Chapter Eleven
NEVILLE!
Handsome Neville who Lila had pinned all her hopes on stood before her.
He was dressed in blue and grey, with a simple fabric mask tied over his eyes.
His hair had darkened to an amber color that fairly glowed beneath the light of the candles.
If anything, he was more handsome now than he’d been when he left.
“Dance with me, Lila,” he said in that voice so familiar, so known, so missed for so long. Couples were taking the floor and before Lila uttered a single word, Neville was leading her to join the dance. They took their places, and her tongue was finally loosed.
“You’ve returned,” she said softly. “I can’t believe you’ve returned . . . here . . . tonight.”
“Are you surprised?” he asked with his merry grin. “I promised you I would be home in time to have the first dance at the Autumn Masquerade and, if nothing else, I am a man of my word.”
“But you said you were not coming,” she said. “I did not expect you.”
“Precisely,” he said with a nod. “That is why my arrival is such a fine surprise. I didn’t even tell Father for fear he would give me up.”
Mory!
Lila turned her head and scanned the crowd until her eyes locked on Mory’s.
He was standing on the edge of the floor, watching her with his expression hidden behind his mask, and Eloise not far away, certainly trying to determine what she could do to help.
The yellow rose that had been a beacon meant to lead her to Mory was now at his side, the bloom facing the floor and reminding her of a glass tipped over and relieved of its contents.
Her heart, already racing, now seemed to spin within her chest.
Mory watched her. Waiting. Wondering.
“I am promised to another for this dance, Neville,” she said, turning back to look at him.
His smile dropped immediately. “You have only just arrived,” he said. “How could you be promised to another?”
“I did not know you were coming. You said you would not be here.”
“You said you were waiting for me,” Neville said. “I believe the words you used were ‘on bated breath’.”
She did not know what to do. She had said those words, in the last letter she’d sent to him when he was in America—sent before she’d met Mory.
But Neville had withdrawn his promise, and she had made a new one.
To leave the floor was ill-mannered, but Mory was the one to whom she had given her word.
Or had she given it to Neville when he had said he would arrive back in time to take her to this ball?
But Mory.
The rose.
The magic of the moment when their eyes had met.
She took a step out of formation, but Neville’s hand shot out and took her arm. “You will not leave me standing here,” he said softly, with embarrassment rather than anger.
“I promised another,” Lila said, pleading. Torn. Horrified.
Neville did not remove his hand, but the dance would be starting at any moment. “This is not how I imagined our reunion.”
The dancers on either side of them began the first steps. It was too late to leave.
Years of etiquette training set Lila’s feet to move as well, but her heart was thumping, and as the dance commenced she continued to look for Mory, wishing she did not have her mask so that he might see how sorry she was things had happened as they had.
Stay, she said in her mind and heart in hopes he might somehow hear it.
Wait. Let me explain. For some time Mory remained in place, and then Lila could not find him there.
Eloise was where she’d been standing all along, but again the mask prevented Lila from sending her a questioning look.
Had Mory left? Had she angered or embarrassed him so drastically that he could not bear to stay?
She missed a step and was in the process of regaining her place when suddenly Neville’s hand was at her elbow, and he was propelling her from the floor.
A slight hush fell over the crowd as he pushed her through them, and Lila’s neck caught fire with an embarrassment and fear she had never felt in Neville’s presence before.
“Neville,” she whispered desperately.
“You have spent the entire dance looking for someone else,” he whispered in her ear. “I need to know the whole of it before I embarrass myself further. Do you not realize the effort I made to be here tonight?”
Lila felt someone behind her and looked over her shoulder to make eye contact with Eloise—dear Eloise—just before Neville pulled Lila through one of the open side doors that led to the covered terrace.
There was a bonfire in the middle of the wide porch, and several people stood near it to remain warm in the chilly evening.
Neville led her away from the people and away from the warmth.
Her skin prickled in the cool air, and the heaviness of confrontation fell upon her when they came to a darkened corner, tangled in shadow.
As soon as Neville stopped, Lila wrenched her arm from his grasp and pulled away.
Eloise hurried to her side, and Lila gripped her hands as they stood shoulder to shoulder, facing Neville with their backs against the balustrade.
Lila saw Neville’s hurt and thought of what pains he must have gone through to surprise her tonight and how horribly wrong it had gone.
The regret was cutting. This was Neville, the cousin that she loved in each way someone could love another.
Only she no longer understood exactly how she loved him now.
Were the feelings she had always felt for him only that of a dearest cousin?
Had the fact that she had known no other kind of love led her to believe her feelings were more than they had truly been?
Until meeting Mory, she’d had nothing to compare her feelings with.
Now she did. And yet she found herself confused and unsure of what she felt for whom.
She had known Neville most of her life. She had known Mory for a handful of days.
She felt love and tenderness and affection for Neville.
She felt heat and intrigue and depth for Mory.
Which was love? Which was more powerful than the other?
“What has happened during my absence?” Neville asked. “What have you done?”
