Good manners took over. Neville bowed, as did his cousin. They exchanged bows with the Duke of Portfrey, who had also turned to greet them.
“You left your mother well, I trust, Neville?” Elizabeth asked. “And Gwendoline and Lauren too?”
“All three,” Neville assured her. “They all send their regards.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Have you met Miss Doyle? May I present you?”
The gall of the woman, Neville thought. She was enjoying herself. The mob, he was aware, had fallen quieter. Several of them had melted away. And then stupidly, he was afraid to turn his head. It was physically difficult to do so. But he did it—rather jerkily.
He forgot that he was being observed by half theton—and that she was too.
She was all in white—all delicate simplicity. She looked like an angel. She wore a high-waisted, square-necked, short-sleeved satin gown with a netted tunic, and white fan and slippers and long gloves. Even the ribbon threaded through her hair was white—her hair! It had been cut short and curled softly about her face, making it look more heart-shaped, making her blues eyes look larger. She looked dainty and innocent and exquisitely alluring.
Lily. Ah, dear God, Lily! He had missed her every minute of every hour since she had left. But he had not realized quite how painfully until he saw her again.
“May I present the Marquess of Attingsborough and the Earl of Kilbourne to you, Lily?” Elizabeth said. “Miss Doyle, gentlemen.”
What farce was this? Neville wondered, not taking his eyes from her face. Her own eyes had widened at the sight of him and become fixed on him and she flushed—she had not been warned that he was to be here, then. But she did not lose her composure. Instead, she curtsied prettily.
“My lord,” she said, first to Joseph and then to him.
He found himself bowing formally, becoming an actor in the farce. “Miss Doyle?”
He had never called her that, he realized. He had always liked her and always respected her as Sergeant Doyle’s daughter, but he had always called her just Lily, as he would surely not have done if she had been the daughter of a fellow officer. He had always treated her, then, as less than a lady. Had he?
“Yes,” she was saying in response to some question Joseph had asked her. “Very much, thank you, my lord. Everyone has been most obliging and I have danced all three sets so far. His grace was kind enough to lead me into the first.”
How was she different—apart from her hair, which looked very pretty indeed, though Neville felt that he would mourn the loss of the wild mane once he had been given a chance to think about it. She was different in another way—oh, in a thousand other ways. She had always been graceful. But tonight she seemedelegantlygraceful. There was something too about her speech. It had always been correct—she had never spoken with a vulgar accent. But tonight there was a suggestion of refinement to her voice. The main difference, though, he realized without having to give the matter a great deal of thought, was that she did not look lost or bewildered as she had always looked at Newbury Abbey. She looked poised, at her ease. She looked as if she belonged here.
“Will you dance with me…Miss Doyle?” he asked abruptly. The sets were forming, he could see.
“I am sorry, my lord,” she informed him. “I have already promised this set to Mr. Farnhope.”
And sure enough, there was Freddie Farnhope, hovering and looking uncomfortable but determined to stand his ground.
“Perhaps the next,” Neville said.
“Thank you,” she said, placing her hand on Farnhope’s outstretched wrist—where had she learned to do that? “That would be pleasant, my lord.”
My lord. It was the first time she had called him that. She was being formal and impersonal, as he had been with her. As if they had just met for the first time. Could Lily dance a quadrille? But it was clear to him from the first measure of music that she could. She danced it with competence and even grace—and with an endearing look of concentration on her face. As if, he thought, she had only recently learned the steps—as was doubtless the case.
Elizabeth and Lily, he understood then, had not been idle during their month in London.
The realization hurt in a strange way. He had carried on with his life at Newbury out of necessity, but he had pictured Elizabeth carrying on with hers while Lily hovered unhappily and awkwardly in the background. All month he had been contriving ways of persuading her to come back to him, ways of making life at Newbury Abbey less daunting to her. Or, failing that, he had been trying to think of what kind of life and environment would suit a young woman who had lived a sort of nomadic existence away from England all her life. He had been determined to settle her happily somewhere. He had dreamed of being her savior, of setting her own happiness above his own, of doing what was right for her.
But all the time Elizabeth and Lily between them had been doing what he had never once considered—indeed, he had resisted his mother’s attempts to do so. They had been making her into alady.
Surely she could not be happy, he thought, gazing at her sadly as she danced. Could she? Where was Lily, that happy, dreamy little fairy creature whom he had used to watch in the Peninsula with such a lifting of his spirits long before he fell in love with her? The nymph with the long hair and bare feet who had sat on the rock in Portugal, watching a bird wheeling overhead and dreaming of being borne on the wind? The bewitching woman who had stood in beauty beside the pool at the foot of the waterfall, telling him that she was not just watching the scene butwasit?
She had become the dainty, elegant, alluring lady who was dancing the quadrille at atonball in London, smiling at Freddie Farnhope and concentrating on her steps.
“By Jove, Elizabeth,” Joseph was saying, using his quizzing glass again, “she has turned into a rare beauty.”
“Only to eyes attuned to ballroom beauties, Joe,” Neville said, more to himself than to his cousin. “She always has been a rare beauty.”
“Neville,” Elizabeth said, “you may escort me to the refreshment room, if you please.”
He offered her his arm and led her back toward the doors.
