of agitation—but ran out onto the beach and along it, her face turned up to the sky, her arms stretched out to the sides so that she would feel the full resistance of the wind.
She grew calm again after a few minutes. She could adjust, she told herself. It would take effort, but she could do it if she tried. She had spent most of her life adjusting to constantly changing circumstances. She forced herself to think about the greatest adjustment of all she had had to make. She had learned docility and obedience—she had even learned the Spanish language—as means to survival. If she could dothat, she could certainly learn to be a lady and a countess.
The tide was on its way out. The rocks that connected the beach with the cove of Lower Newbury were half exposed. Lily clambered up onto them. Not that she had any intention of going all the way to the village again even if she could, but she needed to use up more energy than a walk or run along the beach would require. And there was a greater sense of wildness and solitude on the rocks, with the sea to one side, an almost sheer cliff wall to the other. She stood still after a while and turned her head to gaze out to sea.
But as she did so, she heard something that was neither the ocean nor the wind nor the gulls. Something unidentifiable that nevertheless almost froze her in place while panic crawled up her spine. She looked sharply to either side of her, but there was nothing. No one. She could see a good distance in both directions.
But the feeling would not go away. What was it she had heard, the crunching of stones?
She looked up.
Everything happened within so few seconds that it would have been difficult afterward to give a clear account—even with a clear head. Lily’s was far from clear. She saw someone standing at the top of the cliff above her—a figure in a dark cloak. And then the figure turned into a large rock, hurtling down upon her. She twisted away from it, in toward the cliff face, and it crashed onto the very spot where she had been standing—a huge boulder that would without any doubt at all have killed her.
She stood with her back pressed to the cliff face, her hands flat against it on either side of her, clawing for something to grip on to. And she stared at the rock that would have been her death, her heart hammering in her throat and her ears, robbing her of breath and of rationality.
