The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (34 page)

She had allowed Gareth numerous intimacies in those few days, because she knew she was losing him perhaps forever and because she did not care what her father or her stuffy brother and despised sister-in-law might say, and because she was young and very, very foolish. It had always happened outdoors, almost always on the hard ground, Gareth heavy on her so that sometimes she had almost screamed with the pain of stones or hard earth pressing into her back. She had loved what he did to her because it was forbidden and daring and dangerous. He had always done what he did quickly and lustily, intent on his own pleasure. But then she had assumed that that was what sexual relations were supposed to be like.

Perry had not been like that at all. Perry had called her beautiful and he had made her feel beautiful in what he had done to her very unhurriedly on the bed before he had fallen asleep. She had been embarrassed and tense at first because she was a woman approaching her middle
age and he little more than a boy, and because it had been fourteen years since she had last been with a man, but he had made her feel like a woman again, like someone of worth, someone desirable before he had lain on her and come into her.

And the barriers had come crashing down under the gentle caress of his hands, the warm touch of his mouth, the soothing murmurings of his voice. She had come alive again. All her feelings had come slowly and painfully and achingly alive for him, so that when he had come inside her finally, she had been unable to present herself to him as a dutiful wife. She had become a woman opening to her lover. And if there had been any chance that she might have recollected herself before he finished, he had destroyed that chance by working slowly and rhythmically in her even at that culminating stage of his lovemaking. And so she had given herself openly to her husband and had received his gift of pleasure.

She had said nothing. She had held him with her arms, but she had kept her inner trembling in check. And she had closed her eyes and turned her face into his shoulder when he had moved to her side and put his arm beneath her. So, when he had kissed her cheek and pulled the blankets up around her shoulders, he had assumed she was asleep already and had fallen asleep himself. She did not know if he knew. She did not know if she wished him to know.

But she knew that he was a man with far greater depths of kindness and gentleness and love than she had ever suspected. She knew that he was a man in a thousand. A man who deserved the very best that life could give him. A man who should have love and laughter in his home. And children.

And she knew that she was alive again and so full of pain that she did not know quite how she could lie still
so as not to disturb him. She must not allow it. She dared not allow it. It was too late now for her to come alive and be the wife Perry needed and deserved. If she came too much alive, she would become too terribly aware of the injustice she had done him, and she would not even be able to be a good wife to him. She would come to watch for signs of discontent in him. She would come to watch him with other, younger women, watching for signs of longing and restlessness. And she would come ultimately to hate him for having reminded her that life could be for living if only one had not misused one’s youth so very badly.

But the tautness of her body must have disturbed him after all. His eyes were open when she looked across at him again. He was smiling, as he usually was.

“Still awake, Grace?” he asked, running one knuckle down the length of her nose. “Is this very strange to you, dear? It is to me too, I do assure you. I am not accustomed to waking up to find a wife on the pillow beside me.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is a little strange.”

His smile faded. “I did not hurt you, Grace? Or outrage you? Or embarrass you?”

She shook her head. “I am your wife,” she said.

“Yes, you are.” He gazed at her in silence for a while. “Grace, I know you have a great many memories. I know that you have loved. And tonight especially the memories must be painful. I cannot compete against the father of your child. I do not wish to compete. I do not wish you to try to suppress those memories or put me in his place. I just want to give you some comfort, dear, some security. Some affection. Don’t feel guilty if you are remembering him tonight.”

Grace could only gaze mutely back into his eyes.

He smiled and closed the distance between their mouths.
“But I do like waking to find a wife here,” he said before kissing her.

He should not have woken when he had, Grace thought. She had not had time to come to terms with her very live feelings. And perhaps she never would again, living with him by day as she must, sleeping beside him and with him by night. Perhaps she would never be able to die inside again for as long as they were wed. Perhaps she must step out into the world again and learn again how to live, how to love, how to enjoy, and how to suffer.

She found herself wanting more than the warm kiss. She wanted to know if it would always be as it had been the first time, if he would always be her lover as well as her husband. It was only when his mouth moved to her throat and his hands found their way beneath her nightgown and his weight bore down on her and his manhood came into her that she let go of her anxieties and allowed herself to become a woman beneath him again, made beautiful by the gentle force of his lovemaking.

S
PRING WAS COMING FAST
. T
HERE WAS NO TIME TO BE
wasted indoors. Not when a large and barren garden cried out for an artist’s touch. Grace could no more resist the call than a painter could resist a large bare canvas, or a pianist a new and priceless pianoforte, or a writer a block of blank paper.

Peregrine’s old gardener and two new lads hired from the village began the heavy work under her directions, but it was Grace herself who did all of the planning and much of the planting, kneeling on the newly turned soil in an old black dress she had had since Jeremy’s passing, an equally old straw hat shielding her neck and face from the early spring sunshine, a pair of gloves protecting her hands.

Much of the time she stood gazing about her, seeing with narrowed eyes her dream begin to take shape, seeing with her mind the fruit trees and blooms that would make their home beautiful later in the year and in the years to come.

And Peregrine as often as not knelt or stood at her side, planting bulbs and seedlings under her directions, laughing as she reached over to turn a bulb he had planted upside down (“Would it bloom in China, do you suppose?” he asked her), teasing her when she stood silent, with her narrow-eyed gaze, that she was just too
weary to do more work and was merely pretending to concentrate on other matters.

Yet he admitted as he looked about him after a few weeks that already, even with much bare earth and only a few frail plants pushing their way toward the sun and rows of trees that looked impossibly fragile, his house and its surrounds were looking more like a home. It would all be a showpiece within a few years, he was convinced. And he glanced in some wonder at his wife, who was working the miracle.

