Mary Balogh - One Night for Love

"Unless they choose to," he said, smiling.

"They are too busy with other things," she told him.

"Are they, Lily?" he asked her. "Such as?"

But she would not tell him what had kept her so busy during the past month—apart from having her hair cut and learning to dance and behave like a lady. She changed the subject.

"I thank you for repaying the money I borrowed from Captain Harris, my lord," she said, "even though you were under no obligation to do so. I have called on them a number of times. Elizabeth said she would willingly spare me to visit them ."

"Is she a hard taskmaster in general, then?" he asked.

"Of course not," she said. "Would I offend you, my lord, if I offered to repay what you sent to Captain Harris as soon as I am able?"

"I would be offended, Lily," he said. He added a further truth. "I would be hurt, my dear."

She nodded. "Yes," she said. "I thought you would. So I will not insist."

"Thank you," he said.

She had been toying with her food, he noticed. But then he had not even touched his own.

"May I call upon you, Lily?" he asked her. "Tomorrow afternoon?"

"Why?" Her eyes looked fully into his again. He was jolted by the question. Was she going to say no?

"I have something for you," he said. "Something in the nature of a gift."

"I may not accept gifts from you, my lord," she said.

"This is different," he assured her. "It is not personal. It is something you will certainly accept and delight in. May I bring it myself and put it into your hands? Please?"

Her eyes brightened for a moment with what might have been tears, but she looked down before he could be sure. "Very well, then," she said, "if Elizabeth will permit your call. You must remember, my lord, that I am her paid companion."

"I will apply to her for permission," he said. And after all he could not resist the self-indulgence of possessing himself of one of her hands and raising it briefly to his lips. "Lily, my dear…"

Her eyelids came down faster this time, but not before he was quite sure of the tears she hid from him. He forced himself to stop what he had been about to say. Even if her feelings were still engaged, he knew she would not easily capitulate to his wooing. Love, or lack of love, had had little if anything to do with her rejection of him. If they could not find a common world in which to live together, and if they could not live somehow as equals, she would reject him even if he asked her weekly for the next fifty years.

But her feelings were still engaged. He was certain of it. It was both a painful and an encouraging discovery. At least there was something still to hope for, something to live for.

Chapter 20

Lily had reached a frustrating point in her education. At first everything had been bewildering and exhausting but really rather easy—and definitely exciting. Every day there had been something new to learn, and every day she had been able to see her progress. Within the month, she had thought, she would know everything—or at least she would have a thorough grasp of the basic skills that would enable her to know as much as she would ever wish to know.

But inevitably the time came when the lessons became repetitious and tedious, when progress seemed slow and sometimes nonexistent, when it seemed to her that she would never achieve anything resembling even a tolerably basic education.

She had learned all the letters of the alphabet—she could recognize them in both their upper and lower cases, and she could write them all. She could decipher a number of words, particularly those that looked the way they sounded and those that occurred in almost every sentence. Sometimes she persuaded herself that she could read, but whenever she picked up a book from a shelf in Elizabeth's book room, she found that every page was still a mystery to her. The few words she could read did not enable her to master the meaning of the whole, and the slowness with which she read even what she could decipher killed interest and continuity of meaning. When she picked up an invitation from the desk one day and discovered that the appearance of the writing was so different from what she had been taught from books that she could scarcely recognize a single letter, she felt close to despair.

Sheer stubbornness kept her going. She would not admit defeat. She even insisted upon sitting at her lessons all through the morning following the ball even though it had been almost dawn when they arrived home and Elizabeth had suggested sending a note to stop the tutor from coming.

And she sat at her music lesson immediately after luncheon. The pianoforte was proving equally frustrating. At first it had been wonderful just to be able to depress the keys and learn their names. She had felt that she had somehow begun to unravel the mystery of music. It had been exhilarating to learn scales, to practice playing them smoothly and with the correct fingering and the fingers correctly arched, her spine and her feet and her head held just so. It had been sheer magic to play an actual melody with her right hand and to be able to tell herself that she could play the pianoforte . But then had come the demon of the left hand, which played something simultaneously with the right hand but different from it. How could she divide her attention between the two and play both correctly? It was akin to the old game the army children had used to laugh over—of trying to rub one's stomach and pat one's head both at the same time.

But she persevered. She would learn to play. She would never be a great musician. She probably would never be good enough even to play to a drawing room audience, as most ladies seemed able to do. But she was determined to be able to play correctly and somewhat musically for her own satisfaction.

She had been playing the same Bach finger exercise over and over for half an hour. Every time her teacher stopped her to point out an error or commented adversely on what she had done when she played through it without interruption she felt ready to indulge in a tantrum, to hurl the music and some abuse at his head, to declare that she never wanted to touch a pianoforte keyboard ever again, to yell that she just did not care . But every time she listened and tried one more time. She recognized her tiredness—not only had the night been short, but she had lain awake thinking about him— and her anxiety. He was to call later. He had a gift for her. How could she see him again without crumbling, without showing him how very weak she was?

But she played on. And finally she succeeded in playing, not only without interruption, but with what she considered more competence than ever before. She lowered her hands to her lap when she was finished and waited for the verdict.

"Wonderful!" he exclaimed.

Her head whipped back over her shoulder. He was standing in the open doorway of the drawing room with Elizabeth, looking both astonished and pleased.

"This is what you have been doing with your time, Lily?" he asked.

She got to her feet and curtsied to him. If there had been a deep black hole at her feet, she would gladly have jumped into it. She had been caught practicing an exercise that a five-year-old would surely be able to play with twice the competence. She glanced reproachfully at Elizabeth.

"I believe, Mr. Stanwick," Elizabeth said to the music teacher, "Miss Doyle will agree to release you early today. Lily?"

Lily nodded. "Yes," she said. "Thank you, Mr. Stanwick."