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said. “Come.”
    His hand closed on hers and clamped hard about it. He scarcely broke stride, but continued on his way toward the outer door, Lily at his side.

    Neville threw the doors wide, and they stepped out into blinding sunshine and were met by a sea of faces and a chorus of excited, curious voices.
    He ignored them. Indeed, he did not even see or hear them. He strode down the churchyard path, through thegateway, between crowds of people who opened a way for him by hastily stepping back upon one another, and around to the gates into the park of Newbury Abbey.
    He said nothing to the woman at his side. He could not yet trust the reality of what had happened, of what was happening, even though he held tightly to the apparition and could
feel
her small hand in his own.
    He was remembering …

  
PART II
  

Memory: One Night for Love

   3   
    L ily Doyle is sitting alone on a small rocky promontory jutting out over a deep valley high in the barren hills of central Portugal. It is December and chilly.
    She is wrapped in a shabby old army cloak that she has cut down to size. But it cannot hide the fact that she has been transformed over the past year or so from a lithe, coltish girl into a heart-stoppingly beautiful woman. Her dark-blond hair waves loose down her back to below her waist. The wind is blowing it out behind her and hopelessly tangling it. Her slender arms, covered by the sleeves of her faded blue cotton dress, clasp her updrawn knees. Her feet, despite the cold, are bare. How can she feel the earth, how can she feel
life
, she once explained, if she is always shod?
    Neville Wyatt, Major Lord Newbury, is reclining at his ease on the ground some distance behind her, a tin mug of hot tea cupped in both hands. He is watching her. He cannot see her face, but he can imagine its expression as she gazes down over the valley below, up at the cloud-dotted sky and the lone bird wheeling there. It will be dreamy, serene. No, those descriptions are too passive. There will be a glow in her face, a light in her eyes.
    Lily sees beauty wherever she goes. While the men of the Ninety-fifth and the women who follow in its train curse the Iberian landscape, the weather, the endless marches, the dreary camps, the food, one another, Lily can always find something of beauty. But she is not resented for her eternal cheerfulness. She is a favorite with all who know her.
    Until recently she has been a girl. She is a girl no longer.
    Neville tosses the dregs of his tea onto the grass beside him and gets to his feet. He looks about, first at the company of men he has brought with him on a winter scouting expedition to make sure that the French are observing the unwritten truce of the season and are keeping behind their lines in Spain or else inside the border fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, which the British forces will besiege as soon as spring conies.
    He squints across to the hills opposite and down into the valley. All is quiet. He has not expected otherwise. If there had been any real danger, he would never have allowed Corporal Geary to bring his wife or Sergeant Doyle to bring his daughter. It is a routine mission and has been unexpectedly pleasant—this is normally the rainy season. Tomorrow they will return to base camp. But tonight they will camp where they are.
    He can no longer resist. He strolls toward the promontory on which Lily sits and makes a show when he is standing beside her of shielding his eyes and sweeping his gaze over the valley again. She looks up and smiles. He is not quite sure when her looks and smiles started to make his heart skip a beat. He has tried to continue seeing her as the young daughter—the too-young daughter—of his sergeant. But he has been failing miserably of late. She is eighteen, after all.
    “You have observed no French regiment tiptoeing stealthily along the valley floor, Lily?” he asks without looking down at her.
    She laughs. “Two of them actually, sir,” she says.