The Temporary Wife/A Promise of Spring (39 page)

“I think that to a young girl he must appear remarkably handsome,” Grace said.

“With the added attraction of being far too thin and underfed,” he added with a grin. “All those girls are just bursting with maternal concern. The only problem, as I see it, is that the poor man may never get up his courage to ask any of them. I think he can outdo any one of the girls in the matter of blushes.”

“You ought not to laugh, Perry,” she said, turning and taking the brush from his hand, “just because you find it so easy to converse with the ladies.”

“Laugh?” he said. “When the man is in the enviable position of having at least five young female hearts beating for him? I am not guilty, Grace, I swear. He has nothing but my admiration. You did not enjoy yourself a great deal, dear.” He set his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The smile had disappeared from his face.

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Of course I did, Perry.”

“Is it difficult for you to be with all these people again?” he asked. “Did they treat you badly before you left here?”

“No,” she said. “They treated me with amazing courtesy. I was never made to feel like a pariah.”

He framed her face with his hands. “The viscount too?” he asked. “And his father? They received you?”

Grace had never been suffocated by her husband’s nearness before. She swallowed awkwardly and could not look away from his eyes. “I was never received there,” she said, “after Jeremy.”

“Ah,” he said. “But this viscount wants to make amends. He seated you beside him at dinner, Grace. Was he a friend of your Gareth? A relative, perhaps?”

It should have been so easy. It was easy. He was making it as easy for her as it could possibly be. “A friend,”
she said jerkily, removing her eyes from his at last and lifting her hands to the lapels of his dressing gown.

“Ah,” he said again, “I guessed as much. But the pain can be allowed to recede now, Grace. He wants to make a friend of you again. That was very clear. Forgive him, dear. Let it all go, the bitterness. People do behave badly, you know. We all do on occasion. We owe it to one another to give a second chance, and sometimes even a third and fourth.”

“Yes,” she said, running her palms along the smooth silk of his lapels. She looked up into his eyes, gathering resolution, gathering courage from the kindliness she saw there. “Perry …”

“Hush now,” he said, lowering his head and kissing her lips. “Let’s forget it all for tonight and go to bed. It is late.”

“But, Perry …”

“Shh,” he murmured against her lips. “Come and let me make love to you. Does it relax you to make love? Or is it a trouble to you?” He raised his head enough to smile into her eyes.

“You know it is not a trouble,” she said. “You know that, Perry.”

“Sometimes I need reassuring,” he said with his old boyish grin. “You get into bed, Grace. I’ll see to the candles.”

She would tell him afterward, Grace decided as she got into bed. She would tell him later when they were lying quiet and relaxed, her head on his arm. Or tomorrow morning, perhaps …

B
UT SHE DID
not tell him. The moment had passed. She had told the lie, and she had clung to it when the only thing to have done was to tell the truth simply and directly. And immediately. She would just have to see to it,
she decided the next day, that they did not cross paths with Gareth again during the two weeks that remained of their stay before they went to London.

“You did not tell me that Lord Sandersford died,” she said to Ethel when the two of them were alone, gazing down at a daffodil bud that was about to brave the brisk air of early spring. “Or that Gareth was home.”

Ethel looked stricken. Her hand flew to her mouth. “You did not know?” she said. “But he has been back home for years. Oh, Grace, I am so sorry. But of course you would not have known. You have been gone for ten years. I am sorry.”

Grace touched the bud gently.

“I wondered that you were willing to go last night,” Ethel said. “I wondered that you did not beg me to refuse the invitation. It must have been a dreadful shock for you. Does Peregrine know?”

“No,” Grace said abruptly, and moved on.

But her hope of staying clear of Gareth for the remainder of their stay was not to be realized, as she might have known.

“We ran into Sandersford,” Peregrine said late one afternoon after he and Martin had ridden into the village on some business. “He took us back with him to look at his stables. He has enough horses to mount a whole hunt, Grace, and still have enough left for the ladies’ carriages. Some impressive horseflesh too. He made himself very agreeable.”

“Did he?” Grace looked at him in some unease, but he did not elaborate on what topics the viscount had made himself agreeable about.

