One Night for Love by Mary Balogh

did the bulk of her audience.
    “Goodness, child.” That was the countess, who had laughed but who also looked somewhat embarrassed.
    Lily smiled at her. “I believe I was six or seven years old at the time,” she said. “And everyone thought it was very funny—everyone except me. I seem to recall that I burst into tears. Later I learned how to wear a sari properly. I believe I still remember how. There is no lovelier form of dress, I do assure you. And no lovelier country than India. Always when my mother and father told me stories, I pictured them happening there, in India, beyond the British camp. There, where life was brighter and more colorful and mysterious and romantic than life with the regiment ever was.”
    “If you had gone to school, Lily,” the gentleman with the receding fair hair told her, “you would have been taught that every other country and every other people are inferior to Britain and the British.” But his eyes laughed as he spoke.
    “Perhaps it is as well that I did not go to school, then,” Lily replied.
    He winked at her.
    “Indeed, Lily,” Elizabeth said, “there is a school of experience in which those with intelligence and open, questioning minds and acute powers of observation may learn valuable lessons. It seems to me that you have been a diligent pupil.”
    Lily beamed at her. For a few minutes she had forgotten her ignorance and her inferiority to all these grand people. She had forgotten that she was frightened.
    “But we have kept you talking too long and have caused your tea to grow cold,” Elizabeth said. “Come. Let me empty out what remains and pour you a fresh cup.”
    One of the young ladies—the one with the red hair—was asked then to play the pianoforte in the adjoining music room, and several people followed her in there, leaving the double doors open. Neville took the seat beside Lily that had just been vacated.
    “Bravo!” he said softly. “You have done very well.”
    But Lily was listening to the music. It enthralled her. How could so much rich and harmonious sound come from one instrument and be produced with just ten human fingers? How wonderful it must feel to be able to
do
that. She would give almost anything in the world, she thought suddenly, to be able to play the pianoforte—and to be able to lead and to discuss bonnets and tragedy and to know the difference between Mozart and Beethoven.
    She was so terribly,
dreadfully
ignorant.

   7   
    N eville stood on the marble steps outside the house watching Lily stroll in the direction of the rock garden with Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey. He made no attempt to join them. Somehow, he realized, if Lily was to function as his countess, she was going to have to do so without his hovering over her at every moment, ready to rescue her whenever she seemed in distress—as he had been about to do at tea when she had admitted to being illiterate. He had felt everyone’s shock and her embarrassment and had been instantly intent on taking her out of the way of more humiliation. But Elizabeth had come magnificently to her rescue with her questions about India, and Lily had been suddenly transformed into a warm and relaxed and knowledgeable student of the world. She had shocked a few of his aunts and cousins with her candid references to breeches and stays and such, it was true. But more than one or two of his relatives had seemed charmed by her.
    Unfortunately his mother was not one of them. She had waited for Lily to leave and for all but an intimate few of the family to withdraw after tea.
    “Neville,” she had said, “I cannot imagine
what
you were thinking of. She is quite impossible. She has no conversation, no education, no accomplishments, no—no
presence
. And does she have nothing more suitable to wear for afternoon tea than that sad muslin garment?” But his mother was not one to wallow in a sense of defeat. She straightened her shoulders and changed her tone. “Butthere is little to be