“Yes,” she said.
“Is this the special occasion, then, Lily?” He looked up into her eyes.
“Yes, Neville.”
Strange, he thought, how his name on her lips became the most intimate of endearments.
There was no more chance for personal discourse for a while. The food and drink had arrived, the orchestra had begun playing, and conversation became general.
When the dancing began, Neville led Elizabeth out onto the dancing area and then Mrs. Harris. But the third dance was a waltz, and the time for general socializing was at an end. The time for romance had begun.
“You cannot know,” Lily said, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other in his as the orchestra started to play, “how I have longed to waltz—perhaps because I thought I never would.”
“With me, Lily?” he murmured. “Have you dreamed of waltzing with me?”
Her eyes widened. “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes. With you.”
He did not attempt to converse after that. There was a time for words and there was a time for simply experiencing. The air was cool and the moon and stars above them were bright. But nature at Vauxhall was in happy communion with the man-made beauty of the sounds of the orchestra and the colors of the lanterns nodding gently in the trees.
And there was the woman in his arms, small and shapely and dainty, and smiling into his eyes through the whole dance without embarrassment and without any pretense of indifference.
“Well?” he asked when the waltz was almost at an end. “Is it as wicked a dance as it is said to be, Lily?”
“Oh,” she said. “Wickeder.”
He laughed softly and she joined him.
“Come walking?” he asked.
She nodded.
“We must take everyone with us,” he said, leading her back to the box. “But with a little ingenuity, Lily, I believe we can lose them before we have gone too far.”
She did not voice any objection.
She had not been mistaken. Oh, she hadnot. He had married her out of a sense of obligation. He had treated her with kindness after her arrival in England because he was a kind man. He had made love to her because he would make the best of any situation in which he found himself. He had offered for her again even after he knew they were not legally married because he had felt obligated, honor-bound to do so. There had been some love too, of course—he had said so, and she had not doubted him.
But now it was love pure and simple. There was no obligation left. She had freed him, and since then she had made a life for herself and learned the skills that would help her to live independently of anyone’s charity and earn her own living.
He was wooing her now—simply because he loved her.
She would no longer entertain even a vestige of doubt. And she would no longer erect obstacles between them that just did not need to be there. She might never be his equal in the eyes of the world, but she knew now that she could live in his world with some comfort and with a good deal of self-respect. The thought of Newbury Abbey no longer filled her with despair.
She was going to allow it to happen.
And so when they strolled along the tree-lined, lantern-lighted avenue with the marquess and Lady Selina, she made no protest at the almost comical maneuverings of both gentlemen to arrange matters that the two couples part company. Neither did Lady Selina.
“You see, Lily,” Neville said after the two of them had turned down one of the narrower, darker, quieter paths, “there are these areas that were made for lovers.”
“Yes,” she said. “How wonderfully convenient.”
“And they were made narrow enough,” he said, “that two people must walk single file or else with their arms about each other.”
“We cannot talk if we walk single file,” she said, smiling at the darkness ahead.
“Precisely.” He set an arm about her shoulders and drew her close to his side. There was nowhere to put her arm then except about his waist. And then she found that her head was most comfortable against his shoulder.
There was a strange feeling of seclusion even while the sounds of the orchestra and of voices shouting and laughing were still quite audible. There was an occasional lantern in a tree, but in the main the path was lighted by moonlight. If it was romance she had been hoping for, Lily thought, then she had surely found it in abundance.
