Judging from the faintly scandalized expressions of the Earl and Lady Bankham, this comparison was sacrilege.
“You’re... you’re not going to bring Lillias to live there?” Lady Bankham breathed. She surreptitiously touched Lady Vaughn’s hand in support.
“Of course not. The house I want to build for Lillias will be...” He stopped. “Lillias and I will be living in England, of course. I would never want her to live in anything other than the style to which she’s long been accustomed.” He said this to soothe the worried, staring parents.
“They’ll have the Devonshire house for a start,” the earl said to the Bankhams, who nodded, of course, of course, the Devonshire house.
“Oh yes, charming place.”
“And I’ll have Heatherfield, eventually, of course,” Giles said, with an arm sweep to indicate the ground and much deprecation, entirely insincere. “You might find it interesting to know that the marble was imported from—”
“Tell me about the house,” Lillias said.
Her eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face avidly.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“The house,” she repeated evenly. “The one you want to build for me in the Hudson River Valley. Tell me about the house.”
Instantly it was as though the two of them were entirely alone.
A blue butterfly took a moment to orbit them in floppy circles.
Giles cleared his throat. “But if the two of you are going to live in England...”
She didn’t reply. She actually raised a hand slightly.
Hugh ignored him.
And her eyes compelled him.
He took a breath and released it. And suddenly he knew how to begin.
“Have you ever seen a beautiful woman wearing a diamond and think... while the stone is lovely, it’s superfluous? Nothing could improve upon her beauty?”
He addressed everyone.
But he didn’t take his eyes from Lillias’s face.
Not one of the men present had ever had such a thought but they all wanted to be thought of as someone who had, so they nodded sagely. Which pleased two wives.
“I mention that because... that was my inspiration. I should also say—because this is relevant, too—that it’s a little odd for me to hear you call her Lilly, Giles—if I may call you Giles—though of course it arises from long association, and it’s a pleasure to know that others hold Lillias in affection.” He smiled here. He’d chosen that mild little word—“affection”—deliberately. “But ‘Lillias’ sounded to me from the first like the name of a goddess. It suited her utterly. And that’s what inspired the house.”
The objective of his campaign had diverged from their original plan. It had, in fact, been heading in this direction from the moment he’d met her, and he was only now realizing it.
And he was a ruthless campaigner.
Inspiration unspooled, as if this was a story he’d told for lifetimes. As surely as it was a myth. “First I ought to tell all of you—Lillias knows—that the trees in America are like the spires of the grandest English churches. In the morning, the tops of them are often wreathed in mist, like they’re all wearing halos, and the rising sun turns the cloud and mist into nacre and opal. The sunsets... colors you’ve never imagined hang up in the sky like bunting and feathers and the satin of ladies’ dresses at a ball. Flame and purple and rose and gold, they change every moment and the shadows change, too. The smell is...” He took a long breath, trying to fit words to the things he felt. “Green and brown, ancient and dying, new and budding. And when you lay your feet down on the forest floor, a bit of that perfume rises up with every step. A place like that... it shows you who you are. I can’t imagine Olympus holds a candle to it.”
His audience was absolutely riveted.
But the only person who mattered was the one wearing the bonnet with the green ribbon, which fluttered loosely beneath her chin. She was rapt. Her eyes glittered with something close to fury in its intensity. Her features were taut.
The only sounds were birds trilling and the tiny leaves on the tidy shrubbery shivering in a breeze. He looked briefly away, across the smooth acres of green. The image came to him as clearly as a myth told for hundreds of years.
“Everywhere you look on my land, at every time of day . . . it’s like living among a treasure chest full of jewels. And so I knew the house for her should both belong to the land and be a setting in which a woman like her can shine in all her true beauty. And it should look like something you’d stumble across if you should find yourself on Mt. Olympus. And in the Grecian style . . . a bit like a temple. Glowing in the sun, gold in the morning and bronze as the sun begins to fall. Clean-lined, majestic, elegant, serene. Ionic columns. A pediment, with a window, perhaps stained glass, that would catch the light. We’d welcome our guests onto a porch as generous as open arms. Over a sort of infinity of blue sky, mountains and trees and lakes like sapphires . . . we’d look out to . . . eternity.”
Lord and Lady Vaughn exchanged glances.