“And I bought you a length of blue ribbon,” he said, removing it from his pocket and presenting it to her with a bow and a grin, “to replace the black one on your straw bonnet. I wish I might have brought you a more
valuable gift, but village shops do not offer much beyond the purely practical.”

“Thank you, Perry,” she said. “It is a lovely shade. And quite as valuable as diamonds, you know.”

And she could not avoid Gareth on her own account either, Grace was to discover. She was walking with Ethel one afternoon along the bank of the stream that flowed into the lake, looking for wild spring flowers, when he came riding along the road that ran parallel to the water. The road led directly from his house to the village. He stopped to hail them, and Grace reluctantly followed Ethel to the fence to exchange civilities.

“Well met,” he called. “Are you ladies just out for a stroll?”

“Yes,” Ethel said. “The weather is so lovely suddenly and the wild flowers blooming.”

“I feel tempted to join you,” he said while Grace examined the small bunch of primroses she held in her hand.

“Please do.” Ethel’s words, to do her justice, Grace thought, came rather stiffly and after a slight pause.

“I wonder,” Lord Sandersford said, dismounting from his horse and looping the reins over the fence, “if I might beg the indulgence of a few minutes alone with Grace, ma’am?” He smiled at Ethel.

Ethel looked inquiringly at her sister-in-law while Grace said nothing, but smoothed a finger lightly over the petals of a primrose. “Grace?” she said.

Grace looked up tight-lipped into Gareth’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I shall follow you home later, Ethel.” She resumed the absorbing task of smoothing the flower petals until the other woman had walked beyond earshot.

“Well, Grace …” Gareth said.

He had changed. He had always been handsome, attractive, confident of his power to charm. He had been
tall and slim when he had left her. He still had all those qualities. But now he was a man, powerfully built, exuding a seductive and assured sexuality. He was the sort of man no woman would be able to resist if he set his mind on attracting her. Not that that was anything very new either.

“You have changed,” he said, echoing her own thoughts.

“I am six-and-thirty years old,” she said, looking finally into his dark eyes. “No longer a girl, Gareth. Time is not always kind.”

“Oh,” he said, “I would not say it has been unkind to you. You had the grace of a girl when I knew you. Now you have the mature beauty of a woman. But you have lost your proud look, your defiance.”

“I grew up,” she said.

He swung his long legs one at a time over the fence that divided them and offered his arm so that they could stroll along in the direction of the lake.

Grace shook her head, but fell into step beside him.

“You wear mourning?” he said. “You did not a few evenings ago.”

“We wear it in the daytime here still out of respect for my father,” she said. “We will leave it off altogether when we go to London.”

“Ah, yes, Paul,” he said. “He died in predictably heroic manner, I heard. Saving a child?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And cut himself off from his family in equally heroic defense of your honor, I gather,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I would have thought the gesture unnecessary,” he said. “I did not think you would run away, Grace. You used not to be a coward.”

“Some things are too hurtful to be borne,” she said,
“especially when they concern someone one has harmed irrevocably.”

“The child,” he said. “Did you care about him, Grace? My father once told me that he looked like me. Did he? Did you think of me when you looked at him?” He smiled.

“I loved him,” she said. “He was my son. And, no, I did not see you when I looked at him. Or myself. I saw Jeremy. He was a quite separate person. He was not either you or me, I thank God. He was an innocent child.”

“You are bitter,” he said, “and I suppose that is understandable. The child was a nasty mistake, and unfortunately you had to bear the consequences. Are you still bitter that I did not come home to marry you?”

Grace’s voice shook with fury when she finally answered. “Jeremy was not a nasty mistake,” she said. “He was not a mistake at all. He was the most precious thing that has happened in my life, except perhaps …”

“For me?” he completed. One eyebrow was raised. His mouth was drawn into the ironic half-smile that she had always found so attractive. “Did I let you down very badly, Grace?”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, looking away from him and walking on. “A lifetime ago.”

