The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (36 page)

Grace let her hand lie in the warmth of her husband’s and her shoulder rest just below the level of his as she gazed out of the window at the faded greens and browns of the fields and the bare branches of the trees. Spring would come soon to the land and clothe everything in bright beauty again. But not to her life. Her life was heading into autumn and perhaps even winter. A cold and stark winter.

It might well be winter when they came home again, even if all the fruit trees and flowers were blooming and the air was heavy with the scent of her roses and Perry’s.

N
O ONE CAME OUT INTO THE COBBLED COURTYARD
before the main doors of Pangam Manor when their carriage pulled up there, Grace noticed, except for a groom and two footmen. But then it was a cold and blustery February day. Both Martin and Ethel were waiting in the hall, however, both looking remarkably unchanged since she had last seen them.

Martin’s fair hair was perhaps a little thinner on top, his figure a little stouter, his complexion a little more florid. But there was still that air of importance about him, and still the line between his eyes that had always denoted impatience with the slowness and lack of understanding of others and a general dissatisfaction with his life. Ethel was still thin and pale. And still unsmiling.

But they were there, Grace thought, moving forward to hug her sister-in-law and rest her cold cheek against Ethel’s for a moment and turning to place her hands on her brother’s shoulders and stretch up to kiss him on the cheek.

“You are looking well, Grace,” Martin said, resting his hands on her waist for a brief moment in acknowledgment of her embrace.

“You must be very cold,” Ethel said. “I have ordered tea to be brought up to the drawing room. Perhaps you would like some before I have you shown to your rooms.”

Grace turned back to Peregrine, who stood silently behind her. She took his arm and watched her brother and sister-in-law as she presented him to them. Not one flicker on the face of either showed surprise or any other emotion. They were all civil politeness.

“Where is Pa—? Where is Father?” Grace asked.

“He keeps to his rooms a great deal through the winter,” Ethel said, taking Grace’s arm and leading her in the direction of the stairs. “But he will come down for tea when we send to let him know that you have arrived.”

“He is unwell?” Grace asked.

Ethel shrugged. “He has slowed down,” she said. “He is getting older, as we all are.”

There seemed to be no double meaning in the words, Grace decided. And she would not look for snubs where perhaps none was meant. She was no longer Grace Howard, headstrong daughter of the house. She was Grace Lampman, and she recognized the necessity of being civil and expecting civility from those with whom she must associate.

“How are the children?” she asked.

“The children?” Ethel gave her a strange look as she led Grace into the drawing room. “Oswald is away at school. He is almost sixteen. Perhaps you had forgotten that so much time has passed. Priscilla will be down for tea. We will be taking her to town for the Season this spring. She is nearly eighteen, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” Grace said. “It is amazing to think that they are quite grown up already.” Jeremy would have been fourteen.

Miss Priscilla Howard arrived in the drawing room at almost the same moment as the tea tray. She was a younger version of her mother, Grace saw as she rose to her feet. She was slender and fair-haired and wore a frilly pink dress that had obviously been donned for the
occasion though the color did not quite suit her. Yet she was pretty enough, with a mass of ringlets bouncing against the sides of her head and the color high in her cheeks, her gray eyes sparkling with mingled shyness and excitement.

“Hello, Aunt Grace,” the girl said, curtsying low. “I remember you. You really look very little different from the way you used to be. Do you wear mourning for Uncle Paul? Grandpapa does too, though Mama and Papa left theirs off at Christmas.”

“You talk too much, child,” her father said. “Make your curtsy to your Uncle Peregrine.”

Priscilla turned her eyes on him and her blush deepened as she curtsied. “Sir,” she said. And her eyes continued to scrutinize him curiously.

Perry’s eyes were laughing at his niece-by-marriage, Grace saw. He bowed elegantly. “I have just overheard your mother say that you are to make your come-out this Season,” he said. “I can warn her now that all the young bucks will be lined up at your door, Priscilla. And we will make that Uncle Perry, if you please.”

