He turned his attention to the service that would join them together in the eyes of church and state, just as that service in the hills of central Portugal had joined them forever in their own hearts.
Cold air met them when they stepped out of the church. But it was the coldness of a perfect winter’s day, the sort of coldness that whipped color into cheeks and a sparkle into eyes and energy into muscles.
Lily laughed. “Oh, dear,” she said.
She really had not noticed as they had walked up the aisle after signing the church register, smiling to right and to left at relatives and friends, who beamed back at them, that a significant number of the congregation, especially its younger members, had disappeared. It was obvious now. There they were on either side of the winding churchyard path, their hands loaded with ammunition.
Neville was laughing too. “Where the devil,” he asked irreverently, “did they come by all those live flowers in December?”
“Father’s hothouses,” Lily guessed. “But they are no longer flowers. They arepetals.”
Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All in the clutches of cousins who waited gleefully to pelt the bride and groom with them.
“Well,” Neville said, eyeing the open carriage that was to take them back to the house for the wedding breakfast, “we must not disappoint them and walk sedately as if we did not mind being covered with debris, Lily. We had better run for it.”
He grasped her hand tightly, and laughing gaily they ran the gauntlet down the winding path while the cousins cheered and whooped and had the air raining multicolored petals on their hair and their bridal clothes.
“Sanctuary,” Neville said, still laughing when they reached the carriage. He handed Lily inside and reached out to wrap about her shoulders the white, fur-trimmed cloak that awaited her there. “Uh-oh.”
Lily snuggled into her petal-lined cloak while Neville stood up in the carriage and shook one fist at the merry wedding guests. They were all there now, sober adults as well as riotous youngsters. The countess had been weeping, Lily saw, and she stretched out a hand to her mother-in-law and kissed her when she came closer. She kissed Elizabeth, who was also dewy-eyed, and hugged her father, who was pretending that the cold had set his eyes to watering.
Neville, still standing in the carriage, was hurling a shower of coins in the direction of a large group of villagers gathered to observe the spectacle. The children among them shrieked and scampered to pick up the treasure.
And then the carriage was in motion, and both Lily and Neville became aware that it was dragging a whole arsenal of ribbons and bows and bells behind it.
“One would think,” Neville said, settling beside Lily, “that the cousins had nothing better to do with their time.”
“You have a petal on your nose,” she said, laughing gleefully and reaching out to remove it.
But he captured her hand as soon as she had done so and carried it to his lips. His own laughter had faded. She gazed into his eyes, her own glowing.
“Lily,” he said. “My wife. My countess.”
“Yes.” She opened her hand to cup his cheek. They had turned a bend in the country lane that would take them back to the house. Church and wedding guests and villagers had disappeared from sight. “I have changed identity so many times in the past two years that I have not known quite who I am or who I ought to be.”
“I know.” He set his hand over the back of hers. “And now you have found yourself at last? Who are you, Lily?’
“I am Lily Doyle,” she said, “and Lady Frances Lilian Montague. And Lily Wyatt, Countess of Kilbourne. I am all three.”
“You sound confused still,” he said wistfully.
But she shook her head and smiled at him, all her happiness shining from her eyes.
“I am all the persons I have ever been,” she said, “and all the experiences I have ever lived. I do not have to make choices. I do not have to deny one identity in order to claim another. I am who I am. I am Lily.” Her smile became gay. “Also known as your wife.”
He turned his head, closed his eyes, and pressed his lips to her wrist. “Yes,” he said. “That is exactly who you are. You are Lily. The woman I love. Idolove you, Lily.”
“I know.” She bent her head closer to his. “You loved me enough to let me go in order that I might find myself.”
“And you have come back to me.”
“Yes,” she said. “Because I did not have to, Neville. Because I could come freely and offer myself freely. And because I love you. I always have. From the first moment I saw you talking to Papa. You were my hero then. You became my friend after that. And then my love. And now you are even more than that. You are the person I can meet as an equal and love as an equal.”
“Have I told you,” he asked her, smiling slowly at her, “what a beautiful bride you make, Lily?”
“Oh,” she said, “you have Elizabeth to thank for that. She is the one who convinced me that this gown was the one and that I would look better with just flowers in my hair than with a bonnet and veil.”
“I meant,” he said, “in your blue cotton dress with your army cloak and nothing in your hair at all. Not even a hairpin.”
