Read Online One Night for Love by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online Page B

amused by the grim humor of the thought. He turned with a curt nod and led the way down to the library. He crossed the room and stood looking down at the unlit coals in the fireplace until he heard the door close and turned to face them.
    “I suppose it did not occur to you, Neville,” his mother said, some of the usual gracious dignity gone from her manner to be replaced by bitterness, “to inform your own mother of a previous marriage? Or to inform Lauren? This morning’s intense humiliation might have been avoided.”
    “Calm yourself, Clara,” the Duke of Anburey said, patting her shoulder. “I doubt it could have been, though the whole thing might have been somewhat less of a shock to you if Neville had been more honest about the past.”
    “The marriage was very sudden and very brief,” Neville said. “I thought her dead and … well, I decided to keep that brief interlude in my life to myself.”
    Because he had been ashamed to admit that he had married the unlettered daughter of a sergeant even if she
was
already dead? It was a nasty possibility and one he hoped was not true. But how could he have explained the impulse that had made him do it? How could he have described Lily to them? How could he have explained that sometimes a woman could be so very special that it simply did not matter who she was or—more important—who she was not? He would have given the bare facts and they would have been secretly glad,
relieved
,that she had died before she could become an embarrassment to them.
    “I have been able to think only of somehow handling the dreadful disaster of this morning,” the countess said, sinking down into the nearest chair and raising a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips, “and of what is to become of poor Lauren. I have not been able to think beyond. Neville, tell me she is not as dreadful a creature as she appeared to be this morning. Tell me it is only the clothes …”
    “You heard the boy say she is a sergeant’s daughter, Clara,” the duke reminded her, taking up his stand at the window, his back to the room. “I daresay that fact speaks for itself. Who was her mother, Neville?”
    “I did not know Mrs. Doyle,” Neville replied. “She died in India when Lily was very young. There is no blue blood there, though, Uncle, if that is what you are asking. Lily is a commoner. But she is also my wife. She has my name and my protection.”
    “Yes, yes, that is all very well, Neville.” His mother spoke impatiently. “But … Oh dear, I cannot think straight. How
could
you do this to us? How could you do it to
yourself
? Surely your upbringing and education meant more to you than to—to marry a woman who looks for all the world like a vulgar beggar and is indeed a product of the lower classes.” She stood up abruptly and swayed noticeably on her feet. “I have guests I am neglecting.”
    “Poor Lily,” Elizabeth said, speaking for the first time. She was Neville’s aunt, his father’s sister, but she was only nine years his senior and he had never called her aunt. She was unmarried, not because she had never had offers, but because she had declared long ago that she would never marry unless she could find the gentleman who could convince her that the loss of her independence was preferable to keeping it—and she did not expect that ever to happen. She was beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished—and noone quite knew whether the Duke of Portfrey was more friend or beau to her. “We are forgetting
her
distress in a selfish concern for our own. Where is she, Neville?”
    “Yes, where
is
she?” his mother repeated, her voice unusually petulant. “Not
here
, I suppose. There is not a single spare room at the abbey.”
    “There
is
one unoccupied room, Mama,” Neville said stiffly. “She is in the countess’s room—where she belongs. I left her there to have a meal and a bath and a sleep. I have given instructions that she is to be left undisturbed until I go up for