The accusation of his words shocked her.
Years of shame regarding her mother’s own recklessness had left Lila with the fear that she was her mother’s daughter in ways she did not want to consider.
This fear was why Lila was trying to improve her behavior, why she saw marriage to Neville as a kind of proof she had outlived her mother’s reputation.
To hear him question her ability to rise above was staggering.
“She has done nothing untoward, Neville,” Eloise said when Lila began to curl into herself. “Surely you are not accusing her of such.”
Neville’s face softened. “I was not trying to accuse,” he said. “Only, I don’t understand what’s happened. A month ago I received a letter rich with excitement for my return, and now you are looking for another man in the crowd rather than glad to see me. I am taken off my guard, to be sure.”
“I am glad to see you, Neville,” Lila said, finding strength in Eloise. “But I promised another man the first dance. Had I known you were returning this evening, it would have been very different.”
“Would you have danced the first dance with me?” Neville asked.
“Of course,” Lila said, attempting to defend her character. “I had pinned all my hopes upon it.”
“She has been so fiercely devoted to you, Neville,” Eloise said. Blessed Eloise.
“Has been,” Neville repeated. He looked sharply at Lila. “Are you in love with someone else?”
“I . . .” Lila did not know what to say.
Was she in love with Mortimer? Could she take ownership of such a feeling when not long ago she was so certain she was in love with Neville?
“I do love you, Neville. You are as dear to me as anyone.” She paused, wishing she could explain beyond her own ability to articulate.
“But I have met another and . . .” It was coming out all wrong.
Where were the right words she needed to speak her heart and her mind and the truth and the feeling?
“And now you love us both?” Neville supplied.
“No,” she said, thinking of her mother again.
The shame of her loving too many, too much.
Lila let go of Eloise’s hand in order to reach up and untie the ribbon that kept her mask in place.
He needed to see her face. He needed to know—without barriers—that she meant what she said.
A moment later the green feathered mask hung from her fingers at her side.
“What I mean is, I tried very hard not to even like him. He is nothing of the sort of man I have ever wanted.”
“It is true,” Eloise said. “When we learned of Mr. Luthford’s coming, we came up with a plan to thwart his interest from the start—all manner of manipulations meant to keep him from falling in love with her. Only, it didn’t work.”
“Why is he the sort of man you did not want?”
“He was not you,” Eloise said in Lila’s place. “And he is old.”
Lila nodded, but her stomach was as hot as coals because Mory’s age no longer vexed her.
By agreeing with Eloise in hopes of easing Neville’s feelings, she was betraying Mory.
But she had to explain herself. “I was not on the hunt, Neville. I was not looking to soothe myself with some flirtation.” Not as my mother did.
“I did not want his attention.” But I want it now, she thought. Where had Mory gone?
Neville stared at her and said nothing.
She looked back at him, and tears came to her eyes. Was it because she’d hurt Neville or because she’d said unkind things about Mory?
“She has missed you every day you have been gone, Neville,” Eloise said.
“Until the last few, it seems.” His expression lost its tightness and showed only his unfulfilled expectation of what could have been a lovely surprise.
“I’m sorry,” Lila whispered. “I never meant for this to happen, and now you are here, and . . . I . . . I am very confused, Neville.”
A woman at the fire laughed, loud enough to distract the trio and cause them to look toward the laughter, which was finished by the time it caught their attention.
It was the need for relief from the chains of discomfort and strain, more than anything else, that made them eager to look that way, and then a sense of regret that there was not something more dramatic to offer them further respite.
Lila turned to look back at Neville, praying for the strength to say the words that needed to be said.
“Neville,” she said as she caught his eyes again.
But then a yellow rose lying on the edge of the darkest shadow behind him caught her eye.
She stared at it, then hurried to where it lay on the stone terrace.
It had not been there when they arrived for this discussion.
She looked into the shadows around them, the dark corners where someone could have been standing, dressed all in black—a silent audience to a confession that would burn and twist.
With tender hands Lila reached for the rose and picked it up, aware but unaware of Eloise and Neville watching her.
Mory had brought that rose for her. It was to lead her to him, yet now it seemed to speak in silent accusation.
What she’d said and what she hadn’t said pinched and pressed within her memory.
At one point she had felt as though she were betraying Mory with her account, now she knew she had.
She stood and turned. Neville and Eloise watched her.
“I am not in love with you, Neville,” she said with a tender tone.
“I love you, but not in a way a woman should love a man, and I only know this because I met a man who turned my mind and pricks my heart in ways you do not.” Neville’s nostrils flared slightly.
“I don’t say it to hurt you. I hate that I am causing you embarrassment, and I would give anything to have this play out differently than it has, but I would be doing no kindness to lead you on and .
. .” She paused and swallowed the growing regret she felt.
“I have already caused great pain to someone who did not deserve it.”
She met Eloise’s eye for only a moment before her eyes filled with tears that blurred her vision. “I am sorry,” she said to them both, to the shadows, to the ears that she knew were not there to hear it.