Priscilla smiled. “Yes, Uncle Perry,” she said. “Though I think you are too young to be my uncle. Have you been much in London? Mama and Papa have not been there since they were young. I am sure much has changed in all that time.”

Peregrine grinned. “I daresay people went to parties and balls and assemblies and theaters and picnics and whatnot in those long-ago days just as they do now,” he said. “And danced and flirted and otherwise amused themselves. And your mama would have been presented to the same queen as you are like to make your curtsy to. Grace and I will be going to London too, you know.”

“Will you?” she said. “How splendid! Did you hear that, Mama?”

The girl plied Peregrine with eager questions about
London for the next few minutes while Martin and Ethel made polite inquiries of Grace about the journey.

But they were interrupted before they could finish their tea by the arrival of Lord Pawley. He left his valet in the doorway and proceeded into the room alone, leaning heavily on a cane. He was still tall and thin, Grace saw as she rose to her feet. Still severe and distinguished-looking. But the gray hair she remembered had turned to pure white, and the lines running from his nose to his chin had deepened. His eyes sought her out and looked into hers with quite as much bright keenness as ever. He was dressed in deep mourning.

“Well, Grace,” he said, stopping a short distance from her, “you have come home.”

“Yes, Father,” she said. “How are you?”

“Well,” he said. “I am glad to see that you appreciated your brother enough still to wear mourning for him.”

“I loved Paul, Father,” she said.

He nodded. “I suppose I did not,” he said. “Present me to your husband.”

Her father looked long and hard at Peregrine, Grace saw in some discomfort after she had made the introductions. She found she was holding her breath.

“I am grateful to you, sir, for taking care of my daughter at a difficult time for her,” the baron said eventually before seating himself and turning to take a cup of tea from his daughter-in-law.

Peregrine was smiling, apparently quite unperturbed by the long and steady scrutiny he had just been subjected to. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “But Grace and I did not wed merely because she was in need, you know. And may I express my belated sympathies on the passing of your son? Paul was a particular friend of mine. I wear mourning for him still on my own account as well as out of respect for my wife.”

The baron nodded curtly and the conversation became general.

It had been very stiff and very difficult, Grace thought half an hour later as she and Peregrine followed Ethel upstairs to the bedrooms. And much, much easier than she had anticipated. If she looked back on the bitterness of her departure ten years before, it was amazing enough that they had all been able to behave civilly over tea in the drawing room.

Ethel showed Peregrine to his room, in which his valet was already unpacking his things and laying out his shaving gear, before taking Grace across the hallway to her old room.

“Do you want this room?” Ethel asked hesitantly. “I did not know. But it is still thought of and spoken of as yours.” She flushed.

“Yes,” Grace said, wandering across it and looking about her. “And it is just the same. The Chinese wallpaper, the green curtains and bed hangings. Why did I expect everything and everyone to be so different?”

“You look no older, Grace,” her sister-in-law said. “Indeed, you look a great deal better than you did when …”

Grace had crossed to the window to see that, yes, she could still see along the elm grove to the summerhouse, where she had sat so often as a girl with a book or talking with Gareth. She turned to look back at Ethel. “Yes,” she said. “I am feeling a great deal better.”

“I am glad you have come,” Ethel said. “Papa needs you, I believe. But he would never have asked for you, of course.”

Grace turned completely from the window. “How did he take the news of Paul’s death?” she asked.

Ethel’s lips tightened. “He showed Martin your letter, ordered mourning for himself and the servants, straightened his shoulders, which were becoming stooped, and
said no more about the matter,” she said. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yes,” Grace said. “He took it hard. I think I am glad, both for his sake and Paul’s.”

Perry was standing in the doorway, she saw suddenly, his face smiling, his very presence lightening the atmosphere.

“This is where you are,” he said. “What a lovely room. And don’t tell me.” He held up a hand. “This was your room when you lived here, was it not, Grace? And you planned it and chose the wallpaper and the colors of the paint and the bed hangings and the carpet. I could walk into this room anywhere in the kingdom and say without any hesitation at all that it is the handiwork of Grace Lampman.” He grinned and turned to Ethel. “Now, tell me that I am wrong and make me feel very foolish.”