“She was just too wealthy, you know,” he said. “Martha, I mean. And Papa was in debt and my pockets to let and an officer’s pay just too small a pittance for my needs. I could not have offered you much of a life, Grace. Or the child. But it was you I loved all the same. You never doubted that, did you?”

“Strangely, yes,” she said.

“And did you stop loving me?” he asked.

“Very soon,” she said. “Long before Jeremy was born.”

“Well,” he said, “my feelings are not so fickle, Grace. And I am not sure you tell the truth. There has always
been something between you and me. We both knew it fifteen years ago and more. And you felt it when we met again a few evenings ago, did you not? And you feel it now, Grace, as I do. Fifteen years cannot erase a love like that we shared.”

“And yet,” she said, “you seem to have lived very well without me in all that time, Gareth.”

He shrugged. “And what is this marriage you have contracted, Grace? What is he like, the beautiful boy? I would guess he is not much of a man.”

Grace was smoothing the petals of her flowers again. “It depends upon your definition of manhood, Gareth,” she said. “I daresay he would not be long on his feet in a mill against you. But there is more to a man than fists and muscles.”

He laughed. “Well said,” he said. “And don’t tell me that that part is good with him, Grace. You need more of a man to give you that, my love. I know. I have had you, remember?”

Grace examined her flowers, her jaw set in a hard line.

“Why did you marry him?” he asked. “To spite me?”

She laughed. “You are not in my life, Gareth,” she said, “and have not been for fifteen years. It is a long time. You have no part in my life any longer.”

“Why, then?” he asked. “Tell me, Grace. I am curious to know.”

She looked up at him. They had stopped walking. “My reasons for marrying Perry and my whole relationship with him are private matters between me and him,” she said. “They are none of your concern, Gareth.”

“Ah, but I believe they are, Grace,” he said, “or soon will be. Will you not admit that your interest in me has been rekindled in the last few days? Come, Grace, I know you of old. You cannot lie to me.”

“You are wrong,” she said. “All connection between you and me is buried at the end of the lake with Jeremy.
All feeling between us was dead before that. Have you ever been there? Have you ever seen your son’s grave?”

“Yes,” he said. “Once.” He lifted a hand and laid one finger beneath her chin. “The child is buried there, Grace. Not you and I. Despite your protestations to the contrary, you know that nothing is ended between us. Just dormant. This day has been coming. We have both known it.”

His eyes had that intense, passionate look that had always mesmerized her. In years past she had invariably ended in his arms when he had looked at her like that. She felt a twinge of fear. “You are my past, Gareth,” she said. “Not my present and not my future. My past.”

“You think that boy is your future?” he said. “Poor Grace. He is a ladies’ man. Have you not seen that? His head is already turned by the admiration of those silly girls. Imagine what will happen when you reach London and all the new little butterflies of the Season. Grace, my love! He is far too young to appreciate your mature attractions. You will lose him, you know. I would give your marriage perhaps another year. Then he will be lost to you.”

“That is not your concern, and never will be,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “I am a patient man, Grace. We will see in a year’s time. Do you wish me to walk all the way home with you?” They had been strolling back the way they had come.

“No,” she said. “No, that is unnecessary.”

“I shall leave you here, then,” he said, patting the neck of his horse over the fence. “Is this all a secret from the estimable Peregrine, by the way? Does he know of the child? Of me? Does he know who I am?”

Grace buried her nose in her flowers. “He does not know who you are,” she said. “The rest he does know, and has done since before our marriage.”

“I see,” he said, smiling down mockingly at her. “Then I am to make sure that the secret does not slip out, am I?”

“I am not asking anything of you,” she said.

“You leave yourself very much in my power, do you not?” he said, crossing the fence again and disentangling the reins of his horse.

“No,” she said. “I ask nothing of you, Gareth. No favor. You may tell Perry what you will.”

Sandersford swung into the saddle and smiled down at her. “Ah,” he said, “the old defiant Grace. All that is missing is that dark mane loose down your back as you toss your head. But the spark is back in your eyes. I will not tell your secret, Grace. I would not be so poor-spirited.
Au revoir
, my love. I shall see you again soon.” He touched the brim of his hat with his riding whip and turned his horse’s head to the roadway again.