Free The Diamond Waterfall by Pamela Haines Page B

dreaming of my dearest Lily and our next happy meeting!”). Had kept all of them just for the proud thrillof his, in truth, rather badly formed hand. Read now, one by one, they formed a
chapelet,
a commentary on that summer.
    Hurry on, and pass
this
one. Ironic now, referring to the evening out with Lionel when she had met Sir Robert for the first time.
    Dearest, I know that when I am away my darling goes out with others. I think perhaps I must try never to go away unless with you —And yet I know when you are out at supper with
others,
that you are all the time thinking of me, as I am of you (and last evening in the hansom! Your lips are not cherries but strawberries, and that is why I crushed them. I wish, dearest, that I was a poet and not just a silly twenty-three-year-old man about town.).
    And so on and so on—until August, and his departure abroad. He had had no choice about that. He had told her, again in a letter:
    â€œâ€¦ I know, dearest, that
you
could take a holiday this summer—You mentioned it would be possible. And I would have liked to invite you….” But she had not thought much about it because of the hint—reading between the lines—that soon they would be together always. She would become Viscountess Tristram. There would be the headlines, “Carlton Star Weds Peer.” And the customary nonsense: “… one of the loveliest flowers adorning our English stage has been plucked by the aristocracy….”
    â€œI
wanted
to invite you,” he told her again later (his hand over hers beneath the tablecloth). “The trouble is—Mother.”
    Lily had thought, I should have guessed. Earlier she’d said to herself, There will be trouble there. But she had thought herself equal to it. After all, his mother would be the dowager only. I would have always, in the end, the last word.
    â€œâ€¦ Mother. She hasn’t been strong, or well, since Father’s death. The shock. And upsets over the Will, and claimants. She would like to go to Austria or Germany, you see.” His dear face, the vivacity dimmed but shining with affection, with anxiety to please. (Might not that be, even now, the trouble?) “She wants me with her, although a great friend, Lady Bartlett, goes with her sons, and I believe too an aunt of mine. It will be good for her in the mountains. …”
    Lily remembered that she had hoped even then that it was not too late to change…. She had said to him, saucily enough:
    â€œHas she ordered you, Edmund? Is it a
command?”
    â€œNot a command—just a plea, darling. She asked in such a way…. She said, and she’s right, dammit, that Father would have wished—that she
expected.
… So, how not?” He had looked pathetic, torn both ways, distressed and (how to think of that now?) so terribly, terribly in love with her.
    That same night he had written a letter which she first saw on openingher eyes, which she had read over her coffee, wearing, she remembered now, her new negligee with its neck of coral swansdown.
    Perhaps I wasn’t able to say earlier this evening, when your dear sweet face was looking at me. I could not say how
very,
very much I am going to miss my dearest—except that I know she will understand. Soon we shall be together again. And next time—who knows, forever? You
do
understand, my darling? It is not just the duty I owe my mother—but even more, my Father. A man, that King, Country, and Empire could all have been proud of. I could not let him down, could I?
    Their last supper together, at Gatti’s. The promises of undying love, of daily thoughts. The drive back to her house in the hansom cab, his importuning, her fear that she might yield….
    And then the long weeks: the rest of July, half of August. Letters had come. Shorter it was true, but no less protesting. Gifts. How was she to know, how could she ever have known? In the middle of August, his