Ethel was smiling, Grace was surprised to see. “No,” she said. “You are quite right.”

Peregrine laughed and strolled right into the room. “An indoor garden,” he said. “That is a thumb of the nose to English weather. I was going to suggest that you move your things to my room, Grace, but now I think I must beg to be allowed to bring mine here.” He turned to Ethel, still smiling. “Grace and I share a room always. You will not mind?”

“D
ID SHE MIND
?” he asked Grace a few minutes later when they had been left alone. “She certainly turned pink and left in some haste. But I would feel foolish to be observed creeping across here to you each night, Grace, as if I were up to no good. Better for everyone to know that we sleep together.”

“Yes,” she said, strangely pleased.

“You do not mind, Grace?” he asked. “Perhaps you
would prefer to have your room to yourself again? Perhaps you need some time alone? I am remarkably selfish, am I not, thinking only of my own comfort.”

“No,” she said sharply. “I would prefer to have you here, Perry.”

He came closer to her and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “This is all very hard for you, dear. Do you think I do not know that? But you have done the right thing to come. Your family wants you back again. Perhaps you are too involved in your own emotions to see that clearly. I can see more objectively. And it is so, Grace. You are loved here. And I can see just as clearly that you want them too. You have never stopped loving them. It will be hard for you, the next week or so, but it is right to force yourself to live through it. It is what you need to do.”

She clasped his wrist and turned her head to kiss it briefly. “Yes,” she said. “I am only sorry that you have to be involved in the discomfort, Perry.”

He smiled at her. “I think you may need an arm or a shoulder to lean on from time to time,” he said, “though of course you could do it alone if I were not with you. But since I am here, it will be my arm and my shoulder, Grace. And I must confess to some curiosity to know the people and places that figured so largely in your life before I even knew you. I must go back to my dressing room to shave. Perkins had gone for the water before I came across here, and there is nothing more terrifying to behold than the wrath of Perkins when he has just been forced to watch my shaving water grow cold.” He bent and kissed her cheek.

G
RACE WAS SURPRISED
and somewhat gratified to find in the following days that Ethel was making an effort to be friendly. They spent some time together, sitting over
their embroidery, wandering through the orangery, examining the shooting plants in the garden, which would be transformed into daffodils and tulips within a very few weeks.

“I am glad you have come, Grace,” Ethel said on more than one occasion. “The cloud of your leaving has hung over Papa and Martin for a long time. They never mentioned either you or Paul in all those years, of course, but I know them both well enough to understand that that meant only that they were hurting deeply.”

Grace looked at her sister-in-law curiously. She had never liked Ethel, had never tried to like her, perhaps. She had not wanted another young woman in the house when Martin had first brought his bride home. And she had been jealous when the births of her niece and nephew had diverted some of her father’s attention from herself. Then, of course, for the last five years she had been at home, pregnant during the first, with Jeremy for the remaining four, Ethel had been the favored lady of the house.

And Ethel had gloated. She had made the most of her triumph, both for herself and for her very legitimate children. Grace had hated her, if the truth were known. But Ethel was a person like any other, she saw now. And she was clearly a person who knew and understood her husband and her father-in-law. And cared. And now she was holding out an olive branch to the sister-in-law who had treated her badly for several years and to whom she had finally returned the compliment.

“I did not even write about Paul’s death until six weeks after it happened,” Grace said. “I did not know if they would wish to know.”

“You are as stubborn and as blind as they are, Grace,” Ethel said. “You are all so similar, you know, the three of you. Only Paul was different.”

Grace looked up again in surprise.

“Martin cried,” Ethel said. “I was frightened, as you may well imagine. I had never expected to see him cry. And he talked on and on about how he had always ridiculed and mistreated Paul as a boy. And about how he had let him go and had never even tried to communicate with him after.”

Grace pointed to a bunch of primroses, almost hidden in the grass. “Was it Martin’s idea to invite me for Christmas?” she asked.