They went about a great deal together in the afternoons and sometimes in the evenings, visiting their friends and neighbors, attending the few assemblies and social gatherings with which the families of the area entertained themselves. Grace was a little less withdrawn than she had been as the rector’s housekeeper, recognizing that more was expected of Lady Lampman than had been of Miss Grace Howard. She discovered that her neighbors were quite prepared to accept her in her new status. She had been afraid that they might resent her rise to social prominence and her taking away of their favorite.

Peregrine was as charming and as sunny-natured as ever and every bit as willing as he had ever been to converse with the ladies and compliment them on a new cap or lace collar or a recovery from illness. But he no longer flirted.

The young ladies accepted reality, with perhaps a sigh of resignation, and wondered when they might expect the Earl of Amberley to return from London. Several were agreed that he was without a doubt the most handsome gentleman in the county even if his manner was a little more reserved than they might have wished and even if his title and wealth and property did set him somewhat beyond their touch. Others, especially the very young, protested that his younger brother, Lord
Eden, was by far the more handsome. And so tall. And with such open, pleasing manners. And would he come home to Amberley for the summer, or would he take himself off to his own estate in Wiltshire?

Peregrine went about very little on his own, a fact that somewhat disturbed Grace at first. Not that she minded having him near her. It was a pleasing novelty to have company in her gardening, and a constant amusement to discover the vast extent of his ignorance about plants and landscape gardening. But she had not wanted to tie him down. She had not wanted to kill the joy in his life. She relaxed more as time went on and he seemed to be quite happy to spend his days with her and to see his garden being transformed before his very eyes.

When they were not out of doors and not visiting or entertaining, Peregrine sat reading as often as not. It had always been his favorite hobby. He enjoyed it even more now after discovering that he could share interesting facts from his books with Grace without either boring or mystifying her. Indeed, he realized soon, Grace was an intelligent and well-informed woman. He thought of all the times he and Paul must have talked in her silent presence and he had never suspected that her mind was as active and as interesting as his friend’s had been, even if not perhaps quite as knowledgeable.

Sometimes he read aloud to her as she stitched at her embroidery. And he never tired of watching the design grow from the blank linen beneath her long, slim fingers. On occasion he did nothing else but sit and watch her, her black-clad figure slim and shapely, her hair sleek, the black lace cap that she wore indoors hardly distinguishable from the color of her hair, her dark eyelashes fanning her pale cheeks as she bent to her work.

She would look up at him eventually with her large gray eyes and sometimes a fleeting smile, and he would resume his reading, not wishing to embarrass or to make
self-conscious the grace of her movements. If his parents had made a disaster of naming him, Grace’s parents could not have picked a more perfect name for her.

He was never sure how happy or unhappy she was. She went about her work with quiet energy and created beauty wherever she went. She had taken quiet control of his household and won the ungrudging respect of a housekeeper and servants who had gone largely their own way since his mother had left three years before to live with his aunt, her sister, in Scotland. And he had noticed that she was taking her rightful place among their associates as his wife. She was no longer the silent presence in company that she had always been when Paul was alive.

He was not sure, either, how she felt about sharing his bed each night. She never complained or showed any sign of distaste or reluctance, even when he awoke her in the middle of the night or in the early morning, as he very frequently did. He could not leave her alone. He had never consciously found her attractive when Paul was alive, even though he could look back now and remember that his eyes had rested on her often and found her pleasing to look at. She was not beautiful in any universally accepted sense. And yet he had found her so since his marriage to her.

He never tired of looking at her narrow, rather pale face, her dark hair, her slim, graceful figure. And he never tired of touching her with his hands and his mouth and his body. There was a woman’s maturity to her body that excited and aroused him to loving her over and over again. And she was not entirely indifferent, he thought at times. She never openly participated in their lovemaking, never by word or sound showed any emotion.

But her body betrayed some enjoyment. There was a tautness to her breasts, which he occasionally touched
beneath her nightgown, a welcoming wetness when he came to her, a certain tightening of her inner muscles as he worked toward his unhurried climax, a tilting of her hips to allow his deeper penetration. And her arms always held him when he lay on her and in her.

He hoped he did not misread the signs. He would hate to discover that the nights of their marriage, which were becoming more and more magical to him, were something only to be endured for her. He knew that she did not love him, that he could never expect her to do so. She had done so much more living than he. Her eyes showed that she had lived and suffered and survived. And she had loved. He could not forget the look of agony on her face and the sounds of anguish in her voice as she had told him about her lover and her son. He could not fight against the past, against the dead. He had accepted both, had accepted her just as she was at the particular moment when he had found her, had decided that he would take just and only what she had to give.

But he did not want her to give out of reluctant duty. He wanted her life to be tranquil, secure, peaceful. She could never be happy again, perhaps. But he wanted to bring her contentment, as she was bringing it to him.

It was not at all clear to Peregrine why he demanded so little for himself from his marriage, when he was a young man who had always loved life and who had seen for several years past that it was possible to attract the interest of almost any female he cared to have. He might have married almost any beautiful young girl he wished to choose. He might have commanded her admiration and love. Yet he had chosen an aging woman of questionable beauty and charm, whose love had long ago been given elsewhere and from whom the most he could hope for was respect and affection.

However it was, Peregrine grew content, even if not
wildly happy, during the first year of his marriage. Perhaps he did not realize fully the extent to which he loved his wife. But he did know that she mattered to him, that he cared for her, that seeing to her contentment gave meaning and shape to his days, that her presence in his life gave pleasure to his days and joy to his nights.